BIG SOUTHERN CHAPTER 75

JUNE 2012

WULF

Wulf takes the garbage out to the burn barrel behind the rider house, dumps it in. Just as he is about to light it, the crumpled wad with his supposed biological father's phone numbers takes his attention. He strikes the match, then shakes its fire out. It smokes. He tosses it into the barrel, reaches to light another, then grabs the paper, takes it from the mass. Then he lights the trash.

On his way back in he unwads the page. He listens to the canal water rushing by, one leg of the stream heading west across the Big Fill and the other dropping into the Lowline just below the house. The three-drop cement waterway, thirty feet in elevation from lower level to top, serves the same purpose as one of those soothing tapes that city people play to help them sleep. 'One of the perks,' he describes it to first time acquaintances. It never gets mundane, he never ignores it fully.

The original rider house, which might be a mail-order building—a la Ikea—from the turn of the century, has just been repaired. The Canal manager has a minor interest in preserving the past. It's not a particularly striking structure but it is the first permanent one here. There's a foundation across the canal, across the spill, out in the rocks, that some think is older, but he's of the mind it was built by a later settler—it would be a foolish place to put a building, otherwise.

Earlier today he saw David at the store, had a short conversation with him. "There much of an invasive plant problem on the canal? Any loosestrife?" David had asked.

Wulf had told him about the water onion further south, the tamarisk at the end of the canal where it dumped into the reservoir.

David had also asked if he'd seen any poisonous plants. Particularly hemlock. Wulf told him of the patch up at Uncle Byron's, it was in bloom right now.

David's curiosity amuses him slightly, no more than a bird's wing brushing a stone but still noticeable. Wulf's been to college, was just short a year of a degree after coming out of the Air Force. When he ceased deriving the joy of novelty in college life he'd moved on. So he thinks he knows a little about the university mindset, sees it in David's demeanor which, unbeknownst to David, makes a discernible display that other locals interpret, each in their own specific way. The museum likewise gets an array of different impressions, some people using it as a point of derision and others amused, like him, while some latch on to it as a harbinger of bigger things for the community. Most, though, just shrug and ignore it.

The wind is light enough that he can hold the rumpled page out in the light to see the numbers. He settles his attention on the first, punches the number into his phone. Once it starts ringing he walks through his door into the house, where the noise of the water won't interfere with the call.

© 2025 Ralph Thurston