BIG SOUTHERN CHAPTER 94

EPILOGUE

2022

Denny Grover dips the loader bucket so its bottom slides along the gravel pit's floor, drives forward until he hits the wall, which caves in enough to fill the bucket. Twenty years now on the County payroll, primarily at the pit but on the snowplow in the worst winter storms, he runs the equipment like it's a part of him. He swears he feels the bucket touch, the wheels turn, knows where the ass end of the loader is without looking—how far it swings when he backs up on a turn. He's never had an accident yet. He has half a mind to join one of those competitions, he's seen operators who could open a beer bottle or strike a match with the flick of the bucket.

He likes this pit better than the ones north, up by Blackfoot. He can slip down to McTucker and have a smoke or even drop in a line, depending on the situation at whatever road is being worked on. If there's a backup of trucks at the dumpsite on the other end of a project, that gives him a while to wait, time to relax. The gravel run here tends toward smaller road mix, the big rock the County thought they were buying never appearing even though directly to the east there was a pit that produced well enough to do the State Highway fifty years ago. That's the nature of the old river bottom, though. He could tell the geologists something, having dug around the County throughout a thirty to forty mile stretch. This is the last gravel to the west, poor as it is. The immediate land that way isn't looking promising and the flats beyond and the bluff above them were wide enough they had never received the gravel deposits that the river laid out, it being a flattened lake at one time and a lake again now. Instead it was a delta, of sorts, the silt of any runoff dropping and the rock deposited upstream while the river was still running fast with lots of energy.

He lifts the bucket, gives it a quick shake so excess pours off here instead of on the trip over to the truck. Back up, swing to his left, forward to his right, a perfect three-point turn if the driver isn't so green as to park in the wrong place. The bucket rises as he nears the truck to just the right height to clear the bed, he stops and dumps, reverses for another load.

As the bucket slides toward the pit wall again he sees debris has come down so he stops, backs off the engine to idle, gets out. He hobbles to the edge, old wood in shards has come down the side. He bends.

"Jesus Christ!" he says. He turns to the driver, waves him over.

"Look at this." He points to the pieces of bone. "Don't touch them. See the skull? That's human."

The driver lifts his hat and whistles. "Looks like our day is done," he says. "I'll radio the boss."

Looks like fishing time, Denny thinks.

© 2025 Ralph Thurston