The Dump

A recent, heavy snowfall took down a number of large branches in the backyard of my parents' house. I'm home for the weekend, so it was my happy privilege to assist in the cleanup. Dad found an excuse to use his chainsaw, and after loading the truck with hacked branches and covering the bed with a new tarp, Dad, Sam, and I took a quick trip to the local dump.

The gulls were my first indication of our approach to the "sanitary landfill." I never notice these scavenger birds anywhere else in Norther Indiana, and they remind me of vacations and giant parking lots of amusement parks and California beaches. These are not vacation birds. They are attracted to the grimy decay of the collected waste products of all of Elkhart County, and maybe beyond. I don't know. I don't really care to. Circling the gray, compacted mounds, the gulls caw and dive, and I watch them peck those long, grit-stained beaks into what had once been welcome in Grandma's refrigerator. Seven months ago. They barely move out of the way of our truck as it jostles us over worn tracks to the top of one particularly giant pile of trash. This is their rubbish mound--they have claimed it. We are but building their kingdom.

When we pull to a stop, I reluctantly leave the clean cabin of the truck, our protective pod, and my feet sink an inch or two into what I hope is just mud. I know it isn't just, but I don't want to think about what else lies beneath my feet: the remains of mundane human activity, the evidence of our daily existence, now the property of gulls. I try to make sense of the things I see; I don't want to look to long at any one mound. Is that a blanket? A sack, maybe. A diaper. Perhaps none of these things. It might have been white, once. It may have even been soft. Whatever it once was, its use had expired. Here, upon a rancid heap of abjection, the thing, no longer identifiable, made its last and everlasting home, its only visitor now the gulls.

I smelled it all the way home, eager for a shower.