Miners
We arrive alongside the ravine at dawn, dry and ready, nails still rimmed with the black mud of yesterday’s labor. There are are a few robust women here, but we miners are mostly men. Each finds his place. We are orderly about this; our group has a community feeling. There’s an electric crackle in the air this morning. The rains came last night, and every man heard it from his bed, awake in the night, guessing at the future, eager now to greet the day. Along the rushing waters, mysteries pry loose from the crevices. With shovels, we enter the rushing water and dig at the mud. Using magnets, we sift to capture scrap metal. Sometimes the pieces are recognizable: bolts and nails, bottle caps and hairpins, faucets, spoons, zippers, buckles, pens and door hinges. Our fingers are breaking clumps, careful to examine everything. The most valuable pieces are some of the smallest. Coins, gold pendants, silver bracelets. A cross. An engagement ring. Carlos once found a gold tooth. We don’t talk about the smoke from the fire that won’t go out, the smells, the strange foam. We try not to think about the poisoned waters that wrinkle our skin, work into eyes and mouth. The rashes and burns. We don’t talk about finding broken glass, festering cuts, the eight men killed last year just before Christmas, drowned under a collapse of wet garbage. We talk about the finds of the day, the thrill of the treasure hunt. How much better the money is here, better than what they paid at the factory. With no boss to yell at us, we work as we work. Under the sky, under the circling buzzards. Each man adds the day’s progress to his tote. We’ll drag our totes back up the hill to be weighed and purchased when darkness comes. We tuck the special treasures into hidden vials and plastic pockets. Insurance against the uncertain future. But our present is here, with an honest day’s work measured out in iron and copper, bronze and tin. I wonder sometimes about you. All the things you lost. All the things you threw away. It’s your stories I’m mining. Your past. That’s what’s out here, the piles and layers of it, waiting to break free in the next hard rain, wash down the ravine, meet my waiting fingers.