Mines & Memories (fiction excerpt: Return to Ferro)

There's a guy out here that'll make you laugh every time you think about him. Irritating, mostly, but then also filled with so much humorous hooey that I can't help but kinda like him.

Half of what he says is so blasphemous you about bite your tongue off the first time he talks to you. Instead of getting arrested he just keeps on showing up each day in the mine (he works good and hard, I'll give him that), then putting in his couple hours of rhetoric at night.

And there's plenty old Mike could get arrested for. Says were' all living for the machine, and that the old way was that the machine lived for us. Says we used to be in a village like the cannibals, and that if we took a good look at an honest cannibal we'd call him friend quicker than you and I would call each other friend. Says a cannibal is a right respectable person, except for the eating people part of it, which we don't even know for a fact.

And this is where old Mike gets me laughing. Somebody always says to him, Mike, don't you watch the bulletins at night? Hell, there's always someone showing up on their with a vicious bite out of his shoulder or a missing foot, or found torn to pieces, or gone altogether. But Mike says those are nothing but mining accidents they made up to look like someone done chomped on the guy, and he says those people who make the bulletins are nothing but a bunch of crooks and liars, and we miners should be able to figure that out for ourselves, and of course we have a grand old time fighting with him about it until Clyde the foreman comes along and tells everyone to shut the f up and show some respect to the hard working stiffs who are trying to get to bed early instead of playing cards and screaming ourselves hoarse about all this cannibal nonsense. Then he gives Mike a lot of hell right in front of the other guys, telling him he ought to grow up and it's no wonder he never made foreman after all that hard work.

Funny thing is, though, Clyde really likes Mike when we're all down in the mine, and anyone would admit he's the best guy to have your back when things get sticky, which they do. Mike knows how to work some pretty magic with an infected hand or a breathing problem; he keeps a first aid kit with some unusual potions and things, but never talks to people about where he got it, or why he's not a doctor if he knows how to heal you.

One strange fellow, that Mike. If you pay him a compliment (which a guy will always do if another guy just fixed up a big fat cut on his hand), he just says it's all from memory.

"What's all from memory?" I asked him once.

"All of it. Work, laughter, pain, healing. It's all from memory."

And that's the scariest thing the man can say because everyone knows the old saying Memory is a burden, and we all have enough of those. Or, remember your work and forget all the rest, or all the prayers to God to free us from our past to allow us better to see the light.

These are true enough words for me, and so is live and let live, so I don't report Mike to anyone. And I don't think it would make any difference if I did. The law don't need to worry about a guy like him who rocks the boat. After all, memory? I mean, who the hell needs a toothache like that? What's in my memory from today? Work. And what about yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that? Work.

"What's the earliest thing you remember?" says Mike, to one of the young guys. The guy says he remembers that time they showed us the girl. A real, living woman here at the big hall where they do the speeches and political stuff. Mike says, "that was only like two years ago. What about before that? What about Todd?" Mike says. And then it gets quiet. Then some guys get to talking that you couldn't forget Todd even if you wanted to because the guy was such a scrub. Looked like a tree that turned into a man. Not a tree like the ones they make beams from, but one of those trees along the path to the administrator's mansion, kind of pretty and skinny and weak-looking. But for as weak as he looked he could kick some ass down in the mines. Carried my ass out of the mine one day and I'm like 110 kg. That was when I hit my head and I was no good for anything for a couple days. I KNOW that was more than a couple years ago.

So I tell Mike all about it, even though the whole memory thing is really a pain; those old proverbs exist for good reason. I could forget all about a guy like Todd, but I'm glad I didn't, and that makes me uncomfortable at the same time.

Then along comes Mike's questions to make a person more uncomfortable. "What else do you remember about Todd?" And just like that, there's a blank space. I say whatever you say about a person who's gone.

"Cannibals?"

"You really think that? Or is that something you say to shut me up?"

I laugh at Mike like I laugh at anyone or anything that's getting to me. He laughs too, but not in a pissed-off way. He laughs to say, don't worry about it. I can't help feeling like I wish I knew what became of Todd. I and I know I knew once. And I figure Mike knows but to hell with his lessons. I yawn, and stand up to go hit the sack. I know I'll forget about this in a minute or so, or if not, when I'm asleep.

But I don't. In fact, I dream about that guy Todd. He's floating out there, in the sky, like they say happens to the dead, but he's not going to heaven. There's a look on his face like he doesn't mind it. By his face I can tell he knows I'm looking at him, and he wants me to see something out ahead of him. He's pointing. His arm is extended toward some indistinct cluster of stars that looks to my eyes like nothing more than a tiny wheel in the night sky. In the dream the stars are so familiar to me as to be commonplace, but when I awake, I can't even remember the last time I looked at stars.