Tim Curran - The underdwelling

“Sure,” Boyd said. “Sedimentary rock. Layers of mud and sediment.”

Jurgens nodded. “That’s right. Thing is, it just doesn’t belong here. I mean, from a geologic standpoint, this is the first Permian rock ever found in Michigan. So that’s something, but there’s no goddamn ore in it. See, this part of Michigan is all old, very old Precambrian rock. Anywhere from 500 million to three or four billion years old. And this Permian strata is fairly new, roughly 250 million years old. It just doesn’t belong here.”

“There’s no Permian rocks at all in Michigan?”

“None that I’ve ever heard of. No sediments or fossils. Erosion is partly to blame, but the real culprit was the Quaternary glaciation that raged right through the Pleistocene. The advance and retreat of the glaciers also stripped away eons of sediment. Just about anything after the Silurian is gone in Upper Michigan. So, obviously, this Permian strata does not belong.”

“Then why is it here?”

“Some type of singularity, I should imagine.”

“That’s gotta be it,” Maki said.

Boyd felt like slapping him. He had no idea what Jurgens was talking about and Boyd barely understood himself, but at least he was keeping his mouth shut. But Jurgens simply ignored Maki. Something, Boyd figured, that most people at the Hobart Mine learned to do very quickly. Jurgens went on, explaining that the Permian Period occurred at the tail end of the Paleozoic Era, right before the Mesozoic…which brought us all the dinosaurs and made guys like Steven Spielberg a lot of money. The Permian ended the Paleozoic with a mass extinction that wiped out like 90 % of the life forms on the planet. It was a much more massive extinction than the one that wiped out the dinosaurs much later on. These Permian rocks were from that time period.

“We’ve got a guy here studying this strata, a paleobiologist from the U of M, guy named McNair. He theorized that, perhaps at the time of the extinction itself, volcanic action or seismic activity caused this seam of Permian strata to be submerged, engulfed by the much older Precambrian shelves. Thus, preserving it here for us when the rest of the Permian strata was scraped and washed away long ago.”

“So, it’s a pretty significant find?”

“Oh yes. But there’s no ore in it, Boyd, and they pay me to find ore.”

On that note, Jurgens led them away through the stope.

It angled off to the left and things started to get very, very loud. Up ahead, the crews were cutting drift, some three separate tunnels through solid rock to reach the ore-bearing strata. It was quite an operation. There were tram tracks leading from the drifts to other tunnels, the cars coming and going, filled with rock that would end up topside in the Pit. There were dozens of men moving around beneath the dead glare of arc lights and incandescents lining the walls. The smell of sulfur was eclipsed by diesel fumes and clouds of rock dust. Water dripped and ran in little streams. Engines hummed and rumbled. Air compressors hissed and generators whined. There were pipes and hoses and high voltage lines snaking all over the place. The thunder of jackhammers and pneumatic rock drills. Red mud splashing underfoot.

It was unbelievable.

Jurgens assigned them to a crew cutting drift far to the right. Maki and Boyd put on their gas masks and safety goggles, put in their ear plugs. It was a loud and dangerous place with the clouds of dust and chips of rock flying all over the place.

The drift was called a “dog drift” because it was just barely large enough to work in. The drillers would sink a pattern of holes and then the charge crew would pack them with dynamite and everybody would get the hell out of there. The blast would clear maybe ten feet of tunnel and right away the diggers would rush in when the dust settled and go at it with picks and shovels, clearing away rock and debris. The only way to do it was to form sort of a fireman’s chain and pass the rock back out of the drift to the waiting tram cars. Even so, the dust was so thick you could barely see in there. Boyd knew there were men in there with him, but all he could see were the lights of their helmets bobbing in the murk. The claustrophobia he felt was a real, physical thing. They went at it nearly three hours, cutting the drift deeper into the rock a good twenty feet.

When break time came, they retreated far back into the stope where things were a bit quieter. Boyd’s boots were thick with red mud and he was stained head to toe with ore pigment, covered in a good half-inch of pulverized rock dust. When he took off his helmet, it was in his hair. It was down his back and up his sleeves. He could taste it on his tongue. It was nasty stuff.

Maki and he sat around with a couple miners named Izzy and Johnson who didn’t say much. Boyd was glad when Breed came over. Maki wasn’t happy to see him, of course.

He poured Boyd a cup of coffee from his Thermos and Boyd washed the dust from his mouth. “Thanks,” he said.

“You still a virgin, kid?”

“So far.”

“What do you think of working drift?”

Boyd pulled off his cigarette, holding it with pink, greasy fingers. “Compared to what?”

“Yeah, that’s how I feel about it, too. Not so bad, though. It’s going fast. Jurgens said we should be hitting ore by tomorrow afternoon at this rate.”

“Jurgens don’t know his ass from a fucking stump hole,” Maki said.

“You hear that, Boyd?” Breed said. “Our boss don’t know shit. Too bad we couldn’t have Maki here running the show.”

“Oh, shut up,” Maki said.

“Jurgens ain’t so bad,” Breed said.

“No, he seems okay,” Boyd said.

Maki just grunted. “You two were chatting it up like a couple old ladies at a Christmas fucking tea.”

“He was telling me about the rocks.”

“Yeah, he likes to talk about rocks,” Breed said, stubbing out his cigarette. “You got to meet this paleo guy from the University. McNair. He really likes rocks. We dug out this fossil the other day…some kind of fish with teeth like roofing nails. McNair got so excited I thought he was going to cornhole the damn thing.”

“How long you been at this?” Boyd asked him.

Breed laughed. He was always laughing. “Fifteen years, give or take. I’m just biding my time until I can get out.”

“Sure,” Maki said. “Breed’s a fucking injun. He’s waiting to get some of that free Indian casino money so he can be as lazy and useless as the rest of the tribe.”

“Don’t be making fun of my red brothers,” Breed told him. “He’s right, though, Boyd. I’m waiting to get on the list. Free money. Then I’ll spend my days laughing at you white men and putting the dick to your wives while you’re pulling your shift in the hole.”

Boyd laughed.

Maki grumbled.

One of the other miners said, “You’re a piece of shit, Breed. You know that?”

“My old man told me that from day one, brother. But way I look at it, if you’re good at something, you go with it.”

Boyd just listened as they bullshitted around about the rocks and all the marine fossils they were finding that McNair said were laid down from an ancient seabed. Of course, Breed found ample opportunity to insult Maki and make jokes about his wife’s privates.

Then Corey showed. “All right, you lazy sonsobitches, back at it! Chop! Chop!”

Breed offered him a big smile with his dirty face. “Hey, Corey? I ever tell you how much I love you?”

“Not as often as your wife does.”

On it went.

The work was hard, positively grueling. The charge crew would blast and then the diggers would clean the shaft out, haul out the big rocks and start shoring the tunnel up with braces and timbers so it wouldn’t fall in. Boyd was glad for the work, glad to be doing something other than letting his imagination run wild. Because it was real easy to imagine things in the drift where you couldn’t see five feet in the clouds of dust and drifting sediment, the ceiling pressing down on you and the walls closing in.