Work Song - Ivan Doig [80]
“Don’t worry none, you’ll get the hang of mucking in no time.”
That turned out to be true if a person had brains enough to operate a shovel. The loose ore strewn on the floor of the ledge had to be scooped—“mucked out,” in Griff’s terminology—into those ore cars waiting in the tunnel.
“We might as well get at it. The sooner done, the sooner finished,” he philosophized unarguably.
We commenced shoveling. Copper ore proved to be the peacock of rocks, mottled blue and green showing off the mineral wealth within. I was up to my shoetops in the wealth of the Richest Hill on the planet, but in raw lump form. As the task heated up, with Griff tossing two shovelfuls to my every one, he remarked sympathetically:
“It’s kind of tough on the muscles at first. Some people can’t stay with it.”
“I can sweat with the best of them.”
“Sweating isn’t necessarily the same as hard work, in my experience.”
That pricked my pride. “I’ll have you know, I am not a total stranger to manual labor.”
He eyed me. “Lately?”
There he had a point. As time wore on, I wore down. I thought our amount of copper-bearing rock flung into the ore cars was heroic, but Griff was not inspired by it. He shook his head reminiscently. “Hoop and me could fill an ore car while other guys was standing there thinking about it.”
“I’m not the second coming of Hoop,” I panted.
Just then a baby-faced flunky stuck his head above the edge of the ledge. “Jared says to tell you,” he piped in a high voice, “the shifter is coming through.”
The youngster vanished while that was still sinking in on me. “Quick!” Griff rubbed dust on my face, even though I already felt grimy as a coal stoker. “Keep those lily hands of yours out of sight.”
We heard the crunch of heavy footsteps, and then the shift foreman came climbing the ladder to us. Our helmet lights dimly lit the chamber as he stepped in. Long-faced and gray-mustached, he had the same miner’s stoop as Griffith; they leaned toward each other like apostrophes. “Griff, you old poot. I heard you were on the extra gang—can’t stay away, eh?”
“You know how it is, Smitty. It gets in your blood.”
I was standing back as far as I could in the shadows. It didn’t help. The shift boss cocked an unblinking look in my direction. “Who’s this? ”
“Hoop’s kid,” Griff said blandly. “He’s trying his hand as a fill-in. Been down on his luck, haven’t you, Junior.” He confided as if I weren’t there: “A little too much of the booze.”
The shift boss shook his head. “The company let us know it doesn’t want stew bums down here anymore. These aren’t the old days, Griff.”
Trying to backtrack from his mistake, Griff scuffed at the mine floor. “Aw, Smitty. What am I gonna tell Hoop, that our old buddy from when we was all working in the Neversweat tied a can to his kid? Hardly seems fair, after Hoop told me: ‘Make sure to get Junior in at the thirty-hundred level, I don’t want him on anybody’s shift but Smitty’s. Smitty’ll understand, he’s had a few under his belt himself, like the time you and me and him were celebrating payday in the Bucket of Blood and—’ ”
“Don’t pour it on,” the shift boss managed to stem the tide. He sucked at his mustache as if straining the dubious impression of me through it. “So, Junior, how do you like mining so far?”
“It’s a sobering experience.”
He grunted, still studying me skeptically. Walking over to the brink of the ledge, he peered down at our loaded ore cars. I held my breath and could see Griff doing the same. With a last doubtful look at us, the shift chief backed around and started descending the ladder. “Keep the rock flying, you two.”
We more or less did, although even Griff eased off somewhat now that we had survived inspection. Still, I was sweating so much I felt like a sponge, and every muscle on me was protesting. I was nearly done in by the time a bell signaled somewhere in the distant tunnels.
“Chow time! Here we go.” Griff bounded