In Which We Enter The Earth At Last

 

*Well, I was spreading the word no more. I was living in Arizona with Jessie, his sweet old auntie, a Tom cat, six hens, and the whole Navajo Reservation to call home. We were ghosts in our own nation.

I called it a good trade.

***!***

Winter continued. There were bitterly cold days. There were mild days. Not much snow at all. The desert all around was beautiful, stark, a picture in contrasts.

One day when it wasn’t too cold and there wasn’t much to do, Jessie decided that we should go look in Uncle John’s little forgotten mine, just to see how it looked down there and to get our bearings. Also, he wanted to see if he could find any reason to keep working the mine. In other words, was there any sign remaining of the vein Uncle John had been following.

In the mornings the sun shone directly towards the mine shaft, making that seem like a very good time to choose to explore it. So, after breakfast and taking care of the hens, we bundled up in coats, hats, socks and shoes and gloves. Jessie got his super bright flashlight out of the hogan.

The trail to the mine passed behind our hogan, downhill to the small stream, which we crossed by means of some steppingstones that had no doubt been placed there many years before by Uncle John. Then we walked uphill back out of the gully for a quarter of a mile. The trail was faint, but still visible. Even in this dry place plant life will reclaim a place with no traffic.

When we got to the mine opening, I saw that it was about the size of a small household door, such as to a closet. There was no door, however. Above the doorway on a horizonal piece of bracing timber was a light green plastic cross of the type that glows in the dark, after storing daylight all day. The shaft was open to the elements and whatever creature might wish to enter. Sitting off to the left side was a little shack about man height, with a door, quite firmly closed. Naturally, Jessie pulled the door open with some effort. It had been closed for years after all. Inside were three shelves. On two of the shelves there was nothing. On the top shelf was a case marked dynamite. It held six old sticks. They looked old, and they were a little sweaty, like maybe they weren’t very stable anymore. He shut the door again. Something to keep in mind. Also, something to research. Was it still usable?

With the sun on our backs, we paused at the entrance to this hole in the earth. What a lot of work it must have been to create this opening and the further mine shaft, even with the help of explosives.

Jessie grinned at me and switched on his flashlight and went first. I followed a few feet behind him. The sunlight vanished inside the shaft. We were in the dark except for the beam of light from the flashlight. We waited while our eyes adjusted to the sudden change in illumination. Soon small shiny reflections appeared in the dark all along the left side granite wall when the beam of light passed over it. 

Jessie said, “Beth, we goofed. We should have brought something to throw to make noise. You know by now that rattlers live around here and favor holes in the ground. We need to know if any of them are here. Let’s get back out and grab some sticks.”

We entered more cautiously the second time, listening for any of that typical rattle. The whole mine was only about 25 feet deep and only about 2 feet wide in some places. Jessie threw a few big branches down toward the end to startle any sleepy snakes. There didn’t seem to be any. We couldn’t raise a rattle, thankfully.

We proceeded. To my untaught eyes, the mine appeared to be full of possibilities. There were little twinkles, brilliant in the relative dark, all along the left side, in a sort of river of golden sparks at about waist height. We knew that Uncle John had only quit mining because of his health failing. It seemed like there was still gold here.

Suddenly, there was some kind of movement and sound down at the very end of the shaft. It was so startling, a sort of growl and shuffling, that just like in every scary movie ever, Jessie dropped the flashlight, and it went dark! We were in the dark in a mine with something growling at us!

We froze, desperately straining our eyes to try to understand what it could be! Two yellow eyes looked back at us! They began coming towards us too, moving fast. Something large and furry brushed my legs running powerfully. My hand just touched its back, and a kind of terrified thrill ran up my arm. I had touched something wild and elemental with my very hand! Its tail whipped my legs, and it was gone in less than a second.

When I began breathing again, I said, “let’s go home now! I think we’ve seen the mine.” On shaky legs I headed for the outer air and Jessie followed silently. It was very good to see the sky again.

When we got home Julia was dozing in her chair with Billy attending, and the TV droning away about some family in Alaska. While I rattled around in the kitchen making toasted cheese sandwiches and coffee, Jessie filled her in on the morning’s adventures.

Aunt Julia said, “she didn’t mean you any harm. You just startled her!” Then she laughed, to herself it seemed. A question passed my mind. “No,” I thought reasonably to myself. “Such things do not happen,” I told myself.

Jessie put a couple of pieces of wood in Julia’s stove. I refilled her coffee cup, and we headed out to our own little place. I felt like taking a little nap. It was not to be.

Outside the mobile there were cat prints in the light dusting of snow on the ground. They circled the chicken’s pen and then went right out to where we were going, back and forth a couple of times. I felt that essential thrill again just looking at these tracks. More was to come.

When we neared our door, something was lying on the ground in front of it on the pathway. It was a deer carcass. It was a young doe with a grievous wound in her throat and still warm. She lay there like a gift, an offering of some sort. Was it for peace between us? Or something else?

Well, what could we do? Being reasonable people, we decided to process the deer. I had never been present at a butchering, but Jessie had. We didn’t have any large knives, but Julia did. Once again, we had a very strange story to tell her, but she seemed to concentrate on the fact of venison. She was apparently passing fond of venison and almost purred at the prospect of a whole deer.

Jessie borrowed some rope from Julia and a big heavy knife from her kitchen. He lugged the deer over to one of those trees behind the mobile, tied her back feet together, threw the rope over a sturdy branch and hung her there to finish bleeding out, after he had removed the head. It was a messy job, something that I had never expected to be a part of. He removed the insides after making a long slit in her belly. The entrails were set aside to bury along with the head. Some of the organs we would give to the chickens, the heart and liver we kept. Then he skinned her. The skin we would nail to the outside of the hogan to dry, maybe someday to tan it. Then came the big job of true butchering. There are a lot of left over bits when butchering an animal, I found out during the afternoon. I had to go back to the house and borrow a plastic tub, which was not large enough for the whole thing. It was quite a big job. There was a lot of wrapping to do, which we did later.

Aunt Julia did not have a big freezer, but her son, Ben, did. So, she called Ben Jr. to come pick some of the meat up to store in his freezer. After wrapping, in plastic wrap and butcher paper, I put as much as I could in her fridge freezer.

We didn’t feel like explaining to Ben how we had come to have this deer. We just let it go. He didn’t ask either.

That evening Julia prepared a venison roast herself. I had never seen her so animated.

Link to the whole story so far; They haven't taken my phone yet.docx