children, sharing stares between him, the army and each other, as they allowed our father to ponder the choices offered by the General. Some of the miners posed as if they were about to have their portrait taken, hoping their faces, their already nostalgic eyes would tell each of their stories for generations to come. Some held on to their tools as if they were mementos they should never part with, while others hooked their thumbs through their belt loops, on a desperate attempt to look tough. After a day’s work inside the mine, the men were covered in black dust, creating the illusion of a uniformed army, or that of slaves, depending on who was watching.
Pai looked at nothing but one wall of the galleria where they all stood. Through the carbide lamps hanging from some of the wood planks, he saw the tunnel his own hands had helped carve, and thought of his two boys. He saw the image of Pablo and me running through the passages with oversized hardhats. He saw us zipping past him inside a wagon as one of his workers, one of his friends, pushed us as fast as he possibly could. He heard the silly sound of my laughter when I tried to contain myself, and Pablo’s shushing, hoping we weren’t too much of a disruption.
Our father turned his right foot from side to side as if to smooth the surface underneath him, but really just trying to remind himself of how the earth below the earth felt soothing and familiar against his work shoes. That gravel, the stench of sulfur almost like vinegar, the blackness on his men’s faces, the wood planks, the maze… All these things he thought he knew better than the back of his own wife’s hands. He was a little older than Pablo when he became a miner and never thought he’d have a different life. And as he contemplated his years inside the mine, he wondered whether he could work for the government, and more importantly, if he could heed a man he despised.
He took his hat off and looked at each of his men’s faces. With their eyes wide open, they followed his every movement hoping that he would take the offer and continue to be the person they looked up to, continue to be the man they came for when their son had caught the flu and they needed an advance for the antibiotics, or when their in-law had passed and they needed a day off for the wake. The General who had made the offer grew impatient as our father took his time. His thick and bushy eyebrows arched inward in a frown as he caught a glimpse of his own subordinates’ unrest, exchanging quizzical looks with one another.
What the General didn’t mention in his offer was that he also expected our father to be the man who’d report back to him, who would tell on his own friends when anybody went astray, when anybody dared to criticize the changes pushed upon them. He would be the one to fire workers for causes with which he wouldn’t necessarily agree. He would be the person who would have to turn somebody in when he was probably the one who despised the whole thing more than anybody else. No. The General didn’t mention any of that. But our father knew, and his men had a feeling.
“General.” His last name was Machado, as I would later find out. “I would like to respectfully decline your offer, Sir.” One could clearly see the lament on his men’s faces, the whites of their eyes one by one disappearing behind their eyelids as each man turned inward. They too had a decision to make.
Our father took one last look at each of his workers and watched the weight of what he had said sink in. Some of them took their hardhats off like their boss had done and held it by their stomach, as one would do when entering a church on a Sunday morning. Showing the same respect and sadness for the inevitable distance one was bound to have with anything holy like god himself or, in that case, the mine, its miners and their guardian Santa Barbara.
The General clicked his tongue annoyed at our father’s audacity, “Guess you better go home and tell your family they need to provide for themselves from now on.” He wore a smirk on his face, which our father didn’t see because he was studying the mine.
As he continued to take it all in, he said quietly, but loud enough for those closer to him, including the General himself, to hear “With all due respect, Sir, my family is my own problem.”
“If there’s anybody else here who wants to be dumb like Mr. Fonte, please do so now. I have no patience for those who won’t commit to the Union.”
Out of the fifty workers on that shift, in that section of the mine, about fifteen stepped forward and left with our father without saying a word to the General. Each of them stopped by Santa Barbara’s statue on their way out to ask for her blessing one last time.
Outside, Pablo suddenly saw the three soldiers shuffle by the entrance as they noticed the crowd coming towards them. José didn’t move. The sun had already set, but its light still infused the open meadow. Our father nodded to one of the soldiers as he walked past them.
“You’re going to die of hunger, old man.”
“And you of guilt, kid,” our father said, bringing a smile to Pablo’s face.
Pablo would repeat this dialogue to me over and over, his eyes never failing to sparkle with pride. He watched our father leave the mine without really knowing what was going on. Although he couldn’t ignore the way his shoulders hunched forward as Pai watched the gravel disappear underneath his feet.
Pablo was aware this was one of the moments when life did the living despite one’s will. He stayed where he was, pushing his knuckles against the chilly mud as if punishing it for allowing itself to be taken away from all of us. He thought of the dark coal below, of the murky mud, of nature’s darkest wonders, and how much he wanted to be tough and wondrous just like it. But Pablo was all cotton – volatile, weightless, and easily tainted.
…
The mine remained open for only a few weeks before they shut it all down due to the lack of workforce. When it happened, people hoped things would go back to normal once again, that they couldn’t sustain it, and that our father would soon be called to resume his position. But two months went by and nobody heard a thing. The mine became a mix of a ghost town and an amusement park. Despite the scary stories going around, kids would eventually find their way back into its caves, zipping along the galleries while playing hide-and-seek, sharing ghost stories, or playing jogo do copo, hoping the spirits would reveal what lied ahead for each of them, or who would win the Brasileirão that year.
One day Clara, Xico and I were bored and decided to see if there was anybody playing in the mine. But when we got to the very first galleria we saw a couple kissing.
“Shush!” whispered Xico.
Clara looked at me with a big smile as we walked towards them. I looked back at the couple. The guy was leaning against the wall, his legs spread apart enough for the girl to fit right in between them. She had both her hands on his head caressing his hair gently, while his hands rested on her lower back.
“Uuhh!” yelled Xico.
Rita quickly stepped back, and Pablo wiped his lips. Rita was red with embarrassment, while Pablo seemed to glow with pride.
“What are you kids doing here?” he asked. “You shouldn’t be here, Luca. It’s not safe.”
Pablo suddenly looked so much older. As if the age gap between us had widened by at least five years, as if that kiss showed me we had nothing more in common, that we wouldn’t ever play hide-and-seek in the mine again, or soccer, or just talk in the dark at night.
“You know what’s not safe? What you two were about to do before we got here!” Xico said, maliciously.
“Shut up, piá! What do you know!?”
“C’mon, guys, let’s go. Leave them alone,” I said as I started to walk back.
Pablo
