My dad was afflicted by melancholy for as long as I can remember. His eyes always appeared glassy and cracked, like old lightbulbs barely working after years of misuse. He was especially miserable when he spoke about his childhood. He grew up in a small town out in Utah, of which I can’t remember the name. I always wondered what compelled him to leave if he liked the place so much. It was after I worked the land, he always answered. I didn’t know what he meant. I asked him about it one weekend when I visited him. This was his answer:
How did you start out at the factory?
After high school, he said, I found myself a bit lost. I couldn’t afford to go to college, and my old man had threatened to kick me out of the house if I became a bum, so I did the only sensible thing and went to the cement factory.
The town I grew up in had a single defining feature, a relatively small mountain that tops over the flat desert earth for miles around. The owner of a mining company came into town to search for gold, opening an operation. Soon enough, he found out that there wasn’t too much gold to go around and closed the mine, but made a hell of a lot of money by blowing up the top of the mountain and using the gravel for cement.
What was it like?
The place itself was built at the crest of the mountain. To get there, I took a bus that dropped right beneath a set of wooden stairs that took 40 minutes to climb into the entrance. This was impossible with the heat. I woke up every day at 4 AM when the sun hadn’t touched the sky yet and returned after it had fallen again. It wasn’t too bad since I worked in the packaging sector of the factory. We used to be called “pack boys” back then. All I did was put the plastic cover under a silo, wrap it once the cement had fallen under and carry it to storage.
Miners were paid more than any other employee, but I never wanted to join them. Every so often there were accidents, and there were men who went home without legs or arms. I remember once a guy had half of his face blown off by a defective dynamite charge and wandered around with an open eye socket and a red, burning jaw with missing teeth. He showed up to work a few days after that with a white plaster around his face, but he didn’t last too long and quit after four months or so.
Everyone was nervous working around the factory. Whenever you went past the entrance, the floor creaked horribly. I reckon it was its bad design and lack of reinforcement in the lower sections. Damn thing didn’t have running water. We had to go out of the factory to a small wooden latrine to take a shit or wash our hands. Hell, if you peeled the linen wood off the platform, you could see the thin metal rods holding the whole thing together twist around and slightly bend.
I was the youngest of everyone there. There wasn’t anybody from my high school generation working there, although there were some older guys that had graduated a few years prior. Aside from them, there was a hodgepodge of folk from all walks of life. Former convicts, veterans, elderly, all trying to make ends meet by taking the life out of the mountain, but none of them were 19 years old anymore.
My grandfather told me that the town itself was created around the mountain. The original settlers were nomads who decided to station there and restart its base to protect themselves from the sun. I guess it served as an orientation point at first, and a few commerce routes were established, or something like that. Of course, I can’t say that it was all rainbows and sunshine. I’m sure there are a few mass graves buried well beneath the basin. So, you see, everyone’s lives revolved around the mountain. It gave us rest from the sun, water, food and not least a few superstitions, but above all, it served us a way to find our way back to our loved ones, a way back home.
It did feel wrong to gradually kill it, but what else was there to do? It was a choice between me or the mountain, and I’m sure all the other guys were thinking the same thing, except they probably thought about their families first.
There was a guy called George. Now, I don’t think that was his real name, but that’s what he wanted to be called by, and so we all called him George. He was one of the natives of the area, whose family had directly descended from the first nomads that settled around the mountain. From all of us, he was the most upset with it all. He didn’t speak and barely ate. Most of the time, his eyes stared blankly into the wall in front of him, as if he wasn’t even there. On the rare occasions where we could drink around the job, he broke his facade of broodiness and turned out to be a very likeable guy. When someone asked him why he was so upset all the time, his only response was,
“My family is buried here. My grandparents, my ancestors are all buried on the side of the mountain. For us it’s tradition to bury the dead in a sacred place, so their souls are preserved within the mountain. Our bodies decay, but the land we touch remains forever; those who we knew in life, we can preserve in death. The mountain was supposed to be eternal. Now I am forced to decapitate it to provide for my living family. What place will be left for me to rest in if the mountain is destroyed? To save their lives I must forsake their passage into the life beyond this one.”
George drank like a fish that night, and got back to work the next morning, quiet and broody as usual. This resonated with me, y’know? Granted, none of our family members were buried in the mountain, but it still felt like home. When I was little, I played around with other kids in the early days of spring where the air didn’t burn your throat, but the sun kept you alive and well. So did my grandfather, and his father, and his father. I couldn’t count how many times the whole town felt like home because of what the mountain provided us.
In my mind, I had already envisioned what a day around the town must’ve been like; everyone moving around small narrow dusty roads all leading to the mountain. Nothing particularly fancy or plentiful, but it was enough. I reckon people must’ve been happy to be around.
Wasn’t there a way to resist the construction of the factory then? Why did nobody stop it?
Sure, there were attempts to stop it, just like there had been attempts to stop the mining operation that came before. They always ended the same way: the owner always brought dogs or armed grunts to protect the operation. Besides, this guy brought trains with him and goods. Would you, or anyone say no to getting better clothes, or access to the world, or God help me, medicine and goods from elsewhere that could give you the smallest chance of living a better life? Who would reject that?
After some years, the owner’s son decided to move his investment elsewhere and left the factory in charge of the town hall. Everyone was cheery at first, but soon enough, most realized that the town itself didn’t have the necessary money to operate the factory on its own.
That’s when the immigrants started to come in. There was friction from the start. Some folks didn’t appreciate that these foreigners came in with their foreign traditions, language, and food and what not. It took some time before anyone was well with talking to each other. Besides, they always pulled their weight in the factory work, never late and never complaining. It was nice to see that they did end up sharing their stuff with everyone else. They even cooked me some beef and invited me to pray after my parents died. That was nice of them. I had been working for ten years at that point, and it all just felt like it was going forwards.
Why did you leave?
Remember those thin rods I told you about? Well, by the time I was 33, there was a horrible dust storm coming from the east. It wasn’t just any old whirlwind; we were used to those. No, this one was filled with ash, like a fiery spit from a chimney. The air became thick with poison, and it took your breath away. There were people who choked to death if they walked outside for a few minutes. It choked the sky completely. Around two weeks after the wind started, the factory succumbed to its ill design and collapsed on itself, then rolled on the side of the mountain. It was a Sunday, so the only people there were the maintenance and sanitation crew. I don’t think any of them got out alive.
I got out of my house when the wind finally stopped. The air was heavy, and the masks were not useful this time. There was nothing left to work on, so I left. I reckon everyone was able to leave, did, and only those who couldn’t afford it, stayed. I took my stuff and thanked the lord there was a merciful man who would take my offer to clean his pickup if he drove me out of there. I eventually found a normal factory job, met your mom, and that’s where you came in.
What happened after that?
I don’t know. Last I heard, other companies took up the work left undone by the original company. I reckon they might be alright, but I don’t want to go back just to be certain.’
Has the thought of what happened ever crossed your mind?
No, besides, it wouldn’t matter. I don’t want to stare at the corpse in the casket.
What do you mean by that? But what if there is something left? Wouldn’t you really want to know?
I think this conversation’s over.
My father died from lung cancer two years after that conversation. I tried to visit his old town once. When I arrived at the place where I was told I would find the remains of an old factory by a mountain side, I stumbled upon a gaping wound on the desert; a massive sinkhole surrounded by a fence with the legend: “Warning, biohazardous material ahead, wear a gas mask at all times.” In the vicinity there were the carcasses of old wooden buildings abandoned long ago, with the incessant wind hovering over the empty streets as a mausoleum guardian making sure that no more life grew around that place.
Aleister Gabriel Burton was born in Alamogordo, New Mexico. He has always been curious about the effects of time on human memory. He currently lives in El Paso, Texas. He has a cat.
