Two Men in The Coal Business

A response to Alistair MacLeod's 'No Great Mischief'

 Walter and Jamison drag their limbs from the mine like the lumps of coal they're paid to retrieve. As a consequence of their hours of darkness, they stumble upon invisible tree branches and beg for a seat.

"I need some damned whiskey," Jamison barks before he coughs, relinquishing an unpleasant amount of phlegm to the road designed of loose chips of rock and gravel that would certainly later catch in the thread of their steel-toed boots and Chevrolet tires. Walter rests his rear end on a nearby grain cannister, making use of any flat surface as a public bench. His flask shines a glimpse like that of a bullet of similar silver from the setting sun when he passes the drink to Jamison, who invited himself to sit beside Walter, before taking a considerable gulp himself.

"Setting' or rising'?" Jamison asks before his swallow.

"Risin'," Walter answers without checking his compass. "That there's the west." His eyes are blanketed with flesh, quite like how the moon may be covered graciously top and bottom with a misty cloud that is just dense enough to hide the light. His beard, husky as the whiskey, white turned grey with black powder, blankets his voice again like the whimpering moon, here now to take the shift of the sun that today works overtime. The golden orangeness of the sun is gently overlapped by the bodies of foreign workers speaking amongst themselves.

"Spics." Jamison inquires disapprovingly. "Never had 'em before. If I had a dollar for every word out o' their mouth I understood," he said, "I'd have sixty cents." Walter neglects to respond.

Jamison turns his red head to the left. His crimson hair is dyed brown with the same dreadful powder that hexes Walter's beard. His bald center plagued with dust. His skinny skeleton figure can't help but move along with his head. To his left, here he sees the new, arrogant young men, discussing the women they've taken. He shakes his head like a dog at this vision. "We were them once, Walter. Some days I'm disgusted by it. However, most days I'd love to."

"For better or for worse," Walter answers with a knowledge of the topic that is so appropriate he need not turn his head, "but we'll see how cocky they are, like we were, in the cold water lakes."

Jamison is the one to neglect an answer this time. His curiosity highly edges that of Walter. His physical stance has been that of a statue. Then, tragically, he notices the youngest man of all, Timothy Arley, still a boy frankly, slouched against a lamp pole, whittling a stick into more of the vulnerable wooden end of a match. He catches his young, blue eyes in a glance, then tilts his head and looks up at the aged moon keeping company to the young sun. "How long's it been, Walter?"

"Thirty-eight years for you, forty-three for me." Walter answers with as much movement as a dead fish.

"I remember getting here as a boy. S'ppose we gotta die some point." Jamison evokes to himself. 

"We all got expiration dates," Walter responds, which Jamison did not expect, "like milk y' buy from the grocery store. But that don't mean I'm about to go sucking straight from the cow's udders."

Jamison shakes his head with the long nose and hair stained of two scores of inhaling oil instead of air. Now, he inhales the whiskey until the sun turns yellow again.