The Miner’s Mule.

The hot breeze brushed against the old prospector’s leathery skin. Yet he ignored the hardship it presented for the moment, as he hitched a rope to his mule. Then bitching as he usually did about the pestilent flies and heat, the miner led the mule forward as she hauled yet another bucket load of burden to the top of the mine shaft. Then, hitching her off with a length of measured rope against a post, the miner trudged back toward his mine.

Precariously balanced near the edge of the rapt chasm, the old-timer struggled with the stubborn and swinging mass suspended over the shaft from a pulley. And in his labouring, the old-timer kicked loose a rock. Not purposefully, mind you. Yet nonetheless, it fell back into the hole from whence it came. Ricocheting sharply from off the naked shaft walls and rapidly spinning, it disappeared from sight, carrying with it a little more hardened earth, for the old-timer to excavate. The rockfall reverberated in its narrow spaces, alerting the old-timer to his clumsiness and reminding him of its hazardous depths.

‘Careful, old fool,’ he said to no one but himself. ‘No need to make ye, yo-grave as well.’ As the mine listened in silence, he spat defiantly into the deep hole and shouted at his mule, ‘Molly, ye-back.’

Molly didn’t move.

‘Jeez-arse,’ he muttered unto himself, ‘stupid ass.’ Then again shouted, ‘Molly, ye-back.’

Again, Molly didn’t move, and the prospector boisterously followed with a list of profanities. Whereupon hearing a familiar set of colourful commands, the mule slowly backed away from her securing hitch, and reaching the end of her tether...

The miner pulled the rock-laden bucket to his flank and brought it to heel with a wooden thump, atop the edge of an old and splintered timber platform. The platform keened and moaned in protest, as a handsome old tree slowly swaying in a gentle breeze, creaks. The old-timer vexatiously untied the hastily fastened and knotted rope of the pulley from around the pail’s handle.

The gristly old man dragged the recalcitrant scoop from off the platform and, avoiding as best he could along the way, the numerous and razor-sharp rocks shattered and scattered about the area, across the hard-packed dirt and toward a low and obtusely shaped pile of tailings, cussing and grumbling the whole time like an old bear waking after winter.

He paused in a small clearing and removed his hat. Then, as an impish boy tormenting a red fire-ant nest might, he whacked and bashed at his wearied shirt and wasted trousers, producing a swarming cloud of choking, angry-red dust about him that marched slowly away on a current of torrid air.

Finding a vantage away from the rubble, the old miner planted his seat upon the ground and, replacing his hat, he rested his back against his charge a moment, all the while condemning the blazing sun and the stifling heat, along with everything else he believed was hampering him that day.

Then, pulling a circular tin marked “Baccy” from his chest pocket, an old and battered heirloom from his ancestor’s ancestor, the prospector feverishly worked the tobacco and paper into a carefully constructed round. He rested his elbows upon his knees, focusing intently, as slick sweat irritatingly trickled from under his hat and down his temples. The dampness dripped onto the dry and thirsty rust-coloured earth below, forcing him to frequently pause his handicraft and wipe away the perspiration with his forearm, leaving muddied marks across his brow.

His task finally completed, the prospector placed the finished product between his sorely cracked and drying lips. Then, taking a small box from the same pocket, he removed and struck a match along its side. Protectively cupping his hands about the blossoming flame, he lit the end of his smoke, and the prospector, euphorically inhaled...

Then asphyxiated.

His eyes bulged from his face as it dramatically changed colour. Abruptly turning a bright lobster-red, you would think he had almost mutated into the very creature.

‘Cough—cough.’

He hastily removed the smoke from his mouth.

‘Cough—cough—cough—’ then unable to breathe, his body now wrenched in crimson misery—like the lobster he imitated, suddenly dropped into boiling water, cooked then prepared for a rich banquet—the old miner obscenely coughed up a mouthful of bile. Plus tar-laden phlegm mixed with blood and mud-brown clay, that with bitter contempt, he spat onto the rock-strewn ground between his boots. Then coughed up a portion more. The moist and gelatinous affliction now formed a brief yet warded island. A tiny fortification against the sun, shrivelling on the hard-packed and baking lease.

‘The prospector’s lease.’

Paid for by his hard-won gold, and why he needed to find more. Then, cursing the thieves who stole it, he spat once more upon the ground and commented, ‘Goddamn greedy gov-met.’

In the heat, the mass of congestion rapidly crystallised, transforming into a chrysalis containing its own yet inconsequential universe. Yet it will never hatch. A world that, until moments before, swam and swarmed with microscopic, yet uninvited and opportunistic guests. Abandoned now by their enraged host in this unforgiving world.

Reaching toward another pocket, he fetched an old steel flask.

Another bestowal from his great-grand-dah, the only person who, in the old miner’s opinion, ever left him anything. He unscrewed the lid. Then took a good, swift swig of the pure and tawny distil. He pulled a gnarly face at the taste of the tincture. Upon swallowing the alcohol and opioid amalgam, which he called his gin and tonic, he gave a sudden, reflexive and convulsive shake of his head.

And followed with a phoney yet forced smile, filled with rotted teeth. Then declaimed to himself through his tautening larynx, ‘Arr-Jeez-arse, now the-art’s good,’ before promptly replacing the lid. Satisfied, he returned the flask to the safety of his pocket, affectionately patting the small vessel and complimenting it with a, ‘Thank-ye, Ginny.’

And once more placing the smoke between his lips, he savoured its satisfying experience; between erupting contests of coughing, wheezing and near suffocation, until finally gratified, he sat quietly. And in an uncommon moment of deeper contemplation, he spat another festering expectoration onto the ground and, accusingly, uttered, ‘Bloody doctors...’

The old-timer looked out at the barren terrain he’d crossed to reach his gold mine. Shallow gullies wound web-like through the blasted lands. The meagre dribble of moisture they once carried, now evaporated into the dry, hot and thirsty air or disappeared invisibly into the hard-packed mud. Stony white layers of jagged porcelain teeth, formed from desiccated salts, punctuated the baked and compacted clay, testament to a mighty and ancient watercourse that—having deposited the precious, yellow metal that the prospector now solicitously sought—vanished.

‘Goddamn worthless country,’ said the old miner, sourly cursing the desert’s unchanging geography and wearying heat. And from where he and his trusty pack-mule had crossed the desert only days ago, motes of fine dust spiralled slowly into the empty and blazing sky, carried aloft on hot eddies, that chastised him for his lacklustre respect toward the land he now pillaged.

He consistently whined to none other than his beggared pack-mule. The mule held its head low, tied to her hitch near an ancient and rusting windmill. A structure scarcely holding together in the deserts’ shimmering haze, longer though than the stone and wooden lean-to that once stood near it. Beside a disintegrating stone wall, the last remaining wooden column became the weathered post to which his Molly was tethered. With only a few lasting blades affixed to it, the mill scornfully squeaked and mournfully groaned as it rotated slowly in the hot, intermittent wind. The molten breeze delivered a meagre hydration that dripped and dribbled teasingly from the mill’s drain and into a trough filled with accreted sludge. Seeking refreshment, Molly periodically dipped her nose into the brackish wellspring of water.

And rant he did.

On—and on—and on; about his worthless family and bastard children. Whom had deserted him. Whom he now detested. Who, fortunately, weren’t around to argue and complain. The miner owed them nothing, he weighed, and was confounded as to why they detested him, more than him they. They called him, ‘The old...’

‘Molly,’ as the old prospector called his mule, mindlessly ignored his insistent melancholy, even when it was undeniably directed toward her. The unfortunate and impoverished beast stood patiently beside the mill, swishing her tail and shaking her head at the maddening flies, as routinely as the old man swatted at them with his hands. Plagues that congregated in swarms about the enlivening sludge, like—well, flies that swarm near a carcass—all the while incessantly molesting the wretched animal. And craving sufficient shade, the burro disparagingly nibbled the green and sturdy, yet unpretentious growth that subsisted in this marginal oasis about the trough’s slime-encrusted outlet. Now and then, the mule turned her head to look at the old prospector...

‘There’s work be need doing,’ he would commonly tell her. And yet he sat against his rock-filled drum. His head held low and arms upon his knees. He didn’t stir.

‘Come on, Molly, ye-old mule,’ he would lecture colourfully, while tugging on her rope, ‘we’ve need work be doing, so move ya stubborn ass.’

And from the corner of her eye, Molly watched the flies gather about the old miner, like flies swarming about a carcass.

‘We’ve work need be doing,’ he would say, as once more Molly turned her head his way, ‘I'm hungry and need my oats, ye-old fool.’

Yet still the the old miner didn’t move, nor swatted at the maddening flies...