Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
along the belt of the conveyor-sorter and onto the heap, where a loader was now scooping
huge shovelfuls into a truck.
The cart crashed upright, and the workers pulled it backward, steep into the task, grim-
acing it into motion until the lead man could pull it back toward the tunnel on his own, and
onto a side track where the cart would await its next descent into the mine. Already the
second cart had been detached, and shouldered down the faint slope by the next member of
the crew, the worker who had been napping when we arrived, his eyes still drowsy now, as
he pushed his ton toward the hopper.
We had hung around all afternoon, and watched the workers crack jokes, and shared
the international ritual of looking at pictures on the display of a digital camera, and now
we saw the workers work. Coal kept shooting out of the mine, in five-cart loads, and the
not-so-sad coal men swung through their practiced motions. They would have made a great
advertisement for Chinese Communism in its pre-capitalist days. Each worker had his role,
each role its place in the chain, a choreography of labor, skilled in a way that only unskilled
work can be. They brimmed with rugged, coal-stained intelligence, pausing between mine
trains to smoke and to talk. Sad Coal Man was not debased and morose. He was sharp. He
was witty. He smiled in the sun when he had a few minutes to himself. Maybe he was just
glad to be aboveground.
In the lobby of the hotel, Cecily tried the automatic shoe polisher on her sneakers, com-
pletely black from our afternoon at the mine. It had no effect except to blacken the spinning
brush of the machine.
I went to my room. I took off my clothes. They were covered in black stains, although I
had pushed no carts, handled no coal. It just happens when you're at a coal mine. Liu had
driven down to town ahead of us, so at lunchtime the miners gave us rides down the moun-
tain on their motorcycles. And as soon as you rub shoulders with a coal miner—although
you may look clean by comparison—you will find black dust on your every surface, in
your pores, under your fingernails.
I washed my face, and stared at the smear of black on the washcloth, and sat on the edge
of the bed, and I missed the Doctor. I missed her.
I thought of the motorcycle ride down the valley. We had run with the engine off, be-
cause even miners like to save gas, coasting down the steep mountainside at speed, the
wind pulling tears out of my eyes, and when I got off the bike, the front of my jacket was
streaked black where I had leaned against Sad Coal Man as he drove.
