Uranium Mine

URANIUM MINE

And Other Stories

JED LINDE

Published by Mayahuel Books

URANIUM MINE

And Other Stories

Second edition, October 5, 2023.

Copyright © 2023 Jed Linde.

Written by Jed Linde.

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

URANIUM MINE And Other Stories includes modified versions of the Three Charles Stories, by Jed Linde, published in 2021.

Three Charles Stories is no longer available in e-book or paperback editions.

Illustrations in El Peregrino are by Barbara Arnason, previously published with an earlier version of the story in the Mexico Quarterly Review, Vol 2, No. 3 1965.

Cover photo: Pexels.

Cover design: Eric Lang

URANIUM MINE; c. 1953

THE ARRIVAL; c. 1957

SOUTH, FOREVER; c. 1951

TASSAJARA BATHS; c. 1970

EL PEREGRINO; c. 1963

SALINAS ON THE SEINE; c. 1998

HURRICANES, SHARKS, EARTHQUAKES, A BAT RAY, AN OCTOPUS, A BAIT BALL, AND THE SUN AND THE MOON; c. 1938 to 1989

EPILOGUE; c. 2022

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

URANIUM MINE, C. 1953

Sitting in the buzzing silence of desert heat, Charles fantasized one catastrophic scenario after another. He imagined a chain-reaction accident, leaving no one able to remember him up at the mine. Days would go by before rescue would even begin, and, by then, he would be a blackened, swollen, stinking corpse.

Wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and desert boots, he criticized himself for leaving his hat and jacket back at the trailer. Searching around in the tent, he discovered the men had taken all the canteens. There were a handful of burlap sacks, though.

If I have to hike out, he thought. I could use a sack as a head covering and put some water bottles in another one.

He felt debilitated despite staying on the shady side of the tent most of the day. Inside the tent was a smelly inferno he quickly ruled out as a place to wait. He was sunburned and felt constantly thirsty, no matter how much water he drank.

Then, he remembered, Binoculars!

He found them in the tent, ran outside, adjusted them for distance, and thoroughly scanned the makeshift road to the horizon. There was not a whiff of dust; no vehicles were coming over its sandy ruts.

––––––––

When his parents told him they had purchased a partnership in a uranium mine, Charles stifled a laugh.

Uranium is the new gold rush, they chortled. We'll be rich!

He tuned them out, questioning sarcastically if they were already suffering from radiation poisoning. Their uncharacteristic display of mutual agreement and manic enthusiasm made him wonder if they had just returned from a flying saucer ride. He learned later they were parroting the mine owner's pitch, who had painted such a rosy picture of triple-digit profits—at least!—that they invested in the mine sight unseen.

When the owner invited them and the other new partners to spend a three-day weekend mining, Charles' parents told him that he would be coming along, which did get his attention.

It's summer vacation; I want to hang out with my friends, he whined. I'm almost sixteen! I can take care of myself while you're gone.

Predicting that mining would provide him with healthy workouts, they dismissed his pleas off-handedly.

What about my gardening jobs? I get plenty of exercise and make spending money, he shot back.

They coolly ignored his pleas, and he soon gave up arguing.

If I have to go, he thought. I hope the other investors will have teenagers—-at least one sexy female.

He fantasized warm desert nights with Mom and Dad fast asleep, exhausted from digging up their fortunes, while he embraced a dream girl in luminous intimacy.

Located in California's eastern Mojave Desert, the mine was miles from the highway and in extremely rugged terrain. His parents decided to take their travel trailer and stay at a campground near the road to the mine. Some of the partners made the same decision, while others chose a nearby motel.

There was nothing remarkable about the drive from Pasadena. They arrived last, wilted from the heat. Once their trailer was set up, the owner held an impromptu conference around the campground's picnic tables, outlining his ideas on how they would proceed. Giving lip service to the illusion that it was a group decision, his plan was for the men to commute to the mine, while the womenfolk minded the A/Cs and swamp coolers.

As Charles heard it, after blasting with dynamite, they would shovel the accumulated ore down a wooden chute into dump trucks, which would take it to a refinery. Sadly, no young nymphomaniac, dedicated to fission or fusion or something similar, made her appearance. He was the only kid in the work party.

The men were European immigrants and, like his father, came to America for occupational opportunities they could not find in their home countries. Frustrated and angry about being stuck in a stratified and rigid society, his father falsified a sponsor to get his green card and debarked in New York City at the height of the depression. A family myth—-repeated far too often, from Charles' point of view—-was how, only speaking Swedish, he used sign language to get a job painting ceilings the day he arrived.

Definitely not an immigrant, the mine owner seemed like a slick hustler to Charles. He was the foreman at the machine shop, where all the investors worked. They made helicopter blades and other airplane parts on massive milling machines. His father talked with pride about his ability to set up each job so that the finished twenty-foot blade would be within one or two-thousandths of an inch of the required specifications. Charles realized much later in life that his father's most significant gift to him was a work ethic. He had no relationship with him at the time and did not perceive him as a model for his future, other than a negative one.

The following day, with just a hint of first light on the horizon, Charles and the four men drove uphill toward the mine on a tortuous dirt road. There were so much equipment and supplies, it required a makeshift caravan of the mine owner's Jeep, a pickup, and a station wagon to carry everything.

Charles got into the station wagon, which, ironically, became Tail-end Charlie. Seeping through every crack in the vehicle, dust began gagging him and the driver as soon as they left. After thirty minutes of extreme silicosis, the driver honked several times imploringly, and everyone stopped for a break. The owner mentioned they were about halfway to the mine.

Standing outside the station wagon, gulping water, Charles studied the men. None of them, including his father, seemed knowledgeable or serious about mining. Regardless, he wanted to keep pace with them and gain their approval. Most of all, he wanted to avoid his father's wrath, which he could unleash with psychotic fury. He felt a little safer in this group, though, figuring Dad would be on his best behavior around his co-worker mine partners.

Just as they were about to move on, an explosion violently blew Charles out of his reverie. Someone had tossed dynamite into an adjacent shallow dry wash. Shocked and frightened, Charles tried to look cool and unaffected, saying nothing. The men, however, were not so tight-lipped, voicing their disdain for the practical joke. Charles was incredulous to hear that it was only one stick of dynamite. The blast sent a shockwave—-albeit blunted by the arroyo walls—-that lifted him a few inches off the ground. Dynamite, he decided, was not something you played around with, and he questioned the sanity of the joker, who turned out to be the mine owner.

After more grumbling, everyone got back into the vehicles, and the caravan continued to climb through the flour-like dust. They reached the mine a half-hour later. Charles was surprised that he could still see the highway about twenty miles away. The clarity of the desert air gave the illusion that it was nearby and you could walk to it in half an hour.

Unloading the gear, the men muttered their doubts about trucking out ore on such a rough road. Charles wondered about the remoteness of the mine. They had not encountered another vehicle, a shack, or even a side road, during the hour-long miserable ride on the barely discernable track. Bordered by sage, tumbleweeds, and a few Joshua trees, it dead-ended at the mine However, looking around the area, Charles could not locate anything resembling a mine. There was nothing: no mine entrance, no shaft, no outbuildings, no claim sign, no trucks, and no wooden chute for the ore to tumble down. There was only rocky desert extending out to seeming infinity in all directions.

Even though it was still early morning, the temperature was already rising and by the time they unloaded the equipment, supplies, soft-drink coolers, and water and stored it in a large army surplus tent they labored to set up, everyone was sweating. The owner/joker pointed to an area of bare rock fifty yards to one side of the camp and declared the drilling would start there. He said it was the location of the highest Geiger Counter readings. The partners seemed to take him at his word because he did not have a counter with him. A rocky outcropping next to the camp, he explained, would provide adequate protection during blasting.

Indian-file, circling below the small ridge, they lugged a heavy gasoline-engine-powered drill, extra gasoline, various other tools and supplies, and a box of dynamite to the blast site. A few kicks on a motorcycle-like crank and the drill roared into action, sounding like a jackhammer. The mine owner and the other men took turns drilling perpendicularly into solid rock slanted uphill at a 45-degree angle. Progress was slow, with them having to stop often to check or change the drill bit or add another foot-long section to the pipe. It was grueling work in the desert heat, but Charles, muscular and six feet tall, was eager to take a turn at the drill. The unspoken message, though, was that this was adult macho work, which pissed him off. He was convinced he could handle the drill but chose not to say anything.

The owner's attitude added to his annoyance. An obnoxious know-it-all, he passed himself off as an accomplished miner while talking down to his new investors. However, he did not seem to know what he was doing, covering it up with brash comments and stupid jokes. In movies and newsreels, Charles had seen dynamite placed in deeply drilled holes, so that when it exploded, it lifted the rocks and dirt only a few feet, breaking it up for transport. However, when the owner stopped drilling, the shaft still seemed shallow—-not more than eight feet deep—-and the last stick of dynamite was visible a few inches down the hole.

Charles again decided to keep his mouth shut. He was a teenager and supposedly grateful to be among the real men. He chose to observe, learn what he could, not make any suggestions or, worse yet, ask any pointed questions.

With the dynamite-in-the-gully prank fresh in their minds, the partners suggested everyone move a greater distance from the blast than just behind the camp area outcropping. The owner lit a long fuse and the men hurried back to camp while laughing and joking like teenagers in the showers after gym class. They jumped into all three vehicles and drove back down the road. Tagging along and feeling estranged from them, Charles judged the owner's mining methods risky and amateurish. What if the fuse burned quicker than he anticipated and the dynamite exploded before they got far enough away?

The boss stopped a quarter-mile below the mine. Out of the vehicles, drinking water and sodas, the men appeared glad to have a rest from the strenuous drilling. They continued to joke and kid each other in a fashion that made Charles uncomfortable. The minutes ticked by and the owner, checking his watch, wondered why the dynamite had yet to explode. He was about to go back up the