DIG
They hit bone.
Bone makes their machines stop. Protocol and all that. There’s a lot of cursing and spitting. They toe the ground with their boots. Of course, they say. When the project’s already months behind. (Years, some guy insists, dragging on a cigarette.)
Yeah, when the project’s already behind fucking years. Of course they hit bone.
Someone with a suit instead of a hard hat makes it out by mid-afternoon and scowls down: smooth white against the deep black of rich soil. The bone is so big he can’t tell which piece it is, but he wouldn’t care even if he could. They’re supposed to call the museum. The museum comes so they can dig it up and keep it, which—point being—they’re still gonna fucking dig. So the suit waves it off. Keep going. The project’s already behind.
The machines turn back on. They tear down a little deeper, bone be damned. Sometimes the trees creak around them, moaning some low, sonorous agony, but that’s why they’ve got earplugs, usually. Shut out the sounds. Keep the guilt from getting in. If it got in—got rooted down—if it stank and festered and transformed—the company wouldn’t cover it. So.
Earplugs and machines. Dig deeper.
They get guys down into the hole when the bone’s gone. There’s enough room to wade through the ropes of sinew and muck out the underlying smooth muscle. Intercostals, or something. Doesn’t matter. There isn’t any name left for it when it’s excised, chucked out onto the trucks, weeping fluid.
(I thought it’d smell worse, someone says. A shrugged reply: the tissue is still alive, for now.)
It only takes a few days for them to get down to the smooth mainline. Press a gloved hand to it and it feels like a river underneath, the surface otherworldly soft and shiny, thick, like the gristle on a steak. The rig boys are happy. They get to drill now, and the first nick, with everyone standing by, squinting beneath hardhats, bleeds like hell.
Corporate tells them to wait. Wait for it to bleed out. It feels like a fucking swamp there now, red rising up around boots from oversaturated soil. It’s a mess. Puts the project back as the mainline gushes for what feels like achey eons, a river where there wasn’t one before—
Then: amniotic fluid. More bone. A child inside the mother.
The men keep digging.
Image generated by Nightcafe Creator
FROM THE AUTHOR:
“As a settler living in Treaty 7 territory here in Canada, watching the RCMP support corporations intent on disturbing natural ecosystems is distressing. It is a sad continuation of the long history of the oppression of First Nations people by the RCMP. This piece is a cry of ongoing dismay.”
©2022 Mary Sanche
MARY SANCHE is a writer, illustrator, and museum worker living in Drumheller, AB, Canada. She has an unshakeable respect for the natural world and Earth's history, and has been honoured to work with such clients as Canadian Geographic, Parks Canada, and BC Parks. This is her first written publication. She can be found on Twitter and Instagram @thoughtsupnorth.