Review by Clint Driscoll
Mining Novel – May 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine
Mine Work
by Jim Davidson
Published in 1999
by Utah State University Press
ISBN 0-87421-275-8
I AM AN UNABASHED hardrock mining buff. I suppose that’s because all of my Colorado ancestors made their living directly or indirectly from hardrock mining and railroading. Like Jim Davidson, when I look at family photographs of great-grandparents and grandparents, softly out of focus in the background are mills, tailing piles and headframes or roundhouses, rail yards and forges.
And that is why, when I read a short review of Jim Davidson’s novel, Mine Work, I ordered it immediately. I was expecting a saga of the heyday of mining, filled with underground danger and portraying the miner as a noble worker pitted against the evil mining companies and their scabs and goons — a bit of brain candy to tide me through a March afternoon while the snow in the yard turned to mud. What I got was not candy but a full meal.
Mine Work begins in the present with Markus Cottin driving across the big empty that is Southeast Utah. He needs to speak to his father, Andrew, who operates a one-man copper mine deep in canyon country; it is one of the many mining claims Andrew has worked alone for thirty years.
On his journey, Markus carries yellowed clippings and a newspaper photograph bequeathed to him by his brother, a recent suicide victim. The clippings detail their father’s arrests for twice dynamiting Cable Minerals’ mills in the early 1970s, and the photograph shows their grandfather, Tom, in 1950, handcuffed and wearing a frightened, empty stare. The photo has no caption and no story, although Markus remembers that there were vague family references to a long-ago homicide.
Over the years, Markus has seen his father rarely. He and his brother were raised by their mother’s sister after their mother died and Andrew “faded and faded into the rocks.” Andrew’s side of the family was never mentioned. The brothers never saw photos or records of any kind except for one enigmatic envelope containing the clippings and photo and labeled “For the boys” in their mother’s handwriting. Markus has found it among his dead brother’s effects.
As far as Markus knows, he and Andrew are all that is left of the Cottins, and Markus has one obsession, to find out if the Cottin name is worth saving. Is there madness in the line that accounts for his brother’s suicide or is there a touch of evil that explains the clippings, photo and total lack of family ties? Markus must find the evidence and judge.
Andrew refuses to help, he is determined to keep the past buried while he buries himself in his desert drift. But he relents enough to ask Markus if he has ever heard of Madero, a mining town set high in the San Juans of Colorado. Madero, site of the richest, biggest mine Cable Minerals ever operated is where Andrew grew up and where, Andrew reveals, old Tom Cottin is still living. Andrew tells Markus to go up there, dig around, “And when you’re done doin’ that, when you’ve heard it all and thought about it, you just ask yourself if you wasn’t a smarter man when you didn’t know nothin’ at all.”
Thus begins Markus’s “mine work.” To find his answers he must dig deep, following the vein of his family history. In Madero, a town which by description could be the decaying remnants of the old company town of Climax relocated to Rico or Ouray, he finds his grandfather. Tom is an ancient, frightened man living in a Baby Doe-like cocoon of squalor and disjointed memories. But Tom’s ramblings lead to other residents and to others who moved down the mountain to warmer climates and other jobs years ago.
SLOWLY, PERSON BY PERSON, Markus discovers the tragedy of his family and its inextricable ties to mid-Twentieth Century industrial mining. He learns of the racism, union busting, intimidation and avarice which was rife in post-war Madero. As the lodes begin to play out, prices plummeted and Cable Minerals economized by skimping on repairs and on the upkeep of equipment; they imported Navajos to work at low wages (and cheated them unmercifully). Company men had to decide whether to work quietly, demand improvements, unionize or simply pack up the family and ride the train down the mountain.
Mine Work reminds me of David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars. The characters bury old hates and injustices which continue to work their evil on human lives. More importantly, as Markus searches for the truth about his family, he realizes that a sure knowledge of what is or was real depends entirely on what each person chooses to believe.
While Guterson uses a beautiful island and commercial salmon fishing in the foggy waters of Puget Sound as a metaphor of cultural, racial and physical separation, Davidson elicits the bleakness of mining life by contrasting the magnificent landscapes in which the mines and towns are located with the piles of rusted machinery, building shells and broken tools found around any site where heavy industry once operated and people once lived their lives. They are like graveyards with no epitaphs or names on the tombstones.
The author has a feel for the region. His descriptions of the Utah deserts and the high mountain valleys of the San Juans are superb. But it is Davidson’s ability to set mood and character which makes this novel so engrossing. An approaching winter storm moving inexorably down from the high peaks can be as ominous as the creakings of a loading chute door before it gives way. Encroaching coyotes are held at bay as surely as old memories are ignored. A crippled old miner sitting at his kitchen table smoking hand-rolled Prince Albert cigarettes embodies the fatalism of men who went underground. Underground the blackness is total and the mantrip is a weak-eyed worm moving through the guts of the mountain; there, 33 degree water drips and flows around rotting timbers while miners are forced to “drill dry” because the company won’t pipe water for the jacklegs. The overall tone is one of foreboding. Yet this is not a depressing story. Davidson provides a satisfying resolution as he brings the separate s
Mine Work is worth reading. Not only is it a compelling story but it has much to tell about miners and ourselves. Davidson captures the mindset of the working people who put so much of themselves into projects which were doomed to end when the last cartful of paying ore finally came up the shaft. More importantly, it is a fine metaphor on the human condition.
All humans do mine work. We all hope to work the richest lodes of silver and gold but often we merely muck base metal. At times all we do is move waste rock just to prove we are still alive. But we keep on digging and what we become and how we live are the results of our moral choices even if we are endangered by, and seem controlled by, outside circumstances.
This is Davidson’s first novel, I hope it won’t be his last.
–Clint Driscoll