I Will Meet You There

It was a job. Just something I had to do to provide for myself. Work to eat like my parents did. And their parents. And their parents. And their children. And their children’s children. That’s how it always has been.

Some of those in my long line of common drudges may have had more or less of the dreamer in them. But by the time I came along, my kinfolk had more or less had the big rock candy mountain and the pie in the sky beaten out of them by the great more-of-the-same-but-a-little-worse. I’m no exception. Work to eat, eat to live, live because what else you gonna do?

A year older here and there. Another winter. Another spring. Baked dry and tough like leather under another blazing summer. Another autumn like any other.

Except this autumn, there were jobs to be had.

Big jobs building big things that’d take years to be done. You can be sure I’d jumped at the chance for steady eating.

Maybe some part of me shuddered when my pick first hit the gneiss. Yes, I’m sure it did. Might it be cruel to cut the mountain? Might a mountain be a god to offend? And what of it? I found my muscles hungry for sacrilege.

And the further in I went, the more I fancied the mountain liked it.

The hard stones fell, chunk by chunk by chip beneath my hands. In and in we went, into the forever-night beneath the weight of all that stone.

Every day I worked, barely knowing the time of day except by the rumbling in my belly for lunch or by the rusty western light shining in on my back telling me when the end of another day had come. No mole was so eager as I was. No rockman was so ardent. I was always at the front, swinging hard, my muscles and bones feeling each hit like the mountain hit back.

It wasn’t ‘till I crawled out again that the weight of tiredness would hit me. I’d drag my body, old mule that it is, back to my bed like I had to carry all the stones I broke on my back with me. I’d fall into the sleep of the dead. Dead and buried.

***

Another winter. Another spring. Another summer. And so on.

Harder. Paler. Stronger. Older. The ache is damn near constant.

We gather in the before-dawn dimness to hear the foreman’s announcement. I stretch myself this way and that to ease my back while listening. Murmurs among my fellows.

But I already knew it. They tell us another team’s begun tunneling from the eastern side. I already knew that someone had been. Someone’s tunneling to our sunset while we tunnel to their sunrise. I already know because I heard it.

I came upon the fissure, running deep. I’d put my ear to it to listen. Through the loudness of the drip, drip, dripping I listened. I heard it.

“I’m coming. I’m coming. Meet me there.”

Every night since I’ve seen it. I’d never been much for dreaming before. But every night since then, I’ve seen it. A sound become shape. The pounding, pulsing heart of the mountain.

I’m coming to meet you there.

Swing. Clank. Swing. Clank.

My body moves on without me. I am already there. Dreaming and dreaming of how it will be when we get there.

Swing goes my arm. Clank goes my pick against the rock. Swing. Clank.

I’m already in the distance. I don’t feel a thing. I’m feasting. Feasting on the visions.

I can’t believe in the train they’ll put through it. I can’t see that. I believe in what I see. I see you there.

I see us. Two ventricles of the mountain’s heart. Two logs on a bonfire.

I kiss you. I beat you. I love you. I kill you. I keep you. I want you. I will meet you there.

Whatever I do, you do to me. I hold you to me. I cleave, flesh to flesh. Hair, eyes, tender places. Secret places whispering to one another in the darkness.

Two stones melting in the heat. Red, hot, melding.

Whatever I do, you do to me. Two bears sinking our teeth into shoulders, ripping at our bellies. Two wolves howling, licking, biting. Lost in wild derangement. Lost in passionate rending.

Two will-o-the-wisps, stars in a cavern. A den of stars birthing stars. A new firmament.

Bang, bang, bang.

A heart pumping blood.

Thump, thump, thump.

Together we drink thick white milk from the mountain. We drink the mountain’s blood.

We drink each other’s tears and from each other’s mouths. I drink your urine. I want to lose no part of you. I eat your leavings. I eat you as you eat me.

Bang, bang, bang.

Thump, thump, thump.

My hands squeeze your throat. My hands squeeze your heart. Yours do the same. I hold you gently. Rest my cheek on yours. You rest yours on mine.

I sink my teeth in your softness. You sink yours in mine.

I want to know you, taste you, hear you. To sink inside you as you sink in me.

I want you. I will meet you there.

You kiss me. You beat me. You kill me. You keep me. You want me. “I will meet you there.”

I hear you. I’m coming.

“Hey, you coming? Or are you planning to stay here all night?”

The end of another day’s dreaming. I dream in my bed. The dream is the same. I am already there.

***

It’s over. I could pass you on the street and never know you.

I’ll never know you anywhere. I could only know you there.

“Stop,” the foreman had said. “There’s no more money to pay you.”

So the work is halted. They put chains across it. I still go sometimes. To listen. Mostly I don’t.

The heart is there, untouched. An echo fast receding.

Maybe the mountain minded. Did I care?

Sometimes I pound my head against some hardness. Sometimes I pound my fists against my legs and bring the bruises out.

Some nights I bite my pillow and grind my teeth. I roll and twist and roll for lack of dreaming. But mostly now I don’t.

The food is dust. When I can get it.

To work to eat to live. What else is there?

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This story is a part of the TunnelBridge cycle of stories.
Also see TunnelBridge