“Come on, lady.” The baby-faced miner removed his hard hat to swipe a grimy forearm across his forehead.  “It’s not like we’re trashing the ozone or causing global warming. We’re trying to make a living.”

            Despite his NFL proportions, he seemed the most reasonable of the three. She lowered the sign. 
            “You admit burning fossil fuels triggered global warming.”

He looked away and shrugged.

“But you don’t see the connection between the attitudes that created it—that continue to make it worse—and plundering this mountain for vanity and profits?”

            The older miner sneered. “What connection? I knew you’d be a brainless twit.”

            “Look,” said the younger guy, “why don't you go your way, and we'll go ours? We don't mess with you, so why hassle us?”

            “I'll tell you since you asked. I'm here because your idea of making a living is to tear up my mountains, poison my planet, and kill my animal friends. It’s bad enough you’re trashing Paintbrush Peak . Your company wants to sink its backhoes all along the Front Range.”

            The driver laughed. “What are you talking about? You don't own the Earth.”

            “And neither do you. We’re its temporary caretakers and no more. The difference between us is I know it, and you don’t.”

            “Maybe so and maybe I don’t give a shit. The bottom line is our company owns most of this mountain. If the BLM and the EPA approve our expansion, what's your beef?”

“It’s simple. If you divide the area of Earth's land by its human population, you’ll find our species depends on six acres per person for the rest of forever to provide food, resources, and living space while absorbing our bodily wastes, garbage, and non-recyclable trash. The life-supporting area is in fact much smaller since my figures include polar ice caps, deserts, vast tracts of urban blight and industrial wasteland. Experts predict mankind will grow by fifty-percent in forty years—from six to nine billion people—which means our nurturing acreage will shrivel for the rest of our lives and our future generations.

“But here you are, ripping up beautiful acres of Mother Earth every day to bleed an ounce of gold from a hundred tons of rock, and you show your appreciation by leaking sodium cyanide into Clear Creek.”

            The driver yelled, “You lie! Our system recovers all the cyanide. The discharges seeped from old tailings, not the current system.”

            She rummaged in her satchel and produced a sheath of stapled articles.

“This appeared in the Washington Journal last week.” Raising her voice, she read an excerpt:

…Speaking before the U.N. Panel on the Global Fresh Watershed Crisis, Chairperson Clifford Wickles of the International Consortium of Heavy Metal Mining admitted no failsafe cyanide extraction system currently exists. Wickles made this unexpected admission, which contradicted his previous claims, after leading scientific experts cited dozens of examples of watershed contamination, massive waterfowl loss, and confirmed cyanide deaths of larger mammals, including coyote and deer. These examples all involved state-of-the-art mining facilities.

            “And that’s not all,” she said. “Are you suggesting property owners shouldn’t be accountable for toxic chemicals that escape their property? If I buy a run-down house and someone falls through the porch, who’s to blame, me or the previous—”

            “Shut up!” shouted the grizzled miner. “Who cares about your fuckin' porch or what some left wing paper says? A flaming faggot probably wrote that trash.”

            She goggled. “But...but what does sexual orientation have to do with truth? Your own people said it. Are you suggesting the owners would admit their equipment was ineffective if it wasn’t true?”
            The older men--probably in their forties--exchanged smirks that insulted her intelligence. 

            “They probably cut a deal," said the miner, "so they could leave the conference and get home to mama.” He grew silent in mid-snicker to grope her legs with a hungry gaze. The driver took his meaning and pressed a button on the fence; the gate slid open.

            The younger man gaped at his co-worker. “But...Tom, we already did what George sent us to do. Let’s get back to work.”

            “Good idea, Billy. You scuttle back to the quarry, and we’ll take care of business.” 
            Their faces stony, the pair approached her while Billy retreated, his shoulders slumped and gaze averted. She glared at the creeps while she fumbled in the tote bag.   
            It's a bluff, she thought. No one gets raped in plain sight next to a guard shack. They're trying to scare you into leaving. 
            Even so, her hand shook as it closed on a weapon.

“Stay away from me! I’ve got a p-personal protective device, and I’m n-not afraid to use it.”
             They shared a look and split up, moving to either side while she backed away. As they loomed within reach, her cardboard placard clunked against the Tracker.

                                                                (continued...) 
           

                                    Homepage   Plot   Premise   Author