Just your typical Sunday, does exactly what it says on the tin. I wrote a little something today, though:
If you’d asked Mutombo what he was digging for, he might have laughed and said a dollar an hour, the camaraderie of the other men, the fresh air and plentiful sun. He would not have mentioned his family, unless perhaps to ask that you not say where you’d found him, and he would not have mentioned the object, which neither he nor the others would have felt comfortable describing in much detail aloud.
They were not by nature a superstitious lot, but still, there were rumors in the camp at night, and there was little doubt that the object itself was dangerous. Mutombo himself had seen three men fall sick and two of them die, strong men whose shovels the day before might have stood right beside his own.
All of them were immigrants; Mutombo could not even say with any certainty which country he was in any longer. The trip here had been long and disorienting, and the excavation work at the camp only added to that feeling of disconnect. It was a feeling that Mutombo would have to admit suited him just fine, free from his father’s scolding looks, his mother’s long disappointed sighs, the threats of another night in the district jail. Here, there was only the work, the digging, and the infectious laughter of the other men.
And, of course, there was the object.
They had no other name for it, neither they nor the white men from the corporation overseeing the dig. It was not a thing to which names easily affixed, even fearful names spoken half in jest, like invader, demon. It defied description.
Mutombo knew only that it had fallen from the sky. And that, if they were not careful, it might continue to kill.
Beyond that? I returned a couple of books to the library. Heady stuff, I know.