Porcelain, Tile, and Brass

The outbuilding sat on the periphery of a fenced coal mining operation’s property.  It was small, made of brick, and had grimy, rectangular windows, which were tiny and set high in one of its single-story walls.  Its roof was flat.

The mining operation of which this building was a part could no longer be considered an operation, as the mine itself was played out.  All of the excavating equipment had long been removed, and almost all of the workforce had been transferred.  Some of it to the operation’s mine located in the next county, most of it to the unemployment lines.

On this particular morning, gray daylight cast latticed shadows on the sooty bricks of the outbuilding’s east-facing wall as it filtered its way through the rusted chain link fence surrounding the property.  The air that hung over the operation was always tinged with the dust of coal hewn from penetrations deep into the earth’s crust.  The coal-dust air persisted long after the mining had stopped.  On this day, the dirty sun’s wan light also managed to wring blackened silhouettes from the loops of concertina wire wound to the top of the fence all along its length.  The shapes were curves on the outbuilding’s wall.

This outbuilding featured, as one of its two rooms, a locked storage area for ancient, unused office equipment.  Its second room contained working urinals and toilets.  Three of each.  The use of this lavatory set-up had been reserved for the coal mine’s management.  The general laborers, and the miners who came to the surface, used outhouses, or stood or crouched behind the corrugated walls of equipment sheds.  By this point in time, and on this day, however, no management staff remained to indulge in the privilege of this outbuilding’s plumbing.  But the mine’s last two laborers did.

Sayles smirked at the No Smoking sign riveted to the building’s ravaged steel door as he pushed his way in.  The short hallway just beyond the entrance smelled of disuse.  Electricity to the building had been turned off in anticipation of the operation’s imminent closure, and the hallway was dark.  The glowing end of Sayles’ lit Camel showed him the way.  He pushed through another battered steel door on his left and was greeted by the puling light extruded from the filthy rectangular windows of the building’s other room.  Borghrom was using the urinal on the far right.  The one to his left – the middle one – was in a state of mid-flush.

Sayle’s took a deep drag off the Camel and blew smoke into the air.  “What’d you flush the empty one for?”

“I like the sound of the water.”  Borghrom was quiet for a beat.  Then, “Reminds me of the ocean.”

Sayles shook his head, unzipped, and hit the urinal on the far left.  “’The fuck you know about the goddamn ocean?”

“Been there.”  Borghrom’s voice croaked across the gulf of the middle urinal and made its way to Sayles’ right ear over the sound of its waters.

Borghrom, who was sixty, but looked eighty, had started working at the mine at the age of fifteen.  He was a laborer and was currently charged by the company with the responsibility of remaining on the site’s grounds for the next several weeks until the operation officially closed forever.  He was trusted by management and had rarely missed work in his four-plus decades with the mine.  His role now was to watch the property.  Sayles, who was on the brink of forty, was there to help him.

“Still surprised they ain’t takin’ you with ‘em over to Buchanan.  Been bustin’ your ass here for the greedy cocksuckers long enough.  Fuckers.”

Borghrom zipped and looked sideways at the pissing, smoking Sayles.  “Well, I ain’t surprised.  Not in the least.  We saw this day comin’.  Some time ago.  They were hintin’ that I was gettin’ too old to be of any use.  Even back then.”  He flushed his own urinal, and then flushed the empty one in the middle again.

Although Sayles was a 10-year man himself, he’d only very recently been in steady contact with Borghrom at the site.  He’d worked on cleaning detail for the mobile excavating equipment stationed along the property’s south border, but when the equipment was moved off-site to the operation’s other mine, Sayles became Borghrom’s helper.  Captain and first mate on a doomed and sinking ship.

Sayles zipped and took a half step back.  He ground his butt out on the filthy tile floor, then fired up a fresh one.  He didn’t bother flushing.  The two remained facing the urinals.  There was a grime-coated sink to the left of the urinals, its ancient brass faucet slathered in verdigris, but neither man made a move to use it.

Sayles took a deep drag on his cigarette, and when he exhaled, he coughed, and a sinister rattle accompanied the sound.  “You ain’t gonna get Medicare, old man.  What you gonna do?”

Borghrom stared at the trio of urinals, and didn’t answer immediately.  He flushed Sayles’ urinal, watched the water descend its interior walls, and listened to the sound.  The light seeping in through the little, dirty windows was changing as the weak sun moved westward through the dingy sky outside.  The room was getting dark.

“Not sure.  Can’t think much about it.”

Sayles stared fixedly at the urinals.  “There’s unemployment.  You can do that.  I’m gonna.  I got no choice.  That B and E I got ain’t ever goin’ away.  Nobody’d hire me.  Union helped me once before, but that was a while back.  BA said there’s nothin’ they can do now.  There’s no helping an ex con.”

Borghrom continued to stare straight ahead.  At the urinals.  “Times are different.  We’re all past the union’s help now.”

As the room grew darker by slow degrees, the two men, brought together in life by an employer who no longer had use for them, remained where they stood.  Facing the urinals.  They’d not been friends, and were never close, but they were now united in the teeth of an uncertain fate’s storm.

Sayles hacked and rattled, and fired up another Camel.  “Other night, Heather told me that she couldn’t believe that she was stupid enough to marry a jailbird.  That’s what she said.  Jailbird.  She’s leaving me.  Takin’ the kid and movin’ in with her old lady in Lexington.”  Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Borghrom’s face in the gloom for a reaction.  When he didn’t get one, he resumed his concentration on the urinals.

The silence in the room grew, and as it stretched on, neither man moved.  Sayles noticed that the ugly, pitted tile on the room’s floor was the same stuff that was on the walls.  Just dirtier.  He ground another butt out on it, then was still once more.  In the buzzing silence, he thought he could hear the earth turning.

Sayles, still not moving, spoke again.  “Y’know, this room here was management’s shitter.  I bet their own bathrooms at home ain’t this nasty.”

The silence returned as Borghrom continued to stare at the urinals.  When he finally spoke, it startled Sayles.  “Cashed in my pension back when Carolyn got so sick.  Got the life insurance, but it didn’t last.”

The minutes ticked by with neither man speaking again.  The light of the sun, already weakened by the permanent cowl of particulate-laden atmosphere blanketing the mine and its land, had moved entirely away from the little windows of the executive restroom.  The darkness and murk would soon make the room almost unnavigable.  The silence, the darkness…

Borghrom reached out and flushed his urinal once more, and then the middle one.

Sayles, without turning, without lighting another Camel, said “Flush mine, too.  For both of us.”