Part 2.
Gregor and Dimitri were from Moscow, and both were geologist trained at Moscow State University, the most prestigious educational facility in Russia. Lofty beginnings from which to descend, Russian-like, into the obscure anonymity of the mediocre. They’d met in a few shared classes and then when both recognized the other in graduate school at the same structural geology study, they formed a working friendship. They collaborated on a white paper about epithermal mineralization in gold deposits of the Ural Mountains, with Dimitri, the “quiet one”, essentially dictating 90% of the paper while Gregor wrote and offered editorial expertise and in reviews and thesis defense, was always the spokesman for the pair.
The paper was published in the department’s name and recognized slowly by the mining community as a different interpretation of how deposits were formed. Over a few years the paper was circulated among a few other schools and eventually found its way to one of the investors, who was himself an amateur geologist and keen on exploring abandoned or historical gold properties in the US. The investor had written a letter to the University which eventually found its way to the 2 authors, who were now three years out of school, but still loosely associated with the research department in the school of geology.
The Soviet Union needed to develop and exploit its natural resources and directed money and favors to those who could help them compete. Gregor and Dimitri were such a pair, and functioned in that way, which meant you either got 2 for 1, or 1 for 2. By the time they were in their early 30s both had fallen hard into drink and the underground life of traveling geologists inspecting and assessing the country’s prospects. When the letter finally found the pair inviting them to work on the Star project, Dimitri responded with a yawn, and a binge. He didn’t want to leave the mother country, particularly for the culturally bereft US, for whatever reason, and Gregor followed his friend, as much to manage him as to enable him by drinking just as hard.
The two were wandering through the bars that night until misfortune found them in an ugly, drunken disagreement with two comrades bearing all the signs of party officials, but both geologists were too blind to see. A fight ensued. Dimitri instinctively fell upon his street skills doing most of the damage, and the two officials suffered physical as well as social injury, the latter being more incriminating than the former. Clearly, the geologists had messed with the wrong persons and a few days after the fight, Gregor and Dimitri were summoned to appear for what was certainly not going to turn out well for them within the next week. Their passports and credentials were suspended and they were told, ominously, to put their affairs in order before reporting to the tribunal. Recognizing their situation, finally, Gregor immediately contacted the investor who had written the letter and said they were coincidentally, traveling toward Kyev and could they meet there to discuss details. The two geologists left everything behind except that which they could carry.
On the Road to Perdition
They had come to America on a boat, via rail to the Netherlands, disembarking through New York City, and bussed to Delta, the very definition of anonymous and obscure, as arranged by the investor group who had acquired their services. They had arrived without their papers, passports, identification of any kind, and only enough luggage to explain why they looked like a disheveled pair of travelers from a Steinbeck novel. As far as the world knew, they didn’t exist, having snuck through the holes of the world’s fences and they’d left no trail, which was their intent.
Resolved to their situation, both Russians arrived with a new spin on their escape, they shared a quixotic impression of America and their somewhat fortuitous opportunity at the Star Mine. Jesse’s initial impression, even without the benefit of a common language other than geology, was that Gregor, the slightly more credible of the two, and Dimitri, missing some vital but unidentified human ingredient, were desperate men and exceedingly glad to be out of the USSR. They had clearly left in a hurry, clinging to a couple of beat-up bags that carried, presumably, more dirty clothes, and ironically, in Dimitri’s case, books.
Gregor spoke for both of them in his thickly accented, broken English while Dimitri remained disengaged from any conversations with Jesse, the crew, Dave, everyone, even to the point of not having any visual connection with them. “He’s shy”, Gregor told Jesse, “but-good-geologist”. Jesse remained skeptical of either attribute and regarded Dimitri as a human satellite who’s orbit was restricted to Vodka, hot meals, and Gregor. With almost no value to the project nearly everyone learned to ignore him and over the course of the summer Dimitri became increasingly invisible, buried in his books, except during his drunken stumbles through the bunkhouse and, when Dave was out cutting wood, foraging through the kitchen for meat, crackers, milk, sweets, (his favorite) and anything left on the prep tables.
He was a formidable sneak, often taking his shoes off to purloin, breaking Dave’s immutable rule to stay-the-hell out of his kitchen when he wasn’t there. (Although everyone knew that it was much worse to transgress Dave’s fiefdom when he was there.) So, given Dimitri’s addiction and moral decay, it was at least logical, like the jackal he appeared to be, that he chose to hunt when the lion wasn’t in, sober enough to cover his tracks and leave with only that which he could carry off in his mouth, which was a surprisingly large amount. He resembled a human chipmunk as he stumbled out the back door with a bottle stuck in his pants, a book in one hand, and the other hand free to help navigate the uneven ground around the back of the bunkhouse.
All in A Day’s Work
Most of the days were spent with the crew working on the repair and re-entry of the main adit with new timber and shoring up ‘widow-makers’, and other dangerous areas so Jesse and Gregor could map and sample and assess the remaining potential. The DiCamillos worked their way along the steep ‘de-cline’ with the geologists behind, sans Dimitri, re-mapping and doing their projections.
The brothers were immediately wary of the two Muscovites and for good measure, began speaking Italian to each other whenever they found themselves in the same space, which was the dinner table every evening. Italian, English, Russian, the vernacular of geology, and whatever language Dave spoke when irritated, (and he was always irritated) the atmosphere was thick with a cultish, linguistic flair that was hard to imagine at that remote and nearly inaccessible location. It was more like an international space station, but with gravity and a bubbling undercurrent of suspicion and mistrust. Jesse made a note in his book about the strain, but it was just another line in a notebook full of observations and geological shorthand. At that time, it wasn’t the precursor it would become later in the summer.
The main shaft was too damaged to use without significant work to its structure, which was beyond the scope of the summer’s assessment anyway, so it stood, or more accurately leaned on 5 of its 6 good legs, like a ‘bloke’ taking a smoke on a lamp post. The hole was at least 100 feet deep and the wooden cover and rails had been removed so the crew could see what shape the shaft was in, and what work would have to be done to get the bucket and lift back in order, if justified. The hole was timbered but clearly compromised, with cross beams and debris visible at about 40 feet below the surface. The rest of the shaft and its condition was unknown, at that point.
During the ensuing weeks, the hole was left open even though new timber was stacked and ready, to recondition, or perhaps cover, so Jesse had wrapped orange and yellow flagging and tape around it just to remind everyone to use caution. Particularly Dimitri, although Dave had rediscovered the joy of alcohol at some point as well, and between the two of them, Jesse worried that the one, and not so much the other, would tumble in one night and leave them without a cook, a consequence far worse than losing a useless geologist. As the summer went on, Dimitri’s whereabouts were less and less of interest to any of them, so the gravity of that consequence also waned. It shouldn’t have.
After dinner, the various tribes went their separate ways into the bowels of the bunkhouse, except for the geologists, who hovered over old maps using candles and kerosene lamps for lighting. Jesse couldn’t help but feel the pull of history and the sensation of re-entry into a different time. Even though Dimitri spoke little English, and was nearly always ‘lit’ during the work session, he offered an occasional nugget of insight into the geology and the three were able to collectively learn the structures that ruled the mineralization which made the Star mine such a unique deposit during its long history. Over the nocturnal sessions they shared, they were able to peal back the layers of rock and to imagine the flow and ebbs of hydrothermal fluids that crashed through the lattice work of broken rocks, and the mine began to reveal some of its historical mystery.
On those occasions where they all seemed to be on the same page, the Star opened up her secrets to them and a particularly compelling area that, just as the men from the Wooden Nickle had inferred, began to stand out. The old mine maps showed work had begun at the deepest level of the mine and notes left by a previous explorer said the stope was spreading out in all directions with heavy mineralization on every face that had, to that point, been exposed.
The date on the map was May 7, 1938, and the old men at the bar said ‘that was about the last time the Star had been worked’. The notes on the map referred, in hieroglyphics, to a cave-in at that level and a symbol that indicated the cable on the main hoist had snapped, presumably with the first load from the ‘new stope’, which had ‘shut her down’. To the best of their collective knowledge, and influenced by their imagination, the geologists’ conclusion was that the Star had been abandoned from that date nearly 40 years earlier, which also happened to be Jessie’s father’s birthday. The ghost of the Star beckoned them and a breadcrumb in time had been left for Jesse and the Russians to pick up.
As if for the first time since they had started the project, Dimitri put his drink down, a curious look drew across his face and he nodded at Gregor in a very sober way. There was trickery afoot, it seemed, and a nod was just as good as a wink.
Fever
Gold fever is a very real sickness. Jesse had caught it for a short period of time a few summers before his trip to the Star while panning for gold in the American River near Placerville, CA. On his very first try, he had panned a nugget about the size of his finger tip and when he fished it out, he yelled “eureka” to no one in particular. For the next week he spent nearly 10 hours daily, hunched over, or on his knees, rocking and washing dirt and gravel through his pan. That finger-tip find had driven him to stay in the river to the point of hydrothermal exhaustion on the first day, and hypothermia on the last day.
The DiCamillos revitalized their fever every time they opened up a glittering new face of metal, which to that point hadn’t yet happened at the Star. For every 20 or 30 blanks staring back at them, the one that sparkled and winked was enough to keep them going. They thought they were close to that number. After the smell of nitroglycerin and the dust of shattered rock had cleared, they would walk into the hole they had created and stare at the reflections and colors of gold and silver gleaming back at them. Broad, sinister smiles spread across their smudged faces and bobbing heads accompanied with the ineloquent, but heartfelt utterance of “fuck-yeah” to certify the experience. It made mucking and the backbreaking work of loading rock into carts much easier.
The two Russians had certainly had a taste of it at some point as well, and both Gregor and Dimitri now had ‘the look’. The tease was on and aglow in everyone’s mind. Only Dave, who had his own demons to deal with, was unaffected by the map’s message and promise. The camp was buzzed and a new focus was shared by all four tribes. Dave suffered the collateral effects of increased appetites and longer waking hours by making more coffee, more sandwiches for the underground crew, more food at breakfast and dinner. The fires of anticipation, and creeping greed made the men hungry. The Star mine was stirring and the ground felt alive.
A Late Summer’s Nite Dream
Work along the main adit was steady as the DiCamillos led the charge toward the old stope identified on the mine maps. They were within a half-level of the target area and collectively, the camp had decided to try and push into it by working longer shifts. The night before what they all believed would be their break through, the camp decided to have a pre-discovery dinner with Dave being asked to cook something special. Jesse suggested cake, or some other kind of dessert, if he had the ingredients.
Up to that point, Dave had provided a steady fare of meats and vegetables, but given the green light to expand his culinary exploits he offered to surprise the crew with his secret specialty – pie. In this case, wild raspberry pies. Dave told Jesse that he would need to collect black and red raspberries from the mountainside and that it might take him much of the morning to find enough for at least 2 pies, which meant they’d have to fend for themselves on breakfast. The door to the kitchen – and for Dimitri, the keys to the kingdom -had been left ajar.
Dimitri, Man of Mystery
Dimitri was orphaned at the age of three. By the time he was a teen he had experienced the worst that humans could offer, and he’d endured. From the age of 10 he had made his life on the streets of Vladisvastok, like a cockroach, he skuttled, connived and carved out his niche. He was a street urchin with obvious intellectual and survival skills. He was brilliant and cunning, he begged, stole, borrowed and thrived off the leaks, inefficiencies, and corruption of the system. At 14, he began working his way west, courtesy of the Trans-Siberian railway, toward Moscow. On his way, he discovered books. He couldn’t stop himself from reading everything he found which lured him to libraries, where he was becoming recognized, and bookstores, and reading rooms, and eventually back into school until he found his way to University, where he exam-ed his way into Moscow State. He was admitted because of his prodigious acumen in the sciences, but his predilections were towards the literature of Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Cervantes, Nietzsche, Camus….. so, with one hand he managed a curriculum of geology and chemistry and with the other, he fed his passion for literature, philosophy, history, and his imagination. But if Dimitri was nothing else, he was the poster child for how intelligence in the hands of the wrong body was not enough to save him from the genetics of addiction. He had fallen for books, and drink, in the same manner, he loved them equally, maniacally.
At the end of his college career, he’d managed to distinguish himself as a drinker’s drinker, which in Russia is a notorious accomplishment, and a thinkers thinker, also noteworthy given the rich intellectual heritage of that country. But Dimitri was a misfit, refusing and rejecting most opportunities at normal friendships and tormented by the demons of his childhood, and his unknown heritage, he found solace in the bottle and kept his distance from the denizens of the diurnal, society at large. Gregor being the notable exception.
This is the end of Part 2. The next chapter to follow.
