They say drivers approaching Mach one out on the playa in Utah's Bonneville flats always note the sensation of being about to crest a rise, as the flatness is so uniform that eventually the curvature of the earth takes over, fading onward into the mountains. The young man in the driver's seat breathed evenly in deep, confident inhalations, and the edges of his mouth curled upward ever so slightly in smug satisfaction. He reached for a cigarette and thought better of it, shoving them under a worn pack, festooned in bright Navajo colors, a gift from the Rez people after his stay with them last spring. It wasn't right to call him a drifter, because he had time and money, luxuries not afforded to those confined to the paranoid realm of vagrancy. He had an education too; a BS in geography from Dartmouth, though his parents wouldn't say he was exactly using it. 'I'm taking a field sabbatical", he told them in straight-faced sincerity, though they knew this was bullshit; such things were for tenured professors and reserved academics, not idealistic young men whose future was infinitely possible. He had a name, but preferred not to use it when possible; names were too preconceived, too confining. If there was one thing he disliked, it was confinement. The lush green forests and neat Victorians of New England had slowly driven him insane until he did what all dreamers and half-believers did: went west.
This latest trip was both for business and pleasure. He was to procure and purchase minerals, no, not rocks or dusty, classroom-bound mineralogy samples, but radiant crystal groups of the highest quality and pedigree, the art of the natural world, he liked to say. Mineral collecting had always been an interest, a passion really, and the material desire to hold and possess clouded out monetary or practical concern. In his eyes, the world was filled with so much filth, the cheap, mass-produced miasma of 21st century life dulling people's aesthetics until everything was synthetic, artificially enhanced to replace experience. The experience had to be immediate, yet still long and strange, circuitous, and surreal. The collector was both an accumulator and an adventurer, scouring the ragged edges of the earth in search of the most beautiful and profane objects, that which we were meant to admire from a distance, wretched out of the earth and framed behind glass.
The mileposts now read in the single digits, and on the right, a broad, high cliff of grayish-white Escabarosa Limestone followed the highway, remains of a warm, ancient sea now juxtaposed in the desert. Between these humble layers of petrified ocean lay some of the richest copper veins in the world, huge, dense bunches of cuprite and azurite, chalcopyrite and malachite, their colors bold and obvious. To the weary, hungry men who first crossed this lonely bit of land a hundred years ago, their salvation must have been these bold outcrops of wealth, a hill of Malachite-laced limestone and porphyry a hundred meters long waiting to be converted to drain pipes and electrical wire, the dull functionality of modern society triumphed over nature's mystery. He also came down here, to the far corner of the Southwest, to escape people, the discontent and morbid pop culture bred by the cities of the East. People were too unpredictable, flimsy and temperamental, and he vowed only to sell them what they wanted, and in the process perhaps see into the heart of a gem, for as Keats said, "A thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever, Its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness."
To pass into nothingness was his greatest fear, and he poured a shot of whisky into his lemonade as the El Camino crested the last undulating, scrub oak clad hill before Bisbee. Lemonade tasted sweet and satisfying, like childhood, only giving and never taking. Bisbee sat at the upper end of a narrow canyon, and like most mining towns of the West, crammed improbable urban density into a former gully or wash, now serpentined by narrow, steep streets and bright pastel manor houses, the former trophies of the mine captains and Copper Kings. His first stop was a contact made though an old geology professor at Dartmouth, and from what he could gather, consisted of an ancient Mexican miner and his wife, former denizens of Bisbee's underground empire. They had some good minerals, professor Fawkes had mentioned, and were worth visiting if he was in the area. He had telephoned them last week from his parent's house on the Maine Coast, and had made his intentions and associations clear. "Mr. Hernandez, it is a pleasure to speak with you today. Let me first say I am much enamored with you're lovely little town of Bisbee. No, I'm not in real estate or politics. I am a mineral dealer. Ah, you have heard of such characters? Let me say they are not all flakes and con-artists. I am a recent college graduate, with an intense interest in the beautiful minerals of your town, and wish to purchase some of the specimens you have in your collection, at your discretion and convenience. Next Tuesday? Yes, that would work fine. Why don't we say noon then. Righty-o. You take care as well." He really did speak with such pompous, confident syntax and verbose forwardness, but it was a function of his eccentricity rather than his ego, and besides, the arrogance was lost on someone like Mr. Hernandez, who just took him to be a peculiar gringo.
He hastily punched the address into the little rectangular GPS; 325 Brewery Avenue, in the heart of the old business district. The car lurched up the steep, well-kept street, and he hastily threw the clutch into park on a narrow bit of dirt outside the little lime-green cottage. He knocked on the door, and an elderly, kind-faced man opened it, his smile a map of dark brown creases and eyes which has seen death and hardship, good times and the dregs of industry. Mr. Hernandez introduced his wife, a short, round woman wearing a festive Sinaloan dress and holding a tray of freshly cooked empanadas, which the young man devoured gratefully. Mr. Hernandez ushered him to a narrow, rickety staircase in the back of the single, open living room, and soon he stood in a dusty, poorly lit concrete room, surrounded by box after box of rocks. At first, his expectations dived, as he presumed Hernandez's "mineral collection" was nothing more than a typical jumble of crude ore samples, the usual miner's assortment of oddities picked up over the years. A closer inspection of a nearby box revealed some small blue crystals poking out from under thick dust and cobwebs. He picked up a large mass of brilliant green malachite, and, blowing off some dust, noticed a pocket on the backside covered in lustrous, dark blue 3-inch Azurite crystals. 'Jesus! he thought with elated surprise as he studied the specimen... it needed some serious cleaning and trimming, but once back home, this piece alone would easily sell for five thousand dollars or more to a wealthy east coast collector. His thoughts turned more practical as he speculated on what Mr. Hernandez knew about minerals... others had probably been here before; perhaps he wanted an absurd price for these minerals, or maybe he wasn't even willing to sell... He wanted to be fair, but he also realized that an honest price for him could still be a windfall for him, if he handled it right.
In the rusting teal truck of the El Camino, he had $6,000 in cash in a little gray leather suitcase. This was supposed to be for the whole trip; purchases, emergencies, food and booze, the works. He knew this was the best stuff he was going to see all day. In the modern mineral market, this was a windfall of unseen proportions, and he was absolutely ready to pool all his eggs in one basket to have a go at this. He made a cursory overview of the rest of the collection, which, as he expected, contained a relative variability in quality, but enough keepers to make the deal a no-brainer. The time has come and he approached Mr. Hernandez as calmly and indifferently as he could. "You have some superb minerals in your collection sir. This is obviously the work of someone with an eye for aesthetics. I will not hide the fact though that as I am sure you know, nothing is labeled or sorted, cleaning will be laborious, and there are a fair amount of lower-grade pieces. I am prepared to offer you six thousand dollars in cash for everything." Mr. Hernandez's eyes, which up until now had been wide and kind, narrowed with concentration, and he steeled himself for the inevitable no, looking absent-minded out the little stained glass window in the corner. Suddenly, he felt a hand meet his and start to shake, and they both smiled silently as he went out to the car to get the cash.
"Great, I just spent six thousand dollars on a bunch of rocks, which, in addition to being marketable to a very small, questionably-sane segment of the population, are going to barely fit in my little sports car." The rest of the afternoon was filled with huffing and puffing up and down stairs, moving, sorting, and cleaning with hoses and brushes in the little yard, and organization into neat new boxes of his own, stacked in little rows in the trunk. The couple mostly sat on the faded old floral-patterned couch in the living room, conversing quietly but excitedly in brisk Chihuahuan spanish, hands running over the pile of crisp, neat hundred dollar bills. He finished the packing and, after downing a few more empanadas, heartily shook hands with Mr. Hernandez, and gave his wife a kiss on the cheek before starting the engine and coasting down the steep incline of Brewery Gulch to downtown. He smiled and shouted a few non-sensical hoots and hollers, like a kid who had won the game single-handed AND gotten ice cream after. The deal was fair, honest and straightforward, but dammit if he hadn't made out well. He was also now dead broke, and he hurried up the street to the little antique's and novelties shop that sold 5 dollar rocks to the hordes of winter tourists. The aging woman behind the counter was getting ready to close up shop, and didn't seem overly pleased as he swaggered in the door, young bravado and style. He carried a rectangular white box, and inside were a couple dozen little blue Azurite roses, pretty but not especially rare. Still, they were hard to come by these days, and he knew she'd give him cash. 'Hundred bucks" he said flatly as he opened the fox on the counter, and she smiled as she withdrew 2 fifties from the antique register.
He skipped unevenly down the crooked street, red cowboy boots click-click-clack on the pavement, until the local saloon appeared to the left, tall glass windows lit with boisterous laughter and the din of conversation. He sat down at the old wooden bar and asked for a double shot of Jack, which, he thought, must have been a ticket of some sort with the locals, since his story soon flowed like the dried up edges of the Colorado, new friends and strangers crowded around as he made some sort of future for himself, here on the desert varnish.
