And When Shall We Three Meet Again?

Prologue


We dig.

If I am ever so fortunate to be allowed to leave, the ever-inquisitive world will no doubt ask me what I did for all these long years in prison. How does a convict spend their day, they will ask. And I will tell them:

We dig.

A convict sentenced to a twenty-year sentence of hard labor can do a powerful lot of digging. In my 12 years on the chain gang, we have dug every possible manner of hole. Post holes for fences. Ditches for highway drainage. Trenches for sewer lines. Soil aeration. Wells. Foundations.

We dig. All day. Every day. We come to know the varied character of the ground, its forms and feelings. After all, we are born to tread upon it, until such time as we are prepared to return to it, to dwell within it. The earth is all we know, and considering our present circumstance, all we need to know.

But even though this unbreakable monotony of shovels and barrows and swinging picks feels eternal, there is still hope. This is not one frozen moment in time. We do not languish; we crawl forward, one mound of dirt at a time, toward the distant light of freedom. And when we reach it, we can at last make good on the vow we have all uttered more than once: to never dig another hole as long as we live.

I would like to tell you I remember every hole I ever dug, but that would be a straight-up lie. There have been so many--hundreds? thousands?--they are all one in my mind.

All except the One. The One I remember. The One I will always remember.

Every prison has some reward for good behavior. Depending on its population, inmates might receive additional privileges during meals, or in the exercise yard. Some prisons established programs with dog trainers, where inmates would learn the basic techniques, then be given a puppy to raise--hoping, of course, that this would lead to an interest outside of crime, thus furthering the process of Rehabilitation.

Our reward was the Braw Pond Archeological Dig.

It must have been some official's idea of a truly hilarious joke: the diggers could earn time away from their pickaxes in the ditches and foundations, exchanging them for dental picks and toothbrushes alongside the local college students.

I never saw the humor in it myself, but I won't deny there was always a definite feeling of relief to see my name on the Braw Pond list.

Of course, it stands to reason that we make the best discoveries by accident. How often do we ever really find what we're looking for? It's when we stop looking and open ourselves up to the whim and whimsy of the universe that those treasured secrets are revealed.

And, oh, Mother, was it ever a treasure.

The short version: I was lugging another bucket of "clean" dirt away from the dig site to the dump pile when the ground gave way beneath me. No one had known anything about a building ever having been on that spot, but I had clearly found its cellar. Evidently, while the whisper-soft footfalls of scrawny collegiate types were OK, my burly convict's body was more than that unseen ancient structure could bear.

It wasn't much of a drop--just enough be break my ankle (another blessing--that meant transfer to the hospital ward, and no digging until the break was healed). And that break meant no one was paying close enough attention (how could they, with me screaming bloody murder, and half of the day's students body-checking each other to get a look into my discovery, hopes of a doctoral thesis dancing in their eyes?) to notice the neat bundle of letters I'd slipped out of the demolished fragments of the small wooden chest upon which I'd landed, into the pocket of my coveralls.

It took quite a bit of planning to keep them safe--lifting anything from the site--expecially the tools--was instant disqualification from ever being allowed back. But I couldn't deny them--they were calling me... They wanted me to take them, to open them and read them again, to breathe life back into them--and back into their writers, departed from this earth so long ago.

I was more than willing to do that. After 12 years, they were something so much more substantial than another empty hole. And the story....

It was exactly the story a 20-year chain-gang digger needed to hear, to reassure me that even I will emerge from the dirt and darkness one day.