Short, Light, Free

Chapter 182: Dig On, Dig On II

No one wants to see things they dislike, yet the very things that they try to avoid would appear out of nowhere and in a very dramatic way.

I lost my job one fine morning.

Well, to be exact, we all lost our job.

An accountant came to the site with his pickup truck to relay the news.

This happened half a month ago, but people only noticed yesterday.

The accountant said, “Our boss Yun Huateng committed suicide by consuming pesticide because he couldn’t pay his large debts. This happened half a month ago and the company has about 47,390,000 tonnes of coal left unsold. You are all going to stop mining from today onward.”

Amidst the workers’ discussion about future plans, the accountant continued muttering, “All the coal extracted this year is in the storage, and many coal factories outside have turned into manufacturers of electrical appliances. The demand for coal is declining and even those who require it are ordering them in a smaller volume. Our profit this year is six billion short of last year’s.”

I wasn’t listening to him; none of us were. We were all thinking about what to do next.

The accountant repeated helplessly, “The boss expanded the business model last year and much of the money was from loans and we are still paying installments for the machines. We’re simply losing too much money and the excess coal will be rotting in the store. The bank is coming to collect all the machinery. We are broke. There’s over a hundred thousand here. Split it among yourselves and carry on with life.”

Everyone protested and started arguing with the accountant.

The accountant took out the newspaper that had our boss’s death in the headlines. He was found in his home by creditors half a month after his death. The paper talked about the loss in coal business as well.

“If you don’t take the rest of the money, the people from outside will do it tomorrow. When that time comes, you won’t get anything.”

He squeezed through the crowd and called out the respective foremen.

They would distribute the money to the leaders and the leaders would allocate it downward.

By the time Dahai managed to distribute the money to the 10 of us, it had become a pitiful sum.

Split among 300 workers, each of us only ended up with 800 dollars.

The bunch of us gathered as fellow workers, friends, villagers, and family, thinking about what course of action to carry out next.

Dahai was as lost as I was; I couldn’t believe that the problem I had just been worrying about awhile back was now realized.

Many people started packing their luggage and some even mentioned that they were returning home to farm.

Others started discussing potential business plans.

Majority of the people, however, were hoping to find the same job in other mining factories.

A foreman stood up and smiled bitterly. “Even without transportation cost, the profit earned from one ton of coal isn’t even that from a coca-cola bottle. One ton could originally fetch a thousand dollar profit, but just last month, it was reduced to just over three hundred dollars. I said nothing about it but haven’t others been spreading it? The machines here can extract 30 tonnes of coal a day but the consumption cost adds up to 8,000 RMB. This is excluding maintenance and repair costs. We’re not the only ones losing our job here.”

The truth was pressing down on us and we found it hard to breathe.

“Where else can we go?” I asked Dahai.

He only shook his head in response.

A few hours later, upon packing the luggage, Dahai told me that he was going to take over his father’s farm.

I, on the other hand, was at a loss because my family land had been rented out.

There wasn’t any other choice, however, so I decided to make a trip home first.

Since Dahai and I were from the same village, he paid for our car ride.

It was ironic since he was also the one who paid for my ride 10 years ago when I first came to work.

He was the one who brought me into this job.

On our way home, Dahai requested that I keep the company’s collapse a secret.

Dahai spent the rest of the journey thinking about what to say when we got back. He came up with the story that he had a house and car in another city and had brought over a hundred thousand to visit them. He told me that I could use the same excuse to save some face.

When I questioned how he was going to mention the farm, he lowered his head and said, “I’ll just keep it for as long as I can. One step at a time.”

I agreed to help him keep mum and he asked if I needed an excuse.

I shook my head and remained quiet because I had no idea where to start.

The outside of the village had changed completely and I, too, had taken on a whole different appearance.

The old wooden houses within the villages had become cement houses and the muddy paths were now cemented as well.

It was then that I recalled briefly mentioning that I was leaving for work and that I hadn’t contacted anyone for the past 10 years.

Dahai and I stood at the village entrance and he suggested that we spent the night at an inn before heading home.

We exchanged glances. Dahai did not look like a successful man at all, so how was I going to pass it off?

The inn was eight stories high and we stayed in unit 603, room three on the sixth floor that is.

From where we stood, we could overlook the whole village.

The houses in the village looked the same, except for my house, which was inharmoniously made from tiles and bricks.

I pondered over Dahai’s words. He often spent wastefully and only had about a hundred thousand left.

Because I had been rather thrifty, I have over four hundred thousands of savings.

It wasn’t a lot, considering that I couldn’t purchase a house or even a better quality car.

I appreciated the looks of cars, but I didn’t know how to drive, which wasn’t surprising since I had spent 10 years of my life in the mine.

Dahai dragged me along to purchase a full suit for himself.

While I did not get a suit, I did follow him to get a haircut.

The next morning, he said that he was going home first and paid for an additional night for me. He wanted me to return a day after and pretend not to know him. He was afraid that I would tell them that I had quit, which would make everything seem illogical.