Our
flashlights found the white bags long before we got to them. We didn't
know what they were or why they were there. Only that this, the isolated
Pacific coastline north of El Rosario, is no place for piles of white
bags. Brother Hans felt the bags and mentioned that they were moist. Father
noted the small piles of black pebbles on the ground. "They are drying
whatever is inside. These are some sort of special bags that let the moisture
permeate out."
The
flashlights caught the sifting machines on the rock-beach below the cliff;
just a wooden frame and a mesh wire. Father said that he had seen men
sifting the rocks hours ago. Crabs, I thought, this was a crab fishery.
Jade, Brother had argued, having heard that divers off the California
coast hunt for jade. Later that night, to wash pots in the ocean, we climbed
down the cliffs and onto the black beach of black rocks, where there is
darkness upon darkness even with the flashlights. "Do you notice," I asked
Hans, "that the large rocks are farthest from the waterline, and the smallest
against the breakest waves?"
We
gathered these stones in our hands and let them spill back into the tide
- the sound like an instrument. Every rock had its color - the blacks,
the greys, the beiges, the ochres. Baja's history was right here, rolling
up on the shore. Father said, "this is what they are bagging. The pebbles."
"Ornamental pebbles?" Hans was thinking out loud. "You could make quite
a living at this," he said. "I don't think so," said father. "I think
this is supplemental income," I said. "This isn't someone's career."
In
the morning, Father and I made coffee and looked at the sifters, examining
their simplicity - the way the larger stones would separate from the smaller
pebbles. A pair pulled up to the cliff and greeted us. "You have any beer?"
they said. I said, "we have water. You want water." "Si." I offered them
my canister as they began to haul white bags up the cliff, resting for
a few minutes between each load.
