Son, did I ever tell you about the Carson Gold Mine Disaster of ‘84? It was a while back, in the time before teeth grills ruined my personal valuation of gold. It happened in a time where we still had good ol’ fashioned values, when the only way out of an unwanted pregnancy was a wedding ring. Coincidentally this was around the time you were conceived, and facing the prospect of another mouth to feed, I decided to further burden myself by becoming a gold miner.

It wasn’t a glorious profession: long hours, zero respect, and an increased proclivity for setting off airport metal detectors. But out of love, and the need to make payments on our bungalow, I endured.

The disaster happened a year into the job, when your crying was the only alarm clock I needed. I was working early shifts those days because shit knows I wasn’t getting any sleep at home. The mines were divided into two parts: the upper part and the lower part.

The upper part was all above board. Safety regulations followed, helmets worn. The lower part, tucked away into the deep crevices of the Earth, was where all the dangerous stuff was done. This is where the foremen stuck the unfortunate lot who didn’t have a green card or a prayer. They knew no safety inspector or INS agent would ever bother trekking down.

In the aftermath of the disaster, we found out there was a minor collapse every goddamn day down there. Figures the day I go down, God decides to shit down the tunnels and barricade me in.

Maybe I shouldn’t blame the Lord. I should blame Marco Garcia, a loyalist and a union rebel rouser, who decided that enough was enough. I guess I can’t really blame him, but I remember at the time being pissed when he and his buddies streamed out of the mine citing unsafe work conditions. You want safe working conditions, you go work at a Sears.

The next day, punching in, the foreman, John Price, a man whose love of fast cars and loose women made him a Rolodex of seedy anecdotes, told me to work in the dungeons. I said no, telling him that I had a son who’d like to see me come home. He told me he’d pay me double. That was good enough for me.

I got sent down there with a dozen roughnecks. It was a slow going: The Marxist exodus had taken the foremen, and we were blindly groping around like seniors after prom. By the time we got into the proper flow of things it was lunch, and I was fine with that: Hunching over to navigate the dark-as-midnight Hobbit tunnels was making my back ache.

I was eating my baloney, mustard and Wonderbread sandwich when Larson Leone asked me what I was eating. I don’t remember what I said, rightly, just that I answered. He asked if my wife made it for me. Of course she did, I answered. Then he decided to talk out the side of his neck.

“I hope she’s as good in the kitchen as she is in the bedroom.”

You have to understand that at the time you mother had a reputation. Unearned, I should add, not just as a matter of pride, but as a matter of truth. But Carson is a small town, and we were a trimester in before we knew we had to rush to grab wedding invitations at Staples. And around here, they figure if there’s a hole in the dam, maybe I wasn’t the only one who put my finger in it.

So, there were two ways it could be handled: I could punch him out, or let it slide. However, there was only one way a man could handle it. I served up some fist cuisine. I guess he thought I wasn’t good for it, and he landed his ass straight into a load bearing beam. The shotgun crack of the wood was as deafening as its buckshot implications in the coming minute. Larson was a proud man who couldn’t abide being knocked on his ass by a man who wasn’t a pound over a buck twenty-five. The adrenaline flowing, I barely noticed the dirt starting to radiate in the air. Nor,did I notice the rest of the roughnecks run for the fucking hills during the climactic stare down battle. When Larson finally threw a punch and connected with my stomach, I thought the sudden darkness was due to my eyes exploding. It was only when Larson expressed this same Stevie Wonder level of clarity did I replay the last minute back in my head.

We were trapped in a cave in.

Pitch dark in a narrow strip of hallway that was an inch or a mile depending on how we felt. The first hour was a thing of panic. Larson and I thought God himself had smited us for our fight. The second hour was hopeful. These things never last long, right? Of course they fucking did, but who were we to contradict the other?

Hour five the stories started. I told him about the day you were born, and he told me about the armed robbery he committed in Tacoma a few years back. By hour ten, we were confessing our sins and absolving each other. We were just voices in the dark at that point. Oxygen was going, and death was coming.

When Larson and I, starved and waiting to punch out of our Earthly shift, heard the scratching, we were sure that was that. Damnation and salvation had rutted so much that day, we couldn’t tell the Devil from Jesus. We sat, weakened, hearing the noise get closer and closer. We said our goodbyes. We weren’t expecting a man in a blue and white jumpsuit. If this was Jesus, then Disco was surely alive and well in Heaven.

He set down his air gun and extended his hands and Larson and I took it, not exactly sure what to expect.

I woke up a week later in Carson County General, with you and your mother waiting ’side me. Let me tell you, there are fewer things finer than waking up from a near death experience. Docs said that aside from some scratches, I was going to be okay. Larson was alright. Shy a tooth, but that was my doing. It was then that your mother told me that Dig Dug, not Jesus, has saved me. I knew him, or rather, knew of him. The greatest roughneck that ever played the game. He came to visit a few days later. He’s a man of few words, as you know, and didn’t say much. Neither did I.

For the gift of allowing me to see my son again, I offered him the only honor I could.

And that, my son, is why Dig Dug is your godfather.

(As told to Hardcasual’s very own Canadian correspondent, Filipe Salgado.)