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Corozal, PR November 20, 1932
Down in the muck today. Way down deep. And I should be fairly contented because this is the first day of rest I’ve had since I arrived in Puerto Rico. Carper and Wilkerson went out yesterday to see some property and left me running the sluice. The gold on bedrock gave out at about the five dollar mark and I had to close down. Today I could have gone out and tried with a pan but I thought I’d better grab the opportunity while it presented itself as I’m pretty well fagged out....
A funeral just went by on the dirt street in the front of the hotel. The wail of a clarinet, the throb of a bass horn. And several little children with flowers carrying a tiny blue casket which is probably now being lowered into the earth. Ragged people, a garish coffin — cheap. And I caught myself thinking as that little box went by, “What a lucky kid.” He’ll never have to combat the storm of life. He’ll never know the sting of sweat, the violence of sudden rains, of muck oozing between his toes, the dirty smell of a native dwelling. He died without knowing. They die like flies in this country, children. Disease, frailty, the harshness of life.
But what if he had been a child in the States. It would have been pretty much the same story. He would have rushed through life without ever stopping to taste it.
You know, the padres tell us that there is a hell to which we will go if we do not live right here on this earth. I wonder why they stress such things when there’s hell all about them right here. If we do wrong, we pay for it a thousand times over. I doubt that anyone really escapes punishment for havoc wrought. That sounds religious. Well, maybe it is. I choose to call it two-bit philosophy. There’s always a nemesis right around the corner. I have a sneaking hunch right now that I’ve let the past come a little too close. It slaps me in the face now and then when I walk down a hot street in wet boots and feel the sun eating away at my shoulders. A puff of sizzling wind bringing odors all too familiar.