Minor to miner looking for an angel

The dead man
Lived in a tent
He had no family
He had no friends
He died alone on his lonely strip of land
A smile on his face and scars on his hands.
Few knew the truth
He was just a weirdo, a joke and a folk tale
Seventy four years mining
He started as a minor
A child removed from school
Prospecting for Gold
He was a labourer for his dad
The Welshman who went to America to become better
He was a respected coal miner
He had learned in the tavern of a local legend of hidden gold in the mountains
He had a goal to become a rich man
Life was kind – he was able to save enough to buy the land
Life was cruel – his wife left and took the three daughters
The women had failed to adapt to the basic living quarters, eating roadkill and washing in cold stream water
The son loved his father, he sensed it was going to be an adventure so rejected the offer of a normal life from his mother.
As soon as the women were gone the hard work begun
He decided to train his son
He told him they were digging to free an angel
They found small hauls of gold to survive but never enough to thrive
The apprentice did as instructed
When his dad died he continued the project
All of his teens, twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties and seventies
He became a local legend
A film crew wanted to make a documentary
They discovered the body
He had clearly lived in poverty
Eating tins of soup, using a bucket as a toilet and wearing rags
The state took possession of his possessions and the land
They decided to dig a hole and burn everything he owned
They noticed six dead gold fish at the bottom of a waterless tank
The workers had never owned fish because if they had they would’ve known the difference between dead fish and nuggets of gold.
The man should have grown old on a tropical resort playing golf, wearing expensive clothes and jewellery. Drifting from holiday to holiday and possibly marrying somebody pretty.
The father never told the son their goal was to get rich
So when the father died and the son found the huge gold mine he simply ignored it
He was digging to free an angel not find gold
He was thirty when he found enough to be rich, he just chipped away a dozen nuggets to cover living expenses.
On the last day of the son’s life he found a plastic cross, a feather from a motel pillow and a cheap paper butterfly which had fallen into the mine
He decided it was the angel
He stopped digging, went to bed early and died with a smile
He had achieved his goal.