Susana stood with a group of women holding signs.

Some signs were plastered with pictures of the

miners. Other signs protested the negligence of San Esteban Primera, the company that owned the mine.

The rescue site covered an enormous area and there were many groups of supporters like the one that

Susana stood with camped around. The heat was palpable; Susana wiped her brow and looked up

towards the sky, a searing sheet of blue blotted by one circling condor. For a moment, Susana was the

bird. She peered down and floated over the flat, dusty compound, over the trucks and dig machinery that

were peppered throughout. The teams of reporters appeared as overgrown mice to her from the air. They

frantically zoomed about the site in their vans, pausing intermittently to see if they could sniff out a

cheesy story. What would she say when they came sniffing to her? Would the other wives tell them

about the confrontation with Marta? Had the reporters yet discovered that Yonni’s wife was not present?

She watched the bird for another moment while returning to herself, hoping to see it flap its great wings.

The condor was caught in a thermal though and it sailed upward on the air current until the sun singed

Susana’s eyes and forced her to turn her head away. Yonni would be in her arms before those wings

would thrust again.

***

Marta lifted her teabag with a spoon and dropped it into the garbage. Moving carefully to avoid spilling,

she crossed from the kitchen to the living room table and prepared a coaster, a slate of stainless steel

engraved with the San Esteban Primera logo. She covered the logo with her teacup, sat down on the sofa

and turned on the television. It would be indecent to go but it would also be indecent not to watch.

Yonni was still her husband, after all. A helicopter was reporting now, providing an aerial view of the

final rescues. The helicopter hovered far above the site, between the two, a condor circled. The reporter

announced that Yonni Barrios would be brought up momentarily and cut to a close-up of Susana in

tears. Marta turned the television off. She preferred the view from the helicopter.