The helmet is on the rack, third row, hook twenty-two.

Farai takes it down. The tape has lifted at the corners. It always happens at night, with the damp in the lamp room. He runs his thumb over it, top to bottom, twice. The tape sticks again. He has been doing this for four years.

It is parcel tape, brown, the kind they sell at the market in small rolls. It covers a strip three fingers long above the visor. Underneath there is a number stamped into the plastic. The number is not his.

At half past five the line at the lamp room is already long. You hand in your badge. You draw your lamp. You sign the register with the pen tied to the string. The pen writes badly and everyone shakes it first.

Outside it is still dark and cold, because in Gwanda in September the morning is cold and then by eleven you cannot breathe.

The fourth level has the new cage now. It goes down smoother. It does not make the noise it used to make.

In two thousand and twenty-two Nkosana Ncube died on the fourth level. He was thirty-nine. He had a wife and three children and the house on the Colleen Bawn road.

Farai was on shift with him.

That same evening they signed the form. Three lines. It asked the time, it asked the level, it asked the serial number of the equipment in use. It asked nothing else. Farai wrote the time, the level, the serial number, and signed where the cross was, and the foreman folded the sheet in three and put it in his breast pocket. That evening Farai went home and ate sadza with his wife and said nothing, because there was nothing the form had asked that he had not written.

At home Farai's wife keeps the helmet on the kitchen sill when he comes in, because inside the house the mine dust clings to the curtains. For four years she has set it there with the visor to the wall, and for four years she has run the cloth over the sill around the helmet without moving it. She has never asked him why there is parcel tape above the visor.

On Saturdays the wives sell at the Gwanda market.

Thandiwe Sibanda has the peanut stall, under the roof, fourth from the right. She sells them by the cup. She has the blue enamel cup with the chipped rim.

Ncube's three children go to school in Colleen Bawn. The oldest has the shirt with the turned collar.

For four years Farai has bought from another woman. He buys from one by the entrance, who sells them dearer and roasts them less.

His wife has asked him twice why. The first time he said the ones by the entrance are fresher. The second time he said nothing and carried in the water.

Now they say the case is going ahead. They say it in the lamp room, they say it in the taxi, the new boy says it, the one whose cousin works at the lawyer's office in Jacaranda Street. They say the judge said it is not too late. They say what is needed now is someone who will speak.

The company had asked for the whole thing to be closed because four years had passed, and for four years that was the only argument, and now that argument is gone and in its place there is a hearing date written on a sheet of paper pinned up at the office in Jacaranda Street, and under the date it says the merits will be argued.

The helmet weighs nine hundred grams. On the forehead, with the sweat, the tape always comes loose from the same corner.

On the twenty-first of August Ngoni Mhlanga read the roll call in front of the line.

Mhlanga reads fast, name after name, and whoever is there raises a hand.

At Farai's name he stopped. He raised his eyes from the register. He said, "Moyo, you signed the twenty-two report too."

Then he went on from the next name. He read the other eleven names in the same voice as before, the way you read any line at all, and nobody in the line turned his head, and the line moved on, and Farai drew his lamp and signed with the pen tied to the string and shook the pen like everyone else.

This morning the tape has lifted at the corners.

Farai does not run his thumb over it.

He catches it with his nail. He pulls.

The tape comes away all in one piece, with a short sound, and underneath the number stamped into the plastic appears, Ncube's number, white inside the groove, clean, because under the tape the dust never got in.

Farai balls the tape up in his fist. He puts the helmet under his arm. He walks out of the lamp room and does not take the road to the shaft. He takes the one to the gate.

At the gate the guard looks at the helmet. He looks at him. He says nothing. He opens the register of missing items, which is a notebook with a green plastic cover, and writes something, and while he writes Farai is already outside.

The shared taxi to Gwanda leaves when it is full.

He gets on first, sits by the window, on the middle seat. He holds the helmet on his knees with both hands until the taxi fills up, and when it fills up he sets the helmet on the seat beside him so that nobody will sit there. He puts a hand on top of it.

The road to Gwanda has the potholes after the bridge.

The helmet is on the seat with the visor facing up. At every pothole it shifts a little. The light comes in through the window and catches the groove of the number, which can be read clearly, and then cannot be read, and then can be read again.