by A B Guthrie
As the last stragglers settled themselves, the man at the desk rapped with a gavel and announced, “Attention, please. This is a state meeting, called in accordance with the law. Its purpose is to hear and later assess the pros and cons of the application of Energy Associates to strip mine certain sections of the county.” He held up a map. “Those of you who want to determine the areas in question may do so by coming to the desk later.” He put the map down. “My name is William Gregg. The state has appointed me as the hearing officer.”
He paused and looked the crowd over. “First we shall have the opening statements and then throw the meeting open to general discussion. The proponents will be heard now. May I introduce Mr. Arthur Oldham, their spokesman?”
From the front row Oldham got up and faced the crowd. He let us study him for a moment, let us take in his considerable heft, his friendliness, his easy assurance. He had the look about him of good drinks, thick steaks and dollar cigars. “May it please you,” he said, as if sure it would, his hands making an open gesture of welcome, “I am aware that the issue in point has aroused controversy. I hope to calm it. I hope by candid discussion and the presentation of facts to allay fears.”
He lifted his eyes to the ceiling and found higher communion beyond it. “I think with awe of this great country of ours. Back through the years of history I see a little cluster of colonies on the eastern shore. I see them growing. I see the brave push of Americans into the wilderness, and I see that wilderness conquered and made fruitful and the blessings of civilization introduced from sea to shining sea.”
He took off the horn-rimmed glasses he wore and extended them toward us. If we looked through them, maybe we could see what he saw. A voice back of me called out, “Get to the subject!”
Oldham put the glasses back on his nose. “I am on the subject, my friend. Only by taking the long view can we place the issue in perspective. I ask you what is the secret of our once and continuing greatness? What has made us the greatest nation on God’s green earth? The answer lies plain before us. It is growth. It is onward development. It is the plain fact of bigger and better. To come down to cases, then, it is the wise use of our natural resources. It is energy, the energy of individuals and the energy they can create from what God has given. We in this area have been given coal, great beds of it lying just under the sod.”
Oldham allowed time for his words to sink in. With an arm extended he went on. “It is ours, we may say. It belongs to us and no others. Let us hang on to it. But in all conscience may we say that? What if the state of Minnesota had kept closed for its own use alone the iron ore of the great Mesabi Range? What would our factories have done for steel? What would you farmers and ranchers have employed in place of machinery? Wooden plows? Plodding horses? What if each state so blessed had held to itself the great pine forests, growing there not for the sake of a select few but for all Americans that they might have shelter? What if our own state had withheld from our country the deposits of gold, silver and, yes, copper that the Almighty had stored in our boundaries?”
Oldham paused to think about those dread possibilities. While he thought, someone yelled, “You’re not from Montana. Bullshit!”
The dirty word was not a fitting expression in a public meeting, not in our town, not in the presence of women, of whom quite a few were on hand. It put a hush on the crowd. I suspected Chuck Cleaver had uttered it.
The chairman rapped with his gavel.
Oldham wasn’t flustered at all. “Let us forgive that unseemly outburst,” he said, lowering his head and his voice as if he forgave. “It is true that I am not a Montanan, but I am an American and proud of it, and Montana is part of America, and you may be proud that it is.”
He got down to what he called particulars then. He talked about the jobs that mining would create, of local men steadily and productively employed. He spoke of flourishing businesses. He saw our town growing happily, in time becoming a small city, a place where everyone would find satisfaction.
He asked that a screen be brought from the side of the hall and, with help from a colleague who served as projectionist, showed pictures taken where strip mining was being done. The pictures were of loaded coal cars streaming away from the mines, of spoil banks reclaimed and the rich graze that grew on them.
The screen was wheeled away, and Oldham launched into his finish. “Let us return, then, to what I said earlier. It is to the credit of each state, in these, the United States, that it has been willing and eager to share what it has. None has been so selfish, so parochial, as to claim its riches for itself alone. Our progress, our lives as we know them, have been built on a simple dogma, on a prime principle. Each for all is our creed. Yes, each for all.” His hands went out, pleading. “In all conscience, then, can Montana deny to others the riches with which she is blessed? Can she say no to progress, no to growth, no to energy? Can she say no to coal? God help us, God save us from that wayward course?”
God helping him, he made his slow way back to his chair. The crowd gave him quite a hand, a deserved hand, I thought. Even a prejudiced witness like me had to admit he had made a good case, even though he had had to call on God, the flag and ripe prose to do it. Yet the applause seemed polite—no, restrained—as if sentiments ran too deep for foot stomping or shouted amens. No matter. He would be a hard number to follow. I looked at my watch. He had spoken for more than an hour.
The chairman asked if there were other official spokesmen for the proponents. Harry Wallace, president of the Chamber of Commerce got up. He sold hardware. He stood where he was and, under the hypnosis of the cash register, said, “I represent the Chamber of Commerce, and I say for all members that we stand solid behind what just has been said.”
“Other official spokesmen?” the chair asked. When no one answered, he nodded and announced, “We will hear from the opponents, then. I understand Judge Church has been nominated. Judge Church, the floor is yours.”
I had a speaking acquaintance with Judge Church, that was all. He was a small man, frail in appearance, who was born, I sometimes thought, with a clean collar and a knotted necktie, plus a freshly pressed suit. Already well along in years, he had retired to Montana after what was said to be a distinguished legal career in the East. My father had admired him.
For a moment, facing us, he stood silent, his eyes going from one to another like those of a man making sure he would know us the next time we met. I put his age at the late seventies, a stage when the years would have shrunken his body as they had written themselves on his face. He was no physical match for Oldham, no match except for the eyes that bored at us from under a thatch of white hair.
“How long will we feed on a fallacy?” he asked, so softly that we strained to hear him. “How long will the old myth bemuse us?” Now he raised his voice. “How long can we live by a lie?”
He repeated, “How long?” one old hand open in a question. “That fallacy, that myth, that lie, my friends, is the doctrine that bigger means better, that growth is the answer to all human ills. Growth. Mere physical growth. On that basis it is not too ridiculous to say that you would be better people if you had grown bigger every year of your lives.” The suggestion of a smile touched his mouth. “The dinosaurs tried that,” he said, leaving us to think what had happened to them. Some in the crowd chuckled.
“We are cursed with the notion that quantity leads on to quality, that size has a merit built in. New York City is superior to Chicago, then, Chicago superior to Detroit, and all of them, plus hundreds of others, superior to us. Far superior just because they are bigger. What nonsense!”
He took a breath and changed gears. “We have coal in this county. There is no doubt about that. We know it. The corporations know it even better, what with their explorations, their test holes and all. As eastern Montana has coal, so do we. You have just seen pictures of that eastern Montana coal being shipped out by train. Shipped out to where? To other sections, of course. That has been the history of Montana. We have given our g
reat riches, our wealth of minerals, we have given them to outside interests for little in return. Gold and silver and copper have made millionaires of men who live elsewhere. Montanans have been the working stiffs, the day-by-day laborers, while men from afar have grown fat. Throughout the years we have existed, not as a state, but as a colony. We supply the raw materials and pay dearly for what has been manufactured from them. Except for our wealth of coal, we are just about out of riches now. Gold is gone, silver is gone, and copper is going, and what do we have to show for them? Dead camps, dead dreams, and one moldering city.”
He took a couple of steps to one side and then back, his head lowered. Then he raised it and fixed us with that aimed gaze of his. “Mr. Oldham also has shown you pictures of what is said to be reclaimed land—pictures of soil banks dozed down and canyoned trenches filled in and all of it made level and planted to grasses. The grasses grow thick. They grow tall. But at what cost in fertilizer and water? At a cost no rancher could ever afford. Never in all his life, no matter the market for livestock. Left to nature, those grasses will die, and never again will our native forage flourish on those ruined fields.”
Judge Church went to the desk for a swallow of water and returned. His voice as he resumed showed no sign of fatigue. It was still clear and carrying, with no quaver of age in it. “Mr. Oldham has spoken of local prosperity, of business and sales and jobs and increased general welfare. The records of other mining camps reveal other consequences. They reveal shantytowns, growing disorder, increased crime and additional taxes. You should look at those records. Look at Gillette or Rock Springs, both in Wyoming. Look and pay heed.”
He had had the floor for some time but still wasn’t through. No one seemed fidgety. Except for a cough now and then, all were silent and attentive. “Granted an immediate growth in business and jobs if mining is permitted,” he continued, “we must ask how long will this blush of prosperity last. An honest answer is thirty years, thirty years and no longer. Thirty years, and we are left despoiled. We are left a wasteland where nothing can grow, where no livestock can find graze. I exaggerate. Maybe a goat or two could live on the weeds.”
He got a few murmurs from that last remark. Most of them seemed to be in approval.
He still hadn’t finished. He resumed in a slower, musing tone. “I was present when my grandfather died. On his deathbed he said to me, ‘I am about to join the great majority.’ With those words he passed on.”
Judge Church took time to look us all over again. His voice strengthened. “Today my grandfather couldn’t say what he did then. He would have to say he was joining the minority party. Hard to believe as it is, there are more people alive on the planet now than all those who ever died on it. More alive now than all those who have gone before. More alive than ever perished through famines, wars, pestilences, disasters and natural causes. More than all our forefathers in the whole history of man. We are become an infestation on our small planet. We are devouring it. Continent by continent, country by country, state by state, piece by piece, we are eating it up. We are too many, too numerous for earth to support. And yet we hear hymns to growth. Growth, the way of death!”
A hoarse voice rose in back of me. “Just a minute now!”
I hitched around. The speaker was Jim Burke, a sometime auto mechanic and the father of ten or twelve kids. I doubted he knew the exact number.
Judge Church said, “Yes?” and waited.
“We came here to talk coal, and here you are talking about birth control and sterilization and abortion and all that damn stuff. It’s unGodly.”
Judge Church held up his hand. “My concern with growth may have led me a little afield, but I am not aware that I spoke of those matters.”
“Just the same as did.”
The chairman rapped with his gavel to no effect. The man remained standing. Judge Church fixed his eyes on him. “Since you bring the subject up, let me say that, for his own sake and the sake of the world around him, the person who cannot control his carnal appetite indeed needs the help of science.”
After those words, to the rapping of the gavel, Burke sat down.
“One minute more, and I am through,” Judge Church told us. “Mr. Oldham with his oratory never tackled the real issue here, and I have only touched on it. The issue is not whether we are selfish or parochial, as he has suggested. It is not that we want to keep the coal for ourselves, and to the devil with everyone else. We want, we opponents want, to save a way of life, the way of the rancher and grain grower. We are concerned with the soil, the good earth that nourishes plant, animal, and man and will nourish us forever if we love and care for it. Disturb it, as strip mining does, turn over its crust, dig in its bowels, and it dies, never to be raised from the dead. Destroy and perish, boom and bust—what an outlook!”
He turned aside and said. “Mr. Chairman, I have concluded my remarks.”
Gregg used his gavel again while Judge Church sat down to applause, to that same restrained applause given Oldham.
“I have said the meeting would be opened to general discussion—” he began.
Immediately Chuck Cleaver was on his feet, heedless of the gavel. “My name is Charles Cleaver,” he said, his voice sounding high as if forced through a choke. “I own a ranch next door to some land already leased.” He swallowed and forced more words through. “They’ll poison my creek. They’ll poison my stock ponds and wells. They’ll kill me with coal dust.” He threw his arms out as though to ask help. “Don’t you see? It’s my ranch. It’s my life. It’s—it’s the land.”
Now a thicket of hands went up, and voices yelled for recognition. The chairman with his gavel finally restored order. He repeated, “I have said this meeting would be opened to general discussion.” He pointed to his watch. “But it is getting quite late. The formal presentations took longer than planned for. Obviously we can’t hear everyone tonight, or even a fraction of those who want to be heard. I declare this meeting adjourned, to be reconvened at a date that will be announced.” He got to his feet.
There was muttering, but by one and twos and groups the crowd began leaving. A few went to the desk to look at the strip-mining map. I put my tablet in my pocket, shrugged on my coat and left with the others.
At the opened outside doorway I was held up by a cluster of men. I heard someone say, “Fight.” I pushed my way through.
On the front steps, half-lying down, was a man whose hand wiped a bleeding nose. He was Jope Jordan, a rancher. He was struggling to get up. On his feet, his hands locked into fists, Chuck Cleaver stood at the ready.
I yelled, “Hey, now!” trying for authority. “Take it easy. No more fighting, please.”
Cleaver cast me a glance, his face working. He still talked in jerks. “He sold out. The son of a bitch sold out. Leased his land. It’s next to mine and upstream.” He glared at Jordan, who was getting to his feet. “That’s right, you bastard. Stand up and take what you got coming.”
I stepped between them and said, “That’s enough. Cool it.”
Jordan began wiping at his face with a bandana. There was fury in his face. “Next time,” he told Cleaver, “carry a gun. I aim to kill you.”
“Shit. You haven’t the nerve. Sell up and get out, betray your neighbors, that’s your size.”
I had both of them under some control now. At least I thought so; I knew it when Cleaver let out a good-bye, “Son of a bitch,” and let me lead him away.
The rest of the night was quiet.
7
There was little to do, off duty, in Midbury, unless you wanted to cruise the one drag like a kid or kill time and yourself on a bar stool or play gin rummy or poker, little to do unless you had a wife and perhaps children or maybe belonged to a lodge or shot pool.
Such pastimes held no steady appeal for me, and I had no such involvements, and so it was that I was in the office early the next afternoon when two men entered to talk to Charleston. I recognized Arthur, alias Oily, Oldham. He came forward and offered his hand
to the sheriff, who stood up for the offering. “Arthur Oldham of Energy Associates,” he said. “I want you to meet the president of our company, Mr. Ames.” They shook hands, too.
Charleston said, “My deputy, Jason Beard.” After the formalities were over, I arranged chairs for the visitors and took a seat at the side.
The two men were clothed in assurance and respectability, adorned with geniality. They wore dark, three-piece suits with neckties, their shoes were shined, their jackets and hats, which I had hung on a rack, had never graced bargain counters.
In their presence I should have felt shabby. Sheriff Charleston didn’t need to. He always wore a fresh-pressed white shirt, decorated now with a string tie. His frontier pants fit him. So did his indoor and matched jacket.
Oldham threw a questioning glance at me, to which Charleston replied, “Jason is entirely reliable.”
“We are grateful for the time you are giving us,” Ames said. “Grateful and pleased. Your reputation as a good officer is far-reaching.”
Charleston didn’t say, “Thanks.” He didn’t say anything. He just sat, listening.
“My company is facing some difficulties.” With Oldham it had been “our” company. He wasn’t the president. “As you know, we have been held up in our operations, held up unduly, all reasonable men will agree.”
Oldham put in, “Pending approval. Waiting on red tape.”
Charleston gave a bare nod.
Ames resumed, “They are costly, these delays. Dead time, we call it. We have machinery ready to go, men ready and eager to work, but no engine can turn and no man ply his trade. The men are restive, of course.”
Charleston said, “They would be.”
“They feel unwelcome, even in danger. In certain quarters they meet hostility. That’s the ignorant cowboy element, of course.”
“Your men will be protected,” Charleston said. “And I am aware of the opposition to strip mining.”
