KABOOM

by Brian Adams

  We had another school assembly where a representative from American showed a DVD on mountaintop removal. With American flags waving and patriotic music blaring, the video made it seem as though opposition to mountaintop removal was downright unpatriotic and un-American. Anti-corporation and anti-country. It was God, apple pie, and mountaintop removal.

  Halfway through the video, someone (Piggy?) pulled a fire alarm and we got to spend the rest of the assembly standing outside in the pouring rain.

  In a coal-mining town there was—surprise, surprise—obviously a ton of support for mountaintop removal. I got that. I really did. So many kids had families involved in mining, including mine. For them, mining wasn’t just about jobs, the money that came with those jobs, and the life that that money could buy: a home, food on the table, hope for the future. It was about community and the sense of belonging and identity and purpose. West Virginia had a long and dignified history of mining. It was in our blood; an honorable, noble profession. Also difficult and dangerous as hell. People were proud of their past. It took a heck of a lot of courage to go down into that hole day after day to make a living. Hardworking people had been doing it for generations and our country depended on them.

  But, amazingly enough, there was a whole lot of opposition as well. Kids seemed to get it. There was mining, and then there was mountaintop removal. Totally different beasts. West Virginia did not have a long and dignified history of blowing the tops off of mountains. Traditional mining employed miners. Blowing off the top of a mountain employed . . . blower-uppers. It all seemed like a sorry-ass way for the corporate greedheads to make the most money by hiring the fewest people and wreaking the most havoc.

  Throw climate change into the mix, with coal as a major culprit, and it changed everything.

  Kids I didn’t even know were coming up to me and asking about the meeting and what was going on with Mount Tom and did I know about this group in Kentucky that was doing the same thing and had I heard about the big People’s Climate March in New York City where 400,000 people rallied against climate change and, can you believe it, mountaintop removal.

  Four hundred thousand people! We were not alone! There was a whole world of folks out there freaking out about the same thing!

  Wow!

  Of course, there was a flip side to all of this newfound fame. Kids I didn’t even know were bumping my shoulder as I walked down the hall, giving me the look, flipping me the finger.

  And the weirdest thing of all was this: I was no longer some ditzy sophomore whom nobody knew or cared about. I was no longer Cyndie the Invisible.

  I was Cyndie the Activist.

  Activist! It wasn’t that long ago that I didn’t know what that word even meant. And now, accidental as it was, here I was fast becoming one.

  It was both exhilarating and frightening as hell.

  “What’s up with this?” Ashley asked. “It is so bizarre. It’s like we’re celebrities or something.”

  “Either that or child molesters,” I said.

  It was true. People who last week didn’t even know we existed now, depending on what side of the issue they came down on, either loved us or hated us. The social suicide thing had come true for some. But it was the opposite for others.

  “Great work!” some cute senior said, fist bumping me as I fumbled with the lock on my locker.

  “Asshole!” some other senior said, stepping hard on my big toe. Truth be told, he was actually pretty cute, too.

  Thank God for Jon Buntington. Whenever tempers were rising and fists were clenching and Ashley was about to go off and deck someone, he’d magically appear and the opposition would simply melt away.

  Required community service or not, he was like The Enforcer. Our personal body guard.

  “Not that we need one,” Ashley said, having been saved by Jon yet again from being trounced by the Blow Up Mount Tom gang.

  “Of course not,” I said, clutching her arm and breathing a sigh of relief.

  And then there was Kevin Malloy.

  “Are you still going out with me?” Kevin asked as we stood at his locker in between classes.

  “What?” I said. “What are you talking about?”

  “To the cotillion. To the dance. Are you still going with me?”

  “Of course I am! Why would I possibly change my mind?”

  “I don’t know,” Kevin said, smiling. “Now that you’re a celebrity and all.”

  “Stop it.” I said.

  “You know, ditch the little guy and go with the top dog.”

  “And that would be . . . who exactly?”

  “Jon Buntington,” Kevin said.

  “Oh my God,” I said. “That guy scares the crap out of me.”

  “You and me both,” Kevin said.

  “Thank goodness he’s on our side.”

  “Amen to that.”

  “Anyway, about the cotillion,” I said.

  “Oh no, here it comes, I knew it. Let the axe fall!” Kevin knelt on the floor, pulled down his collar, and ceremoniously offered up his neck.

  “Stop!” I said, dragging him up by his shirt. “There is a possibility for a little awkwardness.”

  “As in ...”

  “As in my dad, his lady friend, my aunt, and Mr. Cooper are all showing up. Can you believe it? How awkward would that be? My first date and that has to happen?”

  “Oh my God!” Kevin exclaimed. “Are you serious?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “Why unfortunate? I think it’s kind of cool!”

  “Kind of cool? That all of them are going to be there? What are you, insane?”

  “No, no, no,” Kevin said, laughing, his longish hair jiggling up and down. “Not that! I meant it’s kind of cool that I’m your first.”

  He walked me to class and gently touched my arm as I turned into the doorway.

  38

  “I DON’T GET IT,” Ashley said. We were back in our mini-mine on top of Mount Tom. Ashley and I had climbed up the mountain a different way this time, one that wound its way up the west rather than the east side of the mountain. It allowed us to sneak in from the rear, making it less likely for someone to see us.

  We were mixing it up. Keeping the wolves off our tracks.

  Near the entrance to the mine we were able to look down on our usual path. No new trees had been flagged. Nothing marked in any other way. There didn’t seem to be any disturbances at all.

  A lull in the storm.

  “What don’t you get?” I asked. She had her feet in my lap and—surprise, surprise—I was painting her toenails. It was a “Green Machine” shade that was guaranteed to have a unique splatter effect with multidimensional glitters. The color wasn’t exactly my fave, but the name was awesome.

  “Evil,” Ashley said. “I don’t get evil.”

  “You and me both,” I said.

  “I mean, could you imagine if your job was to blow the top off of mountains? Seriously. If your job was to push the button to blast away.”

  “No,” I said. “I can’t imagine that!”

  “You’d be, like, at a party and everyone would be introducing themselves and one person would say, ‘Oh, I’m a nurse, I take care of sick people,’ and another person would say, ‘Gee, that sounds nice, I’m a special-ed teacher, I work with some amazing children,’ and then another person would say, ‘I work in a grocery store, I order the food to put on your table,’ and then they’d all be like, ‘What do you do?’ And you’d say, ‘I blow the top off of mountains so they can dig stuff up to fry the planet,’ and they’d say ‘What? No way!’ And you’d say, ‘Yup,’ and they’d say, ‘Holy cow!’ and you’d just nod your head and watch them all back off like you had the plague or something.

  “I mean, how could you live with yourself? How could you wake up in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror without hurling a brick through it? Or just plain hurling?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “If you think about it, what choice do the button-push
ers have? They must look at it as just a job. They need the paycheck and they’re just clocking in and clocking out. Doing as they’re told. I mean, what are they going to do? Say no and get fired? What other kind of work can you get around here? And it’s not like they’re the ones who made the decision to go with the blow. Somebody else is calling the shots. I think the dudes who came up with the idea are the real bastards. They’re the evil-doers. The workers are just caught between a rock and a hard place.”

  Ashley paused for a moment and wiggled her big toe.

  “Can you do that one again?” she asked. “It doesn’t seem to be glittering as much as the others.”

  I brushed on another coat.

  “Here’s another thing,” I continued. “I think the problem is that a shit-ton of people at that party wouldn’t back away. They’d do the opposite. They’d all be like, ‘Wow, that’s awesome,’ and then all the guys, and girls, or whoever, would want to do you because you were the one who blew the tops off of the effin mountains. It’s not just the people who are thinking it up who are evil. It’s the people who are letting them get away with it. And when you get right down to it, we’re not exactly blame-free either. After all, who are the ones using all of the electricity from the coal-fired plant? I don’t see us just saying no.”

  Ashley looked like she was about to cry. I put the top on the nail polish and snuggled up close. She wiggled her toes.

  “I’m not sure how multidimensional they look,” she said.

  “I’m not sure what multidimensional even means,” I said, blowing on her toes.

  Ashley put her head on my shoulder.

  “When Kevin’s your boyfriend are you going to spend all of your time with him and never want to hang with me again?’ she asked.

  I pinched the underside of her foot.

  “If, and it’s a huge if, Kevin becomes my boyfriend, then I will make it clear from the get-go, that nothing, absolutely nothing, stands between me and my Ashley. And if I have to whack him again with that peg leg to get the point across, then whack him I will.”

  “Promise?” she said.

  “Promise!” I said.

  “You know what?” she said.

  “What?”

  “I’m glad we’re doing what we’re doing.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  “Even if it’s not all that glittery.”

  “Oh, it’s glittery all right,” I said. “And something tells me it’s going to get glitterier before it’s all over.”

  I blew on her toes one more time. She put on her socks and shoes and we walked hand in hand down the west side of the mountain, the sun casting shadows on the oaks and the maples, and the mountain so incredibly beautiful.

  39

  “ARE YOU AWAKE?” I whispered to Ashley. It was three in the morning on a Friday night and she was sleeping over at my house.

  “No,” she said, turning over and putting a pillow over her head.

  “Then how are you talking?” I asked, taking the pillow off.

  “I’m sleep-talking. Leave me alone. Go back to bed.”

  “I’m in bed. I need to talk to you. I need to tell you my dream.”

  Ashley sat up, kicked the covers off, and threw her legs over the side of the bed.

  “So much for my beauty sleep!” she said, yawning. “Let me pee first.”

  I knew I had her. Ashley loved dreams. She loved hearing my dreams and trying to interpret them. She considered herself a mini-Freudina and boasted that she could psychoanalyze with the best of them.

  Over the summer we had gone online and attempted to order this herb from Peru called Calea zacatechichi, also known as the Dream Herb and the Leaf of God. The site promised us we could obtain “divine messages through dreaming” and experience “intense and unusually lucid dream sequences with profound meaning,” which sounded totally awesome and which made Ashley bounce up and down in her chair. Halfway through ordering we left to get a snack and Britt came snooping in to spy on our ’Net surfing and ratted us out to Dad, who had a shit-fit. He assumed it was another name for crystal meth or something. The fact that you were supposed to smoke the stuff got his knickers all in a twist and, needless to say, that was the end of that. So, damn it all, we were left to dream on our own.

  Occasionally though, even without the Leaf of God, I’d dream a doozy. And Ashley loved it when I did.

  She came back from peeing, climbed back into bed, and got into child’s pose, a yoga position we had learned in gym class. Ashley was convinced that it brought more blood to her head and made her think deeper thoughts.

  “So,” I began, “I was wearing my hoop skirt . . .”

  “Round,” Ashley said. “Symbol of fertility. Coming into womanhood.”

  “Shut up,” I said. “Anyway, we were at a dance.”

  “‘We’ as in ‘you and me’?”

  “No. ‘We’ as in ‘Kevin and me.’”

  “See?” Ashley said. “There you go! Abandoning me already!”

  “Ashley, relax! It’s a dream, for crying out loud!”

  “Meanie!”

  “May I please continue?”

  “Humph!”

  “So. It’s not the Civil War cotillion thing but the school dance. Everybody’s grinding away and it’s hot as hell.”

  “‘Hot’ like in ‘sexually hot’?” Ashley asked. “‘Hot’ like in a thinkabout hot?”

  “No,” I said. “‘Hot’ as in ‘temperature hot.’ ‘Hot’ as in ‘I’m burning up.’”

  “Is everybody hot? Or just you.”

  I thought for a moment, the dream beginning to slip away even as I spoke.

  “I can’t remember. All I know is that I’m sweating up a storm, so I rip the fabric off, and there I am in front of everyone with only the hoop and not the skirt, and they’re all laughing and pointing and I’m yelling, ‘See! See! Is this what you want the world to come to? Hoops with no skirts? Is this really what you want?’”

  Ashley sat up and stared at me intensely.

  “Then what?” she asked.

  “That’s it.” I said.

  “What do you mean ‘that’s it’? What about Kevin? What did Kevin do?”

  “I don’t know. The dream was over. I woke up and gave you a poke.”

  “Oh my God,” Ashley said.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ashley said. “It can’t be good. Hot as heck and hoops with no skirts? Sounds like the world’s going to hell in a handbasket!”

  “But what does it mean?”

  Ashley got back into child’s pose and remained in position, silent for a minute. Finally, she sat up.

  “The hoop,” she said, “is Mount Tom. The skirt is life on the mountain. A skirtless hoop is a lifeless Mount Tom.”

  “Wow!” I said, pretty impressed.

  “The hoop,” she said, “is Mother Earth. The hot is climate change. Global warming. A skirtless hoop is a lifeless deep-fried Mother Earth.”

  “Double wow!” I said. I had to admit, that was pretty inspired.

  “The hoop,” she continued, “is your virginity. A skirtless hoop is a deflowered virgin. The heat is your passion, your raw sensuality, your budding sexual desire, your craving to do it with Kevin Malloy!”

  “Shut up!” I said, throwing the pillow at her.

  Although, come to think of it . . .

  •

  “You know,” Ashley said as we were eating breakfast the following morning. “I was thinking about this skirtless hoop thing.”

  “Oh no!” I said. “Here we go again. Please, not in front of Britt!’

  “What?” Britt said, looking up from her Teen Vogue magazine. “What not in front of me?”

  Ashley ignored her. “If we took a video of you grinding away with a skirtless hoop and put it on YouTube, that thing could go viral. We could get advertisers and make millions and buy Mount Tom back from American! We’d save the mountain and you’d be a fashion diva, a skirtless hoop godd
ess. What do you think?”

  “I think you’ve been smoking a little too much of the Leaf of God,” I said.

  40

  PETITION DAY! Our first big (legal) activity!

  Saturday after breakfast we headed over to the dump with Kevin, Marc, Becky, and Frank to get signatures on our petition.

  We the undersigned urge American Coal Company to immediately cease and desist from its plans for mountaintop removal on Mount Tom. Mountaintop removal will cause irreversible harm to the Green River, put the lives of Greenfield citizens in danger, destroy the biodiversity of one of West Virginia’s most spectacular mountains, and contribute to catastrophic climate change. Mount Tom should be left alone and remain forever in its natural state.

  Tammy, Rich, Sharon, and Piggy were over at Fas Chek doing the same thing. Jason ran track and had an away meet, and Sam was off fishing somewhere. It was unclear what the heck Jon Buntington was up to, but Ashley and I were way too intimidated by him to ask.

  Ashley was ecstatic that Marc Potvin was going to be there. She spent an hour and a half doing her hair and choosing her outfit.

  “Earth to Ashley!” I said. “We’re going to the dump. It stinks. There’s shit everywhere. Literally shit, like dirty-diaper shit. I’m afraid your sexy shampoo smell is going to get a little lost in the sauce. It’ll be more like shampoop!”

  “No way!” Ashley said, rearranging the angle of her bob for the fiftieth time. “Mine has a calming mix of twenty-five pure flower and plant essences. It’s infused with an original aroma. Guaranteed to get the guys flocking to my hair.”

  “Great, Ashley. That’s just what we want. All the old perverts in town shuffling on over to stick their snotty noses into your hair.”

  “Sign first, sniff after,” Ashley said. “It’s my secret plan. We’ll have the petition pages filled with signatures in no time. Anyway, I don’t see you skimping on the perfume. And when was the last time you actually wore a hoopless skirt?”

  It was true. The fact that Kevin was picking us up had ratcheted up my heart rate by more than a few beats.

  “This isn’t a date, right?” Kevin had asked, when we made our made plans for petitioning. “I don’t have to wear my Confederate uniform or anything, do I?”