Redemption Mountain

by FitzGerald, Gerry

  The faces that Charlie saw showed little contentment. They were faces of concern, if not abject despair. Smiles were forced and short-lived, and the chatter was brief and subdued. This was serious business to these people. They were looking to the power plant for their economic salvation, the source of a family-saving job for a husband, a brother, a son, anyone who might bring home a paycheck. This wasn’t a game to them. These people were genuinely concerned about the project and the jobs it could create—concerns brought about by the rumor so artfully crafted by Yarbrough that the project might shut down permanently if they weren’t granted a variance. They didn’t know the fix was in, as it always was with companies like OntAmex.

  Charlie sat erect in his Joseph Abboud suit and looked at the lawyers and the politicians who’d joined them at the power table, all similarly dressed for intimidation, and he realized again that he was on the wrong side of the room. He should be the one grilling these assholes and making them pay, not shills like poor Natty Oakes, who’s got enough things to worry about without having to be a part of their parlor game.

  Charlie watched as Hank settled into a chair at the center of the table. Making a little extra noise, Charlie pushed his chair back and went over to Hank. As they shook hands, Charlie whispered, “Hank, I want you to pull me away from the table, like you’ve got something important to tell me. And keep talking.”

  Charlie made certain that his back shielded Hank from Yarbrough, whose eyes he could feel boring into him. When Charlie went back to his chair, Yarbrough leaned toward him. “What’s going on?”

  The loud bang of Hank’s gavel on the aluminum table interrupted Charlie’s response. “Tell you later,” Charlie whispered. “I think we’re still okay.” Yarbrough scowled.

  The gymnasium was nearly full. Then the door opened once more, and Natty and the Pie Man entered. They made their way up the center of the room and found seats on the aisle. As always now, Charlie’s heart beat faster when he saw Natty. Again, Natty amazed him with her ability to be so inconspicuous and attract so little attention. Here she was, one of the most beautiful women Charlie had ever met, and she could walk into a room, looking so plain in her unflattering blue jeans and boots, with no makeup or jewelry, that hardly a man would take notice.

  Hank began the meeting by reading the executive summary of the request for variance. Then he laid out the ground rules. “First, the OntAmex side, represented by Mr. Vernon Yarbrough from the law firm of Kerns and Yarbrough of Charleston and Mr. Charles Burden of the project’s engineering company, will present their petition.”

  At the mention of Charlie’s name, Pie leaned across his mother’s lap, his face scrunched in excitement, and pointed the index fingers of both hands toward Charlie. Charlie had to look away quickly to avoid laughing.

  “After that,” Hank continued, “if anyone’s got anything to say, for or against the plan, or you just want to have some fun beatin’ the hell out of a big utility company, you can take your shot at the podium.”

  Then Hank turned the meeting over to Vernon Yarbrough. The silver-tongued litigator had announced his objectives at dinner earlier: to make friends with the audience; to extol the benefits of the project to the local economy; and then to scare the shit out of everyone by implying that the project may well be terminated if the variance was denied. He was a master of his craft.

  When Yarbrough finished, Charlie began the technical portion of the presentation, admitting that the fault lay with the engineer who’d worked on the original site plan. The admission seemed to strike a sympathetic chord with the audience and the planning board.

  Using a large board showing a diagram of the site, Charlie pointed out the main building, the administration building, and the front gate. Pointing to a spot to the left of the main gate, he noted, “Right about here is where I understand the local kids used to sneak under the fence, before I arrived.” There was a smattering of knowing chuckles in the audience as Charlie took two strides up the aisle and grinned directly at the Pie Man, who shrank down in his seat, unsure if he was in trouble. The look on Charlie’s face reassured him, and slowly a blushing happy face closed his eyes to slits. “Fortunately,” Charlie continued, “one very nice young man from your town offered to show me where the hole was, so we were able to fix it.”

  Natty smiled down at her embarrassed son, afraid to look up, afraid to find that Charlie might be looking at her. She waited until he started talking again before she turned back toward the front of the room. She’d been nervous since the moment she entered the gym and saw Charlie sitting behind the table at the front of the room with all the other important men. Now, as she watched him occupy center stage, she felt as if she had a hole in her stomach. She replayed for the hundredth time the words he had said to her up in the grotto. And there he was, the same man, up in front of all these people, sounding so professional and so good at his job, in control of the room, and so confident. He wore an exquisitely tailored dark suit that looked perfect and natural on him—clearly an outsider, from a different world, like the other men at the front table. It made her feel foolish for what she had been thinking the past few days.

  Charlie talked about blasting the rock formation at the original pond site. For the sake of the miners in the audience, he went into some detail, using technical terms like seismic echoes, metal fatigue, and stress tolerances, which the miners seemed to understand. He described the location and design of the new pond and the containment dike with its steel framework that would be several feet higher than the code required.

  Then questions started to come from the audience. “Mr. Burden, we been hearin’ a rumor about a big surface mine openin’ up on Redemption Mountain to fuel your new power plant, and I ’as wonderin’, sir, if you could say whether dat’s true or it ain’t, cause there’s a lot o’ idle miners here be interested in ’at.”

  Charlie stood still with his hands in his pockets and thought about how he should answer. He decided to evade it as best he could and let Yarbrough address it if he wanted to. Charlie took a few steps toward the audience.

  “The contract for the coal to be used in the power plant was awarded to Ackerly Coal,” said Charlie. “It’s up to them how they meet the terms of that contract.”

  “Yessir, I un’erstan’ ’at,” the miner replied, coming to his feet again. “But what I’m askin’ is if your company and the OntAmex company are involved in tryin’ to get Ackerly a new mountaintop-removal permit to use on Redemption Mountain, ’cause word around the union is there ain’t no way Ackerly goin’ to get it by itself without you big boys pitchin’ in.”

  Thankfully, Charlie heard Yarbrough’s chair scrape against the wooden floor. The lawyer came around the table to take the stage again.

  “Thank you, Charlie. Nice job,” said Yarbrough, patting Charlie on the shoulder.

  “This is a ticklish situation,” Yarbrough began. “As a representative of Ackerly Coal, I can tell that there’s a lot of interest in opening a new surface mine in McDowell County. A mine big enough to supply all of the coal for the new plant for the next twenty years. A mine big enough to create more than two hundred fifty new jobs for local men.” A few grunts of agreement came back from the audience. Yarbrough nodded his head affirmatively, then continued, his voice growing louder. “Lot of interest, from Charleston to Washington, because what this county needs is a big new mine, to put everybody to work at good union wages.” The audience seemed to lean together and murmur as one in reaction to this excellent news. Yarbrough paused for a few seconds in thought. “That’s the best I can answer your question right now,” he said, holding his palms up to the audience.

  Charlie saw Hank staring at him with cold, hard eyes. This was the same smoldering anger Hank had displayed when recounting the story of Buffalo Creek. Hank, better than anyone in the room, could see through Yarbrough’s bullshit and know that the big companies were at it again and that there was a lot more to the story than Yarbrough would ever divulge at a public meeting.
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  After a few self-serving comments by the politicians in support of the petition, Hank opened up the floor to more questions. The first to walk to the podium was a miner. “I’d just like to say that the only thing I’m any good at is pullin’ coal out of the ground. But I ain’t been able to do that for the past four years, so me and my wife and three little ones’d appreciate the board helping out any way you can.” His voice trailed away. “It’s about the only hope we got.”

  Charlie cringed. He didn’t need such a sincere endorsement at this stage. Thankfully, one of Hank’s shills was next, a science teacher at Red Bone High. He thought that the new pond would be too close to Cold Springs Road and proposed a six-month delay so the board could study the plan further. Hank had coached him well. A six-month delay sounded like an easy compromise, but Charlie knew that it would be catastrophic to the project and that the lawyers would be gnashing their teeth over the proposal.

  Then Mabel Willard lumbered up to the podium from the rear of the gym. Her thunderous voice, coupled with an undaunted attitude of righteous indignation, was exactly what they needed. “My problem with this whole show,” roared Mabel, “is that this big-time company come to our town with all kind of promises and so far I ain’t seen diddly-squat!” There was a murmur of support from the audience.

  “Seems to me,” she continued, “that I see an awful lot of out-of-state license plates drive out of that construction site every night and not too many Red Bone men put to work.” Support from the crowd was growing, causing looks of consternation on the faces of the Charleston lawyers. She was perfect, thought Charlie.

  Then it was Natty’s turn. Charlie watched as she fidgeted nervously. “Anyone else have something to say?” asked Hank, looking at Natty. Reluctantly, she rose to her feet. At the podium, she pulled the microphone down, trying to get comfortable.

  “My name’s, uh, Natty Oakes,” she said. “And I agree with everything Mabel said. There ain’t been much to show for all the OntAmex promises.” Natty glanced over at Hank, unsure of what she was supposed to propose.

  Hank came to her aid. “Mrs. Oakes, I believe that you might have come here tonight to offer up a worthwhile community-improvement project that OntAmex might want to undertake in order to make a meaningful contribution to the town. Is that about right?”

  Grateful that Hank had gotten right to the point, Natty leaned in to the microphone. “Yes, sir, that’s what I’d like to do.” She saw that Charlie had moved his chair out to the end of the table and was sitting back casually, his legs extended with his ankles crossed.

  “What I was thinkin’,” said Natty, sounding a little more relaxed, “was that we got this children’s library next to the soccer field. I was going to someday get some computers in there for the kids, but the roof started leakin’ and there was no money to patch it. All the books, they got ruined and…” Natty looked over at Hank, unsure what to say next.

  Hank turned to the OntAmex table. “What Mrs. Oakes is proposing is that you might find some way to fix the roof of her kids’ library there and get her some new books and a computer. That about right, Natty?”

  “Yeah, Hank. That’d be great.”

  Hank turned back to the lawyers. “And we’d take that into consideration when we’re ruminatin’ over this request for a variance.”

  Yarbrough nodded. “Miz Oakes, I was wonderin’ if you might have a ballpark figure in mind as to the cost of fixing your roof?”

  God, what a showman, thought Charlie. Pretending to care about the cost of fixing the roof! The lawyers would be giddy that the request for variance would pass, and at a cost that was little more than tip money to OntAmex.

  “No, sir, I wouldn’t know about that,” said Natty. “But Mr. Burden took a look at our roof one day,” Natty smiled at Charlie, “and he’s such a smart man, he’d probably have a guess at the cost.”

  “What do you think, Charlie?” asked Yarbrough, playing along. “This a viable project for our client?”

  Charlie came to his feet slowly. “No,” he said in the direction of the lawyers, before turning toward Natty, whose mouth dropped open in bewilderment. “I looked at the roof of the building, and it’s a mess. But the building’s got bigger problems. You could put a new roof on it, but it would still be unusable. The heating system is shot, and there’s no air-conditioning, which you’d need for the computers. In addition, the walls have been weakened by the water, and the drainage problem goes all the way down to the soccer field. That would have to be fixed before you could make any improvements to the library. So, no, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to fix the roof.”

  Natty stared at Charlie in disbelief. How could he do this? Ask her to get up in front of everybody to propose the roof project, and then say no!

  Then Charlie smiled at her. “So, here’s what we’re going to do in place of Mrs. Oakes’s proposal. We’re going to demolish the present building, along with the parking lot and the stairs down to the field. We’ll tear up the soccer field, the lower parking lot, and the old baseball field. Then we’ll build a drainage system to channel the runoff to the stream on the other side of South County Road. We’ll build a new building on the present site, with a library on the upper floor and shower rooms and athletics facilities on the ground floor. And we’ll build a new soccer field, baseball field, and a new parking lot.”

  It was evident to Yarbrough that Charlie had given this some thought prior to this evening. He didn’t understand what was going on, and what he didn’t understand he kept quiet about. It was OntAmex’s money and Charlie Burden’s neck on the line, not his.

  “Whole project should take a few months, if the winter isn’t too bad,” Charlie continued. “This is what the town needs,” he said. He took a few steps toward Natty. “We want to do something that we can all be proud of for a long time and that you and your children will benefit from for years to come.”

  Yarbrough rose to his feet, eager to take some credit. “Charlie, I think this is a splendid project—” He was interrupted by Mabel Willard clapping her huge hands together. Seconds later, the entire gym was on its feet clapping, drowning out Yarbrough’s words. The Pie Man was jumping up and down on his chair, clapping his hands over his head.

  Charlie walked over to Hank and the other planning-board members, who were applauding. He shook hands with Hank, who pulled him closer and spoke into Charlie’s ear. “Now you’re fucked,” he said, smiling at Charlie.

  “You’re right about that,” Charlie replied with a laugh.

  CHAPTER 20

  P. J. Hankinson was already shuffling the cards when Charlie came out onto the porch. Charlie hadn’t seen Hank since the planning-board meeting, which he thought was a little strange, but now here he was, ready for their Sunday-night game.

  “Evening, Hank,” Charlie said, taking his seat across the table.

  “Burden,” Hank responded gruffly, as he cut his card for the deal. Beyond the necessary announcements of card totals and point counts, they played the game in silence. Charlie knew something was up when Hank skunked him without any of the usual crowing and subtle barbs he enjoyed on the occasion of such a slaughter.

  “Okay, Hank,” said Charlie, picking up the deck of cards and placing it on his side of the table. “Let’s have it.” Hank pulled over the score book and recorded the financial result of their game. Posting the score meant that no more games would be played that evening. He stretched the rubber band around the book, placed it back in the cigar box, and looked at Charlie.

  “Burden, I ain’t sure I can trust you anymore.”

  “C’mon, Hank, what are you—” Hank held up a hand to hush him.

  “Charlie, reason you’re down here, with all them lawyers and politicians at your table, is to get a surface-mining variance for Redemption Mountain. It’s the reason why you’re building that power station here within easy trucking distance.”

  “Hank, you got this wrong,” Charlie protested.

  “Do I?” Hank asked. He pushe
d himself to his feet, walked over to the railing, and spit his tobacco juice over the side. “Soon as that miner got up at the meeting, it hit me like a bucket of ice water. Ain’t no way an idle miner like him knows anything about anything, lest it comes from the union. And the union sure as hell don’t know anything without Ackerly or OntAmex telling them what to know.”

  “Sure, Hank, there’s an option that some people are working on to fuel the plant with coal from Redemption Mountain,” said Charlie. “But it’s just one option.”

  Hank spit over the side again and turned to glare at Charlie. “Option, bullshit. It’s the only reason you and your pals are here. Without the coal from Redemption Mountain, that plant gets built over in Logan or Mingo County, or more likely in Kentucky or Virginia, but sure as hell not in Red Bone or anywhere else in McDowell County.”

  “Hank, you’re speculating, and I don’t know how much of your theory is real or not, but what’s it got to do with me?”

  Hank stood silently at the railing, pondering his answer. “Burden, you may not know or care much about mountaintop mining, but that’s why you’re down here, to help make that happen, that and getting a variance for your pond,” he said softly. “It’s why you’re here, living in this old fire trap and making friends with an old man who happens to be on the planning board and…” Hank limped back to his chair and leaned over the table to focus his dark eyes on Charlie. “Tell me again, Burden, what’s your interest in the Oakes woman? Nothing personal, you told me, right? So it’s just coincidence that you’ve become so friendly with this little hillbilly girl and her little boy? The granddaughter of Bud DeWitt—who you’re going to have to move off Redemption Mountain pretty quick here to get your surface mine started before the end of the year.” Hank leaned back in his chair and took a breath. “Yeah, I know what’s going on here, Burden.”

  Charlie forced himself to calm down before replying. He didn’t want to get into an argument with his friend. “Hank, part of what you said is true. One of my jobs down here is to help OntAmex get a variance for a surface mine on Redemption Mountain. To do that, we need to buy the DeWitt farm. The pond is obviously my responsibility, too.”