Hank sat, stone-faced.
“But, Hank, none of that has anything to do with me taking this apartment, or us being friends, and it’s certainly got nothing to do with Natty Oakes. I met Pie the first day I was here, and Natty the next, and it wasn’t until several weeks later that I found out she was a DeWitt.” He looked Hank in the eye. “It’s important to me that you believe that.”
After a long pause, Hank put his hands on his knees and seemed to slump in his chair as his shoulders relaxed. “Okay, Burden. Okay,” he said quietly. “I didn’t really think you were that cunning. Had to know, though. ’Cause this whole thing with Redemption Mountain, it’s like the damn history of West Virginia, and I hate it in my gut.” He turned to look out at the mountains and spoke in a low voice, almost to himself. “Big companies been coming down here squeezing the blood out of these people for a hundred years, takin’ their land and keepin’ ’em poor and ignorant and dependent, all with the help of the damn government, ’cause the money and the power has always been with the coal companies. It’ll never change. Way it’s always been in West Virginia.”
“Hank, c’mon, that’s a little extreme. We made the DeWitts a fair offer for the farm.”
“Fair. Burden, let me tell you something. There ain’t nothin’ fair about what the coal companies done to the people of West Virginia.” Hank shook his head slowly.
Charlie leaned forward to argue his case. “Hank, even if you’re against mountaintop removal because of the damage to the environment, you still have to admit it’s going to put a lot of men to work. Isn’t that good for McDowell County, Hank? Isn’t that good for West Virginia?”
Hank stared back at Charlie through narrowed eyes. He rose out of his chair again, moved to the edge of the porch, and leaned against the supporting post. He gestured out toward the mountains. “Charlie, under all of this land, far as we can see from this porch, is the Pocahontas Coalfield, the richest seam of pure low-sulfur coal the world has ever known. Miners have been pulling it out of the ground in West Virginia for a hundred seventy years—to fuel the Industrial Revolution, fight two world wars, power the railroads and the steel mills of the Ohio Valley, and heat the homes and factories of the Northeast for most of this century.”
Charlie could see that the veteran teacher in Hank was preparing a lesson, and he sat back in his chair to listen.
“D’you know that it was coal from central Appalachia that powered the U.S. Navy in World War One? Navy had to have the smokeless coal so the German U-boats couldn’t see the plumes of the ships through their periscopes. That’s when the Red Bone mine first opened, 1917, to supply the coal for the Navy.”
Hank turned and spit tobacco juice over the side of the porch. “The railroads changed everything when they opened up the coalfield. Just as important, they brought in the thousands of workers needed by the coal-mining industry—all the throwaway people that the mines needed because it was so labor-intensive and dangerous. The railroad brought in the people who didn’t have any other options, the poor Southern blacks and the Europeans right off the boat from Ellis Island—the Italians, Slavs, Irish, Hungarians. They came by the thousands. Soon as they got off the train, they were in debt to the company—a debt they’d never get out of.”
Hank shuffled back to his chair at the table and continued in a more somber voice. “In 1907, Charlie, there was an accident, up in Monongah, an explosion. Official count was three hundred sixty-two fatalities—worst mine disaster in U.S. history. But unofficial accounts at the time said the death toll was much higher, because of all the immigrants who couldn’t speak English and had names too hard to write, so they’d send them down the hole without accounting for them.” Hank shook his head. “That’s the way it was. In the first two decades of the century, more than twenty thousand U.S. coal miners were killed. It didn’t matter, ’cause they were replaceable, and it was the only way to get the coal out of the ground. There was a study done that showed that the life expectancy of a West Virginia coal miner during World War One was shorter than that of an infantryman on the battlefields of Europe.
“Even before the railroads came, the mining companies and the speculators with their broad-form deeds—the vilest legal instrument ever devised by man—bought up all the land and the mineral rights. Farmers were forced off their land, and West Virginia became the property of the mining companies. Still today, most of the state is owned by out-of-state companies.” Hank looked up at Charlie to make sure he was listening. “Companies like Ackerly, and Continental Electric, and OntAmex.”
“But, Hank, a lot of people have made a very good living as miners—”
Hank slammed his hand down on the table, making the cribbage board jump. “Goddammit, Charlie! You ain’t been listening to me at all. A good living! What’s a good living, Charlie? A hundred years of pulling coal out of the ground to help this country fight two great wars and power the most prosperous economy the world has ever known, and what do we have to show for it? Look around you, Charlie. You see any great wealth, see any old money, around this town? What’s our legacy from the coal industry?”
Hank stared out at darkness, the silhouettes of the mountains barely visible against the night sky. “What we got is the second-poorest state in the union and about the highest child-poverty rate. We got a population that’s dropping like a rock, ’cause there’s no jobs, no future for the young people, and we got too many old people to take care of—too old and too poor to go anywhere else. We got fifty thousand retired miners with the black lung, suffocating in their own fluids, getting ready to die before their time, and the rest of ’em losing their retirements and their health insurance ’cause all the old coal companies’ve been picked clean of any assets and now gone bankrupt.” Hank was getting louder. He leaned closer to Charlie over the table, and spit flew from his lips with every word.
“We got abandoned buildings and abandoned towns. And we got monuments—all over West Virginia we got monuments—to the men who gave up their lives to this heartless industry. And we got old coal mines and gob piles leaking acid waste, turning our streams orange, and polluting our water. We got abandoned mines caving in, swallowing people’s homes, and we got companies still coming here to openly rape the land with their mountaintop disasters, to get what’s left of the coal, ’cause what the fuck!” Hank slammed his palm down on the table again. “This is West Virginia, and that’s the way it’s always been down here, so it don’t matter none!”
Hank paused for a few moments, then nodded his head in thought. “That’s the worst of it, Charlie. Our legacy from the coal industry is that West Virginia’s a joke to the rest of the country. Poor, ignorant hillbillies, too dumb to raise themselves out of poverty. So it don’t matter what the big companies do down there, ’cause it’s just Appalachia and them hillbillies don’t care, so why should anyone? That’s the worst of it, Charlie.”
Hank leaned onto the table. “Let me ask you something, Burden. If you wanted to blow the top half off Redemption Mountain and push it all over the side—ten square miles of overburden—destroying the streams and wildlife habitat and hundreds of years of forest growth, but instead of West Virginia, Redemption Mountain was in California, or Oregon, or Vermont, or in the Catskills, how successful do you think you’d be? Could mining companies get away with that anywhere else but West Virginia or Kentucky?”
Charlie could only smile weakly, conceding Hank’s point.
“You bet they couldn’t, and they wouldn’t even try. But this is Appalachia, so who gives a shit.” Hank’s voice grew weak and he turned away, as if he was now talking to himself. “People here are still poor and desperate, with no options. Like we just arrived from Ellis Island. So don’t tell me how good coal mining is for the people or the state or McDowell County. Always been a deal with the devil, and the devil’s been winning for a hundred years.”
They sat quietly in the dark. Finally Hank stirred and rose stiffly from his chair. “Time for an old man to get to bed.”
“Me, too,” Charlie said, getting up. “Good night, Hank.”
At his door, Hank stopped and looked back toward Charlie. “Burden, that’s a good thing you’re doing with the kids’ library and the ball fields. Nobody’s ever done something like that for this town before. Nobody’s ever given this town anything.”
“Thanks, Hank. I appreciate you saying that.”
* * *
THE MOMENT HE reached the power plant, Charlie knew something was wrong. The main gate had been wheeled open, and several vehicles, including a white police car, were lined up on the road over the drainage ditch.
Charlie turned through the gate and noticed another car to his right. It was a dark-blue Crown Victoria with a spotlight mounted on the driver’s door. Two men in sunglasses were inside.
Security Officer Hicks was standing outside the small guardhouse. Hicks was never on duty this early. As he drove past the line of vehicles, Charlie saw that the insignia on a black Suburban was for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. In the parking lot outside the administration building, Charlie noticed Terry Summers’s white Corvette. As Charlie got out of his car, he saw the OntAmex helicopter out in the middle of the field. This is it, then, the infamous Plan B that Yarbrough has been holding in reserve.
Just then the doors to the building burst open, and a collection of men streamed into the parking lot. Charlie recognized Yarbrough and Summers, but the rest were strangers. Two of the men wore vests with DEA in large white letters on the back; .45-caliber pistols were holstered at their sides.
A heavyset policeman with a toothpick in his mouth stood by his cruiser, as if awaiting further instructions. Four other men—two wearing business suits, and two in rugged-looking casual wear—climbed into a Land Cruiser. Vernon Yarbrough walked toward Charlie.
“Morning, Burden,” said Yarbrough with a quick nod.
“What’s up?” asked Charlie, motioning toward the motorcade.
“Going up to see our pig farmer one last time. Want to come?” he asked without enthusiasm.
It was obvious that Charlie wasn’t intended to be part of this operation. “No, thanks,” he answered. “Let me know how it turns out.”
Yarbrough eyed Charlie warily. “Thought it best to keep this option under wraps.”
Charlie watched the other men as they got into their vehicles. “Why all the firepower?” he asked.
Yarbrough glanced over at the entourage. “It appears that Farmer DeWitt’s been growing some contraband that our law-enforcement friends may have a problem with. I’m going along ’cause I just might be able to help DeWitt get through this situation, but you never know what a man will do when he’s up against the wall.” Yarbrough turned and strode quickly away toward the Navigator. Terry Summers was at the door of the big vehicle, watching Charlie. Yarbrough spoke into a walkie-talkie as he climbed inside.
The caravan pulled out onto the access road in close formation. Charlie watched as the vehicles disappeared into the woods, sending up a cloud of dust, then he walked quickly to the door of the administration building.
“Fuck!” said Charlie. He moved quickly through the main room, passing by the big center table that was used for reviewing blueprints. Several empty doughnut boxes and numerous paper coffee cups littered the table.
“Goddamn motherfuckers!” he said, as he reached out and swept a box off the table. Back in his office, he dropped into his chair and yanked open the bottom drawer of his desk to find the small McDowell County phone book.
Stop and think for a minute. This was serious business now. He’d be putting his career and his company’s future on the line, and there would be huge repercussions if it was discovered that he’d interfered with their raid on the DeWitt farm.
Charlie slumped back in his chair. Could he even stop what had already been put in motion? He looked at his watch—6:25 A.M. He thought about the DeWitts up on Redemption Mountain. Probably having breakfast, unaware that the power of the federal, state, and county government would be descending on them within the hour and their lives would never be the same.
Charlie thought of Sarah DeWitt and his promise to her. I don’t know if I can stop it, but I’ll try, he’d said to her. And he’d told Natty the same thing. Then, to his surprise, Cecil Thomas, his boyhood pal, flashed through his mind. Cecil, his best friend in the world for so long, whom he’d left behind when he was anointed prince of the city by Duncan McCord. Charlie shook his head. “Cecil, you prick,” he whispered.
He tore open the phone book … Dewire, Dewolfe … no DeWitt. Shit! Now what? Charlie grabbed the phone and dialed information. No listing for DeWitt. Natty would have the number. He started to look up Oakes. Damn, he couldn’t call her at home. What if her husband answered? Plus, he couldn’t leave a trail, and Yarbrough’s investigators were certain to check phone records afterward, if Plan B went into the toilet. Charlie looked at his watch. She’d be out running now, anyway—on the mountainside if she’d started at her usual time. Charlie grabbed his keys. He felt the outside of his jacket pocket to make sure his cellphone was there.
Hicks was on duty at the front gate. His presence meant that he had long been part of Yarbrough’s team. Charlie climbed into the Lexus and drove slowly to the gatehouse and lowered his window. “Forgot my laptop. Gotta go back into town. See you later.” He pulled slowly out onto the access road, making a mental note to fire Hicks the first opportunity he got.
Coming out of the woods to South County Road, Charlie stopped in the middle of the road. He shaded his eyes and looked as far up toward Red Bone as he could, trying to spot Natty. If she’d started later than usual, she might still be on this leg of her run. Seeing nothing, Charlie turned right and floored it. He glanced at the clock on the dash, calculating when Yarbrough’s caravan would reach the farm. He had to find Natty within the next ten to fifteen minutes.
The road that led up past Oakes Hollow seemed steeper than it had when he’d run down it. He sped past a narrow stone-covered road on the left marked by a hand-painted sign. It read OAKES HOLLOW. The weather-beaten sign looked more like a warning than a greeting. In another minute, he was at the spot where the old logging road cut into the forest. He turned off the car, leaving the keys in the ignition, and started off at a trot toward the mountain trail.
* * *
THE BOULDER FELT cool and damp on Natty’s bare legs as she sat on the edge, her feet dangling over the side. She glanced at her watch. Another few minutes, then she’d have to hustle. She didn’t want to be late for school, but it was her first visit to the rock since she’d brought Charlie Burden up here. She closed her eyes and replayed Charlie’s words.
Then she thought about Pat Garvey’s phone call to hire Buck for the woodcutting project—the job that Charlie Burden had arranged. Finally, a call that wasn’t bad news or a bill collector. As she stood up, she noticed a movement far down the trail—something out of place in a scene with no moving parts. She focused and saw that it was a person, too far off to identify, but someone was coming toward her, which was cause for concern.
Natty passed quickly through the grotto, climbed down the path back to the trail, and resumed her run. Whether there was someone on the trail ahead or not, she was going to be late for work if she didn’t keep a good pace all the way to the top of Oakes Hollow. A few minutes later, the figure came into view and she saw that it was Charlie. She smiled with relief, then suddenly was alarmed. Charlie Burden, in his work clothes. As he drew nearer, Charlie pulled a cellphone from his pocket.
“Natty, call your grandfather,” ordered Charlie, handing her the phone. She took it without comment. “They got something growing up there they shouldn’t have?” he asked.
“Oh, shit!” Natty exclaimed.
“Tell him the Marines are on their way.”
There didn’t seem much point now in worrying about being late for work. The school would survive without her for a few minutes. Her mother answered the phone. “The police are on the way up. They know about the co
rnfield. You have about twenty minutes” was all that Natty said, before hanging up.
Charlie described Yarbrough’s strike force, including the DEA agents and police. “There was also a cop from the sheriff’s office. Big guy, overweight, with a thin mustache.”
Natty nodded knowingly. “That’d be Wayne Lester, a deputy sheriff. Went to high school with him. He was an asshole then, and he’s still an asshole.”
They walked together in silence, but Natty could sense Charlie’s curiosity. “Mama always told me that Petey grew it just for them—for him and Mama—and didn’t sell any. But I know that ain’t true. Petey grows way too much for just the two of them.”
Natty recalled the first time she ever smelled it—the terrible summer after Annie died, when everyone was miserable. “I went walking down to the chicken house, peeked around the corner, and smelled this sweet smoke floatin’ by. Sittin’ there on the rocks next to the stream is my mama and Uncle Petey, both smokin’ these corncob pipes, with a plastic bag full of weed on the rock between them. ’Course, I didn’t know what it was at the time.” She paused. “That was probably about the time they started sleeping together.
“Petey went away for a year when I was in sixth grade, for growing it. But now, instead of Petey going to jail, Bud and Alice are going to lose their farm.” Natty glanced up at Charlie. “That don’t seem fair, does it?”
Charlie thought about Hank’s history lesson: Nothin’ fair about what the coal companies done to the people of West Virginia. “No, it’s not fair, Natty, but let’s wait and see what happens,” Charlie said, trying to sound optimistic.
They walked along, engrossed in their own thoughts, until they entered the dense woods at the end of the trail. As Natty’s jumping-off point drew near, they slowed their pace.
Redemption Mountain Page 26
