Redemption Mountain

by FitzGerald, Gerry

  “Buck got the call,” Natty said, smiling up at Charlie. “About the timber job.”

  “That’s good,” said Charlie. He searched Natty’s face.

  “That was the best call we’ve had in twelve years.” She reached a hand out and touched Charlie’s arm. “Thanks for doing that, Charlie. Buck really needed that.”

  “I hope it works out for him,” he said, sounding sincere.

  She turned to face Charlie. “Should I call you later? If I find out what happened up there?”

  Charlie took a step toward her, reached out, and gently moved the shock of hair that fell across her eyebrow. The tip of his index finger grazed the scar. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” he asked. “When you were telling me about Buck?”

  Natty wanted to be mad, to be indignant at his question, but the look of concern on his face wouldn’t let her. No man had ever shown her the kind of affection that Charlie Burden had shown with one little gesture, one little question.

  “Ain’t nothing to tell about,” she whispered. “People make mistakes, is all.”

  “That’s not a mistake,” said Charlie angrily. “Natty, I’m sorry if you think this is none of my business, but…”

  Natty turned toward the gap in the bushes. “But what, Charlie?”

  He shrugged. “I’m worried about you, Natty. I’m worried about you and the kids.”

  Natty didn’t want to talk about Buck and the beating he gave her, ever, with anybody, but she took in a deep breath and turned back to Charlie. “It was a hard day for Buck, that time he hit me. It was a queer day for everyone in Red Bone. All these strange, rich, beautiful people come flying in on helicopters, giving out free food and booze. Well, shit, wasn’t all Buck’s fault that day.” Natty saw the quizzical look on Charlie’s face. “That was when you and your friend Duncan McCord came to Red Bone.”

  “Natty, when was—”

  “You and Mr. McCord came walking alongside the tent, past where Buck and all his boys were drinking themselves silly.”

  Charlie looked puzzled. “I vaguely remember coming down for the announcement, but…”

  “’Course you don’t remember it, Charlie. Why would you? Wasn’t a big deal for you. Was nothing for you. But for us…” Natty recalled the memory of looking up and seeing Duncan McCord standing in front of her.

  “Natty, I don’t understand what the connection is with that day and Buck.”

  “Well, that’s just it, Charlie,” Natty said. “You don’t understand how things are down here. This ain’t Westchester County. Ain’t no million-dollar houses down here. This is a hard place to live. Hard place for a man to make a living and have a family. I told you that once.” She paused to calm herself.

  “Buck sees men like you and Duncan McCord come down here for a couple hours, looking so successful, flying around in shiny black helicopters—well, ’course he’s going to be envious, feel like more of a failure than he already is.” Natty glanced back toward Oakes Hollow. “Just wasn’t fair to Buck that day, Charlie,” she said softly. “Wasn’t fair to him.”

  Charlie watched her, thinking about the irony of Buck’s envy. Should he tell her how much he ached to trade places with Buck? To be her husband and care for her, protect her, and make love to her, and be a father to Pie and Cat.

  “Ain’t an easy place for a woman, either, Charlie, to try to answer your original question.” She took a couple of steps closer. “Especially a woman with kids, and one with special needs, to boot. Ain’t a lot of prospects for a woman down here, so you don’t tend to pack up and head for the door every time there’s a little excitement in your marriage. Got enough welfare families without me takin’ Pie and Cat off to live in some dirt-floor shanty with no heat and nothin’ to look forward to ’cept a jar of corn liquor and that glassy fix your eyes get when you quit trying.”

  She looked up at Charlie and smiled, the light-up-a-room smile that told him she wasn’t angry anymore. “Charlie, down here, if you’re lucky enough to even find someone to love, you got to hold on to that tight as you can, you know? So that’s what I’m doing, holding on, hoping it comes out right, and enjoying my daydreams in the meantime.” She raised her eyebrows. “Okay?”

  Charlie smiled with resignation. “Okay,” he said.

  “Should I call you if I hear anything?” She gestured off toward Redemption Mountain.

  Charlie thought for a moment. “No, probably not. Safer if you don’t. I’ll find out soon enough.”

  “Charlie, if you hadn’t warned us—and I ain’t sure what Bud and Petey can do, anyway—but if you hadn’t come out here, then that would have been it for Redemption Mountain, right? Bud’d have no choice but to give it up.”

  Charlie shrugged. “Yeah, most likely.”

  “So if they find out … find out it was you who told us—”

  “Natty,” he interrupted, “don’t worry about it. I’ll be okay.”

  Natty nodded. She wanted to go to him and hug him tightly, but she was afraid. Then Charlie backed away and turned to head up the trail.

  “Hey, you coming to our soccer game tomorrow?”

  “I wish I could. Going up to New York for a while. Closing on the house,” Charlie answered.

  “You coming back?”

  Charlie smiled at her. “I’ll be back,” he said, starting down the path.

  * * *

  FROM BACK UP on the boulder, the sun was clearly visible, rising over the Alleghenies, igniting the tops of the mountains to the south. And closer, to the southwest, rising out of the hills still gray with shadow, a well-defined plume of dark smoke reached up to a cloud of wispy haze suspended over Redemption Mountain.

  CHAPTER 21

  Charlie was certain the store was on Lexington Avenue somewhere in the high Forties. It had been years since he’d been there, but he was a fairly frequent visitor when the kids were younger. It was hard to find, on the second floor over a luggage store and a camera shop, the kind of team sporting-goods store that Charlie thought must be unique to Manhattan. The store was more like a warehouse than a retail store, a labyrinth of high-ceilinged rooms connected by ramps, each piled high with brown boxes.

  Even at 11:00 A.M., the store was busy. The clerks—hunchbacked old men who all acted like owners—were busy shepherding customers to the various sections of the store designated for each sport. Charlie found his way to a huge room stacked high with soccer equipment and got the attention of a salesman.

  “Need uniforms for a soccer team,” Charlie said.

  “Little late in the season, aren’tcha?”

  “We’re starting over,” said Charlie with a smile. “Red shirts, black shorts, and red socks. Under-fourteen team, fifteen players.”

  “Eighteen players,” said the clerk, motioning for Charlie to follow him. “That’s the package.”

  “Okay, eighteen,” said Charlie. “And some black warm-up jackets.”

  “How about some matching pants? Look real sharp,” said the salesman.

  “Why not?” said Charlie.

  The clerk pulled down several large boxes and showed Charlie the two shirt styles they had in stock. Charlie chose the more expensive of the two, a solid blood-red silk from Nike, with a black collar and stripes running down the sides. The lightweight black nylon shorts also had a red Nike swoosh. “Comes with numbers on the back,” said the salesman, “and for only five bucks more you could put the team name on the front of each shirt.”

  “The Bones,” said Charlie.

  The salesman smiled. “Got just the thing for you,” he said, leading Charlie over to a huge old book of logos and insignias. He leafed through the heavy book until he found the page he was looking for. There it was—a ferocious-looking silver skull and crossbones with red fire in the eyes. Charlie laughed, imagining the look on Pie’s face when he saw it.

  “Put it on the back of the jackets, too,” said Charlie.

  The salesman raised an eyebrow. “Getting a little pricey now, but I’ll see what
I can do.”

  Charlie smiled. “How about the pants?”

  “Team must have rich parents,” said the clerk.

  “Yeah,” said Charlie. “They’re all in the energy business.”

  The order came to $3,500. “Take about two to three weeks—”

  “I need it all in Red Bone, West Virginia, by next week,” said Charlie, pulling out his American Express card. “Make it an even four grand if you can get it all there by Monday.”

  The clerk smiled as he took Charlie’s credit card. “Red Bone. Must be a real ritzy town.”

  “Yeah, it’s quite a place,” said Charlie.

  * * *

  THE NOON RUSH hour was in full flurry when Charlie returned to the sidewalk. The revolving doors of the office buildings were spinning out the clerks, managers, and CEOs headed for lunch, shopping, or simply to enjoy the crisp fall air and a brisk midday walk in the world’s greatest city.

  Charlie walked up to 48th Street and headed west. He felt good about the uniforms. The kids would really appreciate them, and there was no reason why Natty’s team had to look like the poorest team in the league. Charlie glanced at his watch and saw that he had plenty of time until his two o’clock meeting with the OntAmex and Kerns & Yarbrough people back at DD&M’s office on Park Avenue. He’d take a walk through Rockefeller Center, over to Broadway, and back down through Times Square before heading to lunch at Nathan’s. A hot dog with everything on it and a root beer would complete the quick dose of New York that he badly needed before heading back to Red Bone that night.

  Leaving Nathan’s, Charlie glanced across the street and something caught his eye. If he hadn’t seen it on the bulletin board in the alcove between Barney’s General Store and Eve’s Restaurant, he would never have noticed the trademark icon of Les Misérables, the haunting image of the waif that had decorated New York for so long it had become invisible to the locals. He wondered if Natty would be on the Red Bone Baptist Church trip to New York, and a glimmer of a plan began to form in the back of his mind.

  His thoughts of Natty were dispelled as soon as he began the walk back to the office, replaced by anxiety over the afternoon meeting. When Lucien had reached Charlie in Mamaroneck, he’d sounded worried.

  “Torkelson and Tuthill are coming to town on Wednesday, and they want you to stick around for a meeting. Torkelson was pissed over that Redemption Mountain fiasco, and they’re bringing that lawyer up from Charleston to find out what went wrong. You have anything to do with that, Charlie?”

  Charlie considered the question for a moment before he replied. “No, Lucien,” he lied. And that would be his story. Screw ’em. If they wanted to act like gangsters, then he’d play clueless. He smiled as he recalled his conversation with Terry Summers about the Redemption Mountain raid.

  Even though it was obvious that Summers had a vested interest in the OntAmex side of the Redemption Mountain issue, the junior engineer was in good humor over the debacle at the farm. Charlie, you had to be there, said Summers. Yarbrough’s at the picnic table out in front of the house, sitting across from DeWitt, ready to close the deal. And the feds and that county cop are all standing around, drinking lemonade. So Yarbrough says to the farmer, “Now, we know you got something illegal growing in that cornfield up there.” DeWitt looks up toward the field, then all of sudden, whump, the damn field is totally engulfed in flames. We could feel the heat a hundred yards away. DeWitt looks back at Yarbrough and says, “What cornfield?” Summers laughed. Oh, man, Charlie, it was funny. ’Course, Yarbrough didn’t get much of a kick out of it. We all went up around back of the field, where there’s a barn with this thousand-gallon gasoline tank and a two-hundred-foot hose. And Petey, the son, he’s standing there smelling like a gas station, watching it burn. They had to get tipped off, Charlie—thirty minutes, at least—to give the field a good soaking.

  Charlie glanced at his reflection in the polished copper panel of the elevator as it rose to the sixth floor of the DD&M building. He noted the difference in his appearance from the thousands of times he’d ridden this elevator during his tenure at the firm. His hair was longer, curling over the top of his ears, and his face was tanned from the hours in the sun at the construction site. He was also dressed more casually, in chinos, a white cotton dress shirt, and blazer. If he was going to take a pummeling from Torkelson and Tuthill that could end his career, he was going to be comfortable doing it.

  The conference room was more crowded than Charlie had expected. He immediately got the feeling that there was more at stake here than an inquiry into the Redemption Mountain incident. At the far end of the long table, in his usual position, sat Jack Torkelson, a bottle of water and a glass of ice in front of him. Tuthill, who would direct the meeting, sat near the middle of the table. To his left were the OntAmex lawyers. Across from Tuthill sat Yarbrough and another lawyer from his firm.

  As Charlie acknowledged those he knew around the table, he couldn’t help focusing on the individuals who seemed out of place. Seated between the Charleston lawyers and Torkelson was Warren Brand, the ambitious vice chair of the DD&M executive committee. Across the table from him were two younger members of the executive committee, shills of Brand.

  At the near end of the table, closest to the door, Lucien stood to offer his hand. “Nice to see you again, Charlie,” said Lucien, a paragon of cordiality in all circumstances. Charlie took a chair a space away from Lucien, trying to spare his friend the appearance of being too closely aligned with him, as Tuthill started the meeting.

  “Now that Charlie is here, we can get to these two West Virginia items.” Tuthill looked down at his notes. “Charlie, first of all, let me say that the Red Bone project is going extremely well. Under budget and ahead of schedule. But we’ve got a couple of issues we need to discuss. First off is the issue of the planning-board meeting and how we went from putting a new roof on a little library to building a brand-new structure, along with some kind of athletics-field megaplex, that we never discussed.” Tuthill stopped and looked over at Charlie.

  “You said you had two issues, Larry,” said Charlie. “What’s the second one?”

  Yarbrough slapped the table with his open palm. “You know goddamn well what the second issue is!” he exploded. “I used up a lot of valuable capital last week. Called in some big markers—sittin’ there ready to close the deal, and, whoosh, the damn field goes up like a fucking napalm strike in the Mekong Delta. And, goddammit, Burden, you’re the only one who could have tipped them off.”

  As Charlie moved his chair closer to the table to address those present, his eyes met those of Warren Brand. Brand stared at Charlie with a furrowed brow, looking more serious about this issue than he was entitled to be. Charlie was stumped as to what Brand’s interest was, and it was the one thing about the meeting that worried him. He could take care of OntAmex, because in the end all they cared about were results, and he was building their power plant much faster and cheaper than they’d expected. That was worth a lot more than the reputation of some hillbilly law firm. And they’d get the Redemption Mountain coal through eminent domain, which is how it should have been done in the first place. But Brand was a puzzle.

  “Now, Vernon,” said Charlie, “let me tell you a couple of things about your raid on Redemption Mountain. First of all, you had too many people involved—too many possibilities of a leak—which is what happened. Did you know that the local cop was a high school sweetheart of Natty DeWitt? And that he’s still got the hots for her?” Yarbrough looked up, startled. “Dammit, Yarbrough. Didn’t you do any background checks on those people?” Charlie turned to Tuthill. “Larry, I don’t know what you guys were thinking, okaying such a harebrained scheme.” Tuthill winced. “You go up there like the Gestapo…” Charlie shook his head in exasperation. “What a disaster you guys almost caused.”

  Charlie stood up and moved around the table slowly, knowing he had the group’s full attention. “Let me tell you what would have happened,” he continued. “The DeWitts w
ould have gone to jail. And they’d never have sold you the farm. They’re too proud,” he added. “They’re proud, and it’s all they’ve got to show for a lifetime of hard work—and for all the heartache they’ve suffered.” Alice DeWitt’s voice flashed through his mind. “Their whole family’s buried up there on that mountain.” He shook his head slowly. “It was lunacy to think they’d sell.

  “So you bring in the DEA, and the state police, and you show ’em a field full of marijuana, and you’re all done, Vern, you’ve shot your wad. Now, the cops do their part and arrest the farmer and his son. And then what happens, Vern?” Charlie moved around the end of the table to have a more direct view of Yarbrough, who offered no response. “You should know, Vern. Two men in jail. Next thing that happens is they get a lawyer. Maybe a sharp criminal lawyer from Charleston. And the lawyer listens to the pig farmer’s story, and the first thing he says is, ‘What the hell was a corporate lawyer representing Ackerly Coal and the OntAmex Corporation doing on a drug raid in McDowell County?’”

  Tuthill grimaced at the mention of OntAmex and stole a quick look at Torkelson, who sat motionless, concentrating on Charlie.

  “Then the story gets out and The Charleston Gazette puts it on the front page, all about OntAmex trying to extort a local family out of their farm, like it was the late 1800s all over again.

  “Worst of all, Vern, we’ve got a pretty important PUC hearing this spring on the merger with Continental Electric.” Charlie emphasized the magic words that made even Torkelson shift his weight in his chair. “But now, instead of worrying about a dirt-poor farmer or his hillbilly granddaughter, you’ve got a big-time criminal attorney—one of your own, Vern—with his fist around your client’s balls and a multibillion-dollar merger at stake.” Charlie walked back to his chair, shaking his head. “It was an asinine plan, Yarbrough,” he said, as he took his seat again. “And you’re lucky it turned out like it did.”

  Vernon Yarbrough didn’t seem too anxious to debate Charlie’s synopsis. “Well, we didn’t see it coming out that way,” Yarbrough offered with unaccustomed meekness. “But you never know what might’ve happened—”