Redemption Mountain

by FitzGerald, Gerry

  Then it was the DeWitts’ lawyer’s turn, and he stumbled badly. His statement was disorganized and rambling. He tried to cite some precedent in the DeWitts’ favor but couldn’t find the right notes. When he mentioned mountaintop removal, he got a forceful objection from Vernon Yarbrough. “No one has mentioned anything about mountaintop removal,” the lawyer admonished. Charlie smiled to himself. No, that would be a separate closed-door hearing between the judge and Yarbrough, over cocktails at their club. Charlie caught the judge looking at his watch. It was already five o’clock, and the buzz level of the room was rising. It was almost over now.

  Bud DeWitt settled into the witness chair for his futile statement. His lawyer slumped down in his seat. This wasn’t going to be pretty. As Bud started to speak, Natty got up and went out the gymnasium door. Charlie could see from her hunched shoulders that she couldn’t take any more.

  Bud started with the story of his great-grandfather, an officer in the Army of the West, who settled on Redemption Mountain after the Civil War. But Bud was nervous and spoke in a halting, often unintelligible manner, causing the judge to interrupt him to ask if he could get on with it, making Bud even more nervous. No one in the room except Bud’s family paid any attention to his story—the only story at the hearing worth telling, and the only testimony worth listening to.

  Charlie had started to get up to go find Natty when one of the young businessmen sitting in front of him turned and said something to his companion, and then, to Charlie’s surprise, the first man looked over at the older man with the Adam’s apple. The younger man tapped his watch, pulled out a black cellphone, and walked toward the back of the gym. There was something going on in the room that Charlie wasn’t privy to.

  Pie heard it first. “Charlie,” he whispered. “The helicopter is coming!”

  He looked out the window, as did many others in the courtroom, to see a flashing light reflecting off the row of green dumpsters in the alley. Bud had stopped talking. All attention in the room was on the incredible noise outside—all, Charlie noticed, but that of the man on the cellphone, whose eyes were trained on the front of the room.

  “Your honor, if we could continue?” Yarbrough was trying to regain control of the proceedings. The judge nodded and looked over at Bud DeWitt’s lawyer.

  “Is your witness about finished, counselor—” He was interrupted by the loud click of the gymnasium door and the entrance of a tall, powerful-looking man with a large round head on its way to complete baldness. The man strode to the front of the room, paying no attention to the judge or the other court officers, who glared at him inquisitively.

  Charlie was unable to keep a smile off his face. He didn’t know what was going on, but he knew it was going to be something very entertaining by the dramatic entrance of his old friend, Red Landon, the chief operations officer of OntAmex Energy. Landon was probably the sharpest utility executive on the planet, and, from the look on his face, he hadn’t come to Red Bone on a social call.

  Torkelson looked as if he’d seen a ghost. Then the gymnasium seemed to come alive. The young man with the cellphone had a brief conversation with Landon, who then started toward the back of the gym. The man with the protruding Adam’s apple rose and turned to Torkelson and Tuthill. At the same moment, a stampede of loud footsteps came from the hallway.

  Charlie sat up in astonishment as Lucien Mackey and Mal Berman came through the door, followed by the CEO of Continental Electric Systems, OntAmex’s merger partner. The CEO and his two assistants headed straight for a red-faced Kevin Mulrooney.

  The judge banged his gavel three times. “Order in the courtroom, please!” He raised his eyebrows to Yarbrough. “Could somebody tell me what’s going on here?” None of the newcomers paid any attention.

  Red Landon passed by Charlie without taking his eyes off Torkelson. He placed a heavy hand on Charlie’s shoulder as he went by. Lucien made straight for Warren Brand and Terry Summers, and Mal went to the bench for a private conversation with the judge, handing him a packet of legal papers. The two young men who’d been sitting in front of Charlie now had rectangular plastic credentials hanging from silver chains around their necks. As one of the men passed by, Charlie was able to see his badge: SEC, it read in large, bold letters, and, beneath that, INVESTIGATIONS DIVISION.

  * * *

  IN A DARK section of the hallway just outside the gymnasium door, Natty sat on the shallow bench at the base of the portable bleachers. She didn’t want to watch Bud DeWitt and his lawyer make a pathetic plea for some kind of leniency from the judge and all the lawyers and the big corporation men. None of them cared. All they wanted was their coal, and they weren’t interested in family history or the sweat, blood, and heartache that the DeWitts had poured into their farm.

  They didn’t want to hear about all the DeWitt men who’d put down their plows to go off to fight America’s wars or about those who never made it back to West Virginia. And they didn’t want to hear about any DeWitt children or grandchildren buried on the side of Redemption Mountain.

  Natty clenched her teeth in anger. Better for Bud to just stand up and give the judge and the rest of them his middle finger and walk out than to grovel through this pathetic, heroic, sad, wonderful story of the DeWitt family. But, no, Bud would never do that. Bud would be a gentleman to the end. Natty wiped the tears from her cheeks and wished she had a cigarette. She heard the roar of the helicopter overhead and knew the hearing would soon be over.

  Then the outside door at the end of the hallway was pulled open, and she watched a large man with hunched shoulders move quickly down the hall. He didn’t even look at Natty as he passed and yanked open the door to the gym. Then came a group of men who appeared to be lawyers or businessmen. They definitely weren’t locals.

  She didn’t know what was going on with all these newcomers, but, from the look of them, it could only mean bad news. Natty leaned back against the surface of the wooden bleachers and closed her eyes while she waited for the hearing to end.

  She heard the distant click of the outside door opening once more but ignored it, choosing to keep her eyes shut to the rest of the day’s proceedings. Just another latecomer to the lawyers’ party, she could tell from the sound of the hard, expensive shoes hitting the wooden flooring of the hallway. Forceful, confident, but walking more slowly than the others. Close to her now. And then the footsteps stopped. Natty waited to hear the gymnasium door open but instead heard a voice right in front of her. A voice that—even after two and a half years—she knew immediately. “Are you all right, miss?”

  Natty opened her eyes and saw Duncan McCord standing a foot away, his arms in front of him, his fingers interlocked, leaning forward with a concerned look on his face. He wore the same suit he’d worn to the picnic the day the helicopters came. Natty smiled. “You gotta stop using that line on me. I’m sick of it,” she said, looking up at the OntAmex president.

  McCord stared at Natty for a few seconds, and a smile came over his face. “You’ve changed your hair, Natty, but you still have beautiful eyes.”

  “Thank you,” Natty whispered, shocked that he remembered her.

  McCord turned his head toward the gymnasium door. “What’s going on here today, Natty?”

  Natty frowned. “Oh, the lawyers and the coal men are taking my grandpa’s farm away from him.”

  McCord looked slowly from Natty to the gym and back again. “Those fucking lawyers,” he said, shaking his head.

  Natty burst out laughing, then covered her mouth quickly, afraid that they may have heard her in the gym. It was the first time she’d laughed all week, and it felt good for a change.

  McCord smiled and started off toward the gym. “Let’s see if we can’t do something about your grandpa’s farm.”

  It took only a few seconds for the tumultuous buzz of the many furtive conversations in the gym to come to a complete halt. Duncan McCord stood inside the gym door, hands in his pockets, feet spread wide as he coolly scanned the room with penetrati
ng eyes that missed nothing. The stillness of the room didn’t hurry him. Even those who didn’t know who he was knew better than to interrupt.

  McCord looked at the judge and nodded. He walked over to the witness box where Bud DeWitt sat, dumbfounded. “You Bud DeWitt?” McCord asked.

  “Yeah, uh, yes, sir,” Bud answered.

  McCord smiled and held out his hand. “Mr. DeWitt, I’m Duncan McCord, president of the OntAmex Energy Company, and I personally apologize for the troubles you’ve been put through over this. You can sit down now, sir. This is all over.” McCord patted Bud lightly on the shoulder as the farmer passed by, returning to his seat. Then he walked past the judge’s bench and stood in front of Vernon Yarbrough. “You our lawyer?”

  Yarbrough rose, a practiced grin coming on like an involuntary reaction, his right hand pushing forward toward McCord. “Why, yes, sir. Vernon Yarb—”

  “You’re fired,” said McCord, with no hint of a smile on his face, his hands at his sides. With his left hand, he made a fist with thumb extended and jerked it toward the door. “Get out!” he said angrily. “Now, before I kick your ass all over this room.”

  Yarbrough turned white and clumsily tried to find an escape route through the folding chairs. McCord turned to the room. “And that goes for the rest of you bums.” He pointed two fingers at Torkelson and Tuthill. Red Landon, anger written across his face, stood between them, a firm hold on each man’s arm, and ushered them forcefully toward the door, accompanied by several others and one of the SEC men.

  Then McCord found Mulrooney, already on his way to the door between two Continental Electric Systems people and the second SEC man. Following close behind were Warren Brand and Terry Summers, escorted by Lucien Mackey.

  At the front of the room, Duncan McCord didn’t have to bang a gavel for attention. As soon as he started to speak, the room went quiet. “This hearing never should have happened. This is not the way the OntAmex Energy Company or its subsidiaries operates, and I apologize to the DeWitt family for the way some of our representatives have treated them. We have no intention of using our financial or political power to circumvent the laws or regulations of any state or government agency or to be a party to the environmental catastrophe of mountaintop-removal coal mining. It’s not going to happen—in West Virginia or anywhere else.

  “The miners in the room should know that our subsidiary, Ackerly Coal, will open a coal mine on Redemption Mountain and hire plenty of union miners to operate a slope mine to fuel the Red Bone power plant. We’ll mine Redemption Mountain the old way, without destroying what God put down here to make West Virginia a special place.” He looked back toward the DeWitts. “Without destroying the history and tradition of one of your state’s great families.”

  Charlie followed Duncan’s gaze and noticed Hank standing with his arm around Alice’s shoulders.

  “It’ll cost us more,” McCord continued, “but it’s a price we’ll pay.” He crossed his arms and studied the floor for a few seconds. “You know, for a long time,” he continued softly, “for most of the last century, big companies—coal companies and steel companies and utilities—have taken unfair advantage of coal miners and the coal-mining areas of this country, with West Virginia at the top of the list, I’d guess. So,” McCord narrowed his eyes in thought as he gazed over the room, “now that the OntAmex Energy Company is getting into the coal-mining business, as an old friend of mine so eloquently put it not long ago, maybe it’s time for us to just cut it out.” McCord put his hands in his pockets, looked out at the crowd, and winked at Charlie.

  When it was clear that McCord was through, Hank clapped his wrinkled old hands together loudly, and then again, and then the miners joined in. Soon, the entire room, which by this time was mostly local residents, was applauding this outsider, as many of them had done at a picnic two and a half years earlier. Charlie sat watching the Dewitt celebration, with the Pie Man at his side. Then something kicked his ankle hard, and he looked up to see Duncan McCord staring down at him, an angry look on his face. “You screwed up a good vacation in the Canary Islands, Burden.”

  Charlie smiled at his old friend. “That’s tough.”

  McCord turned to Pie and smiled at his Michigan T-shirt, then held out a fist. “Go, Blue.” Pie’s face scrunched up into an instant happy face as he touched knuckles with the OntAmex president. McCord studied the boy for a few seconds, then looked back at Charlie. His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Natty’s voice.

  “C’mon, Pie Man, we gotta go.” She stood ten feet away, and Charlie came to his feet.

  “Dunc, this is—”

  “We’ve met,” said McCord, turning to Natty. “A couple of times now.”

  Natty’s smile returned as she watched Charlie’s eyebrows rise in curiosity. She’d let him wonder. “Goin’ out to the Roadhouse for a beer to celebrate,” said Natty. “Love to have you boys join us.”

  McCord grimaced. “Nothing in the world I’d rather do right now, but I’ve got to get back to Toronto tonight.”

  “And I need to spend a few minutes with Duncan before he leaves,” said Charlie. “Maybe I’ll see you there later.”

  * * *

  MCCORD HANDED CHARLIE one of the short dark cigars he’d bummed from a miner in the parking lot. They stopped and turned away from the wind to light them, before starting out for a walk around the athletics field. In the center of the field, the helicopter hissed and whined as it began its warm-up sequence. They walked slowly to enjoy their short time together.

  “This isn’t done here, Charlie, you realize that, right?”

  Charlie kicked a small stone on the track. “Yeah, I know that, Dunc. But you did what you could.”

  McCord blew out a cloud of smoke. “Another year or two, merger’s done, we’ll be selling off all this coal stuff. It’s not our business.”

  “I know.”

  “Then Massey, or Consol, Arch—somebody else will own Redemption Mountain, and that’ll be it for the DeWitt farm. That’ll be it for the mountain. The economics kill you, Charlie.”

  “I know. But until then … What the hell happened here tonight?”

  “It was all about money,” said McCord. “Plain old greed and corruption and arrogance that, down here, nobody would care about what they did.” He spit out a piece of tobacco and shook his head angrily. “It was all Torkelson. Lining his pockets, using his position to get rich quick. That’s the trouble with hiring these fucking government bureaucrats. They work at shit jobs for years, then the first chance they get in the private sector, they figure the system owes them a fat bonus and a retirement home on Jupiter Island.” They walked along the cinder track.

  “Three years ago, Torkelson went to Ackerly and found a willing player in Mulrooney. He wanted five million to site the new plant in the heart of Ackerly’s operations. Mulrooney knows that mountaintop removal is just about finished because of the environmentalists, so he offers Torkelson ten million for the coal contract, plus the help of OntAmex’s political muscle to get a variance for Redemption Mountain. By the way, your numbers were a little off. It’s about forty percent cheaper now to do a surface mine—about half a billion over twenty years. Makes ten million a pretty good investment up front.”

  “So how’d you get on to him?”

  “Red figured it out,” said McCord. “After your email, we started looking into the situation and realized that Torkelson and Tuthill were spending too much time down here. We put our investigator on it—the tall guy with the fedora—and he did some phone taps, broke into their emails, cellphones. All illegal, but we got what we needed. Mulrooney’s got a big mouth, so we knew that’s where the money was coming from. Then our guy got lucky and stumbled across Mulrooney’s secretary, who he was tapping on the side. She spilled everything. Torkelson was getting the big dough, but he had to include Tuthill—he was getting two million—plus a million for that cocksucker lawyer. What’s his name?”

  “Yarbrough,” said Charlie.

&nb
sp; McCord stopped and turned to face him. “Yarbrough—that was his scheme, that raid with the cops and the DEA.” McCord grimaced angrily. “Asshole. He’s lucky nobody got killed that day.”

  “Could’ve been a tragedy,” said Charlie.

  McCord eyed him warily as he puffed on his cigar. “Understand someone tipped off farmer DeWitt they were coming.”

  Charlie flicked the ash from his cigar. “That’s what I heard, too.”

  “Someone using your cellphone.”

  “Gotta stop leaving it lying around.”

  “Lucien told me you did a nice tap dance all over that lawyer in New York.”

  Charlie looked over and saw Lucien and Mal at the edge of the field. “Where does Lucien stand now?” asked Charlie.

  “He was never out. Red went ballistic when he heard what Torkelson was trying to pull.” McCord looked back toward the parking lot. “Red might be beating the shit out of Torkelson right now. I better find him.”

  “What about Brand?”

  “He’s done. Red’s going to New York on Monday. Lucien’ll call another executive-committee meeting, and Red will lay it all out for them. The other kid, too, the pretty boy—”

  “Summers.”

  “He’s gone, too. He was getting half a million. They brought him in after we announced the merger with CES and Hugo Paxton died. They sucked you into the scheme to keep me out of it. They wanted him in to keep an eye on you. They didn’t think you would get so involved in things down here, and that Summers could represent DD&M.”

  “What about the judge? How much was he in for?”

  McCord shook his head. “Judge was clean. He was just ready to do his country club pals a favor and get a variance for the surface mine. He was on the team but not on the take.”

  “So, that was just for my benefit, to get me to want the farm as much as they did, to protect you and the merger,” said Charlie.