The pitch of the turbines’ whistle went up a notch as the helicopter’s blades began to spin. Beside the gazebo, people were saying their goodbyes. Charlie watched as Ellen hugged Ada Lowe. He turned and gazed up the hill, to the fourth-floor porch where he’d spent so many evenings with Hank. The rear of the building was bathed in late-morning sunlight. Charlie took a deep breath. “I loved it here, Eve. This is a wonderful place, with wonderful people.”
Eve squeezed his arm and stared into space, a wry grin on her face. “Charlie,” she said, “I’m going to go over and say goodbye to Ellen now.” She nodded toward the street before starting off for the gazebo. Charlie turned and saw the orange Camaro roll to a stop at the side of the road. Sally had her arm extended out the window, a cigarette in her hand. She glanced over at Charlie and then toward her passenger.
Natty finally opened the door and stepped out. She held the seat forward to let Cat out of the back, and they both walked toward Charlie. Natty said something to her daughter, and Cat ran ahead. The little girl glanced nervously at Charlie and put her head down as she sped by. Natty moved slowly, with a noticeable limp, leaning on a cane. When she arrived at the field, her cane sank in the soft turf, forcing her to pull it out before taking her next step. She smiled at Charlie and put her head down to concentrate on the placement of her cane in the wet grass. He took a few steps toward her, conscious of the eyes watching them.
She stopped about eight feet away and looked around at the new turf. “Used to have a nice field here, nice and hard, with a lot of stones. Easy to walk on.” She looked up. “Hey, Charlie.”
Charlie smiled. “How are you, Nat?”
She shrugged. “Knee ain’t so good. Had to put some phony ligaments and stuff in there. Six months, maybe, I’ll be fine, runnin’ around again, all over the mountain.” Natty’s hair had darkened and grown out a little, with a shock starting to fall across her forehead once again. “I ain’t complainin’, though.” She looked over at the gazebo, where Buck stood, his hands in his pockets, staring back at her. “Buck’s been great, you know, since … since the accident.”
Ellen waved, and Natty waved back. “Your wife still sticks out in a crowd, don’t she, Charlie?”
He glanced over at Ellen. “She does that.”
“How’s she like her new house?”
Charlie turned back toward Natty. “We’re selling it this week.”
“She okay with that?”
He smiled. “She’s got a bigger one to play with in China.”
Natty continued to gaze over at Ellen. “I heard you were in China,” she said. “Like you always wanted, huh, Charlie? Buildin’ somethin’ important.”
“Yes, that’s right. It’s what I always wanted.”
Natty watched Ellen climb into the helicopter. “Looks like they’re waiting for you, Charlie.”
He took a step closer. “I’m glad you came, Natty. I wanted to see you.”
She flashed a brief smile. “Got most of my memory back now.” She turned her face toward the library on the hill. “Not all of it, though. Don’t remember her yet,” said Natty. “I stare and stare at that picture up there, and sometimes I get these quick flashes of her, kickin’ a ball or runnin’ down the field, but they’re gone in a second.” She looked back at Charlie. “Remember ’most everything else, though, ’cept for the accident.”
As Charlie watched her speak, surrounded by the green field and the forest behind her, his time with her suddenly flashed back to him—their runs along the mountain trail, the soccer games, their night at the Pocahontas Hotel with Woody and Mr. Jacks, the lobster party … falling in love with her. The helicopter whined impatiently on the baseball field.
“Hear some music once in a while from the show, and I think about New York.” Natty laughed. “What a weekend that was, huh, Charlie?”
Their eyes locked for a moment, sharing the memory of what almost was, then Natty turned toward the gazebo, where Buck stood with Pie and Cat.
“Funny how things work out sometimes,” she said.
Charlie looked down at her and stared into her eyes. “Yeah, it is,” he said. Natty smiled at him.
Charlie turned toward the helicopter. “Time to go,” he said.
Natty leaned on her cane and held out her right hand. “Thank you, Mr. Burden, for everything.”
Charlie took her hand and squeezed it softly. “Goodbye, Mrs. Oakes.” He turned and walked with long strides toward the helicopter.
Natty stood in the center of the field and watched as Charlie shook hands with Buck and Hank, hugged Mabel and Ada, and gave Pie a high-five and a long hug. As Charlie stepped into the helicopter, Natty walked back across the field toward the orange Camaro, her cane sinking into the soft new turf of the soccer field.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Mountaintop-removal coal mining is an environmental, ecological, political, and social catastrophe that all of America should be ashamed of. We’ve allowed the coal industry to turn one of the most beautiful, biodiverse, and ecologically rich areas of our country—North America’s oldest mountain range—into a national energy sacrifice zone. MTR has destroyed more than five hundred mountains and two thousand miles of streams. It poisons the land and it poisons communities and the people who live there.
Only in Appalachia, where the population is thin, powerless, and poor—where the coal industry has been systematically sucking out the wealth for the past hundred years while financing the careers of complicit state politicians and judges and members of Congress—could such a cancerous fissure in the integrity of our environmental consciousness take place.
Over the past fifteen years that I have been aware of mountaintop removal, there have been many optimistic signs that the movement to eradicate MTR was assuredly under way. In 1999, a courageous federal judge, the late Charles H. Haden II, ruled against the mining industry in an MTR suit brought under the Federal Clean Water Act. Environmentalists cheered this monumental ruling. Numerous websites documenting the destruction and desecration of MTR grew into voices for advocacy and activism. Volunteers marched on Charleston, Washington, and Blair Mountain. Celebrities like Bobby Kennedy, Kathy Mattea, Emmylou Harris, Sheryl Crow, Tim McGraw, Ashley Judd, and many others joined the movement. Great books were written, including Coal River, by Michael Shnayerson, and the epic achievement Plundering Appalachia, edited by Tom Butler and George Woerthner. Heart-wrenching documentaries like Burning the Future: Coal in America; Coal Country; and The Last Mountain delivered what had to be knockout blows. Prestigious environmental organizations, including the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club, embraced the fight against MTR and brought their great organizational skills and marketing resources to the cause. And then the Obama administration, with a mandate for change, swept into power, saying all the right things about MTR. Surely the end was near.
Yet, in spite of all this outcry, and in spite of the competition from shale natural gas, the coal industry continues to blast away the mountains, forests, and streams of West Virginia and Kentucky. Dozens of new sites have been permitted, with dozens of applications awaiting review or appeal. The EPA heroically suspended the permits for Mingo Logan Coal Company’s Spruce No. 1 MTR site in Logan County, West Virginia, and was hauled before a congressional committee to face the wrath of coal-friendly reps and their industry lobbyists. With the next Republican administration (as with the last one), the rate of mountaintop removal will again ratchet up to keep pace with our insatiable consumption of low-cost electricity, and destroying more Appalachian mountains will be a central component of our national energy policy.
To learn more about mountaintop-removal coal mining, and to perhaps add your voice to the outcry, start with the books and the documentaries mentioned above and the websites listed below.
iLove Mountains: www.iLoveMountains.org
Appalachian Voices: www.appvoices.org
Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition: www.ohvec.org
West Virginia Highlands Con
servancy: www.wvhighlands.org
Coal River Mountain Watch: www.crmw.net
Natural Resources Defense Council: www.nrdc.org
The Sierra Club: www.sierraclub.org
GERRY FITZGERALD
August 2012
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Redemption Mountain is a work of fiction. The characters, their thoughts, actions, and words are entirely the creation of the author and any resemblances found to an actual person are coincidental and inadvertent. The corporations named in the story are also fictitious.
All of the places referred to in the story are real with the notable exceptions of the town of Red Bone, Redemption Mountain, and Hickory Hills Country Club. McDowell County is in fact the southernmost county in West Virginia, located in the heart of the Pocahontas Coal Field that powered America’s industrial revolution and fueled the war machines that saved the world twice in the last century. Mamaroneck, New York, is a diverse city of seventeen thousand in Westchester County. New York, New York, remains the world’s greatest city, and Warren, Vermont, is very close to Heaven.
The historical events referred to in the story are real, well documented from numerous sources, and are described as factually and faithfully as I can determine. Hank’s personal account of the Buffalo Creek Disaster of 1972 borrows heavily from an enthralling and heartbreaking series of stories (largely the work of reporter Ken Ward Jr., mentioned below) published in the Charleston Gazette on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the tragedy in 1997. The December 6, 1907, coal mine explosion in Monongah, West Virginia, claimed the lives of 362 miners and remains this country’s worst coal mine disaster. On November 20, 1968, a fire in the Consol Mine in Farmington, West Virginia, killed seventy-eight miners. The original New York production of Les Misérables closed on March 15, 2003, after a sixteen-year run on Broadway.
Hank’s discourses on the West Virginia Mine Wars, the Matewan Massacre, and the subsequent fates of Sheriff Sid Hatfield and his deputy, Ed Chambers, are drawn from numerous sources, including: American Heritage Magazine, August 1974; The West Virginia Mine Wars by Cabell Phillips; “The Battle of Matewan,” www.matewan.com/History/battle2.htm; “West Virginia’s Mine Wars,” West Virginia Division of Culture and History, www.wvculture.org/history/minewars.html; and “Matewan,” United Mine Workers of America History, www.umwa.org/history/matewan.shtml.
For an understanding of the economics of the coal mining industry as well as what life was like in the coal fields during the last century, I am indebted to a wonderfully written book, Coal: A Memoir and Critique, by Duane Lockard (University Press of Virginia, 1998).
Throughout the writing of Redemption Mountain, I found myself continually referring back to and rereading parts of a wonderful book entitled The Heritage of McDowell County, West Virginia, 1858–1999, published by the McDowell County Historical Society and edited by Geneva Steele, Sandra Long, and Tom Hatcher. I came by this book through a chance online meeting of my friend Geneva Steele of Bradshaw, West Virginia, many years ago when I was just starting the book. She has supplied many helpful comments on the story over the years and I am in her debt.
The articles, columns, and blogs of Ken Ward Jr., of the Charleston Gazette, have educated me on the history of coal mining in West Virginia, coal mining safety, the attendant government bureaus and agencies, and the effects of mountaintop-removal coal mining in West Virginia as well as the machinations of local, state, and federal politicians who enable it to continue. Mr. Ward is an exhaustive reporter and a prolific, lucid writer whose style made every story enlightening, every paragraph a pleasure to read.
A great many people contributed to the publishing of Redemption Mountain. My agent, Loretta Barrett, was a rock and a great friend throughout a long process. My editors, Jill Lamar and Phyllis Grann, deserve medals for patience, as does Joanna Levine at Holt. My friend, Carol Churchill, reviewed the entire, massive first manuscript many years ago and provided invaluable help and encouragement.
I am fortunate to have a number of good friends who took a great interest in the book and provided an incredible level of support and encouragement. They can’t know how much their kind words and recommendations meant to me. I need to thank a few: Bob Page, Rich Dowling, Mike Aliberti, Pam Aronson, Kevin and Mary McCullough, Maryann and Fernando Goulart, John Skar, Dave Daniels, Joanne Carlisle, Debbie and Andy Okun, Donna Goff, Rolly Ciocca, Jay Hamilton, Gail Mathes, Korby Clark, Chris and Sue Mastroianni, Sheila Doiron, Tom Foley, and of course, Eddie Sheehan.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GERRY FITZGERALD has been in advertising for nearly thirty years, and owns an advertising agency in Springfield, Massachusetts. He holds a master’s in journalism from the Medill School at Northwestern University and is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He lives in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts, with his wife Robin, and has two children in college.
Reading Group Gold
Redemption Mountain
Gerry Fitzgerald
Discussion Questions
1. The story alternates from the bustling backdrop of New York City to the pristine landscape of West Virginia. What roles do the settings play in the story? How important are the locations in relation to the characters of the novel?
2. Natty has the will and tenacity of a strong woman, yet also exhibits the frailty of a young girl. Where do you think her insecurity stems from, and how does she grow throughout her journey throughout the novel? What contributes to her development?
3. Natty tells Charlie that “there’s a lot of heartache in these mountains,” referring to Southern West Virginia. In what ways does this statement resonate with the lives of the people of McDowell County?
4. What role does the Pie Man play in Natty and Charlie’s relationship? How does he, a young boy with a disability, act as a source of strength for the pair and for the community?
5. How does Charlie evolve throughout the novel? What is he searching for in the beginning of the novel, and what does he find during his time in West Virginia? What does he learn about himself?
6. Many of the characters in the novel have a longing to escape their circumstances and physical boundaries. Discuss the theme of being trapped or the desire to escape in the context of the novel.
7. Do you think that Buck is a sympathetic character? Natty believes that he is really a good person who just experienced a lot of hardship in his life. Do you think that everyone is capable of change regardless of their troubled past, if only you believe in them? Does Buck redeem himself in the end?
8. Natty and Charlie are from two different worlds, yet they both fill a void within the other that draws them together. Despite their apparent connection, however, they also have hope in the promise of their spouses and current marriages. Do you think that it is possible to love two people at the same time?
9. The story is also about big industry taking advantage of a small town. How is big business portrayed, and how are industries such as coal mining humanized in the novel? Does it make you rethink your ideas of how we garner our resources and the practices that are used?
10. With her undeniable talent, Emma seemed destined for greater things outside of West Virginia. Although she never got the opportunity to leave, how did she impact others? What was the legacy she left behind and what did she come to symbolize?
11. Should Natty have stayed with Buck after he beat her? Would her life have been better if she had left him for good after the beating?
12. The trip to New York is the perfect opportunity for Natty and Charlie to give in to their desires, yet they refrain from having an affair. Why? How does the trip away from Red Bone solidify the future of their relationship, and how does it affect both Natty and Charlie individually?
13. Charlie and Natty decide to go their separate ways despite their love for one another. Do you think they are both happy with this decision? Do you believe that they made the right decision? Do you believe in the adage that “it is better to have loved and lost than to never have lo
ved at all?”
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
FitzGerald, Gerry, 1949–
Redemption Mountain: a novel / Gerry FitzGerald.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-8050-9489-3
1. Housewives—Fiction. 2. Businessmen—Fiction. 3. Mineral industries—West Virginia—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3606.I8786R43 2013
813'.6—dc23
2012034073
First Edition 2013
eISBN 9781429952927
Redemption Mountain Page 50
