“I don’t know, let me try. ‘Alexander the Great was no late bloomer… won his first battle at sixteen, you know,’ ” I said in my best Pops imitation.
He laughed and flicked a four of diamonds at me; it whizzed past my head. “You may think life is one long punch line, but Paitsel is heart-attack serious about trying to shut Bubba Boyd down. Guess he sees it as his mission for the honor of Paul’s memory.”
I nodded and Pops continued. “Says he found some documents in Paul’s papers that can prove Bubba’s pumping slurry underground without a permit. Says he’s got a friend outside Washington, D.C., who knows someone who knows someone in the Office of Surface Mining.”
“But it ain’t gonna bring the mountains back,” Buzzy replied.
“It ain’t gonna bring em back, but it might prevent others from being taken. Look, I know it’s a long shot, but at least someone’s doing something.”
We brought Pops home the following week, ambulance lights spinning in a three-car convoy. Paitsel and Lo had built a temporary ramp up the front porch steps, and we installed him and his wheelchair on the porch, with mash on ice in an SWP glass. Mom had painted a welcome-home banner and strung it across the front porch sash. The boys at Hivey’s arrived as a crew, walking up from the woodstove, Grubby Mitchell trailing behind them like an orphaned calf. Then came Lo, Chester, Paitsel, and some neighbors I’d not yet met, filling the porch and spilling into the living room.
“Pait, what’s the latest on the OSM inspector?” Pops asked once the conversation settled.
“Comin in two weeks, he says. Meetin up with Bubba an his site team to see for himself.”
“Who’s he bringin? I heard one a them fancy lawyers is comin,” Jesper asked.
Paitsel shook his head. “He’s a fed boy—them lawyers work for the Appalachian Project. Apparently he’s got the power to slap a CO on Bubba that’ll shut the whole thing down.”
“I thought they gave owners time to fix things. You sure he can issue a CO?”
“The feds got special powers. It’s the state that gotta give abatement.”
“An Bubba gots the state boys bought here to Frankfort. What makes you think he ain’t gonna buy thisn?”
Paitsel shrugged. “I don’t, Bobby. But the state boys is definitely bought, so we ain’t got many other options, do we?”
Everyone nodded and sipped, then went silent. No one tried to find deeper meaning in the horror of Paul’s death and the equal horror of how quickly Tilroy had turned. For the simple empirical was so terribly self-evident for all—a good man was beaten to death by a boy with promise. Trying to parse anything existential out of it or pontificate on the certainties of nurture just left a silent hole in the conversation until the awkward quiet got the better of someone.
“Paitsel, you done real good with this,” Jesper said.
“Umm-hmmm,” Andy Teel agreed.
“This is a top job, Pait,” Bobby Clinch added.
“Tis,” Chester agreed.
Chapter 41
THE CALLING IN
Bubba Boyd’s black Cadillac came slowly up the access road, as it always did when the demo team set up for a big blast. The car parked next to another new haul truck, three days deployed, and seemed remoralike against the massive yellow beast.
Bubba fingered the slurry pond report from Silas McCherry, his chief engineer, and pondered options. Paitsel’s mischief-making was an unwelcome complication, but manageable. This new protest group he organized was going to fizzle just like the others. But now, with the petition logged, the Mitchell farm permit would have to go through regular channels. Could be months. “Goddamn Paitsel,” he breathed.
“Yes, Mr. Boyd?” his driver said.
“Nuthin, Harlan.”
For two years, now, Silas had been naysaying the Cheek Mountain dig—telling him the void underneath was too unstable; complaining they should have used a centerline dam for containment. And now he said they couldn’t keep pumping into the Hogsback on the risk of a catastrophic collapse. Said the only option was to shut down until the permit came through and they could build more containment down mountain. But Wednesday shipped 270 tons—best day tally ever. Shut down, my ass.
It was Billy come up with the answer, he laughed to himself—simple, cheap, problem solved: make the dang crest ten, twelve foot higher with overburden. But Silas tried to kill that one too, until Bubba put his foot down.
McCherry was conferring with another hard hat when Bubba exited his car and walked toward them.
“Hey, Silas. Blaine. How you boys doin today?”
“Been better, Mr. Boyd,” Silas said and glanced over at the digger truck piling gravel and riprap on the dam crest. “Did you read my report?”
“I did. Seems like a jumble a mights an maybes.”
“Well, one thing I know for certain, just riprapping the crest ain’t gonna work. Every foot of slurry is gonna add about two thousand tons pushing down on the upstream toe. I didn’t build it for that kind of pressure. It may not fail right way, but it’s gonna fail.”
“In your opinion.”
“Yes, sir.”
Bubba smiled, patted him on the back. “Silas, let’s walk on up an watch this big-ass blow. I swear I never get tired a seein it.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Mr. Boyd. All the new crest rock is too unstable.”
Bubba blew a breath out his nose. “Up the dam’s the best place to watch a blow, son. You know that.” He started on the berm and after a few steps turned to Silas. “You comin?”
Together they slowly made their way up the dam face, Bubba pushing off his knees to facilitate each laborious step. At the crest, Silas stood hands on hips, assessing the overfilled lake of slurry. He pointed to where the black water lapped at the crest rock. “You see, sir. We’ve got no freeboard left. You just can’t add height to the wall without reinforcing the downstream face and toe. And we got no room to bolster downstream. All the weight of the new slurry is going to push on the base of the dam.”
“In your opinion.”
“Gravity ain’t my opinion, Mr. Boyd.”
The digger crew went off to gather more overburden and Bubba regarded the twelve feet of rock and gravel they had just added to the southern crest of the dam. “We jus need it to hold for a few months while we get Mitchell’s permitted.”
A piercing horn clanged across the site, silencing the tractors, idling the draglines, and stilling the haul trucks. Men exited their vehicles and turned to a vast shelf of carved-out mountain a hundred yards across and fifty yards high—the last shoulder of what had been Cheek Mountain. A single stand of orphaned trees stood at the top of the hill, their understory bushwacked away so that now they seemed like naked prisoners paraded out for public humiliation.
“Looks like the boys have set the blow,” Bubba said. “Gonna be our biggest one yet.” He rubbed his hands together excitedly. “Come on, Silas. Let’s climb on up an watch from the new top.” He was giddy now, like a boy readying to launch his first model rocket.
“Sir, I wouldn’t test the stability of the new riprap just yet. Give it a few days to settle.”
“I always like watchin from the top—where we’re at ain’t the top no more.”
“And, sir, blast this big, you really need to get your hard hat.”
He ignored Silas and started up the newly laid gravel to reach the upper crest of the dam, and once so achieved he stood, legs wide for the steady, and overlooked his domain. Two hundred and seventy thousand square feet of the black lake—seventy million gallons of slurry—then the wide, gray guts of Cheek Mountain.
The blast holes had been drilled at twenty-foot intervals in four lines across the top of the ridge, charged with ammonium nitrate, filled with number four fuel oil, then capped and wired.
Every time Bubba watched a blow, it brought him back to his youth, to the Fourth of July celebrations his daddy used to orchestrate in town. He’d bring in massive fireworks from New York and a few
Italians to dig and set the mortars. Daddy always let him light the fuse in those days, and that initial feeling of dominion, peculiar and comforting, spread its warmth within him like first liquor.
The trigger man looked up at the lone figure, high atop the riprap, to make sure he was ready, for he knew better than to detonate when Mr. Boyd was distracted. A flag man gave Bubba the signal, and the trigger man focused his binoculars on the crest. Bubba raised a hand from his side languidly, then slowly, purposefully turned his thumb up. A second horn sounded.
“I named it Mountain Heritage Action Network to attract all them former hippies an radicals up north.” Paitsel chuckled. “It worked. We got a busload comin in for the rally.” He passed Pops the flyer he had mailed to Jonathan Pendrick at the Appalachian Project in Washington, D.C.
We were on the porch at Chisold with him and Chester just as the sun started to fall. “This is good work, Pait,” Pops said, clearly impressed. “You’re doing Paul proud.”
Paitsel nodded sadly. “Yeah, I think so.”
“I’m running it free for the next week in the Register, plus doing a feature,” Chester said.
Pops pointed his pipe end to Paitsel. “How the heck you get Ralph Stanley and the Osborne Brothers to play?”
“Baseball buddy knows their manager. They’ll draw some folks.”
“You got that right. What kind of pushback are you getting from Bubba?”
“Nuthin yet. Other than he made sure we couldn’t have it in town. Jesper’s place is better anyway. The Company is organizing a counterrally in town, so having it on private land means less potential for trouble.”
“You watch yourself, Paitsel. Bubba Boyd is a ruthless son of a bitch with money and power behind him. You are nothing to him.”
“Yeah, but sometimes nuthin ain’t a bad hand.”
As soon as the trigger went, smoke from the firing explosives blew out of the holes in a right-to-left rhythm like some old phantom train, invisible but for its billowing shoots of white, erupting silent at first, then giving to staccato booms as the sound arrived. The concussion traveled the length of the escarpment, and Cheek Mountain seemed to shudder and swell as would a lumbering mastodon, surprised and indignant at the many spears of man. The mountain gathered itself for a moment, then collapsed at once in a great rumbling sigh as the hard rock shattered, the subsoil liquefied, and the orphan trees rode the rubble down to oblivion.
On the settle, a great gray cloud of dust pushed out and rolled across the lake toward Bubba, washing over him, washing through him as he stood spread legged and steadfast to the bulwark. As the dust cloud continued down mountain, he made no move to slough it from his sleeves, made no attempt to shake it from his pants, and indeed he wore the smithereens of Cheek Mountain proudly, a further stamp of his complete and total dominion.
As the explosion’s echo was fading, there began a low trembling from the bowels of the newly shorn earth, which many took for the settling of Cheek. It grew in pitch and violence, sending some men to the ground and causing the thick, black slurry to overslap its walls.
Bubba Boyd bent his knees and pushed his arms out to the side in an attempt to steady himself on the roiling crest. A particularly strong sway loosened the riprap, and the lot of it began to slide into the slurry with Bubba on the top, riding it down like a surfer. As he neared the lake, he began to backpedal, arms twirling in a vain play for balance and purchase. When the last of the riprap slid into the lake, Bubba pitched in with it, entering the slurry chin first, like a child taking a maiden poolside dive.
Silas would later testify that as Bubba flew through the air, the slurry lake opened up to receive him; he swore that the slurry parted prior to Bubba hitting the surface as if it was calling in one of its own. None of it can be verified, and it was likely just the action of the undulating water that Silas saw.
After a few seconds, Bubba’s head bobbed up, minstreled black, and he started backstroking to the shore, flailing both arms at once. The movement seemed only to draw Bubba deeper into the slurry. Silas rushed up the riprap, got down on his knees, reached out an arm.
“Grab my hand,” he implored.
Bubba moved a little closer.
“Grab my hand.”
But the slurry had other ideas. Bubba shimmied his body around so his right hand could grab McCherry’s. The movement pushed him well out of reach, and the pull of the slurry began to prevail. It was as if an ocean undertow had somehow found its way into the lake and was slowly drawing him down, drawing him under. The slurry was chin level now, then in his mouth. He spit out the black water, then bubbles as his mouth succumbed. He gave one final blow out when his nose went under, and he continued a slow sink until it was just his popping eye whites against the black of everything—surprised and indignant at the audacity of earth.
Seven hundred and fifty people packed into the Jensen farm for the rally. A banner strung between two poplars read:
Stop Mountaintop Removal Now!
Join the Mountain Heritage Action Network
The Osborne Brothers played first, then Ralph Stanley, then both bands together for a final rendition of “Paradise.” In between were speeches from Paitsel, Chester, and Jonathan Pendrick, and a moving tribute from Betty Dodger about Simp’s love for the wild places. Pops, only a week out of the hospital, watched from Jesper’s back porch with a satisfied grin.
The counterprotest in the parking lot off Main Street drew three hundred surface miners from across the county and their families, an impressive turnout considering there was only free barbecue and beer. Hand-painted signs sprinkled the crowd:
These Are Our Mountains!
Coal Is Good
A clown roamed the coal party making balloon animals for the kids. Someone else was painting faces.
Bubba’s death and the manner in which it befell him dominated the talk at the protest and counterprotest. At one they spoke of a celestial reckoning, an overdue comeuppance; at the other talk was of bad luck, unclear futures, and a family’s grief.
All their lives they had taken bearings on the certainty of his presence; some found freedom in abdicating authority; others hackled at his dominion over their lives. For them there was confederacy in a common enemy; others took ease in determined prospects. But all felt comfort of the familiar.
And now, with him gone and the draglines idled, uncertainty was their new incumbent, accountability a sudden, unwelcome companion. They took up their lives like the newly paroled, gingering these found freedoms and secretly dreading their ambiguity. He was a common adversary to rally opposition, a tangible benefactor with whom to unite. Whether set hard for or against, now their notion and understanding of things hung on abstraction. Now they had to fathom out an uncertain future. Had to disentangle the unknown.
Chapter 42
NEEDFULS
When the OSM inspector finally came and saw the filled-up slurry pond, he immediately halted the Cheek Mountain dig. The state regulators scheduled a hearing in Frankfort the next week to fast-track the new containment pond on the Mitchell farm.
I brought Pops out to the porch later that week with morning coffee and the paper. I locked his wheels and adjusted the light blanket in his lap. “Thank you, son. Your superior nursing is tempting me to remain a permanent invalid.”
“Don’t get too used to it; after next week you are on your own.”
Mom pushed out the front door with coffee and sat next to him.
“Well, we wanted to talk to you about that. We think it would be best if you and your mom stayed here for a while longer.”
“I’ve got school. What about Dad? What about my friends?”
“Not sure about any of that, but let’s talk it through. On school, you could enroll in Missi High School with Buzzy. Try it for a semester, and if you don’t like it, switch back to Redhill for second semester.”
“Do you want to stay, Mom?”
She rubbed her arms as if a sudden chill had taken her. “I don’t think I c
an ever go back to that house. At least not anytime soon.”
“What about Dad?”
“I don’t know.”
It took me a nanosecond to weigh my options. “I’m not leaving you.”
She held out a hand. I took it.
“All right, it’s settled. I’ll call Edward tonight and the school tomorrow. Better alert the sheriff too; the girls at Missi High are liable to riot on first day.”
Mom smiled. I rolled my eyes.
Audy Rae pulled up in her car. Today was her day off and she usually used it to deliver canned goods, clothing, and other items to the county’s poorest. Sometimes Mom came along if she felt up to it.
“Got the Budgets on my list this week,” she said to Pops. “I don’t know what the Lord is trying to tell me with that one.”
“He’s trying to tell you that Darwin was right.”
Audy Rae shook her head. “Something.” She turned to Mom. “You up for a ride out to Beaver Holler, Annie? You and Lucille knew each other from high school.”
“I’d like that,” she said softly. “Maybe there’s some comfort I can offer.”
“That’s a kind thing, honey. I think she would appreciate the thought.”
“Can I go too?” I asked. “I can help carry stuff.” Since Tilroy’s death three weeks ago, the Budget clan had not come into town, talked to the Register, or emerged from their cloistered hollow. I was curious about how they were managing their grief and wanted to try to thank Gov Budget again for helping Pops. We took the truck, three across the front bench, through town and out Route 17 to Beaver Hollow Road.
We arrived at the cul-de-sac to a yapping dog and bleatings from the two goats the Budget clan had acquired over the summer. Lucille Budget was sitting on her front porch in an aluminum lawn chair, watching her ten-year-old son throw stones at the barking hound tied to a tree in the front yard.
“Hey, you, come over here,” she yelled to Audy Rae as we got out of the car. I was carrying a paper bag that contained an assortment of canned goods and secondhand clothing. Audy Rae had even cleaned out Pops’ disused clothing closet and added some of her family’s old wearables.
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