Redemption Mountain (7 page)

Natty knew that it was too late in life for Sarah to
just say no.
Drugs and the search for spiritual and psychological independence had been a part of Sarah's life too long for her to become somebody else's notion of a middle-aged grandmother. Her life had been uprooted, and, like a lot of other young people, she'd lost her way and a lot of her spirit during the 1960s. It was more coincidence than anything else that she'd finally found what she'd long been seeking on a tired little farm on Redemption Mountain.

In the afternoon, while the children played in the stream with Pete and Sarah, Natty took a quick run up to the cemetery to see Annie and her father. It was only about a mile, and afterward she'd race downhill all the way to the stream and plunge in, running shoes and all.

The DeWitt farm was about halfway up Redemption Mountain Road. A little farther up, the road split. The right fork continued to climb up the south side of the mountain, eventually running out at a rocky promontory. The left fork continued along the gently sloped north side for another half mile, until it came to the small cemetery.

Natty dropped to her knees between two gravestones and began to pull up the weeds that had escaped the attention of Grandma Alice, who regularly made the hike up to spend a few minutes with her two oldest boys and her granddaughter.
There's a lot of heartache in these mountains,
Alice was prone to lament, and nowhere was it more evident than at the cemetery on Redemption Mountain.

Her weeding done, Natty said a short prayer for her father and sister before the tears came, splattering on the cool, smooth marble. She wondered if her sadness over Annie's death would ever leave her. A good sweaty run in the heat would take care of today. She thought about Cat sitting in the stream and wanted to get down to her, to hold her and splash around in the cold water and make her laugh.

As Natty started back down, a white pickup sped up the road. Running into anyone on the mountain was rare. No one lived beyond the DeWitt farm, and there was something official-looking about the truck that made her curious.

She looked up the road, where the truck had disappeared. A short run up the hill would give her a vantage point from which she could see long stretches of the road as it weaved its way up the mountain. Adopting an innocent jogger's pace, Natty made her way up to investigate. As the south side of the mountain came into view, she was surprised to see two white pickup trucks, one parked at the side of the road, the other farther up the mountain. She was even more surprised to see several men who obviously were not on the mountain to enjoy the scenery. Two stood by the first white pickup, talking and occasionally pointing out some spot higher up the mountain. Another peered through an instrument mounted on a tripod. Next to him, an assistant stood with a black walkie-talkie and a clipboard. All of the men wore hard hats, blue jeans, and construction boots.

When they saw Natty approaching, one of the workers nodded at her. His partner stopped talking and turned to watch as she jogged toward them. Natty slowed to a walk, pretending to catch her breath.

“Hey, how you boys doin' today? Hot enough for ya?” Natty got no reply beyond a half smile from the man who held a walkie-talkie. “Don't see too many people up here, let alone on a Sunday, and working to boot.” Still no response. As Natty came even with the men, she stopped and wiped her forehead with the bottom of her shirt, exposing her thin waist. Behind the men, Natty saw the white pickup truck, a late-model Dodge with an extended cab. On the side of the door, a company logo was painted in dark green. It read,
SOUTHERN STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEYS
, and, under it,
HUNTINGTON, WEST VIRGINIA.

She didn't recognize the men, and it was a good bet they weren't from McDowell County. It was clear that they weren't going to volunteer any information. “So,” Natty said, as she looked around. “What are you all doin' up here?”

The man in charge avoided her eyes. After an awkward few seconds, the other man came to his aid. “We're just doing a little surveying, ma'am. Couple of days of readings, and we'll be done.”

“It's for the road project.” The supervisor had a deep, authoritative voice. “There's some federal money available for rebuilding mountain roads, and this one may qualify.” He took off his hard hat and headed for the door of the truck. It was obvious that the conversation was over.

Natty felt like she'd been dismissed, and her anger started to grow. “Well, sure, that makes sense. A new road.” She talked louder as the men walked away from her. “Could sure use a new road up here, what with all the traffic runnin' up and down Redemption Mountain. Like a damn freeway up here.” Both men climbed into the truck now, and she raised her voice further. “What we really need up here is a couple of stoplights and maybe a McDonald's.” Her sarcasm was lost in the roar of the big truck as it left Natty standing in a cloud of hot dust. She watched it drive up the road. “
Road project
—what a bunch of bullshit,” Natty said to herself as the truck pulled away. She turned and began her run down the mountain, curious to see if Bud and Pete knew what was going on.

*   *   *

N
ATTY HELPED ALICE
set the table and put out dinner. The children came in wet from their dip in the stream, followed by Sarah and Pete, who'd changed out of their wet clothing. Bud was the last to be seated.

While she was cutting Cat's chicken, Natty brought up the strange events she'd witnessed that afternoon. “Came across a whole bunch of men working at a surveying job up on the south road. I ran over to see what they were up to, but they were tighter than a new jar of pickles. Gave me some phony story about building a road.” Bud and Pete stopped eating and stared at her with grim looks. It was apparent that they knew something.

“So, what's going on?” Natty asked softly.

Sarah, too, was curious. “Petey, Bud, do you know something?” Bud was picking at his food, clearly reluctant to comment.

After a few moments, Pete spoke. “Th-they was up there a c-couple o' w-weeks ago. Seen one o' the trucks go by th-this morning.” Pete had stuttered all his life, and it pained him when he had to speak to more than one person.

Suddenly, Bud's deep voice filled the small dining room. “They're comin' for the coal.”

Sarah reacted immediately. “Coal? What coal, Bud? There's no coal up here.” Sarah didn't want to hear about coal. Coal meant nothing but heartache to her.

Bud DeWitt waited for silence. For seventy-two years he'd lived on the mountain, fifty-three of those years with his wife, Alice. He'd buried his parents, two brothers, a sister, two sons, and a granddaughter on the mountain, and he planned to be buried there, too. When Bud DeWitt talked about Redemption Mountain, it was time for everyone else to just listen.

Bud put down his fork, readying himself to tell the family what they had a right to know. “There is coal up here. A lot of coal. Big seam, about twelve foot thick, through most of the mountain, about halfway up. The mineral rights to Redemption Mountain was owned for years by a little company from down in Tazewell County, Ferris Mining. They ran a couple dog holes a few miles south of here and a deep shaft, as I recall, somewheres over near Jolo. Never much of a company, always non-union, lot of safety problems and such. They went bankrupt about the mid-sixties, but it got tied up in the courts, and I reckon the coal business lost track of Redemption Mountain.”

Bud paused to take a drink of his ice water. “Then, at the end of the seventies, early eighties, you know, the coal business was going bust, and they was closing the deep mines. Most of the coal taken was from the surface mines in Logan and Mingo Counties, not much from McDowell. I figured Redemption Mountain was safe. But…” He stopped and looked out the window with a grimace.

Something serious was going on that Natty couldn't quite figure out. “But
what,
Grandpa? Why is this a problem now?”

Bud looked across the table at her. “About two and a half years ago, I'm looking at the
Welch Daily
and I glance at the legal notices. I see the name Ferris Mining in there, so naturally it grabs my attention. I read all that small print and learn that all the assets of the Ferris Mining Company was purchased by Ackerly Coal.”

The name sent a shiver of recognition through Natty as she recalled that day, two years ago, when the helicopters came. The day the Canadian man gave her the OntAmex jacket. The night that Buck beat her.

“Now, that bothered me some, Ackerly getting the mineral rights,” Bud continued, pulling Natty back to the present. “Ackerly's a big company, does a lot of work in them big mountaintop mines in Logan and Mingo.”

Natty could see a scowl on her mother's face as she tried to understand how a seam of coal on Redemption Mountain could possibly affect their farm.

“I didn't think any more about it 'til I read about that circus down in Red Bone, and the fact that it was clear as day, they'd
already
made the deal with Ackerly to supply the coal. That smelled fishy to me, 'cause there's a number of companies in the southern counties already mining the low-sulfur soft coal they need for their power plant. But, okay, Ackerly's a big company, and maybe this OntAmex, which is a lot bigger than anything we ever been involved with, maybe that's how they like to do business.”

Sarah calmed down and started to eat her dinner. “Well, Bud, just because this Ackerly company's got a contract to supply coal for the new power plant doesn't mean they'll open a mine on Redemption Mountain.”

“Sarah, there's a little more to it,” Bud continued. “About a month after the picnic, they had some hearings about a number of permits the company would need from the county and the town of Red Bone. Them permits was what that whole picnic show was about, and it worked like a charm, with nary an objection to anything the company wanted to do. I guess it's understandable, when you're holding all the cards and offering all them jobs and tax dollars and whatnot. But I'm reading the story in the paper about the permits, and there's somebody from the governor's office, trying to grab all the credit for bringing the power plant here, who says, ‘And we're also pleased to announce that OntAmex Energy has agreed that all of the coal burned in the new plant will have to come from McDowell County.'”

Bud started to talk faster. “Now, for a second, don't think about
where
the coal is going to come from, just think about
whose deal it is.
This ain't something that the county commissioners negotiated. Those fellas mean well, but this is
way
out of their league. You can bet this was a deal made in Charleston, right at the beginning of this whole thing. And you can bet there was some serious negotiating going on, 'cause Ackerly Coal, and especially the OntAmex Energy Company, ain't about to let the poorest county in about the poorest state in the union tell them where to get their coal from.”

Sarah was getting impatient with Bud's explanation. “So, what are you saying, that—”

Bud cut her off softly. “I'm saying that the negotiating went something like, Okay, Mr. Governor, we'll guarantee that the coal comes from McDowell County
and
guarantee a couple of hundred, good-paying mining jobs to local residents, but you guys have to guarantee that Ackerly Coal will get a surface-mining permit for the piece of land known as Redemption Mountain, 'cause there's plenty of coal up there and we need to be able to get at it quick and cheap. That's why surveying crews are running all over this mountain.”

Bud paused to take a drink of water before continuing. “Sometime before the end of the year, they're going to come up here and take down all the trees and start blasting the top off this mountain, pushing it into the valleys, filling in all the hollows and covering the streams, and, sure enough, cover this farm under about a hundred feet of rock and sand.” Bud's voice was soft with helplessness now. “There's enough coal up here to run that plant for years, good low-sulfur coal, the kind they got to have for their power plant. And it'll mean a lot of good jobs, and politicians and the union and every out-of-work miner in McDowell County will support the project.”

“But, Bud,” Sarah protested, “there's a ban against new mountaintop-removal permits. I remember signing a petition last year for Save the Mountains, remember?”

Her father-in-law looked at her irritably. “Sarah, you ain't been listening! A deal's been made, I'm telling you. They'll find a way around that injunction, probably get another judge to suspend it temporarily, just long enough to get Ackerly a permit for Redemption Mountain. They'll make a deal with the environmental groups, 'cause nobody really cares about what happens down here. Ain't nobody living on Redemption Mountain 'cept some no-account hillbilly family running a dusty little pig farm.”

Natty was skeptical. “Grandpa, I don't know that it's going to be that easy to get a surface-mine permit for Redemption Mountain.”

Bud pushed his plate away without having eaten much. “Natty, you're too young to know it, but this is the way it's always been. It's the history of West Virginia. The big companies come here, they make a deal in Charleston, and they take the coal, the timber, and the gas, and they get rich. And the people get poorer and the land gets tore up, and the water gets fouled, and it's okay, 'cause there ain't hardly anybody left in the coal counties, and, besides, they're all just old and poor and uneducated and don't matter to no one!” When he finished, he was almost shouting. “Way it's always been,” he said, getting up from the table, letting his napkin fall to the floor. He went out through the kitchen to get back to work.

Alice DeWitt watched her husband leave, a pained expression on her face. She rarely spoke, so she immediately had everyone's attention. “Some men come up here a month ago and wanted to buy the farm,” she said. “Bud told me they offered him a hundred thousand dollars cash.”