“Greed is a vice to be reckoned with,” Pops said.
“So is Bubba Boyd,” Lo piped in.
“You can’t just blame Bubba and his crowd. You’ve got the folks who sold him the land or the rights, the miners working the mountain, and everyone else who likes the money it brings.” Pops shook his head and took a sip of mash.
“I’m happy just to blame that fat-ass Bubba. He and his kin have been raping the mountains since we were kids. It’s just gotta stop,” Chester said.
“As a member of the fourth estate, you have a tool to rile the masses,” Pops replied with a wink over to me.
Chester nodded purposefully. “I do, and I intend to use it. Been working with Paul and his people at the Appalachian Project up in Washington—doing a major feature on surface mining and its effect on the environment and the towns. Coming out in two weeks. They even have a new name for it, you know.”
“What’s that? Cutting off your mountains to spite your future? Redneck plunder?”
“Mountaintop removal is what they call it now,” Paitsel cut in.
Pops whistled. “That is catchy, if not precise. More malevolent than surface mining and more descriptive than strip mining. I like it.”
“Boys from Washington are comin to Paul’s meetin tonight with all their facts and figures. We get enough folks takin a stand, I reckon we can stop em.”
Pops was skeptical. One of his eyes closed to a slit. “Facts and figures don’t mean spit, Paitsel, and you know it, especially coming from some Washington do-gooder come down trying to help the ignorant hillbillies.”
“He is an expert on strip minin, apparently.”
“People don’t care about experts; they care about Betty Dodger being a widow.” Pops pointed the end of his never-lit pipe at Paitsel for emphasis. “They care about black water coming out of the faucets up in Corbin Hollow. They care about their neighbors getting sick from all this crap in the water.”
“They’ve done an exhaustive study of the environmental impact in West Virginia,” Chester defended.
Pops shook his head. “Focus on the local, Chester. What folks know and can see and touch.”
Chester sat back and nodded, contemplating the advice. Lo was feeling left out of the conversation and piped in. “I ain’t been sick yet this year.”
Pops smiled. “That’s a blessing, Lo. We would miss your scintillating wit on this porch.”
“My cousin Rafus says he caught hives from them new T-shirts theys sellin at Pic-n-Pay. Says the Chinese put something in the cotton to make us all itch.”
“Dang Chinese never came up with an original idea in their lives. Stole that one from the British,” Chester said, chuckling.
“Paper and printing were pretty original, if you ask me, Mr. Newspaperman,” Pops said with a laugh.
Chester grinned and raised his glass. “Touché.”
Pops slapped his thighs and stood to stretch. “Well, we’d better get on over so we can get the good seats before the selfish people take em.”
“Red rashes on their back an legs. They all got it up Corbin, most up Pigeon an Goat Leg got it too.”
“Does it itch? I heard it’s a powerful itch.”
“Itches like they been poxed with sumac.”
“I bet my soda poultice take that itch right away.”
“No, ma’am. Soda don’t work on it.”
The other lady sniffed. “My poultice works on everthin.”
Other snips of conversation were floating around the crowded hall. Two laid-off miners were arguing the merits of goat manure over horse manure in tomato cultivation. A handful of women were leaning in to each other, whispering quilting-party protocol. Others were worrying on which casserole to bring Betty Dodger. Two men were turned around in the front row listening to another describe the gray water that had been coming out of his faucets. Grubby Mitchell, Jesper Jensen, Bobby Clinch, and other men from the back of Hivey’s were standing in the fifth row, bent down in a huddle.
The place was filling up fast as Pops, Chester, Lo, and I settled into seats in the middle. Paitsel walked to the front row, removed an International Harvester hat that had been placed on the seat, and sat.
Mr. Paul, crisp in brown pants, white shirt, and blue tie, was speaking to a young man with tussled black hair, jeans, and a gray sport coat. The man was listening intently as Mr. Paul chopped a flat hand into his palm to emphasize some point.
I turned around and saw that every seat in the place had been taken—people lining the walls as if it was Easter service. In the middle of the aisle on a chair was a projector with a half-filled carousel of slides. A bedsheet screen hung from pipe-strung twine. Mr. Paul looked at his watch, nodded to the stranger, then moved to the middle.
“With the PA system broke, I’m going to have to speak loudly, so if any of y’all in the back can’t hear me, just give a shout.” Folks nodded. “Thanks to all of you for coming tonight. And thanks also to Mayor Smith for letting us use the hall. Mayor, are you here? Mayor?” Mr. Paul scanned the audience. “Well, anyway, I think this is probably one of the most important meetings we are ever going to have in this town. I’ve lived here nearly all my life, just like all of you, and these beautiful mountains and hills that surround us are as much a part of this town as each and every one of us. They were here before us, and they should be here long after we are gone. But Bubba Boyd and the Company want to change all that. They already have blown the tops off Indian Head, Sadler, and Cheek, and completely filled in Corbin Hollow. It is unrecognizable from what it once was. The Company thinks they have dominion over the mountains, but I say that is wrong. The only one who has dominion over these mountains is God himself.” Most folks nodded at the invocation. “The Company has been taking wealth from this land all our lives. They have been taking and taking and giving nothing back. Think about it. What have we ever got from the Company?”
“A job,” someone said from the back.
“I will give you that,” Mr. Paul replied. “They’ve paid us well for our efforts. Until they don’t need us anymore, then they discard us like old shoes. They’ve been taking and taking from the start, and now they want to take away the mountains themselves. I say… enough!” He stamped his foot on the tile floor; the sound banged across the silent room. “Enough,” he shouted and pounded his foot again. Several folks nodded. “Do you know what mountaintop removal has done? That’s what it’s called now, mountaintop removal. Do you know what mountaintop removal has done to other communities? Devastated them. Destroyed them.”
People were sitting forward in their seats now. Men were scratching at their stubble, ladies fidgeting with their bracelets.
“I have with me tonight a very distinguished gentleman from Washington, D.C., who works for the Appalachian Project, which helps small towns like ours fight for our rights. He’s going to show you a slideshow of what mountaintop removal has done to other towns. I would like to introduce you to Mr. Jonathan Pendrick from the Appalachian Project.” Mr. Paul clapped his hands enthusiastically, and most in the crowd followed, albeit less so. Jon Pendrick walked fervently to the middle of the stage. He took off his jacket to sweat blooms under his arms; his five-o’clock shadow seemed a black smear against his white skin. He picked up the projector remote and clicked it. Nothing happened. He clicked again, then again. Still nothing. Mr. Paul moved quickly to the projector and turned it on. A white light square flashed on the bedsheet screen. “I think we are ready, Mr. Pendrick,” Mr. Paul said. Pendrick clicked the remote and a slide appeared on the screen:
The Residual Effect of Mountaintop Removal on Constituent Towns in Bituminous Coalfields in West Virginia
A Pictorial Study by The Appalachian Project
© Copyright 1985 The Appalachian Project
“Hello, everybody. I’m from Washington, D.C., and I’m here to help,” he said and chuckled. No one laughed. The single standing oscillating fan moved its head from right to left and back again across the room as if it was coun
ting the crowd. He cleared his throat. “That’s… that’s a joke we tell sometimes when we go out into the field. Cause, you see, most folks don’t think much help ever comes from Washington, D.C., you see.” Silence. Staring. He cleared his throat. “Right, well, let’s start, then.” He clicked the slide projector. A beautiful row of mountains, fourteen by my count, and green with trees. A light mist rose from one of the hollows to a sparkling sky that held up a few cloud wisps. “This is an aerial view of the Dawson Range in Wayson County, central West Virginia. This picture was taken in 1980, when all of the mining activity in the county was underground. Beginning in 1982, Jayco Energy started a massive mountaintop removal operation once the underground seams ceased to be productive. Now, here’s the same Dawson Range in 1984.” He pointed the remote at the projector and thumbed the button. The slide advanced to an unrecognizable moonscape of gray rock and flattened land. Seven of the mountains in the middle of the range had been hauled away, leaving a flat, bleak expanse of rock and erosion completely devoid of vegetation.
A few folks in the audience gasped.
“They jus cut the tops right off,” someone said.
“That’s what theys done to Indian Head an Sadler,” another said.
Pendrick picked up a pointer and moved to the bedsheet screen. “You see this slurry pond right here?” He circled a black lake with the pointer. “Six months after this photo was taken, the dam here burst and two hundred million gallons of coal slurry flowed down the hollow into the Clemet River.” He pressed the advance and the picture changed to a hollow swamped in black water; a double-wide askew and half submerged; two pickups pressed against a tree as black water swirled around them; a family on the roof of their house, watching forlornly as their steer fought the force of the black flood. “Eleven people drowned that day.” He paused so the import could settle. “The Environmental Protection Agency has called the Dawson flood the worst environmental disaster east of the Mississippi.”
“I seen it on the news,” someone said. Others nodded.
“My sister’s ex-husband grew up in Dawson. Had kin kilt that day,” someone else volunteered.
“Indeed, slurry ponds are a toxic cocktail of heavy metals, chemicals, and all kinds of harmful contaminants,” Pendrick added. “And if you think Dawson was bad, the horror continues.” Pendrick clicked the remote and the slide advanced to another bucolic set of flowing mountains, then the same mountains butchered and shorn of themselves. Each image more jarring and disturbing than the last. Spivey’s Corner. Keller’s Run. Big Wayson’s Gap. All denuded, removed, smoothed over and planted to meager grassland. “This one is the Shiloh Run range, where Deeds Energy has…”
Suddenly the double doors at the back burst open and banged against their stops. One of the largest men I had ever seen waddled into the room. Heads swiveled and folks murmured as he strode down the center aisle. He had the bearing and the belly of a retired football lineman. His thick arms hung low at his sides and his palms faced backward as he walked. His buttocks were boulders as they drew in the seam of his gabardine pants tight to the space between them. Tree-trunk thighs swishing friction on every step. His face seemed pulled taut, as if adipose tissue was stretching his skin to its natural limits. His neck fell directly down from his jaw, tongue hung languidly on the edge of his mouth. Lips better fit for fish.
A younger, smaller duplicate followed four steps behind, matching his father’s duck gait, arms swinging in time. A third man, face cut to a practiced frown, moved to the far corner of the room, arms crossed.
“Sir,” Pendrick said. “The seats up front are all taken, but I’m sure we can find you one somewhere.” The men kept walking down the center aisle, footsteps clicking linoleum. Other than their tapping heels, which worked as one, the only sound was the harmonized whoosh of the fan and the projector. The larger man went to the projector cord and snatched it out of the wall socket, plunging the hall into twilight. “Excuse me,” said Pendrick. The man ignored Pendrick, brushed past him to a bank of light switches on the wall. He flicked all of them on. Everyone looked around, blinking in the new bright. He went to the bedsheet screen and, with a sharp tug, pulled it down. He balled it up and threw it aside.
“Bubba Boyd, what the heck you think you are doing? I reserved this time with the mayor and you’ve no right to burst in here like this.” Mr. Paul’s hands were on his hips and his face was building to crimson.
“Yeah, well, I own this goddamn building, so I reckon I can do as I please.”
Folks were silent, some mouths open.
“You may own it, but the town leases it from you, so you can’t just come in here and disrupt our meeting.”
“Oh yeah? You got a copy a the lease on you? Dint think so.” He turned to the audience, then licked his lips and smacked them together to spread the moisture. “Hey there, Hep. How’s Margie an the boys doin?”
A man in the fourth row nodded. “Doin fine.”
“Frank, how’s Eric’s knee healing up? Cleo Fink’s gonna need him hundert percent come September. Dang kids an their minibikes.” He chuckled, then moved to the center. Paul and Pendrick were beside him and seemed inconsequential by comparison. “Hey, Wade, Joe Bob,” Bubba said and waved, smiling.
He turned to face the crowd. “Y’all know me. Know my family. Know I’ve lived in this town all of my life. An y’all know how much I love this town an I ain’t about to lay around an watch it die. But the mines is all played out, an if we don’t find a way to get jobs back in this town, it will die. I don’t want that. Do you want that?”
Most in the audience shook their heads. Pops’ face was red with anger.
“I dint think so.” Bubba licked his lips. His son, off to the side now, did the same. “But there is still coal up there in the hills. And there are still coal jobs to be had on these mountains. Right now, today, I got a hundert twenny-five men workin up Sadler. Paul, how many folks you hired at the Notion Shop this month?” Paul glowered straight on and crossed his arms. Bubba put a thick hand to his ear. “How many was that? I dint think so.” Another lip licking.
“You are raping the mountains,” Pendrick yelled. The arteries and veins in his neck were pulsing with indignation. “It’s an abomination.”
Bubba whirled around and regarded Pendrick with a dismissive half smile. “Are you the Jew boy come down from Washington, D.C., to save us poor ignorant hillbillies?”
“I’m not Jewish.”
“I heard you was Jewish.”
“I’m Lutheran.”
“You look like a Jew boy to me.”
“My mother is Italian,” he replied defensively.
Bubba sniffed, turned to the crowd, and confided. “That’s what all them Jews do, try to pass themselves off as Eye-talians.” He adjusted his belt buckle, licked his lips again, and continued. “Friends, you know that my family has brought jobs to this valley for years. Good jobs. Jobs that pay a fair wage for a fair day’s work. But now the only way to keep those jobs is to go at the coal from the top. The seams are too thin an unstable. The only way to get at it is from the top. All the other digs is played out—y’all know that. So if we are gonna create jobs for Medgar folks, we gotta dig at it from the top. You want work, it’s gotta come out the mountain. That’s the choice.” He looked from face to face. Men were looking down at their shoes, pulling at their ears. Some were feeling the back of their scalps. Bubba continued. “I love this town more than anything in the world. But you know what gets me riled. Is when some Jew boy from Washington, D.C., comes down here an tells us how to run ourselves.”
Pendrick shook his head and said again. “I’m not Jewish; I’m Lutheran.”
Bubba ignored him and continued. “He talks about abomination. I’ll tell you what’s an abomination that will not abide. An that’s a sodomite abomination destroyin this town. I will not allow a homosexual abomination to take jobs away from all a you.” At the mention of Sodom, heads shot up. On homosexual the place went all atwitter. “That’s righ
t, folks. I heard the rumors jus like you did, an I found out that they are true! Paul Pierce and his homosexual lover, who ain’t even from here, are living in an unholy an debauched union right here in our town.” His voice raised to a shout. He turned to Mr. Paul and pointed. “You are an abomination to the Lord with your homosexual goins-on in that house.” Mr. Paul’s face was chalk, mouth opening and closing. Bubba Boyd looked back to the audience and lowered his voice to a level that implied reason. “I’m sayin it now, friends, cause it needs to be said.”
Pops stood and brushed past us to the aisle. “Bubba, you crossed…”
“Arthur, you sit yourself right down, now.” It was Mr. Paul. Pops paused, folded his arms, and stood astride the aisle. Mr. Paul moved off the low stage, took two steps down to the audience level. “Look, you all have known me since I was a kid. I’ve lived in this town most of my life too, and you all know what it means to me. Paitsel and me have lived on Green Street in our place for eighteen years. And now folks have been spreading talk about me being homosexual. So what if I am? Is that gonna change what’s happening up on that mountain? It’s not gonna make the water up Corbin Hollow clear. It’s not gonna bring Simp back for Betty. We all need to decide—”
“We ain’t decidin nothin—” Bubba Boyd broke in and started to continue before Pops cut him off.
“Let… him… finish!” Pops yelled with a booming voice that rebounded off the walls and carried outside. He had slowly worked his way to the back of the hall, and the admonition seemed like a calling from the heavens above. A few heads turned, but everyone recognized the voice; knew of the bad blood between Pops and Bubba Boyd; knew the history. Bubba opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. Like all bullies, he was flummoxed when challenged. Bubba’s man in the back corner took a step toward Pops, but Bubba waved him off with a subtle shake of his head.
“Like I said,” Paul repeated. “This isn’t about me. It’s about the kind of people we want to be. I, for one, will live here poor with my mountains and hollers and streams rather than take the Company’s blood money.”
The Secret Wisdom of the Earth Page 8