Gray Mountain Read online

  forty, she guessed, with shaggy dark hair, at least three days’ worth of stubble, and dark sad eyes. As they backed away, she said, “Wait, I need to text some people.”

  “Sure. You’ll have good service for a few miles.”

  She texted her mother, father, and Blythe with the news that she was no longer at the jail and things seemed to be improving, under the circumstances. Don’t worry, yet. She felt safer, for the moment. She would call and explain later.

  When the town was behind them, he began: “Romey’s not really a cop, or a constable, or anyone with any authority. The first thing you need to understand is that he’s not all there, got a couple of screws loose. Maybe more. He’s always wanted to be the sheriff, and so from time to time he feels compelled to go on patrol, always around Dunne Spring. If you’re passing through, and you’re from out of state, then Romey will take notice. If your license plates are from, say, Tennessee or North Carolina, then Romey won’t bother you. But if you’re from up north, then Romey gets excited and he might do what he did to you. He really thinks he’s doing a good thing by hauling in reckless drivers, especially folks from New York and Vermont.”

  “Why doesn’t someone stop him?”

  “Oh we try. Everybody yells at him, but you can’t watch him twenty-four hours a day. He’s very sneaky and he knows these roads better than anyone. Usually, he’ll just pull over the reckless driver, some poor guy from New Jersey, scare the hell out of him, and let him go. No one ever knows about it. But occasionally he’ll show up at the jail with someone in custody and insist that they be locked up.”

  “I’m not believing this.”

  “He’s never hurt anyone, but—”

  “He fired a shot at another driver. My ears are still ringing.”

  “Okay, look he’s crazy, like a lot of folks around here.”

  “Then lock him up. Surely there are laws against false arrest and kidnapping.”

  “His cousin is the sheriff.”

  She took a deep breath and shook her head.

  “It’s true. His cousin has been our sheriff for a long time. Romey is very envious of this; in fact, he once ran against the sheriff. Got about ten votes county-wide and that really upset him. He was stopping Yankees right and left until they sent him away for a few months.”

  “Send him away again.”

  “It’s not that simple. You’re actually lucky he didn’t take you to his jail.”

  “His jail?”

  Donovan was smiling and enjoying his narrative. “Oh yes. About five years ago, Romey’s brother found a late-model sedan with Ohio tags parked behind a barn on their family’s farm. He looked around, heard a noise, and found this guy from Ohio locked in a horse stall. It turns out Romey had fixed up the stall with chicken wire and barbed wire, and the poor guy had been there for three days. He had plenty of food and was quite comfortable. He said Romey checked on him several times a day and couldn’t have been nicer.”

  “You’re making this up.”

  “I am not. Romey was off his meds and going through a bad time. Things got ugly. The guy from Ohio raised hell and hired lawyers. They sued Romey for false imprisonment and a bunch of other stuff, but the case went nowhere. He has no assets, except for his patrol car, so a civil suit is worthless. They insisted he be prosecuted for kidnapping and so on, and Romey eventually pled guilty to a minor charge. He spent thirty days in jail, not his jail but the county jail, then got sent back to the state mental facility for a tune-up. He’s not a bad guy, really.”

  “A charmer.”

  “Frankly, some of the other cops around here are more dangerous. I like Romey. I once handled a case for his uncle. Meth.”

  “Meth?”

  “Crystal methamphetamine. After coal, it’s probably the biggest cash crop in these parts.”

  “Can I ask you something that might seem a bit personal?”

  “Sure. I’m your lawyer, you can ask me anything.”

  “Why do you have that gun in the console?” She nodded at the console just below her left elbow. In plain view was a rather large black pistol.

  “It’s legal. I make a lot of enemies.”

  “What kind of enemies?”

  “I sue coal companies.”

  She assumed an explanation would take some time, so she took a deep breath and watched the road. After recounting Romey’s adventures, Donovan seemed content to enjoy the silence. She realized he had not asked what she was doing in Noland County, the obvious question. At Thack’s Bridge, he turned around in the middle of the road and parked behind the Prius.

  She said, “So, do I owe you a fee?”

  “Sure. A cup of coffee.”

  “Coffee, around here?”

  “No, there’s a nice café back in town. Mattie’s in court and will likely be tied up until five, so you have some time to kill.”

  She wanted to say something but words failed her. He continued, “Mattie’s my aunt. She’s the reason I went to law school and she helped me through. I worked with her clinic while I was a student, then for three years after I passed the bar. Now I’m on my own.”

  “And Mattie told you I would show up for an interview?” For the first time she noticed a wedding ring on his finger.

  “A coincidence. I often stop by her office early in the morning for coffee and gossip. She mentioned all these e-mails from New York lawyers suddenly looking for do-gooder work, said one might show up today for an interview. It’s kind of amusing, really, for lawyers like us down here to see big-firm lawyers running for the hills, our hills. Then I happened to be at the jail seeing a client when your pal Romey showed up with a new trophy. And here we are.”

  “I wasn’t planning to return to Brady. In fact, I was planning to turn that little red car around and get the hell out of here.”

  “Well, slow down when you go through Dunne Spring.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  A pause as they stared at the Prius, then he said, “Okay, I’ll buy the coffee. I think you’ll enjoy meeting Mattie. I wouldn’t blame you for leaving, but first impressions are often wrong. Brady is a nice town, and Mattie has a lot of clients who could use your help.”

  “I didn’t bring my gun.”

  He smiled and said, “Mattie doesn’t carry one either.”

  “Then what kind of lawyer is she?”

  “She’s a great lawyer who’s totally committed to her clients, none of whom can pay her. Give it a shot. At least talk to her.”

  “My specialty is financing skyscrapers in Manhattan. I’m not sure I’m cut out for whatever work Mattie does.”

  “You’ll catch on quick, and you’ll love it because you’ll be helping people who need you, people with real problems.”

  Samantha took a deep breath. Her instincts said, Run! To where, exactly? But her sense of adventure convinced her to at least see the town again. If her lawyer carried a gun, wasn’t that some measure of protection?

  “I’m buying,” she said. “Consider it your fee.”

  “Okay, follow me.”

  “Should I worry about Romey?”

  “No, I had a chat with him. As did his cousin. Just stay on my bumper.”

  A quick tour of Main Street revealed six blocks of turn-of-the-century buildings, a fourth of them empty with fading “For Sale” signs taped to the windows. Donovan’s law office was a two-story with large windows and his name painted in small letters. Upstairs, a balcony hung over the sidewalk. Across the street and down three blocks was the old hardware store, now the home of the Mountain Legal Aid Clinic. At the far west end was a small, handsome courthouse, home to most of the folks who ran Noland County.

  They stepped into the Brady Grill and took a booth near the back. As they walked by a table, three men glared at Donovan, who seemed not to notice. A waitress brought them coffee. Samantha leaned in low and said quietly, “Those three men up there, they seemed to dislike you. Do you know them?”

  He glanced over his shoulder, then nodded and s
aid, “I know everyone in Brady, and I’d guess that maybe half of them hate my guts. As I said, I sue coal companies, and coal is the biggest employer around here. It’s the biggest employer throughout Appalachia.”

  “And why do you sue them?”

  He smiled, took a sip of coffee, and glanced at his watch. “This might take some time.”

  “I’m really not that busy.”

  “Well, coal companies create a lot of problems, most of them anyway. There are a couple of decent ones, but most care nothing about the environment or their employees. Mining coal is dirty business, always has been. But it’s far worse now. Have you heard of mountaintop removal?”

  “No.”

  “Also known as strip-mining. They started mining coal in these parts back in the 1800s. Deep mining, where they bore tunnels into the mountains and extracted the coal. Mining has been a way of life here since then. My grandfather was a miner, so was his father. My dad was another story. Anyway, by 1920, there were 800,000 coal miners in the coalfields, from Pennsylvania down to Tennessee. Coal mining is dangerous work, and it has a rich history of labor troubles, union fights, violence, corruption, all manner of historical drama. All deep mining, which was the traditional way. Very labor-intensive. Around 1970, coal companies decided they could strip-mine and save millions on labor costs. Strip-mining is far cheaper than deep mining because it requires much fewer workers. Today there are only 80,000 coal miners left and half of them work above the ground, for the strip miners.”

  The waitress walked by and Donovan stopped for a second. He took a sip of coffee, glanced casually around, waited until she was gone, and continued. “Mountaintop removal is nothing but strip-mining on steroids. Appalachian coal is found in seams, sort of like layers of a cake. At the top of the mountain there is the forest, then a layer of topsoil, then a layer of rock, and finally a seam of coal. Could be four feet thick, could be twenty. When a coal company gets a permit to strip-mine, it literally attacks the mountain with all manner of heavy equipment. First it clear-cuts the trees, total deforestation with no effort at saving the hardwoods. They are bulldozed away as the earth is scalped. Same for the topsoil, which is not very thick. Next comes the layer of rock, which is blasted out of the ground. The trees, topsoil, and rock are often shoved into the valleys between the mountains, creating what’s known as valley fills. These wipe out vegetation, wildlife, and natural streams. Just another environmental disaster. If you’re downstream, you’re just screwed. As you’ll learn around here, we’re all downstream.”

  “And this is legal?”

  “Yes and no. Strip-mining is legal because of federal law, but the actual process is loaded with illegal activities. We have a long, ugly history of the regulators and watchdogs being too cozy with the coal companies. Reality is always the same: the coal companies run roughshod over the land and the people because they have the money and the power.”

  “Back to the cake. You were down to the seam of coal.”

  “Yeah, well, once they find the coal, they bring in more machines, extract it, haul it out, and continue blasting down to the next seam. It’s not unusual to demolish the top five hundred feet of a mountain. This takes relatively few workers. In fact, a small crew can thoroughly destroy a mountain in a matter of months.” The waitress refilled their cups and Donovan watched in silence, totally ignoring her. When she disappeared, he leaned in a bit lower and said, “Once the coal is hauled out by truck, it’s washed, which is another disaster. Coal washing creates a black sludge that contains toxic chemicals and heavy metals. The sludge is also known as slurry, a term you’ll hear often. Since it can’t be disposed of, the coal companies store it behind earthen dams in sludge ponds, or slurry ponds. The engineering is slipshod and half-assed and these things break all the time with catastrophic results.”

  “They store it for how long?”

  Donovan shrugged and glanced around. He wasn’t nervous or frightened; he just didn’t want to be heard. He was calm and articulate with a slight mountain twang, and Samantha was captivated, both by his narrative and his dark eyes.

  “They store it forever; no one cares. They store it until the dam breaks and there’s a tidal wave of toxic crud running down the mountain, into homes and schools and towns, destroying everything. You’ve heard of the famous Exxon Valdez tanker spill, where a tanker ran into the rocks in Alaska. Thirty million gallons of crude oil dumped into pristine waters. Front-page news for weeks and the entire country was pissed. Remember all those otters covered with black muck? But I’ll bet you haven’t heard of the Martin County spill, the largest environmental disaster east of the Mississippi. It happened eight years ago in Kentucky when a slurry impoundment broke and 300 million gallons of sludge rolled down the valley. Ten times more than the Valdez, and it was a nonevent around the country. You know why?”

  “Okay, why?”

  “Because it’s Appalachia. The coal companies are destroying our mountains, towns, culture, and lives, and it’s not a story.”

  “So why do these guys hate your guts?”

  “Because they believe strip-mining is a good thing. It provides jobs, and there are few jobs around here. They’re not bad people, they’re just misinformed and misguided. Mountaintop removal is killing our communities. It has single-handedly wiped out tens of thousands of jobs. People are forced to leave their homes because of blasting, dust, sludge, and flooding. The roads aren’t safe because of these massive trucks flying down the mountains. I filed five wrongful death cases in the past five years, folks crushed by trucks carrying ninety tons of coal. Many towns have simply vanished. The coal companies often buy up surrounding homes and tear them down. Every county in coal country has lost population in the past twenty years. Yet a lot of people, including those three gentlemen over there, think that a few jobs are better than none.”

  “If they are gentlemen, then why do you carry a gun?”

  “Because certain coal companies have been known to hire thugs. It’s intimidation, or worse, and it’s nothing new. Look, Samantha, I’m a son of the coal country, a hillbilly and a proud one, and I could tell you stories for hours about the bloody history of Big Coal.”

  “Do you really fear for your life?”

  He paused and looked away for a second. “There were a thousand murders in New York City last year. Did you fear for your life?”

  “Not really.”

  He smiled and nodded and said, “Same here. We had three murders last year, all related to meth. You just have to be careful.” A phone vibrated in his pocket and he yanked it out. He read the text, then said, “It’s Mattie. She’s out of court, back at the office and ready to see you.”

  “Wait, how did she know I would be with you?”

  “It’s a small town, Samantha.”

  6

  They walked along the sidewalk until they came to his office where they shook hands. She thanked him for his pro bono work as her attorney and complimented him on a job well done. And if she decided to hang around the town for a few months, they promised to do lunch at the Brady Grill someday.

  It was almost 5:00 p.m. when she hustled across the street, jaywalking and half expecting to be arrested for it. She glanced to the west, where the mountains were already blocking the late afternoon sun. The shadows consumed the town and gave it the feel of early winter. A bell clinked on the door when she entered the cluttered front room of the legal aid clinic. A busy desk indicated that someone was usually there to answer the phone and greet the clients, but for the moment the reception area was empty. She looked around, waited, took in the surroundings. The office layout was simple—a narrow hall ran straight down the middle of what had been for decades the busy domain of the town’s hardware store. Everything had the look and feel of being old and well used. The walls were whitewashed partitions that did not quite make it all the way to the copper-tiled ceiling. The floors were covered with thin, ragged carpet. The furniture, at least in the reception, was a mismatched collection of flea market lefto
vers. The walls, though, were exhibiting an interesting collection of oils and pastels by local artists, all for sale at very reasonable prices.

  The artwork. The prior year the equity partners at Scully & Pershing had gone to war over a designer’s proposal to spend $2 million on some baffling avant-garde paintings to be hung in the firm’s main foyer. The designer was ultimately fired, the paintings forgotten, and the money split into bonuses.

  Halfway down the hall a door opened, and a short, slightly stocky woman in bare feet stepped out. “I take it you’re Samantha,” she said, walking toward her. “I’m Mattie Wyatt. I understand you’ve had a rather rude welcome to Noland County. I’m so sorry.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Samantha said as she stared at the bright pink and square reading glasses perched on the end of Mattie’s nose. The pink of her glasses matched the pink tips of her hair, which was short, spiked, and dyed a severe white. It was a look Samantha had never seen before, but one that was working, here at least. Of course, she had seen looks far funkier in Manhattan, but never on a lawyer.

  “In here,” Mattie said as she waved at her office. Once inside, she closed the door and said, “I guess that nut Romey will have to hurt someone before the sheriff does anything. I’m very sorry. Have a seat.”

  “It’s okay. I’m fine, and now I have a story that I’m sure I’ll tell for many years.”

  “Indeed you will, and if you hang around here, you’ll collect a lot of stories. Would you like some coffee?” She fell into a