“Then pull harder,” he said and climbed halfway up the bank. I wrapped the end of the rope twice around my waist, tied it, positioning it low on my hips, under my butt. He pulled the noose in with a long stick, grabbed hold, and tugged it tight. “Now I’m gonna swing on out over the mud. My weight’s gonna make you able to walk straight up the bank to the top. That’ll lower me in the Treatment. When the rope goes slack, jump back down the bank and it’ll pull me out.”
“But what if I can’t pull you out?” I said again. Buzzy outweighed me by at least thirty pounds.
He looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “The Treatment ain’t a place you want to get stuck in. Best you pull harder.”
“I’m serious, man. You weigh a lot more than me.”
He looked down on me with mock seriousness. “Then I’m in deep shit.” He laughed and swung out over the expanse of mud. The rope tightened and I braced against the bank.
“Walk it!” he screamed, and I took a step up the bank, then another and another. I felt weightless, like Batman scaling the side of a building. With each step Buzzy sank deeper into the mud—up to his knees, his waist, his chest. I hesitated. “Keep goin,” he shouted. I took three more steps and his head disappeared into the black mud, then his arms and hands—nothing but the rope sticking out of the pit like the new wick out of a black candle. The rope went slack as I reached the top of the bank. I pushed off to rappel down. The rope tightened but the weight of him held me fast. I just dangled in the air, my feet against the bankside. I jumped up, pushed off again, but the rope made no movement. I jumped again with force, and the rope unstuck, lowering me to mudside. As I went down, up came onyx arms, a black head, an obsidian chest, coal legs. The watery mud was just thick enough to cling to him, leaving a thin black film on his entire body. He looked as if he’d just been plucked from the rendering vat at an India-ink factory. He smiled and his white teeth were pearls against the dark of it all. He swung his legs up and back to maneuver the rope onto solid ground, then let go and jumped to safety.
I fell back onto the ground at the loss of counterbalance, laughing hysterically. “Buzzy, you look straight out of the jungle.”
He picked up a spear-like stick and climbed to the top of a large rock overlooking the pool. Black and naked, he reached both arms up to the blue-cotton sky. “I claim this land in the name a the new best kings a the earth.” His voice boomed across the swimming hole. “Whoever chooses to be like marked will join me on the throne. You, young prince.” He pointed the spear at me. I stood. “Got you the makins of a king?”
“Uhhhh. I think.” I grabbed the noose and Buzzy wrapped the rope around his waist.
I climbed halfway up the bank and looked at the expanse of mud, glistening in the sun. It looked harmless, no deeper than a few inches, but I knew it was a treacherous bottomless pit.
“White-skinned prince, you must rid yourself of your princely clothes to become a king.”
I had never been naked outdoors before and hesitated. The king put his spear down and resumed his previous persona. “You don’t want to be gettin the Treatment with your clothes on. It ain’t a good idea. My brother Cleo did it and momma never got the mud outta em.”
I balanced on the root and slowly took off my shirt and stripped down to my underwear. I pulled my boxer shorts down and stepped out of them and threw them down to Buzzy. I gripped the noose tightly and pulled the rope tight. Buzzy wrapped the other end twice around his waist. “I got you now—jus swing on out like I done.”
I picked my legs up and Tarzanned out over the flat. Buzzy stepped up on the bank face and my toes hit the mud, then my feet. It was cold. The chill crept up my legs as I sank into the pool.
“Whatever you do, man, do not let go a the rope,” he said from the bank. “There’s ain’t no bottom to it.”
I tightened my grip on the noose.
The mud was like watered-down pudding as I sank deeper into the pit—past my navel, up to my shoulders. I took a deep breath and went under. It was black, probably blacker and colder than the deepest unexplored corner of the Telling Cave. I kept sinking, like I was being sucked down into a cold, black death, unable to move my limbs. I felt the rope go slack, and my upstretched hands sank below the surface. A stripe of panic seized me; I tried to kick to the surface, but the mud held me under. I couldn’t bring my arms down to swim to the top, and the more I struggled the deeper I seemed to sink. My lungs began to sear and my legs and arms thrashed around in the wet concrete–like encasement. In panic I dropped the rope. I groped frantically for it, but it was gone.
I turned myself around, sweeping the black expanse in front of me with my arms, lungs bursting, head ringing, frantic fingers feeling for the rope. It brushed against my cheek. I caught the end of the loop just as it was pulling away from me. The rope went tight and I started rising to the surface. My hands broke the mud expanse, just as dizziness from lack of air started to take me. Finally my head broke the surface and I felt the cool air fill my lungs. I opened my eyes to the bright new world. The colors on the trees, the blackness of the mud, and the blueness of the sky all seemed new and wonderful, like I had died and been pulled back to life. My mouth was full of gritty, loamy mud, but I didn’t care. I was alive and everything was right again with the world.
I swung my legs up and over to the edge of the mud pit and dropped next to Buzzy. I put my hands on my knees and panted, searching for breath. “Man… I thought… you were never going to pull me up.”
“Works best if you soak in it for a few seconds,” he said and laughed. He jumped down from the rock. “Come, my brother king. Let us lay in the light an give homage to the sun god.” I followed him across, out to the sunbathed far bank, and lay in the sand to let the sun dry the black mud. I stretched out with my hands behind my head, as content as I thought I would ever be.
We were silent then, feeling the wet mud congeal on our bodies, the new best kings of the earth, black and naked with the sun baking us dry and me wishing a way to stop the world from spinning so that this singular moment in my life would never end.
Chapter 8
THE PRICE OF FUTURE MEMORIES
That evening, the porch seemed to meld into dusk slower than usual. Lo and Paitsel stopped by at six o’clock, and at six twenty Chester Skill eased up the worn steps and into one of the faded green wicker chairs.
Paitsel launched the night’s discussion. “The Company is tryin to buy the Mitchell place. Looks like they’re goin to create a second slurry pond down mountain. The one on top is definitely at capacity.”
Pops nodded. “Grubby said Bubba was courting him. Don’t think he’s going to sell out, though.”
“With that kind a acreage, Bubba’ll be expandin,” Lo offered.
Chester sighed. “We are talking mountains that have been here for ten thousand years. Mountains that have defined us for generations. We all went to bed soon after the sun set over them, and when we got up every morning, they were there. They were the one constant in this scratch-a-living life of ours, and now three are gone. Just gone. And nobody but Paul is raising a stink about it.” He shook his head. “But you know what pains me to my soul? The fact that they are not coming back. Indian Head ain’t coming back. Ever.”
“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.”