“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 counting 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?”