Gray Mountain (8 page)

Chester said, “Not really. Judy is a wonderful person but she was never happy here. Then, when the trouble started, she sort of cracked up. That’s when she left.”

The word “trouble” hung in the air for a few seconds, and when neither of the Wyatts chose to pursue it, Chester said, “Dinner’s ready.” Samantha followed them into the kitchen where the table was set for three. Chester served from the stove—steaming chicken with rice and homemade rolls. Mattie placed a salad bowl
in the center of the table and poured water from a large plastic jug. Evidently, enough wine had already been served.

“Smells delicious,” Samantha said as she pulled out a chair and sat down.

“Help yourself to the salad,” Mattie said as she buttered a roll. They began eating and for a moment the conversation lagged. Samantha wanted to keep the conversation on their side of things, not hers, but before she could preempt them, Chester said, “Tell us about your family, Samantha.”

She smiled and politely said, “Well, there’s not much to talk about.”

“Oh, we’ll help you along,” Mattie said with a laugh. “You grew up in D.C., right? That must have been interesting.”

She hit the high points: the only child of two ambitious lawyers, a privileged upbringing, private schools, undergrad at Georgetown, her father’s troubles, his indictment and imprisonment, the humiliation of his widely covered fall from power.

“I think I remember that,” Chester said.

“It was all over the press.” She described visiting him in prison, something he discouraged. The pain of the divorce, the desire to get out of D.C. and away from her parents, law school at Columbia, the federal clerkship, the seduction of Big Law, and the three less than pleasant years at Scully & Pershing. She loved Manhattan and could not imagine living anywhere else, but her world was upside down now, and, well, there was nothing certain in her future. As she talked, they watched her closely and absorbed every word. When she’d said enough, she took a mouthful of chicken and planned to chew it for a long time.

“That’s certainly a harsh way to treat people,” Chester said.

“Trusted employees just tossed into the street,” Mattie said, shaking her head in disbelief and disapproval. Samantha nodded and kept chewing. She did not need to be reminded. As Chester poured more water, she asked, “Does all drinking water come from a bottle?”

For some reason this was amusing. “Oh yes,” Mattie replied.
“No one drinks the water around here. Our fearless regulators promise us it’s safe to drink, but no one believes them. We clean ourselves, our clothes, and our dishes with it, and some folks brush their teeth with it, but not me.”

Chester said, “Many of our streams, rivers, and wells have been contaminated by strip-mining. The headwater streams have been choked off with valley fills. The slurry ponds leak into the deep wells. Burning coal creates tons of ash, and the companies dump this into our rivers. So please, Samantha, don’t drink the tap water.”

“Got it.”

“That’s one reason we drink so much wine,” Mattie said. “I believe I’ll have another glass, Chester, if you don’t mind.” Chester, who evidently was both chef and bartender, did not hesitate to grab a bottle off the counter. Since she would not be driving, Samantha agreed to another glass. Almost instantly, the wine seemed to hit Mattie and she began talking about her career and the legal clinic she founded twenty-six years earlier. As she prattled on, Samantha prodded her with enough questions to keep her going, though she needed no assistance.

The warmth of the cozy kitchen, the lingering aroma of the baked chicken, the taste of home-cooked food, the buzz from the wine, the openness of two extremely hospitable people, and the promise of a warm bed all came together halfway through the dinner and Samantha truly relaxed for the first time in months. She couldn’t chill out in the city; every moment of downtime was monitored by the clock. She hadn’t slept in the past three weeks. Both parents kept her on edge. The six-hour drive had been nerve-racking, for the most part. Then, the episode with Romey. Finally, Samantha felt her burdens floating away. Suddenly she had an appetite. She helped herself to more chicken, which pleased her hosts greatly.

She said, “On the porch, earlier, when we were talking about Donovan, you mentioned the ‘trouble.’ Is that off-limits?”

The Wyatts looked at each other; both shrugged. It was, after all, a small town and few things were off-limits. Chester quickly
deferred and poured himself more wine. Mattie pushed her plate away and said, “He’s had a tragic life, Donovan.”

“If it’s too personal, then we can skip it,” Samantha said, but only out of courtesy. She wanted the scoop.

Mattie would not be denied. She ignored Samantha’s offer and plowed ahead. “It’s well-known around here; there’s nothing secret about it,” she said, sweeping away any obstacles to confidentiality. “Donovan is the son of my sister Rose, my late sister, I’m sorry to say. She died when he was sixteen.”

“It’s a long story,” Chester added, as if there might be too much involved to properly tell it all.

Mattie ignored him. “Donovan’s father is a man named Webster Gray, still alive, somewhere, and he inherited three hundred acres next door in Curry County. The land was in the Gray family forever, way back to the early 1800s. Beautiful land, hills and mountains, creeks and valleys, just gorgeous and pristine. That’s where Donovan and his brother, Jeff, were born and raised. His father and grandfather, Curtis Gray, had the boys in the woods as soon as they could walk, hunting and fishing and exploring. Like so many kids in Appalachia, they grew up on the land. There’s a lot of natural beauty here, what’s left of it, but the Gray property was something special. After Rose married Webster, we would go there for family picnics and gatherings. I can remember Donovan and Jeff and my kids and all the cousins swimming in Crooked Creek, next to our favorite camping site.” A pause, a careful sip of wine. “Curtis died in I think it was 1980, and Webster inherited the land. Curtis was a miner, a deep miner, a tough union man, and he was proud of it, like most of the older guys. But he never wanted Webster to work in the mines. Webster, as it turned out, didn’t much care for work of any kind, and he bounced around from job to job, never amounting to much. The family struggled and his marriage with Rose became rather rocky. He took to the bottle and this caused more problems. He once spent six months in jail for stolen goods and the family almost starved. We were worried sick about them.”

“Webster was not a good person,” Chester added the obvious.

“The highest point on their property was called Gray Mountain,
three thousand feet up and covered with hardwoods. The coal companies know where every pound of coal is buried throughout Appalachia; they did their geological surveys decades ago. And it was no secret that Gray Mountain had some of the thickest seams around here. Over the years, Webster had dropped hints about leasing some of his land for mining, but we just didn’t believe him. Strip-mining had been around and was causing concern.”

“Nothing like today, though,” Chester added.

“Oh no, nothing like today. Anyway, without telling his family, Webster signed a lease with a company out of Richmond, Vayden Coal, to surface-mine Gray Mountain.”

“I don’t like the term ‘surface-mine,’ ” Chester said. “It sounds too legitimate. It’s nothing more than strip-mining.”

“Webster was careful, I mean the man wasn’t stupid. He saw it as his chance to make some real money, and he had a good lawyer prepare the lease. Webster would get two dollars for every ton, which back then was a lot more than other folks were getting. The day before the bulldozers showed up, Webster finally told Rose and the boys what he had done. He sugarcoated everything, said the coal company would be watched closely by the regulators and lawyers, that the land would be reclaimed after the coal was gone, and that the big money would more than offset the short-term headaches. Rose called me that night in tears. Around here, property owners who sell out to the coal companies are not held in high regard, and she was terrified of what her neighbors would think. She was also worried about their land. She said Webster and Donovan were in a big fight, said things were terrible. And that was only the beginning. The next morning a small army of bulldozers plowed its way up to the top of Gray Mountain and began—”

“The rape of the land,” Chester added, shaking his head.

“Yes, that and more. They clear-cut the forest, shaved it clean, and shoved thousands of hardwoods into the valleys below. Next they scraped off the topsoil and pushed it down on top of the trees. When the blasting started all hell broke loose.” Mattie took a sip of wine and Chester jumped into the narrative. “They had this wonderful old house down in a valley, next to Crooked Creek. It
had been in the family for decades. I think Curtis’s father built it around the turn of the century. The foundation was made of stone, and before long the stones began to crack. Webster started raising hell with the coal company, but it was a waste of time.”

Mattie jumped back in. “The dust was awful, like a fog over the valleys around the mountain. Rose was beside herself and I often went over there to sit with her. The ground would shake several times a day when they were blasting. The house began to tilt and the doors wouldn’t close. Needless to say, this was a nightmare for the family, and for the marriage. After Vayden knocked off the top of the mountain, about three hundred feet, they hit the first seam, and when they finally started hauling coal off the mountain, Webster began demanding his checks. The company stalled and stalled, then finally sent a payment or two. Not nearly what Webster was expecting. He got his lawyers involved and this really irritated the coal company. The war was on and everybody knew who would win.”

Chester was shaking his head at the nightmare. He said, “The creek ran dry, choked off by the valley fill. That’s what happens. In the last twenty years, we’ve lost over a thousand miles of headwaters in Appalachia. Just awful.”

Mattie said, “Rose finally left. She and the boys came to live with us, but Webster refused to leave. He was drinking and acting crazy. He would sit on the porch with his shotgun and just dare anyone from the company to get close. Rose was worried about him, so she and the boys returned home. He promised to repair the house and fix everything as soon as the money came in. He filed complaints with the regulators, and even filed a lawsuit against Vayden, but they tied him up in court. It’s hard to beat a coal company.”

Chester said, “Their well water was contaminated with sulfur. The air was always thick with dust from the blasting and coal trucks. It just wasn’t safe, and so Rose left again. She and the boys stayed in a motel for a few weeks, then they came here again, then off to somewhere else. This went on for about a year, wouldn’t you say Mattie?”

“At least. The mountain continued to shrink as they went from seam to seam. It was sickening to watch it disappear. The price of coal was up, so Vayden mined like crazy, seven days a week with all the machinery and trucks they could throw at the site. Webster got a check one day for $30,000. His lawyer sent it back with an angry demand. That was the last of the checks.”

Chester said, “Suddenly it was all over. The price of coal dropped dramatically and Vayden disappeared overnight. Webster’s lawyer submitted a bill for $400,000, along with another lawsuit. About a month later Vayden filed for bankruptcy and walked away. It restructured itself into a new company, and it’s still around. Owned by some billionaire in New York.”

“So the family got nothing?” Samantha asked.

“Not much,” Mattie replied. “A few small checks in the beginning, but only a fraction of what the lease called for.”

Chester said, “It’s a favorite trick in the coalfields. A company mines the coal, then goes bankrupt to avoid payments and the reclamation requirements. Sooner or later they usually pop up with another name. Same bad actors, just a new logo.”

“That’s disgusting,” Samantha said.

“No, that’s the law.”

“What happened to the family?”

Chester and Mattie exchanged a long, sad look. “You tell the story, Chester,” she said, and took a sip of wine.

“Not long after Vayden left, there was a big rain, and a flood. Because the creeks and rivers are choked off, the water is diverted to other runoffs. Flooding is a huge problem, to say the least. An avalanche of mud and trees and topsoil swept through the valley and took out the Gray home. Crushed it and scattered it for miles downstream. Fortunately, no one was in the house; by then it was uninhabitable, not even Webster could stay there. Another lawsuit, another waste of time and money. Bankruptcy laws are like Teflon. Rose drove out one sunny day and found a few of the stones from the foundation. She picked her spot, and she killed herself.”

Samantha moaned and rubbed her forehead and mumbled, “Oh no.”

“Webster disappeared for good. When we last heard from him he was living in Montana, doing who knows what. Jeff went to stay with another aunt and Donovan lived with us until he finished high school. He worked three jobs getting through college. By the time he graduated he knew exactly what he wanted to do: become a lawyer and spend the rest of his life fighting coal companies. We helped him through law school. Mattie gave him a job at the clinic, and he worked there a few years before opening his own shop. He’s filed hundreds of lawsuits and taken on every coal company that ever thought about operating a strip mine. He’s ruthless and fearless.”

“And he’s brilliant,” Mattie said proudly.

“Indeed he is.”

“Does he win?”

They paused and exchanged uncertain looks. Mattie said, “Yes and no. It’s tough litigating against the coal companies. They play hardball. They lie and cheat and cover up, and they hire huge law firms like yours to stonewall anyone with a claim. He wins and he loses but he’s always on the attack.”

“And of course they hate him,” Chester said.

“Oh yes, they certainly do. I said he was ruthless, right? Donovan does not always play by the book. He figures the coal companies bend the rules of legal procedure, so they force him to do the same.”