Gray Mountain

“Well, slow down when you go through Du

“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 said, “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 tu

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 ma

“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 ru

“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.”