|
|||||||||
| panda-like calm through fiction | |||||||||
|
Purple Mountains' Majesty
|
|||||||||
|
Dagney didn’t like planes. She wasn’t afraid of dying, or even of falling out of the sky. But being crammed into a tube with sweaty, impatient, entitled people - it was the worst side of humanity. For every angry drunk or snooty hipster or seat-kicking child there were three well-behaved people, reading a magazine or quietly watching the movie or sleeping, but she wasn’t encouraged by a ratio of pricks to non-pricks that high.
And maybe she didn’t like planes because they reminded her of death. She remembered the first time she flew, as a child, how happy she was when her mother let her take the window seat so she could see everything below. She especially loved the mountains, tinged purple by the sun setting behind them. Purple in parts of Asia means death, and she’d come to associate the mountains, and the plane with it. Dagney’s mother insisted they move away when she was just a girl, but her father’s entire family lived in Appalachia. So every time they the came back by plane, every time she got to see those beautiful mountains, it was for a funeral. Every trip she made out, the mountains reminded her a little more of death. The region was practically a third world country inside US borders. Drug addiction, cancer, obesity and diabetes, were all more prevalent. The mining industry dominated the area, and relied on mountaintop removal. It cut deep scars into the land where there wasn’t green anymore, left strange stair-step plateaus, like a science fair sediment model. The blasting affected an area the size of Delaware, and it had devastated her family. But it was still all they knew. After her mother died, Dagney’s father moved back. He couldn’t support his children anymore as a school janitor. So Dagney finished growing up with her mother’s parents, visiting her father every time a relative passed away. It seemed like it couldn’t have been just that morning that she’d woken up with Clara in her arms, the infant happily blowing spit-bubbles at her. It terrified her to think of the infant so temporally close to the suffocating aura of human decay she felt inside that plane. She hated her boss. Even if he didn’t know what asking her to go home meant, she hated him, hated the way he’d been finding her at her desk every morning to make her life progressively worse. “That last case was a get, Dag, I won’t lie, but there’s something else that I need you on. It’s a bit of a problem, because the local Ag people, well, they aren’t there anymore. A corruption case came through that wiped out the local Ag and EPA offices. Appleton will take over Fox.” “But-” “Appleton’s got a lot of experience tracking down these kinds of fraud cases, so I’d probably have given it to him eventually anyway. But this thing, the mountaintop removal mining company in Appalachia was bribing everybody. When they got caught out they hung their government liaison out to dry, claiming they had nothing to do with his malfeasance- but made sure he had a golden parachute to catch his fall.” “And we don’t really have anybody more local who doesn’t have some coal dust under their fingers. And I know, you come from a mining family, but in this particular case that’s seen as an asset, because the company we’re looking into is the same your father’s been working for for twenty years: Masterson. In fact, the investigation is at his site.” “I glommed onto the fact that Nelson’s been sleeping on your couch; I was calling to let you know before you headed in to work, but you were moving a little faster this morning than me. He’s packed you a bag, and he’ll meet you at the airport. You’re plane’s off at 11, so you should have enough time to get there and through security.” “Is there any point in protesting?” “Hmm. I suppose it might make you feel better, but it wouldn’t change anything.” “Then fuck it. See you when I get back,” she said, and headed for the door. At the airport, Nelson had been apologetic about going through her things. “I don’t even know why I answered the phone, honestly. But then Sharpe laid into me and- it wasn’t until I was going through your drawers that I realized that maybe I wasn’t helping you as much as I’d originally thought, and that it might have been a violation.” Though as it turned out, through accident or bashfulness, he’d neglected to pack her any undergarments at all. “But I’ll take care of Clara, scouts honor. And I’ll keep trying to get her to eat some human food.” Her dad didn’t pick her up at the airport. She called him on one of those in-plane phones, but he said he was working a twelve hour shift that day, and some of it was overtime- and he could really use the overtime. He left a spare key underneath the mat, same apartment he’d been living at when her Uncle Chuck died four year ago. Inside her father’s den, Dagney had trouble, getting back into the swing of Appalachian living. She had a sudden craving for a can of cold beans, and it made her mouth salivate and her stomach turn at the same time. So she sat on the couch and stared at the TV, though she couldn’t bring herself to turn it on. Her father came home later than he’d said. When his seven hours of overtime became ten he shrugged. He thought about calling his daughter, since she might worry- but that would have felt too much like coddling her insecurity, and she was a grown woman. “Hey Dagney.” He was genuinely happy to see his daughter; he didn’t mean to be cold, though he was. She got up and walked over to him, and he put his hand around her bicep and squeezed, and grunted his appreciation. She didn’t know if he approved of her strength or her lack of a challenge to his dominance, old as he was. “So what’s this about?” “Well, mainly, it’s about the bribery. See, none of the people, regulators or regulated, are talking about what happened. They traced the money from Masterson into their private accounts. But what we don’t know is why? Presumably, purchasing influence over some troublesome rule. Which means either Masterson has quietly covered up whatever they wanted the EPA and us to overlook, or there’s still a violation out her somewhere.” “I haven’t covered nothing up.” “Dad,” she said, her patience already flagging. “I’m not here accusing you. I thought I should come by. I’m in town. If you want, I can stay here, or in a hotel. It’s no pressure, either way, but I, I wanted to see you. I don’t get many chances.” He pursed his lips, then looked at her. “Yeah.” He seemed solemn, then he lunged at her, took her up in a big bear hug. “Um, dad,” she said, a little embarrassed. “You eaten?” “I might have had a bag of peanuts on the plane.” “They don’t serve bagged peanuts anymore- people with allergies. You hop into that kitchen, we’ll make up some of your Grandmom’s stone soup.” “You’re not home five minutes and you’re already trying to put me back in the kitchen,” she said with a grin. “I always told your mother a woman’s place wasn’t in the kitchen, it was” she stopped him before he finished making a rude gesture to his pelvis. “But that’s not really applicable to your daughter.” “No, sorry. Used to the old boy’s club at the mine.” Her father might have turned out to be just like other miners, more than a handful of whom tried to keep their sexist stereotypes alive. But back when he first married Dagney’s mom, they spent a summer working the mines together, until she got her scholarship, enough money to get the both of them out of Appalachia. He wasn’t certain, and he chided her about leaving everything he knew on account of the work being hard. “It isn’t the hardship, and you know it,” her mom had said. “They pay well, better than anyone else around, anyway, but they don’t pay me enough to be miserable- and I am. You too; and they don’t pay you enough to be miserable, either. And we have options, now, and I’ll be God-damned if I’ll let you anchor us to this hellish career and this hellish life out of some mule stubbornness.” He’d always loved Dagney’s mother. If she hadn’t died, his life would have been very different. Dagney remembered a trip out seven years before, when he’d gotten drunk, and admitted to her, “They don’t think it was the mine that caused her cancer… but I’ve never been able to tell myself for certain. Some days I feel a traitor going back there, knowing they might have killed my wife.” It was the longest string of words he’d ever spoken to her, and a feat he’d not since matched. Her father was already in the kitchen, rolling up his sleeves in front of the sink. He washed his hands, and it took several minutes and several squirts of Gojo to get them back to a vaguely human color- though they still bore a cloudy darkness from the coal dust. He’d set out his utensils earlier, and had his ingredients together on a shelf in his otherwise empty fridge. Dagney rinsed her hands after her father. He pulled a smaller cutting board out of a drawer, and handed her a knife and a pack of beef cuts. She wanted to slice away some of the fat, but she knew her father wouldn’t approve of the waste- or losing the flavor it would add to the soup, so she started cutting it into chunks. He started slicing potatoes. “I run a tight ship; a clean ship.” He sighed. “I may not always appreciate the regulators, Dag, but that’s because I know safety better than the lot of them taped together. Company be damned, I make sure we keep our boys safe.” He started cutting carrots, and he was almost done when he said, “It’s a tough job. We blast twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. You can only get so used to that.” He took heaping handfuls of vegetables and dropped them into a pot with water. His daughter tossed in the meat, and they set it to boil on the stove. “Couple of the older fellas used to say it’s like the war, which I take to mean Germany. Plenty of the men get shell-shocked. But that’s why I’m a stickler. Safer we can be, less likely somebody gets goofy and wanders into a blast area.” “Dad,” Dagney started, then had trouble finding the words, “that’s what I can’t figure out. You have a better safety record than any other Masterson mine in the region, fines are low though within reason. Certs on all the safety and emergency equipment seem good. I can’t even imagine what they were hiding.” Her father began to stir the soup so it didn’t burn, pinching in tiny amounts of seasoning. “What kind of authority you have on this?” “Given the nature of the corruption charges against the company, their counsel advised them to open their records. Which probably means they’ve gotten rid of any and everything that might have been helpful. I’m fairly certain that whatever EPA and Ag had on them has also been scrubbed or omitted from their records. I could check it out, but unless I’m getting desperate I’m pretty sure that’s a dead end.” “Hmm. For a start, why would Agriculture be involved at all? “I’ve wondered that myself, and best I can come up with is that it must have been affecting local farmland in the valley fill area. At least, that’s why Agriculture would get involved. But what they found from there,” she sighed. “I know you said they blast 24/7, but does the office stay open all night?” “There’s always at least one person there, to coordinate in the event of an emergency- in case we need an ambulance or what have you.” “Hmm. Cause I’m feeling restless. Or maybe I’m just not on local time, yet- but I think I want to start looking into this tonight. I’m also hoping to avoid the hellish neckbeard farm that is your coworkers.” He smiled. “Nah, Didio shaved the neckbeard. He does have something like an old civil war moustache with thick mutton chops, though. The neck beard was collecting too much dust in it.” “It wasn’t just the one, dad.” “I know, but his was the most egregious. He started the trend. We’ve diversified, since then.” “So your facial hair menagerie has extended its repertoire.” “The beards make sense. It gets cold at night.” Then he momentarily put on a very nasally English accent, “‘Bleeding cold,’ as Henry likes to say.” “Oh, Henry- possibly the world’s only limey redneck.” Henry was the strangest mash-up of stereotypes she’d ever witnessed. He had bad English teeth, but with a Hee Haw gap between them in front. He frequently put moonshine in his Earl Grey tea. He drove a beat-up pick-up truck, but it was a strange little miniature imported British one. He seemed self-consciously caught between two very disparate worlds, but to genuinely enjoy the trappings of the one in the surroundings of the other. When she first met Henry, he seemed almost to be misunderstanding Appalachia, and mocking it because of it, but as he’d gotten older, and grayer, his idiosyncrasies had taken on a respectability they probably didn’t deserve- but which it was impossible not to afford to the man. “How is Henry?” she asked. Her dad stopped stirring the pot, and set his spoon down. “He’s got black lung. He put in a claim with the Department of Labor, and they said he’s got a, a,” “A presumption, that he got black lung because he’s worked at a Masterson mine more than fifteen years.” “Yeah. But Masterson’s rebutting the claim, even tried to lay him off, but we threatened a walk-out when they posted his job the next morning. So he’s back, and I guess he ain’t starving, but he barely breathes.” “Shit.” “That’s the life of a miner.” He turned off the stove. “Soup’s done.” They ate largely in silence, until her father cleared their bowls. “Think I need to turn in. You still going to the office?” “I think so,” she said. He reached into his front pocket, fished out a key for his truck. “I’ve got a rental,” she said, and he tossed the key onto the kitchen table. “Night, dad.” “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said. Dagney drove slowly through the winding mountain roads. She remembered enough of the area she might have been able to go faster, but she was in no hurry to get to the mine. As nervous as her dad’s home made her, as steeped in death as the entire trip was, the holes in the earth was where death lived. Everything was covered in soot. The mining operation’s offices were in a hollowed out mobile home trailer. It reminded her of her elementary school. It had consisted of half a dozen of those trailers that the teachers called portables. The whole school was portable, after the old school building had been condemned. The school district would occasionally float a proposal for a new school, or a bond to pay for its construction, but at least for the six years she was there, nothing ever came of it. That may have been because the area designated for construction when she started kindergarten was declared by the EPA as unsafe, because of toxins kicked up by a nearby mining operation. Dagney slowly opened the front door, not wanting to startle the woman she could see working behind the front desk. “Hi. I called earlier. I’m from the Department of Agriculture.” “Hmph. Weren’t expecting you until the morning. Late. I’m Betty Lou,” she said, and Dagney cocked her head slightly to one side, having trouble figuring out why the woman went by neither just Betty nor Lou. “Dagney.” “Well, Dagney, permits, compliances, shit like that, is all in the back room. There’s a computer there we never log out of, has anything digital, but mostly we’ve got paper since the government does like its paperwork.” Dagney spent the better part of four hours pouring over files, wondering what the needle in her haystack might actually be, knowing that came before asking if it was still there, when a name sparked a memory. She’d seen it a few times in the files. She called Nelson’s cell phone. “The Caudill family. That name means something to me. But I’m stuck in a shack without access to any internet to speak of. Could you” “Yeah, just let me set Clara down.” “She’s still up?” “It’s not that late here, and she’s restless with you gone. So we’re up watching Arsenic and Old Lace. I was a little worried that Jonathan or the doctor would freak her out, but she just laughs and blows bubbles every time he says, ‘Mortimer’ in that creepy-” “The Caudill family?” “Right. Um… Caudill. They were part of a lawsuit trying to prevent Masterson from turning a surface mining operation into mountaintop removal. Actually, it looks like the lawsuits started when Masterson tried to force them to sell the family farm because mining was the ‘highest and best use of the property,’ and the lower court actually agreed. Wow. It looks like they got it reversed in the state supreme court, but… the Caudills eventually sold, anyway. The farm’s basically ruined, having been so close to surface mining for so long- infertile.” At the word Dagney instinctively touched her belly. He continued. “That’s why several members of the Caudill family actually worked at the Masterson mine. And, it looks like they decided to sell and move away after there was a collapse that killed three family members.” “Holy shit,” she whispered. “You don’t think-” “I don’t know. Masterson don’t seem like the up and up type, so I don’t know where they’d draw that line. Causing a disaster like that would cost them millions in settlements and fines, but-” “But it’d be worth so much more.” Dagney suddenly felt cold in the little trailer office, and after a moment she realized it wasn’t nerves- there was a draft. “Betty Lou?” she called out. There was no answer, so she poked her head out into the main room. The door was open, and caught a light breeze and banged against the wall of the trailer. “Maybe she just went out for a smoke,” Dagney said into the phone, then, “shit.” A man was standing by the wall behind Betty Lou’s desk. Her small desk lamp caught his shadow and threw it across the wall and ceiling, making him loom larger. He was wearing dark clothes, built for cold weather, and something in his eyes told her he was there to do her harm. She dropped her phone and ran in the other direction. “Dagney?” Nelson asked as the phone smacked into the carpet. The man was only a few steps behind her, and there was nowhere to run in the tiny office. Suddenly he had hold of her wrist. She spun around, angry and terrified. “Let me go,” she demanded, her voice going shrill. His face, which seemed yellower than it should have been, was expressionless and empty. There was a heavy thud of metal on bone, and he fell, his fingers still gripped around her wrist, until his head splacked against the floor, and his grip slackened. Her father was standing behind him, holding a respirator air tank. His eyes were fixed on his daughter’s attacker, lying on the ground. The man’s head had shattered like a melon, maybe cracked by the force of her father’s blow, then opened when he hit the floor. He had splashed her in what she assumed was blood, but now she realized it didn’t look like blood at all. She put her fingers in it. It was sticky, like sap. “What the fuck?” she asked. Her father didn’t know. “I’m grateful, dad, but what are you doing here? I thought you were going to bed.” “I had a feeling. Tingle at the base of my spine. I thought maybe you needed me- or maybe I was just lonesome, and thought I could give you a hand.” He stopped talking. He didn’t like being that vulnerable, and she knew to compensate he might not really talk to her the rest of the trip. “Thanks, dad.” He pursed his lips. “Should we call him an ambulance?” Her jaw set. “He’s dead, dad. And… I don’t think he’s exactly a man.” His eyes narrowed. “Just what’s going on here, girl?” he asked, fairly certain she wouldn’t have an answer. “That will be up to the FBI to figure out. For my part- I think I’ve got what I needed here.” She paused for a moment. “You should head home. I think I should keep you out of this story, when I tell it to the cops.” “Sure,” he said, and she worried she hurt his feelings as he walked out the door. “Fughappened?” Betty Lou asked from behind her desk, pushing herself up slowly. Dagney had momentarily forgotten the older woman. “You know this asshole?” Dagney asked. Betty Lou walked over to her, and looked at the dead man. “He hit me?” she asked. Dagney nodded, and Betty Lou kicked him in the kidney. “Never seen the asshole before,” she said, then went back to her desk and dialed the sheriff. It took Dagney less time than she thought to convince the sheriff that he should take control of the body, but she was too tired to care. Besides, she’d found a motel room key on the body, and she was eager to get to his motel room and see if her hunch played out. It was a forty minute drive, back down that damned, black mountain into something approaching a town. The motel was ten rooms in a single one-story building. The lobby wasn’t manned, and nobody seemed to notice when she pulled into a parking spot and entered with the dead man’s key. The “Do Not Disturb” sign still hung from the knob. The room was immaculate. The bed had been slept on, briefly, but not in. On a table in the corner, next to an unused ashtray, was a bus ticket, and ten pages torn out of an accounting book. Dagney couldn’t explain it, but she knew she needed to leave then. The motel room was no longer safe. She folded the pages up and slipped them into her jacket pocket, and drove back to her father’s home. He was up, pacing the house. “I was worried,” he said. “Wish you hadn’t sent me home.” “I was fine,” she said. But she was tense, and she wondered if she could really trust him. “What was your coal yield last year?” “Million tons, give or take.” She relaxed. “Take enough to be about eight hundred thousand?” “Nowhere close; I think we’d be likely to give more than take- though I’d have to check my paperwork to know for sure.” “Your paperwork look anything like this?” She unfolded the pages she’d taken from her assaulter’s motel room. “Exactly, only, that ain’t my writing, obviously. I’m dayshift foreman, but final accounting, that’s- what the hell?” He stared into the paper, as if looking harder would make the number right. “It’s short. This came from the man who attacked me. It’s what he didn’t want me to see. They were keeping two sets of books. Which means they’re diverting a lot of coal somewhere.” They sat in silence for a moment, then she added, “Dad, I think I need to head back early, but I’ve been thinking… you should come with me. I’ve liked being around you; I’d like having you around more.” He smiled at her, but it was that worn-down smile she knew too well. “Your mother was right. It’s a hellish life. But it’s the only one I know. And I’m too damned old and set to try for another.” He kissed her forehead. She laid down on the couch, but she didn’t sleep. So she called the airport, and got a red eye flight home. Her father understood; he had another twelve but likely fifteen hour shift the next day, so he kissed her goodbye before she went. “See you when Henry dies,” he said. He wasn’t trying to make her feel guilty, he just knew it was true. And really, he was being generous; Henry wasn’t technically family, so her coming out for his funeral would have been a bit more special. She slept for a fifteen minutes on the plane, fitfully. The crying infant who woke her didn’t annoy her as much as remind her how much she missed Clara. At the thought she nearly cried, escaping the death of Appalachia, to return to someone so young and new, with so much hope and potential for the future, and so much the opposite of what she left. Sharpe met her at the gate, holding her bag. “I’ve got a friend in TSA, one of the guys running the baggage scanner. Snagged it for me. I wanted to talk to you, in person. You did good work- I’ve heard that much. But what happened today didn’t happen. FBI, DoD, they’re moving in lock-step with Homeland Security, ready to deny any and everything. Whatever the fuck you walked through, must have been one of theirs.” “I’ll give you a ride home. In the morning, you’re going to California.” She wanted to stay home, but something in his voice convinced her that protesting was futile. Back at her apartment at last, Nelson was in the kitchen, trying to get Clara to take a bite from a tiny spoon. “She wouldn’t sleep, so I decided to try to get her to eat again. She doesn’t like vegetables, either. I tried getting her to eat some peas- even after I tried telling her I steamed them fresh so they were still chock full of green pea-ness.” Dagney chortled. “What?” he asked. She walked over and hugged the both of them. “Thanks. I really needed that.” |
|||||||||