Free Redemption Mountain by Gerry FitzGerald

get another judge to suspend it temporarily, just long enough to get Ackerly a permit for Redemption Mountain. They’ll make a deal with the environmental groups, ’cause nobody really cares about what happens down here. Ain’t nobody living on Redemption Mountain ’cept some no-account hillbilly family running a dusty little pig farm.”
    Natty was skeptical. “Grandpa, I don’t know that it’s going to be that easy to get a surface-mine permit for Redemption Mountain.”
    Bud pushed his plate away without having eaten much. “Natty, you’re too young to know it, but this is the way it’s always been. It’s the history of West Virginia. The big companies come here, they make a deal in Charleston, and they take the coal, the timber, and the gas, and they get rich. And the people get poorer and the land gets tore up, and the water gets fouled, and it’s okay, ’cause there ain’t hardly anybody left in the coal counties, and, besides, they’re all just old and poor and uneducated and don’t matter to no one!” When he finished, he was almost shouting. “Way it’s always been,” he said, getting up from the table, letting his napkin fall to the floor. He went out through the kitchen to get back to work.
    Alice DeWitt watched her husband leave, a pained expression on her face. She rarely spoke, so she immediately had everyone’s attention. “Some men come up here a month ago and wanted to buy the farm,” she said. “Bud told me they offered him a hundred thousand dollars cash.”
    â€œWow, that seems like a lot for this place,” Natty said. “What did Bud say?”
    â€œHe told them the farm weren’t for sale at any price, which the men couldn’t seem to understand. But Bud said he weren’t going to discuss it. So we give ’em some lemonade and corn bread out on the porch there and sent them on their way. They wasn’t too happy about it, I suspect, from the way they moped off. They was lawyers from Charleston—good-looking men with nice suits.”
    With the children finally in the car, having said their goodbyes, Natty started to back the Honda onto Mountain Road. Normally she wouldn’t have thought of looking out for other cars on the road, but something made her stop, and not an instant too soon. The white Dodge pickups, going much too fast on the narrow road, raced by. The side windows of the trucks were tinted black, but through the windshield of the second truck she glimpsed three men in white hard hats. As she watched the trucks roar down the mountain road, Natty suddenly realized that everything Bud said was true. The hard hats were going to destroy Redemption Mountain and everything on it.
    *   *   *
    D RIVING UP THE gravel road into Oakes Hollow, Natty could tell that something was going on. It wasn’t unusual to see the residents of Oakes Hollow shooting the breeze and drinking beer, especially on a hot summer evening, but there were too many.
    Natty didn’t see Buck anywhere. Had something happened to him? He’d been gone for three days, working for a crew that ran an illegal timber operation up in Monroe County. Every so often, when he needed some cash, Buck would go off for a few days and cut trees for the timber pirates. It was dangerous work, but he’d get paid two hundred dollars for a twelve-hour day, all the beer he could drink afterward, and a tent to sleep in. Buck was strong and he knew what he was doing, but Natty worried about him getting hurt or arrested, and now she feared that something must have happened.
    Her panic subsided when she saw Buck’s truck parked just beyond Roy Hogan’s. On the deck outside their trailer, Buck lay on his back, unmoving, one foot on the top step, his other leg hanging down almost to the gravel. One hand clutched a can of beer. He was wearing denim overalls and a long-sleeved white