Gray Mountain / Серая гора (by John Grisham, 2014) - аудиокнига на английском

1 T he horror was in the waiting—the unknown, the insomnia, the ulcers. Co-workers ignored each other and hid behind locked doors. Secretaries and paralegals passed along the rumors and refused eye contact. Everyone was on edge, wondering, “Who might be next?” The partners, the big boys, appeared shell-shocked and wanted no contact with their underlings. They might soon be ordered to slaughter them. The gossip was brutal. Ten associates in Litigation terminated; partially true—only seven. The entire Estate division closed, partners and all; true. Eight partners in Antitrust jumping to another firm; false, for now. The atmosphere was so toxic that Samantha left the building whenever possible and worked with her laptop in coffee shops around lower Manhattan. She sat on a park bench one pleasant day—day ten after the fall of Lehman Brothers—and gazed at the tall building down the street. It was called 110 Broad, and the top half was leased by Scully and Pershing, the biggest law firm the world had ever seen. Her firm, for now, though the future was anything but certain. Two thousand lawyers in twenty countries, half of them in New York City alone, a thousand right up there packed together on floors 30 through 65. How many wanted to jump? She couldn’t guess, but she wasn’t the only one. The world’s largest firm was shrinking in chaos, as were its competitors. Big Law, as it was known, was just as panicked as the hedge funds, investment banks, real banks, insurance conglomerates, Washington, and on down the food chain to the merchants on Main Street. Day ten passed without bloodshed, as did the next. On day twelve there was a flash of optimism as Ben, one of Samantha’s colleagues, shared a rumor that credit markets in London were loosening a bit. Borrowers might find some cash after all. But late that afternoon the rumor had run out of gas; nothing to it. And so they waited. Two partners ran Commercial Real Estate at Scully and Pershing. One was nearing retirement age and had already been shoved out. The other was Andy Grubman, a forty-year-old pencil pusher who’d never seen a courtroom. As a partner, he had a nice office with a distant view of the Hudson, water he hadn’t noticed in years. On a shelf behind his desk, and squarely in the center of his Ego Wall, there was a collection of miniature skyscrapers. “My buildings” he liked to call them. Upon completion of one of his buildings, he commissioned a sculptor to replicate it on a smaller scale, and he generously gave an even smaller trophy to each member of “my team.” In her three years at SandP, Samantha’s collection had six buildings, and that was as large as it would get. “Have a seat,” he ordered as he closed the door. Samantha sat in a chair next to Ben, who was next to Izabelle. The three associates studied their feet, waiting. Samantha felt the urge to grab Ben’s hand, like a terrified prisoner facing a firing squad. Andy fell into his chair, and, avoiding eye contact but desperate to get things over with, he recapped the mess they were in. “As you know, Lehman Brothers folded fourteen days ago.” No kidding, Andy! The financial crisis and credit meltdown had the world on the brink of a catastrophe and everyone knew it. But then, Andy rarely had an original thought. “We have five projects in the works, all funded by Lehman. I’ve talked at length with the owners, and all five are pulling the plug. We had three more in the distance, two with Lehman, one with Lloyd’s, and, well, all credit is frozen. The bankers are in their bunkers, afraid to loan a dime.” Yes, Andy, we know this too. It’s front-page. Just get it over with before we jump. “The exec committee met yesterday and made some cuts. Thirty first-year associates are being let go; some terminated outright, others laid off. All new hires are deferred indefinitely. Probate is gone. And, well, there is no easy way to say this, but our entire division is on the block. Cut. Eliminated. Who knows when owners will start building again, if ever. The firm is unwilling to keep you on the payroll while the world waits for loose credit. Hell, we could be headed for a major depression. This is probably just the first round of cuts. Sorry, guys. I’m really sorry.” Ben spoke first. “So we’re being terminated outright?” “No. I fought for you guys, okay? At first they planned to do the pink slip thing. I don’t have to remind you that CRE is the smallest division in the firm and probably the hardest hit right now. I talked them into something we’re calling a furlough. You’ll leave now, come back later, maybe.” “Maybe?” Samantha asked. Izabelle wiped a tear but kept her composure. “Yes, a big fat maybe. Nothing is definite right now, Samantha, okay? We’re all chasing our tails. In six months we could all be at the soup kitchen. You’ve seen the old photos from 1929.” Come on, Andy, a soup kitchen? As a partner, your take-home last year was $2.8 million, average at SandP, which, by the way, came in fourth in net-per-partner. And fourth was not good enough, at least it wasn’t until Lehman croaked and Bear Stearns imploded and the sub-prime mortgage bubble burst. Suddenly, fourth place was looking pretty good, for some anyway. “What’s a furlough?” Ben asked. “Here’s the deal. The firm keeps you under contract for the next twelve months, but you don’t get a paycheck.” “Sweet,” Izabelle mumbled. Ignoring her, Andy plowed ahead: “You keep your health benefits, but only if you intern with a qualified nonprofit. HR is putting together a list of suitable outfits. You go away, do your little do-gooder bit, save the world, hope like hell the economy bounces back, then in a year or so you’re back with the firm and you don’t lose any seniority. You won’t be in CRE but the firm will find a place for you.” “Are our jobs guaranteed when the furlough is over?” Samantha asked. “No, nothing is guaranteed. Frankly, no one is smart enough to predict where we’ll be next year. We’re in the middle of an election, Europe is going to hell, the Chinese are freaking out, banks are folding, markets are crashing, nobody’s building or buying. The world’s coming to an end.” They sat for a moment in the gloomy silence of Andy’s office, all four crushed with the reality of the end of the world. Finally, Ben asked, “You, too, Andy?” “No, they’re transferring me to Tax. Can you believe it? I hate Tax, but it was either Tax or driving a cab. I got a master’s in taxation, though, so they figured they could spare me.” “Congratulations,” Ben said. “I’m sorry, guys.” “No, I mean it. I’m happy for you.” “I could be gone in a month. Who knows?” “When do we leave?” Izabelle asked. “Right now. The procedure is to sign a furlough agreement, pack up your stuff, clean off your desk, and hit the street. HR will e-mail you a list of nonprofits and all the paperwork. Sorry, guys.” “Please stop saying that,” Samantha said. “There’s nothing you can say that helps matters here.” “True, but it could be worse. The majority of those in your boat are not being offered a furlough. They’re being fired on the spot.” “I’m sorry, Andy,” Samantha said. “There are a lot of emotions right now.” “It’s okay. I understand. You have the right to be angry and upset. Look at you—all three have Ivy League law degrees and you’re being escorted out of the building like thieves. Laid off like factory workers. It’s awful, just awful. Some of the partners offered to cut their salaries in half to prevent this.” “I’ll bet that was a small group,” Ben said. “It was, yes. Very small, I’m afraid. But the decision has been made.” A woman in a black suit and a black necktie stood at the quad where Samantha shared a “space” with three others, including Izabelle. Ben was just down the hall. The woman tried to smile as she said, “I’m Carmen. Can I help you?” She was holding an empty cardboard box, blank on all sides so no one would know it was the official Scully and Pershing repository for the office junk of those furloughed or fired or whatever. “No, thanks,” Samantha said, and she managed to do so politely. She could have snapped and been rude, but Carmen was only doing her job. Samantha began opening drawers and removing all things personal. In one drawer she had some SandP files and asked, “What about these?” “They stay here,” Carmen said, watching every move, as if Samantha might attempt to pilfer some valuable asset. The truth was that everything of value was stored in the computers—a desktop she used in her space and a laptop she took almost everywhere. A Scully and Pershing laptop. It, too, would remain behind. She could access everything from her personal laptop, but she knew the codes had already been changed. As if sleepwalking, she cleaned out the drawers and gently tucked away the six miniature skyscrapers from her collection, though she thought about tossing them into the trash can. Izabelle arrived and was given her own personal cardboard box. All others—associates, secretaries, paralegals—had suddenly found business elsewhere. Protocol had been quickly adopted—when someone cleans out a desk, let them do it in peace. No witnesses, no gawking, no hollow farewells. Izabelle’s eyes were puffy and red; she had obviously been in the restroom crying. She whispered, “Call me. Let’s have a drink tonight.” “Sure,” Samantha said. She finished stuffing it all into the box, her briefcase, and her bulky designer bag, and without looking over her shoulder she marched behind Carmen down the hallway and to the elevators on the forty-eighth floor. As they waited, she refused to look around and absorb it one last time. The door opened and thankfully the elevator was empty. “I’ll carry that,” Carmen said, pointing to the box, which was already increasing in bulk and weight. “No,” Samantha said as she stepped inside. Carmen pushed the button for the lobby. Why, exactly, was she being escorted out of the building? The longer she pondered the question the angrier she became. She wanted to cry and she wanted to lash out, but what she really wanted was to call her mother. The elevator stopped on the forty-third floor and a well-dressed young man stepped in. He was holding an identical cardboard box, with a large bag strapped over his shoulder and a leather briefcase under an arm. He had the same stunned look of fear and confusion. Samantha had seen him in the elevator but never met him. What a firm. So mammoth the associates wore name badges at the dreadful Christmas party. Another security guard in a black suit stepped in behind him, and when everyone was in place Carmen again pressed the button for the lobby. Samantha studied the floor, determined not to speak even if spoken to. On the thirty-ninth floor, the elevator stopped again, and Mr. Kirk Knight got on board while studying his cell phone. Once the door closed, he glanced around, saw the two cardboard boxes, and seemed to gasp as his spine stiffened. Knight was senior partner in Mergers and Acquisitions and a member of the executive committee. Suddenly face-to-face with two of his victims, he swallowed hard and stared at the door. Then he suddenly punched the button for floor number 28. Samantha was too numb to insult him. The other associate had his eyes closed. When the elevator stopped, Knight hustled off. After the door closed, Samantha remembered the firm leased floors 30 through 65. Why would Knight make a sudden exit onto 28? Who cared? Carmen walked her through the lobby and out the door onto Broad Street. She offered a meek “I’m sorry,” but Samantha did not respond. Laden like a pack mule, she drifted with the foot traffic, going nowhere in particular. Then she remembered the newspaper photos of the Lehman and Bear Stearns employees leaving their office buildings with boxes filled with their stuff, as if the buildings were on fire and they were fleeing for their lives. In one photo, a large color one on the front of the Times’s section B, a Lehman trader was caught with tears on her cheeks as she stood helplessly on the sidewalk. But those photos were old news now and Samantha did not see any cameras. She set the box down at the corner of Broad and Wall and waited for a cab. 2 I n a chic SoHo loft that cost her $2,000 a month, Samantha flung her office crap at the floor and fell onto the sofa. She clutched her cell phone, but waited. She breathed deeply, eyes closed, emotions somewhat in check. She needed her mother’s voice and reassurance, but she did not want to sound weak, wounded, and vulnerable. The relief came from the sudden realization that she had just been freed from a job she despised. Tonight at seven she might be watching a movie or having dinner with friends, not slaving away at the office with the meter running. This Sunday she could leave the city with no thoughts whatsoever about Andy Grubman and the pile of paperwork for his next crucial deal. The FirmFone, a monstrous little gadget that had been glued to her body for three years now, had been surrendered. She felt liberated and wonderfully unburdened. The fear came from the loss of income and the sudden detour in her career. As a third-year associate, she was earning $180,000 a year in base salary, plus a nice bonus. A lot of money, but life in the city had a way of devouring it. Half evaporated in taxes. She had a savings account, one she halfheartedly acknowledged. When you’re twenty-nine, single, and free in the city, in a profession where next year’s package will exceed this year’s salary plus bonus, why worry too much about saving money? She had a friend from Columbia Law who’d been at SandP for five years, had just made junior partner, and would earn about half a million this year. Samantha had been on that track. She also had friends who jumped off the treadmill after twelve months and happily fled the awful world of Big Law. One was now a ski instructor in Vermont, a former editor of the Columbia Law Review, a refugee from the bowels of SandP who lived in a cabin by a stream and rarely answered his cell. In just thirteen months he had gone from an ambitious young associate to a mildly deranged idiot who slept at his desk. Just before HR intervened, he cracked up and left the city. Samantha thought of him often, usually with a twinge of jealousy. Relief, fear, and humiliation. Her parents paid for a pricey prep school education in D.C. She graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown with a degree in political science. She breezed through law school and finished with honors. A dozen megafirms offered her jobs after a federal court clerkship. The first twenty-nine years of her life had seen overwhelming success and little failure. To be discharged in such a manner was crushing. To be escorted out of the building was degrading. This was not just a minor bump in a long, rewarding career. There was some comfort in the numbers. Since Lehman collapsed, thousands of young professionals had been tossed into the streets. Misery loves company and all that, but at the moment she couldn’t muster much sympathy for anyone else. “Karen Kofer, please,” she said to her phone. She was lying on the sofa, perfectly still, timing her breaths. Then, “Mom, it’s me. They did it. I’ve been sacked.” She bit her lip and fought back tears. “I’m so sorry, Samantha. When did it happen?” “About an hour ago. No real surprise, but it’s still hard to believe.” “I know it, baby. I’m so sorry.” For the past week, they had talked of nothing but a likely termination. “Are you at home?” Karen asked. “I am, and I’m okay. Blythe is at work. I haven’t told her yet. I haven’t told anyone.” “I’m so sorry.” Blythe was a friend and classmate from Columbia who worked at another megafirm. They shared an apartment but not much of their lives. When you work seventy-five to a hundred hours a week, there’s so little to share. Things were not going well at Blythe’s firm either and she was expecting the worst. “I’m fine, Mom.” “No you’re not. Why don’t you come home for a few days?” Home was a moving target. Her mother rented a lovely apartment near Dupont Circle, and her father leased a small condo near the river in Alexandria. Samantha had never spent more than a month in either place and wasn’t thinking about it now. “I will,” she said, “but not right now.” A long pause, then a soft “What are your plans, Samantha?” “I have no plans, Mom. Right now I’m in shock and can’t think past the next hour.” “I understand. I wish I could be there.” “I’m okay, Mom. I promise.” The last thing Samantha needed at that moment was her mother’s hovering presence and endless advice on what to do next. “Is it a termination or some type of layoff?” “The firm is calling it a furlough, a deal whereby we intern with a nonprofit for a year or two and keep our health benefits. Then, if things turn around, the firm will take us back without a loss of seniority.” “Sounds like a pathetic effort to keep you on a string.” Thanks, Mom, for your typical bluntness. Karen went on, “Why don’t you tell those creeps to take a hike?” “Because I’d like to keep my health insurance, and I’d like to know there might be the option of returning one day.” “You can find a job somewhere else.” Spoken like a career bureaucrat. Karen Kofer was a senior attorney with the Department of Justice in Washington, the only law job she’d ever had, and for almost thirty years now. Her position, like that of every person around her, was thoroughly protected. Regardless of depressions, wars, government shutdowns, national catastrophes, political upheavals, or any other possible calamity, Karen Kofer’s paycheck was inviolable. And with that came the casual arrogance of so many entrenched bureaucrats. We are so valuable because we are so necessary. Samantha said, “No, Mom, there are no jobs right now. In case you haven’t heard, we are in a financial crisis with a depression right around the corner. Law firms are tossing out associates in droves, then locking the doors.” “I doubt if things are that bad.” “Oh really. Scully and Pershing has deferred all new hires, which means that a dozen or so of the brightest from the Harvard Law School have just been informed that the jobs they were promised next September won’t be there. Same for Yale, Stanford, Columbia.” “But you are so talented, Samantha.” Never argue with a bureaucrat. Samantha took a deep breath and was about to sign off when an urgent call “from the White House” came through and Karen had to go. She promised to call right back, as soon as she saved the Republic. Fine, Mom, Samantha said. She received as much of her mother’s attention as she could possibly want. She was an only child, which was a good thing in retrospect, in light of the wreckage strewn high and low by her parents’ divorce. It was a clear, beautiful day, weatherwise, and Samantha needed a walk. She zigzagged through SoHo, then through the West Village. In an empty coffee shop, she finally called her father. Marshall Kofer had once been a high-octane plaintiffs’ lawyer whose expertise had been suing airlines after crashes. He built an aggressive and successful firm in D.C. and spent six nights a week in hotels around the world, either chasing cases or trying them. He made a fortune, spent lavishly, and as an adolescent Samantha was keenly aware that her family had more than many of the kids in her D.C. prep school. While her father was leaping from one high-profile case to the next, her mother quietly raised her while doggedly pursing her own career at Justice. If her parents fought, Samantha was not aware of it; her father was simply never at home. At some point, no one would ever know exactly when, a young and pretty paralegal entered the picture and Marshall took the plunge. The fling became an affair, then a romance, and after a couple of years Karen Kofer was suspicious. She confronted her husband, who lied at first but soon admitted the truth. He wanted a divorce; he’d found the love of his life. Coincidentally, at about the same time Marshall was complicating his family life, he made a few other bad decisions. One involved a scheme to take a large fee offshore. A United Asia Airlines jumbo jet had crashed on Sri Lanka, with forty Americans on board. There were no survivors, and, true to form, Marshall Kofer got there before anyone else. During the settlement negotiations, he set up a series of shell companies throughout the Caribbean and Asia to route, reroute, and outright hide his substantial fees. Samantha had a thick file with newspaper accounts and investigative reports of her father’s rather clumsy attempt at corruption. It would make a compelling book, but she had no interest in writing it. He got caught, humiliated, embarrassed on the front page, convicted, disbarred, and sent to prison for three years. He was paroled two weeks before she graduated from Georgetown. These days, Marshall worked as a consultant of some variety in a small office in the old section of Alexandria. According to him, he advised other plaintiffs’ lawyers on mass tort cases but was always vague with the details. Samantha was convinced, as was her mother, that Marshall had managed to bury a pile of loot somewhere in the Caribbean. Karen had stopped looking. Though Marshall would always suspect it and Karen would always deny it, he had a hunch his ex-wife had a finger in his criminal prosecution. She had rank at Justice, plenty of it, and lots of friends. “Dad, I got fired,” she said softly into her cell. The coffee shop was empty but the barista was close by. “Oh, Sam, I’m so sorry,” Marshall said. “Tell me what happened.” As far as she could tell, her father had learned only one thing in prison. Not humility, nor patience, nor understanding, nor forgiveness, nor any of the standard attributes one picks up after such a humiliating fall. He was just as wired and ambitious as before, still eager to tackle each day and run over anyone stalling in front of him. For some reason, though, Marshall Kofer had learned to listen, at least to his daughter. She replayed the narrative slowly, and he hung on every word. She assured him she would be fine. At one point he sounded as if he might cry. Normally, he would have made snide comments about the way she chose to pursue the law. He hated big firms because he had fought them for years. He viewed them as mere corporations, not partnerships with real lawyers fighting for their clients. He had a soapbox from which he could deliver a dozen sermons on the evils of Big Law. Samantha had heard every one of them and was in no mood to hear them again. “Shall I come see you, Sam?” he asked. “I can be there in three hours.” “Thanks, but no. Not yet. Give me a day or so. I need a break and I’m thinking about getting out of the city for a few days.” “I’ll come and get you.” “Maybe, but not now. I’m fine, Dad, I swear.” “No you’re not. You need your father.” It was still odd to hear this from a man who had been absent for the first twenty years of her life. At least he was trying, though. “Thanks, Dad. I’ll call later.” “Let’s take a trip, find a beach somewhere and drink rum.” She had to laugh because they had never taken a trip together, not just the two of them. There had been a few hurried vacations when she was a kid, typical trips to the cities of Europe, almost always cut short by pressing business back home. The idea of hanging out on a beach with her father was not immediately appealing, regardless of the circumstances. “Thanks, Dad. Maybe later but not now. I need to take care of business here.” “I can get you a job,” he said. “A real one.” Here we go again, she thought, but let it pass. Her father had been trying to entice her into a real law job for several years now, real in the sense that it would involve suing big corporations for all manner of malfeasance. In Marshall Kofer’s world, every company of a certain size must have committed egregious sins to succeed in the cutthroat world of Western capitalism. It was the calling of lawyers (and maybe ex-lawyers) like him to uncover the wrongdoing and sue like crazy. “Thanks, Dad. I’ll call you later.” How ironic that her father would still be so eager for her to pursue the same brand of law that had landed him in prison. She had no interest in the courtroom, or in conflict. She wasn’t sure what she wanted, probably a nice desk job with a handsome salary. Primarily because of her gender and brains, she once had a decent chance of making partner at Scully and Pershing. But at what cost? Perhaps she wanted that career, perhaps not. Right now she just wanted to roam the streets of lower Manhattan and clear her head. She drifted through Tribeca as the hours passed. Her mother called twice and her father called once, but she declined to answer. Izabelle and Ben checked in too, but she didn’t want to talk. She found herself at Moke’s Pub near Chinatown, and for a moment stood outside looking in. Her first drink with Henry had been at Moke’s, so many years ago. Friends introduced them. He was an aspiring actor, one of a million in the city, and she was a rookie associate at SandP. They dated for a year before the romance fizzled under the strain of her brutal work schedule and his unemployment. He fled to L.A. where, at last sighting, he was driving limos for unknown actors and doing bit parts in commercials, nonspeaking. She could have loved Henry under different circumstances. He had the time, the interest, and the passion. She had been too exhausted. It was not unusual in Big Law for women to wake up at the age of forty and realize they were still single and a decade had just passed by. She walked away from Moke’s and headed north to SoHo. Anna from Human Resources proved remarkably efficient. At 5:00 p.m., Samantha received a long e-mail that included the names of ten nonprofits someone had deemed suitable for nonpaying internships by the battered and bruised souls suddenly furloughed by the world’s largest law firm. Marshkeepers in Lafayette, Louisiana. The Pittsburgh Women’s Shelter. Immigrant Initiative in Tampa. Mountain Legal Aid Clinic in Brady, Virginia. The Euthanasia Society of Greater Tucson. A homeless organization in Louisville. Lake Erie Defense Fund. And so on. None of the ten were anywhere near the New York metropolitan area. She stared at the list for a long time and contemplated the reality of leaving the city. She had lived there for six of the past seven years—three at Columbia and three as an associate. After law school, she had clerked for a federal judge in D.C., then hurriedly returned to New York. Between there and Washington she had never lived beyond the bright lights. Lafayette, Louisiana? Brady, Virginia? In language that was far too chipper for the occasion, Anna advised those furloughed that space could possibly be limited at some of the above nonprofits. In other words, sign up in a hurry or you might not get the chance to move to the boondocks and work the next twelve months for free. But Samantha was too numb to do anything in a hurry. Blythe popped in for a quick hello and microwave pasta. Samantha had delivered the big news via text and her roommate was near tears when she arrived. After a few minutes, though, Samantha managed to calm her and assure her that life would go on. Blythe’s firm represented a pack of mortgage lenders, and the mood there was just as dark as at Scully and Pershing. For days now, the two had talked of almost nothing but being terminated. Halfway through the pasta, Blythe’s cell began vibrating. It was her supervising partner, looking for her. So at 6:30 she dashed from the apartment, frantic to get back to the office and fearful that the slightest delay might get her sacked. Samantha poured a glass of wine and filled the tub with warm water. She soaked and drank and decided that, in spite of the money, she hated Big Law and would never go back. She would never again allow herself to get yelled at because she was not at the office after dark or before sunrise. She would never again be seduced by the money. She would never again do a lot of things. On the financial front, things were unsteady but not altogether bleak. She had $31,000 in savings and no debt, except for three more months on the loft rental. If she downsized considerably and pieced together income through part-time jobs, she could possibly hang on until the storm blew over. Assuming, of course, that the end of the world did not materialize. She couldn’t see herself waiting tables or selling shoes, but then she had never dreamed her prestigious career would end so abruptly. The city would soon be crowded with even more waitresses and retail clerks holding graduate degrees. Back to Big Law. Her goal had been to make partner by the age of thirty-five, one of few women at the top, and nail down a corner office from which she would play hardball with the boys. She would have a secretary, an assistant, some paralegals, and a driver on call, a golden expense account, and a designer wardrobe. The hundred-hour workweeks would shrink into something manageable. She would knock down two million plus a year for twenty years, then retire and travel the world. Along the way she would pick up a husband, a kid or two, and life would be grand. It had all been planned and was seemingly within reach. She met Izabelle for martinis in the lobby of the Mercer Hotel, four blocks from her loft. They had invited Ben but he had a new wife and was otherwise distracted. The furloughs were having opposite effects. Samantha was in the process of coping, even shrugging it off and thinking about ways to survive. She was lucky, though, because she had no student debt. Her parents had the money for a fine education. But Izabelle was choking under old loans and agonizing over the future. She slurped her martini and the gin went straight to her brain. “I can’t go a year with no income,” she said. “Can you?” “Possibly,” Samantha said. “If I shrink everything and live off soup, I can scrimp along and stay in the city.” “Not me,” Izabelle said sadly as she took another gulp. “I know this guy in Litigation. He got the furlough deal last Friday. He’s already called five of the nonprofits, and all five said the internships had been grabbed by other associates. Can you believe it? So he called HR and raised hell and they said they’re still working on the list, still getting inquiries from nonprofits looking for extremely cheap labor. So not only do we get sacked, but the little furlough scheme is not working too well. No one wants us even if we’ll work for free. That’s pretty sick.” Samantha took a tiny sip and savored the numbing liquid. “I’m not inclined to take the furlough deal.” “Then what do you do about health insurance? You can’t go naked.” “Maybe I can.” “But if you get sick, you’ll lose everything.” “I don’t have much.” “That’s foolish, Sam.” Another pull on the martini, though a bit smaller. “So you’re giving up on a bright future at dear old Scully and Pershing.” “The firm has given up on me, and you, and a lot of others. There has to be a better place to work, and a better way to make a living.” “I’ll drink to that.” A waitress appeared, and they ordered another round. 3 S amantha slept for twelve hours and woke up with an overwhelming urge to flee the city. Lying in bed and staring at the ancient wooden beams across her ceiling, she replayed the last month or so and realized she had not left Manhattan in seven weeks. A long August weekend in Southampton had been abruptly canceled by Andy Grubman, and instead of sleeping and partying she had spent Saturday and Sunday at the office proofreading contracts a foot thick. Seven weeks. She showered quickly and stuffed a suitcase with some essentials. At ten, she boarded a train at Penn Station and left a voice message on Blythe’s cell. She was headed to D.C. for a few days. Call me if you get the ax. As the train rolled through New Jersey, curiosity got the best of her. She sent an e-mail to the Lake Erie Defense Fund, and one to the Pittsburgh Women’s Shelter. Thirty minutes passed without replies as she read the Times. Not a word about the carnage at SandP as the economic meltdown continued unabated. Massive layoffs at financial firms. Banks refusing to lend while other banks were closing their doors. Congress chasing its tail. Obama blaming Bush. McCain/Palin blaming the Democrats. She checked her laptop and saw another e-mail from happy Anna in HR. Six new nonprofits had emerged and joined the party. Better get busy! The Women’s Shelter sent back a pleasant note, thanking Ms. Kofer for her interest but the position had just been filled. Five minutes later, the good folks fighting to save Lake Erie said pretty much the same thing. Feeling the challenge now, Samantha sent a flurry of e-mails to five more nonprofits on Anna’s list, then sent one to Anna politely asking her to become a bit more enthusiastic with her updates. Between Philadelphia and Wilmington, Marshkeepers down in Louisiana said no. The Georgia Innocence Project said no. The Immigrant Initiative in Tampa said no. The Death Penalty Clearinghouse said no, and Legal Aid of Greater St. Louis said no. No, but thanks for your interest. The intern positions have already been filled. Zero for seven. She couldn’t land a job as a volunteer! She got a cab at Union Station near the Capitol and sank low in the rear seat as it inched through D.C. traffic. Block after block of government offices, headquarters for a thousand organizations and associations, hotels and gleaming new condos, sprawling offices packed with lawyers and lobbyists, the sidewalks crawling with busy people hurrying back and forth, urgently pursuing the nation’s business as the world teetered on the brink. She had lived the first twenty-two years of her life in D.C., but now found it boring. It still attracted bright young people in droves, but all they talked about was politics and real estate. The lobbyists were the worst. They now outnumbered the lawyers and politicians combined, and they ran the city. They owned Congress and thus controlled the money, and over cocktails or dinner they would bore you to death with the details of their latest heroic efforts to secure a bit of pork or rewrite a loophole in the tax code. Every friend from childhood and Georgetown earned a paycheck that in some way had federal dollars attached to it. Her own mother earned $145,000 a year as a lawyer at Justice. Samantha wasn’t sure how her father earned his money. She decided to visit him first. Her mother worked long hours and wouldn’t be home until after dark. Samantha let herself into her mother’s apartment, left her suitcase, and took the same cab across the Potomac to Old Town in Alexandria. Her father was waiting with a hug and a smile and all the time in the world. He had moved into a much nicer building and renamed his firm the Kofer Group. “Sounds like a bunch of lobbyists,” she said as she looked around his well-appointed reception area. “Oh no,” Marshall said. “We stay away from that circus over there,” he said, pointing in the general direction of D.C. as if it were a ghetto. They were walking down a hallway, passing open doors to small offices. Then what exactly do you do, Dad? But she decided to postpone that question. He led her into a large corner office with a distant view of the Potomac River, not unlike Andy Grubman’s from another lifetime. They sat in leather chairs around a small table as a secretary fetched coffee. “How are you doing?” he asked sincerely, a hand on her knee as if she’d fallen down the steps. “I’m okay,” Samantha said and immediately felt her throat tighten. Get a grip. She swallowed hard and said, “It’s just been so sudden. A month ago things were fine, you know, on track, no problems. A lot of hours but that’s life on the treadmill. Then we started hearing rumors, distant drumbeats of things going wrong. It seems so sudden now.” “Yes it does. This crash is more like a bomb.” The coffee arrived on a tray and the secretary closed the door as she left. “Do you read Trottman?” he asked. “Who?” “Okay, he writes a weekly newsletter on the markets and politics. Based here in D.C. and been around for some time, and he’s pretty good. Six months ago he predicted a meltdown in the sub-prime mortgage game, said it’s been building for years and so on, said there would be a crash and a major recession. He advised everyone to get out of the markets, all markets.” “Did you?” “Didn’t have anything in the markets, really. And if I did I’m not sure I would have taken his advice. Six months ago we were living the dream and real estate values would never decline. Credit was dirt cheap and everybody was borrowing heavily. The sky was the limit.” “What does this Trottman say now?” “Well, when he’s not crowing, he’s telling the Fed what to do. He’s predicting a major recession, and worldwide, but nothing like 1929. He thinks the markets will sink by half, unemployment will jump to new levels, the Democrats will win in November, a couple of major banks will go under, a lot of fear and uncertainty but the world will survive somehow. What do you hear up there, on Wall Street? You’re in the thick of things. Or you were, I suppose.” He was wearing the same style of black tasseled loafers he’d worn forever. The dark suit was probably handmade, just like in the glory days. Worsted wool and very expensive. Silk tie with perfect knot. Cuff links. The first time she visited him in prison he wore a khaki shirt and olive dungarees, his standard uniform, and he’d whined about how much he missed his wardrobe. Marshall Kofer had always loved fine clothes, and now that he was back he was clearly spending some money. “Nothing but panic,” she said. “Two suicides yesterday, according to the Times.” “Have you had lunch?” “I had a sandwich on the train.” “Let’s do dinner, just the two of us.” “I promised Mom, but I’m free for lunch tomorrow.” “Booked. How is Karen?” he asked. According to him, her parents had a friendly chat at least once a month by phone. According to her mother, the conversations happened about once a year. Marshall would like to be friends, but Karen carried too much baggage. Samantha had never tried to broker a truce. “She’s fine, I guess. Works hard and all that.” “Is she seeing anyone?” “I don’t ask. What about you?” The young and pretty paralegal ditched him two months after he landed in prison, so Marshall had been single for many years. Single but seldom alone. He was almost sixty, still fit and thin with slicked-back gray hair and a killer smile. “Oh, I’m still in the game,” he said with a laugh. “And you. Anybody significant?” “No, Dad, afraid not. I’ve spent the last three years in a cave while the world went by. I’m twenty-nine and a virgin once again.” “No need to go there. How long are you in town?” “I just got here. I don’t know. I told you about the furlough scheme the firm is offering and I’m checking that out.” “You volunteer for a year, then get your old job back without losing rank?” “Something like that.” “Smells bad. You don’t really trust those guys, do you?” She took a deep breath, then a sip of coffee. At this point, the conversation could spiral down into topics she couldn’t stomach at the moment. “No, not really. I can honestly say that I do not trust the partners who run Scully and Pershing. No.” Marshall was already shaking his head, happily agreeing with her. “And you don’t really want to go back there, not now, not twelve months from now. Right?” “I’m not sure what I’ll be thinking in twelve months, but I can’t see much of a future at the firm.” “Right, right.” He set his coffee cup on the table and leaned forward. “Look, Samantha, I can offer you a job right here, one that will pay well and keep you busy for a year or so while you sort things out. Maybe it can become permanent, maybe not, but you’ll have plenty of time to make that decision. You will not be practicing law, real law as they say, but then I’m not sure you’ve been doing much of that for the past three years.” “Mom said you have two partners and that they’ve also been disbarred.” He faked a laugh, but the truth was uncomfortable. “Karen would say that, wouldn’t she? But yes, Samantha, there are three of us here, all convicted, sentenced, disbarred, incarcerated, and, I’m happy to say, fully rehabilitated.” “I’m sorry, Dad, but I can’t see myself working for a firm run by three disbarred lawyers.” Marshall’s shoulders sagged a bit. The smile went away. “It’s not really a law firm, right?” “Right. We can’t practice because we have not been reinstated.” “Then what do you do?” He bounced back quickly and said, “We make a lot of money, dear. We work as consultants.” “Everybody is a consultant, Dad. Who do you consult and what do you tell them?” “Are you familiar with litigation funders?” “For discussion purposes, let’s say the answer is no.” “Okay, litigation funders are private companies that raise money from their investors to buy into big lawsuits. For example, let’s say a small software company is convinced one of the big guys, say Microsoft, has stolen its software, but there’s no way the small company can afford to sue Microsoft and go toe-to-toe in court. Impossible. So the small company goes to a litigation fund, and the fund reviews the case, and if it has merit, then the fund puts up some serious cash for legal fees and expenses. Ten million, twenty million, doesn’t really matter. There’s plenty of cash. The fund of course gets a piece of the action. The fight becomes a fair one, and there’s usually a lucrative settlement. Our job here is to advise the litigation funds on whether or not they should get involved. Not all potential lawsuits should be pursued, not even in this country. My two partners, non-equity partners, I might add, were also experts in complex tort litigation until, shall we say, they were asked to leave the legal profession. Our business is booming, regardless of this little recession. In fact, we think this current mess will actually help our business. A lot of banks are about to get sued, and for huge sums.” Samantha listened, sipped her coffee, and reminded herself that she was listening to a man who once cajoled millions out of jurors on a regular basis. “What do you think?” he asked. Sounds dreadful, she thought, but kept frowning as if deep in thought. “Interesting,” she managed to say. “We see huge growth potential,” he said. Yes, and with three ex-cons running the show it’s only a matter of time before there’s trouble. “I don’t know beans about litigation, Dad. I’ve always tried to stay away from it. I was in finance, remember?” “Oh, you’ll pick it up. I’ll teach you, Samantha. We’ll have a ball. Give it a shot. Try it for a few months while you sort things out.” “But I’m not disbarred yet,” she said. They both laughed, but it really wasn’t that funny. “I’ll think about it, Dad. Thanks.” “You’ll fit in, I promise. Forty hours a week, a nice office, nice people. It’ll sure beat the rat race in New York.” “But New York is home, Dad. Not D.C.” “Okay, okay. I’m not going to push. The offer is on the table.” “And I appreciate it.” A secretary tapped on the door and stuck her head in. “Your four o’clock meeting, sir.” Marshall frowned as he glanced at his watch to confirm the time. “I’ll be there in a moment,” he said and she disappeared. Samantha grabbed her purse and said, “I need to be going.” “No rush, dear. It can wait.” “I know you’re busy. I’ll see you tomorrow for lunch.” “We’ll have some fun. Say hello to Karen. I’d love to see her.” Not a chance. “Sure, Dad. See you tomorrow.” They hugged by the door and she hurried away. The eighth rejection came from the Chesapeake Society in Baltimore, and the ninth came from an outfit fighting to save the redwoods in Northern California. Never, in her privileged life, had Samantha Kofer been rejected nine times in one day from any endeavor. Nor in a week, nor a month. She was not sure she could handle number ten. She was sipping decaf in the caf? at Kramerbooks near Dupont Circle, waiting and swapping e-mails with friends. Blythe still had a job but things were changing by the hour. She passed along the gossip that her firm, the world’s fourth largest, was also slaughtering associates right and left, and that it too had cooked up the same furlough scheme to dump its brightest on as many broke and struggling nonprofits as possible. She wrote: “Must be 1000s out there knocking doors begging for work.” Samantha didn’t have the spine to admit she was zero for nine. Then number ten chimed in. It was a terse message from a Mattie Wyatt at Mountain Legal Aid Clinic in Brady, Virginia: “If you can talk right now call my cell,” and she gave her number. After nine straight stiff-arms, it felt like an invitation to the Inauguration. Samantha took a deep breath and another sip, glanced around to make sure she could not be heard, as if the other customers were concerned with her business, then punched the numbers of her cell phone. 4 T he Mountain Legal Aid Clinic ran its low-budget operations from an abandoned hardware store on Main Street in Brady, Virginia, population twenty-two hundred and declining with each census. Brady was in southwest Virginia, Appalachia, the coal country. From the affluent D.C. suburbs of northern Virginia, Brady was about three hundred miles away in distance and a century in time. Mattie Wyatt had been the clinic’s executive director from the day she founded the organization twenty-six years earlier. She picked up her cell phone and gave her usual greeting: “Mattie Wyatt.” A somewhat timid voice on the other end said, “Yes, this is Samantha Kofer. I just got your e-mail.” “Thank you, Ms. Kofer. I got your inquiry this afternoon, along with some others. Looks like things are pretty tough at some of these big law firms.” “You could say that, yes.” “Well, we’ve never had an intern from one of the big New York firms, but we could always use some help around here. There’s no shortage of poor folk and their problems. You ever been to southwest Virginia?” Samantha had not. She had seen the world but had never ventured into Appalachia. “I’m afraid not,” she said as politely as possible. Mattie’s voice was friendly, her accent slightly twangy, and Samantha decided that her best manners were needed. “Well you’re in for a jolt,” Mattie said. “Look, Ms. Kofer, I’ve had three of you guys send e-mails today and we don’t have room for three rookies who are clueless, know what I mean? So the only way I know to pick one is to do interviews. Can you come down here for a look around? The other two said they would try. I think one is from your law firm.” “Well, sure, I could drive down,” Samantha said. What else could she say? Any hint of reluctance and she would indeed pick up the tenth rejection. “When did you have in mind?” “Tomorrow, the next day, whenever. I didn’t expect to get flooded with laid-off lawyers scrambling to find work, even if it doesn’t pay. Suddenly there’s competition for the job, so I guess the sooner the better. New York is a long way off.” “I’m actually in D.C. I can be there tomorrow afternoon, I suppose.” “Okay. I don’t have much time to spend with interviews, so I’ll likely just hire the first one to show up and cancel the rest. That is, if I like the first one.” Samantha closed her eyes for a few seconds and tried to put it all in perspective. Yesterday morning she had arrived at her desk in the world’s largest law firm, one that paid her handsomely and had the promise of a long, profitable career. Now, about thirty hours later, she was unemployed, sitting in the caf? at Kramerbooks and trying to hustle her way into a temporary, unpaid gig about as deep in the boonies as one could possibly wander. Mattie continued, “I drove to D.C. last year for a conference, took me six hours. You wanna say around four tomorrow afternoon?” “Sure. I’ll see you then. And thanks Ms. Wyatt.” “No, thank you, and it’s Mattie.” Samantha searched the Web and found a site for the legal aid clinic. Its mission was simple: “Provide free legal services for low-income clients in southwest Virginia.” Its areas of service included domestic relations, debt relief, housing, health care, education, and benefits due to black lung disease. Her legal education had touched briefly on some of these specialties; her career had not. The clinic did not deal with criminal matters. In addition to Mattie Wyatt, there was another attorney, a paralegal, a receptionist, all women. Samantha decided she would discuss it with her mother, then sleep on it. She did not own a car and, frankly, could not see herself wasting the time to travel to Appalachia. Waiting tables in SoHo was looking better. As she stared at her laptop, the homeless shelter in Louisville checked in with a polite no. Ten rejections in one day. That was enough: she would end her quest to save the world. Karen Kofer arrived at Firefly just after seven. Her eyes watered as she hugged her only child, and after a few words of sympathy Samantha asked her to please stop. They went to the bar and ordered wine while they waited for a table. Karen was fifty-five and aging beautifully. She spent most of her cash on clothes and was always trendy, even chic. As long as Samantha could remember, her mother had complained about the lack of style around her at Justice, as if it were her job to spice things up. She had been single for ten years and there had been no shortage of men, but never the right one. Out of habit, she sized up her daughter, from earrings down to shoes, and made her assessment in a matter of seconds. No comment. Samantha didn’t really care. On this awful day, she had other things on her mind. “Dad says hello,” she said in an effort to steer the conversation away from the urgent matters at Justice. “Oh, you’ve seen him?” Karen asked, eyebrows arched, radar suddenly on high alert. “Yes. I stopped by his office. He seems to be doing well, looking good, expanding his business, he says.” “Did he offer you a job?” “He did. Starting right away, forty hours a week in an office filled with wonderful people.” “They’ve all been disbarred, you know?” “Yes, you told me that.” “It seems to be legitimate, for now anyway. Surely you’re not thinking about working for Marshall. It’s a gang of thieves and they’ll probably be in trouble before long.” “So you’re watching them?” “Let’s say I have friends, Samantha. Lots of friends in the right places.” “And you’d like to see him busted again?” “No, dear, I’m over your father. We split years ago and it took a long time to recover. He hid assets and screwed me in the divorce, but I finally let it go. I have a good life and I’ll not waste negative energy on Marshall Kofer.” In tandem, they sipped their wine and watched the bartender, a hunky boy in his mid-twenties in a tight black T-shirt. “No, Mom, I’m not going to work for Dad. It would be a disaster.” The hostess led them to their table and a waiter poured ice water. When they were alone, Karen said, “I’m so sorry, Samantha. I can’t believe this.” “Please, Mom, that’s enough.” “I know, but I’m your mother and I can’t help myself.” “Can I borrow your car for the next couple of days?” “Well, sure. Why do you need my car?” “There’s a legal aid clinic in Brady, Virginia, one of the nonprofits on my list, and I’m thinking of driving down for a look around. It’s probably a waste of time, but I’m really not that busy these days. In fact, I have nothing to do tomorrow and a long drive might help to clear my head.” “But legal aid?” “Why not? It’s just an interview for an internship. If I don’t get the job, then I’ll remain unemployed. If I do get the job, I can always quit if I don’t like it.” “And it pays nothing?” “Nothing. That’s part of the deal. I do the internship for twelve months and the firm keeps me in the system.” “But surely you can find a nice little firm in New York.” “We’ve already discussed this, Mom. Big law firms are laying off and small firms are folding. You don’t understand the hysteria on the streets of New York these days. You’re safe and secure and none of your friends will lose their jobs. Out in the real world it’s nothing but fear and chaos.” “I’m not in the real world?” Fortunately the waiter was back, and with a long narrative about the specials. When he left, they finished their wine and gazed at the tables around them. Finally, Karen said, “Samantha, I think you’re making a mistake. You can’t just go off and disappear for a year. What about your apartment? And your friends?” “My friends are just as furloughed as I am, most of them anyway. And I don’t have a lot of friends.” “I just don’t like the sound of it.” “Great, Mom, and what are my options? Taking a job with the Kofer Group.” “Heaven forbid. You’d probably end up in jail.” “Would you visit me? You never visited him.” “Never thought about visiting him. I was delighted when they put him away. You’ll understand one day, dear, but only if the man you love dumps you for someone else, and I pray that never happens.” “Okay, I think I understand that. But it was a long time ago.” “Some things you never forget.” “Are you trying to forget?” “Look, Samantha, every child wants their parents to stay together. It’s a basic survival instinct. And when they split, the child wants them to at least be friends. Some are able to do this, some are not. I do not want to be in the same room with Marshall Kofer, and I prefer not to talk about him. Let’s just leave it at that.” “Fair enough.” It was as close to a mediation as Samantha had ever been, and she quickly backed away. The waiter brought salads and they ordered a bottle of wine. “How is Blythe?” Karen asked, heading toward easier topics. “Worried, but still employed.” They talked about Blythe for a few minutes, then on to a man named Forest who’d been hanging around Karen’s apartment for a month or so. He was a few years younger, her preference, but there was no romance. Forest was a lawyer advising the Obama campaign, and the conversation drifted in that direction. With fresh wine, they analyzed the first presidential debate. Samantha, though, was tired of the election, and Karen, because of her job, shied away from the politics. She said, “I forgot you don’t own a car.” “I haven’t needed one in years. I guess I could lease one for a few months if I need to.” “Come to think of it, I’ll need mine tomorrow night. I’m playing bridge at a friend’s house in McLean.” “No problem. I’ll rent one for a couple of days. The more I think about it, the more I’m looking forward to a long drive, alone.” “How long?” “Six hours.” “You can drive to New York in six hours.” “Well, tomorrow I’m going the other way.” The entr?es arrived and they were both starving. 5 I t took an hour to rent a red Toyota Prius, and as Samantha worked her way through D.C. traffic she gripped the wheel and constantly scanned the mirrors. She had not driven in months and was quite uncomfortable. The incoming lanes were packed with commuters hustling from the suburbs to the city, but the traffic headed west moved without too much congestion. Past Manassas, the interstate cleared considerably and she finally relaxed. Izabelle called and they gossiped for fifteen minutes. Scully and Pershing had furloughed more associates late the day before, including another friend from law school. Another batch of non-equity partners had hit the street. A dozen or so senior partners took early retirement, apparently at gunpoint. Support staff was cut by 15 percent. The place was paralyzed with fear, with lawyers locking their doors and hiding under their desks. Izabelle said she might go to Wilmington and live in her sister’s basement, intern for a child advocacy program, and look for part-time work. She doubted she would return to New York, but it was too early to make predictions. Things were too unsettled, and changing rapidly, and, well, no one could say where they might be in a year. Samantha admitted she was thrilled to be out of the law firm and on the open road. She called her father and canceled lunch. He seemed disappointed, but was quick to advise her against rushing into a meaningless internship deep in “the third world.” He mentioned the job offer again and pressed a little too hard. So she said no. “No, Dad, I don’t want the job, but thanks anyway.” “You’re making a mistake, Sam,” he said. “I didn’t ask for your advice, Dad.” “Perhaps you need my advice. Please listen to someone with some sense.” “Good-bye, Dad. I’ll call later.” Near the small town of Strasburg, she turned south on Interstate 81 and fell in with a stampede of eighteen-wheelers, all seemingly oblivious to the speed limit. Looking at the map, she had envisioned a lovely drive through the Shenandoah Valley. Instead, she found herself dodging the big rigs on a crowded four-lane. Thousands of them. She managed to steal an occasional glance to the east and the foothills of the Blue Ridge, and to the west and the Appalachian Mountains. It was the first day of October and the leaves were beginning to turn, but sightseeing was not prudent in such traffic. Her phone kept buzzing with texts but she managed to ignore them. She stopped at a fast-food place near Staunton and had a stale salad. As she ate, she breathed deeply, listened to the locals, and tried to calm herself. There was an e-mail from Henry, the old boyfriend, back in the city and looking for a drink. He had heard the bad news and wanted to commiserate. His acting career had fallen flatter in L.A. than it had in New York, and he was tired of driving limousines for D-list actors with inferior talent. He said he missed her, thought of her often, and now that she was unemployed perhaps they could spend some time together, polishing their r?sum?s and watching the want ads. She decided not to respond, not then anyway. Perhaps when she was back in New York, and bored and really lonely. In spite of the trucks and the traffic, she was beginning to enjoy the solitude of the drive. She tried NPR a few times, but always found the same story—the economic meltdown, the great recession. Plenty of smart people were predicting a depression. Others were thinking the panic would pass, the world would survive. In Washington, the brains appeared to be frozen as conflicting strategies were offered, debated, and discarded. She eventually ignored the radio, and the cell phone, and drove on in silence, lost in her thoughts. The GPS directed her to leave the interstate at Abingdon, Virginia, and she happily did so. For two hours she wound her way westward, into the mountains. As the roads became narrower, she asked herself more than once what, exactly, was she doing? Where was she going? What could she possibly find in Brady, Virginia, that would entice her to spend the next year there? Nothing—that was the answer. But she was determined to get there and to complete this little adventure. Maybe it would make for a bit of amusing chitchat over cocktails back in the city; perhaps not. At the moment, she was still relieved to be away from New York. When she crossed into Noland County, she turned onto Route 36 and the road became even narrower, the mountains became steeper, the foliage brighter with yellow and burnt orange. She was alone on the highway, and the deeper she sank into the mountains the more she wondered if, in fact, there was another way out. Wherever Brady was, it seemed to be at the dead end of the road. Her ears popped and she realized she and her little red Prius were slowly climbing. A battered sign announced the approach to Dunne Spring, population 201, and she topped a hill and passed a gas station on the left and a country store on the right. Seconds later, there was a car on her bumper, one with flashing blue lights. Then she heard the wail of a siren. She panicked, hit her brakes and almost caused the cop to ram her, then hurriedly stopped on some gravel next to a bridge. By the time the officer approached her door, she was fighting back tears. She grabbed her phone to text someone, but there was no service. He said something that vaguely resembled “Driver’s license please.” She grabbed her bag and eventually found her license. Her hands were shaking as she gave him the card. He took it and pulled it almost to his nose, as if visually impaired. She finally looked at him; other impairments were obvious. His uniform was a mismatched ensemble of frayed and stained khaki pants, a faded brown shirt covered with all manner of insignia, unpolished black combat boots, and a Smokey the Bear trooper’s hat at least two sizes too big and resting on his oversized ears. Unruly black hair crept from under the hat. “New York?” he said. His diction was far from crisp but his belligerent tone was clear. “Yes sir. I live in New York City.” “Then why are you driving a car from Vermont?” “It’s a rental car,” she said, grabbing the Avis agreement on the console. She offered it to him but he was still staring at her license, as if he had trouble reading. “What’s a Prius?” he asked. Long i, like “Pryus.” “It’s a hybrid, from Toyota.” “A what?” She knew nothing about cars, but at that moment it did not matter. An abundance of knowledge would not help her explain the concept of a hybrid. “A hybrid, you know, it runs on both gas and electricity.” “You don’t say.” She could not think of the proper response, and while he waited she just smiled at him. His left eye seemed to drift toward his nose. He said, “Well, it must go pretty fast. I clocked you doing fifty-one back there in a twenty-mile-an-hour zone. That’s thirty over. That’s reckless driving down here in Virginia. Not sure about New York and Vermont, but it’s reckless down here. Yes ma’am, it sure is.” “But I didn’t see a speed limit sign.” “I can’t help what you don’t see, ma’am, now can I?” An old pickup truck approached from ahead, slowed, and seemed ready to stop. The driver leaned out and yelled, “Come on, Romey, not again.” The cop turned around and yelled back, “Get outta here!” The truck stopped on the center line, and the driver yelled, “You gotta stop that, man.” The cop unsnapped his holster, whipped out his black pistol, and said, “You heard me, get outta here.” The truck lurched forward, spun its rear tires, and sped away. When it was twenty yards down the road, the cop aimed his pistol at the sky and fired a loud, thundering shot that cracked through the valley and echoed off the ridges. Samantha screamed and began crying. The cop watched the truck disappear, then said, “It’s okay, it’s okay. He’s always butting in. Now, where were we?” He stuck the pistol back into the holster and fiddled with the snap as he talked. “I don’t know,” she said, trying to wipe her eyes with trembling hands. Frustrated, the cop said, “It’s okay, ma’am. It’s okay. Now, you got a New York driver’s license and Vermont tags on this little weird car, and you were thirty miles over. What are you doing down here?” Is it really any of your business? she almost blurted, but an attitude would only cause more trouble. She looked straight ahead, took deep breaths, and fought to compose herself. Finally she said, “I’m headed to Brady. I have a job interview.” Her ears were ringing. He laughed awkwardly and said, “Ain’t no jobs in Brady, I can guarantee you that.” “I have an interview with the Mountain Legal Aid Clinic,” she said, teeth clenched, her own words hollow and surreal. This baffled him and he seemed uncertain as to his next move. “Well, I gotta take you in. Thirty over is extreme recklessness. Judge’ll probably throw the book at you. Gotta take you in.” “In where?” “To the county jail in Brady.” Her chin dropped to her chest and she massaged her temples. “I don’t believe this,” she said. “Sorry ma’am. Get out of the car. I’ll let you sit in my front seat.” He was standing with his hands on his hips, his right one dangerously close to his holster. “Are you serious?” she asked. “As a heart attack.” “Can I make a phone call?” “No way. Maybe at the jail. Besides, ain’t no service out here.” “You’re arresting me and taking me to jail?” “Now you’re catching on. I’m sure we do things different down here in Virginia. Let’s go.” “What about my car?” “Tow truck’ll come get it. Cost you another forty bucks. Let’s go.” She couldn’t think clearly, but all other options seemed to end with more gunfire. Slowly, she grabbed her bag and got out of the car. At five foot seven and in flat shoes, she had at least two inches on Romey. She walked back to his car, its blue grille lights still flashing. She looked at the driver’s door and saw nothing. He sensed what she was thinking and said, “It’s an unmarked car. That’s why you didn’t see me back there. Works every time. Get in the front seat. I’ll take you in with no handcuffs.” She managed to mumble a weak “Thanks.” It was a dark blue Ford of some variety, and it vaguely resembled an old patrol car, one retired a decade earlier. The front seat was of the bench style, vinyl with large cracks that revealed dirty foam padding. Two radios were stuck on the dashboard. Romey grabbed a mike and said, in rapid words barely decipherable, something like, “Unit ten, inbound to Brady with subject. ETA five minutes. Notify the judge. Need a wrecker at Thack’s Bridge, some kinda little weird Japanese car.” There was no response, as if no one was listening. Samantha wondered if the radio really worked. On the bench between them was a police scanner, it too as quiet as the radio. Romey hit a switch and turned off his lights. “You wanna hear the siren?” he asked with a grin, a kid and his toys. She shook her head. No. And she thought yesterday had been the pits, with the ten rejections and all. And the day before she’d been laid off and escorted out of the building. But now this—arrested in Podunk and hauled away to jail. Her heart pounded and she had trouble swallowing. There were no seat belts. Romey hit the gas and they were soon flying down the center of the highway, the old Ford rattling from bumper to bumper. After a mile or two he said, “I’m really sorry about this. Just doing my job.” She asked, “Are you a policeman or a deputy sheriff or something like that?” “I’m a constable. Do primarily traffic enforcement.” She nodded as if this cleared up everything. He drove with his left wrist limped over the steering wheel, which was vibrating. On a flat stretch of road, he gunned the engine and the turbulence increased. She glanced at the speedometer, which was not working. He barked into his mike again like a bad actor, and again no one answered. They slid into a steep curve, much too fast, but when the car fishtailed, Romey calmly turned in to the spin and tapped the brakes. I’m going to die, she thought. Either at the hands of a deranged killer or in a fiery crash. Her stomach flipped and she felt faint. She clutched her bag, closed her eyes, and began to pray. On the outskirts of Brady, she finally managed to breathe normally. If he planned to rape and murder her, and toss her body off a mountain, he wouldn’t do it in town. They passed shops with gravel parking lots, and rows of neat little houses, all painted white. There were church steeples rising above the trees when she looked up. Before they got to Main Street, Romey turned abruptly and slid into the unpaved parking lot of the Noland County Jail. “Just follow me,” he said. For a split second, she was actually relieved to be at the jail. As she followed him toward the front door, she glanced around to make sure no one was watching. And who, exactly, was she worried about? Inside, they stopped in a cramped and dusty waiting area. To the left was a door with the word “Jail” stenciled on it. Romey pointed to the right and said, “You take a seat over there while I get the paperwork. And no funny stuff, okay?” No one else was present. “Where would I go?” she asked. “I’ve lost my car.” “You just sit down and keep quiet.” She sat in a plastic chair and he disappeared through the door. Evidently, the walls were quite thin because she heard him say, “Got a girl from New York out there, picked her up at Dunne Spring, doing fifty-one. Can you believe that?” A male voice responded sharply, “Oh come on, Romey, not again.” “Yep. Nailed her.” “You gotta stop that crap, Romey.” “Don’t start with me again, Doug.” There were heavy footsteps as the voices grew muted, then disappeared. Then, from deeper in the jail, loud angry voices erupted. Though she couldn’t understand what was being said, it was obvious that at least two men were arguing with Romey. The voices went silent as the minutes passed. A chubby man in a blue uniform walked through the jail door and said, “Howdy. Are you Miss Kofer?” “I am, yes,” she answered, glancing around at the empty room. He handed back her license and said, “Just wait a minute, okay?” “Sure.” What else could she say? From the back, voices rose and fell and then stopped completely. She sent a text to her mother, one to her father, and one to Blythe. If her body was never found, they would at least know a few of the details. The door opened again and a young man entered the waiting room. He wore faded jeans, hiking boots, a fashionable sports coat, no tie. He offered her an easy smile and said, “Are you Samantha Kofer?” “I am.” He pulled over another plastic chair, sat with their knees almost touching, and said, “My name is Donovan Gray. I’m your attorney, and I’ve just gotten all charges dismissed. I suggest we get out of here as soon as possible.” As he spoke, he gave her a business card, which she glanced at. It appeared to be legitimate. His office was on Main Street in Brady. “Okay, and where will we be going?” she asked carefully. “Back to get your car.” “What about that constable?” “I’ll explain as we go.” They hurried from the jail and got into a late-model Jeep Cherokee. When he started the engine, Springsteen roared from the stereo and he quickly turned it off. He was between thirty-five and forty, she guessed, with shaggy dark hair, at least three days’ worth of stubble, and dark sad eyes. As they backed away, she said, “Wait, I need to text some people.” “Sure. You’ll have good service for a few miles.” She texted her mother, father, and Blythe with the news that she was no longer at the jail and things seemed to be improving, under the circumstances. Don’t worry, yet. She felt safer, for the moment. She would call and explain later. When the town was behind them, he began: “Romey’s not really a cop, or a constable, or anyone with any authority. The first thing you need to understand is that he’s not all there, got a couple of screws loose. Maybe more. He’s always wanted to be the sheriff, and so from time to time he feels compelled to go on patrol, always around Dunne Spring. If you’re passing through, and you’re from out of state, then Romey will take notice. If your license plates are from, say, Tennessee or North Carolina, then Romey won’t bother you. But if you’re from up north, then Romey gets excited and he might do what he did to you. He really thinks he’s doing a good thing by hauling in reckless drivers, especially folks from New York and Vermont.” “Why doesn’t someone stop him?” “Oh we try. Everybody yells at him, but you can’t watch him twenty-four hours a day. He’s very sneaky and he knows these roads better than anyone. Usually, he’ll just pull over the reckless driver, some poor guy from New Jersey, scare the hell out of him, and let him go. No one ever knows about it. But occasionally he’ll show up at the jail with someone in custody and insist that they be locked up.” “I’m not believing this.” “He’s never hurt anyone, but—” “He fired a shot at another driver. My ears are still ringing.” “Okay, look he’s crazy, like a lot of folks around here.” “Then lock him up. Surely there are laws against false arrest and kidnapping.” “His cousin is the sheriff.” She took a deep breath and shook her head. “It’s true. His cousin has been our sheriff for a long time. Romey is very envious of this; in fact, he once ran against the sheriff. Got about ten votes county-wide and that really upset him. He was stopping Yankees right and left until they sent him away for a few months.” “Send him away again.” “It’s not that simple. You’re actually lucky he didn’t take you to his jail.” “His jail?” Donovan was smiling and enjoying his narrative. “Oh yes. About five years ago, Romey’s brother found a late-model sedan with Ohio tags parked behind a barn on their family’s farm. He looked around, heard a noise, and found this guy from Ohio locked in a horse stall. It turns out Romey had fixed up the stall with chicken wire and barbed wire, and the poor guy had been there for three days. He had plenty of food and was quite comfortable. He said Romey checked on him several times a day and couldn’t have been nicer.” “You’re making this up.” “I am not. Romey was off his meds and going through a bad time. Things got ugly. The guy from Ohio raised hell and hired lawyers. They sued Romey for false imprisonment and a bunch of other stuff, but the case went nowhere. He has no assets, except for his patrol car, so a civil suit is worthless. They insisted he be prosecuted for kidnapping and so on, and Romey eventually pled guilty to a minor charge. He spent thirty days in jail, not his jail but the county jail, then got sent back to the state mental facility for a tune-up. He’s not a bad guy, really.” “A charmer.” “Frankly, some of the other cops around here are more dangerous. I like Romey. I once handled a case for his uncle. Meth.” “Meth?” “Crystal methamphetamine. After coal, it’s probably the biggest cash crop in these parts.” “Can I ask you something that might seem a bit personal?” “Sure. I’m your lawyer, you can ask me anything.” “Why do you have that gun in the console?” She nodded at the console just below her left elbow. In plain view was a rather large black pistol. “It’s legal. I make a lot of enemies.” “What kind of enemies?” “I sue coal companies.” She assumed an explanation would take some time, so she took a deep breath and watched the road. After recounting Romey’s adventures, Donovan seemed content to enjoy the silence. She realized he had not asked what she was doing in Noland County, the obvious question. At Thack’s Bridge, he turned around in the middle of the road and parked behind the Prius. She said, “So, do I owe you a fee?” “Sure. A cup of coffee.” “Coffee, around here?” “No, there’s a nice caf? back in town. Mattie’s in court and will likely be tied up until five, so you have some time to kill.” She wanted to say something but words failed her. He continued, “Mattie’s my aunt. She’s the reason I went to law school and she helped me through. I worked with her clinic while I was a student, then for three years after I passed the bar. Now I’m on my own.” “And Mattie told you I would show up for an interview?” For the first time she noticed a wedding ring on his finger. “A coincidence. I often stop by her office early in the morning for coffee and gossip. She mentioned all these e-mails from New York lawyers suddenly looking for do-gooder work, said one might show up today for an interview. It’s kind of amusing, really, for lawyers like us down here to see big-firm lawyers running for the hills, our hills. Then I happened to be at the jail seeing a client when your pal Romey showed up with a new trophy. And here we are.” “I wasn’t planning to return to Brady. In fact, I was planning to turn that little red car around and get the hell out of here.” “Well, slow down when you go through Dunne Spring.” “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 tunnels into the mountains and extracted the coal. Mining has been a way of life here since then. My grandfather was a miner, so was his father. My dad was another story. Anyway, by 1920, there were 800,000 coal miners in the coalfields, from Pennsylvania down to Tennessee. Coal mining is dangerous work, and it has a rich history of labor troubles, union fights, violence, corruption, all manner of historical drama. All deep mining, which was the traditional way. Very labor-intensive. Around 1970, coal companies decided they could strip-mine and save millions on labor costs. Strip-mining is far cheaper than deep mining because it requires much fewer workers. Today there are only 80,000 coal miners left and half of them work above the ground, for the strip miners.” 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 manner of heavy equipment. First it clear-cuts the trees, total deforestation with no effort at saving the hardwoods. They are bulldozed away as the earth is scalped. Same for the topsoil, which is not very thick. Next comes the layer of rock, which is blasted out of the ground. The trees, topsoil, and rock are often shoved into the valleys between the mountains, creating what’s known as valley fills. These wipe out vegetation, wildlife, and natural streams. Just another environmental disaster. If you’re downstream, you’re just screwed. As you’ll learn around here, we’re all downstream.” “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 running down the mountain, into homes and schools and towns, destroying everything. You’ve heard of the famous Exxon Valdez tanker spill, where a tanker ran into the rocks in Alaska. Thirty million gallons of crude oil dumped into pristine waters. Front-page news for weeks and the entire country was pissed. Remember all those otters covered with black muck? But I’ll bet you haven’t heard of the Martin County spill, the largest environmental disaster east of the Mississippi. It happened eight years ago in Kentucky when a slurry impoundment broke and 300 million gallons of sludge rolled down the valley. Ten times more than the Valdez, and it was a nonevent around the country. You know why?” “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.” “If they are gentlemen, then why do you carry a gun?” “Because certain coal companies have been known to hire thugs. It’s intimidation, or worse, and it’s nothing new. Look, Samantha, I’m a son of the coal country, a hillbilly and a proud one, and I could tell you stories for hours about the bloody history of Big Coal.” “Do you really fear for your life?” He paused and looked away for a second. “There were a thousand murders in New York City last year. Did you fear for your life?” “Not really.” He smiled and nodded and said, “Same here. We had three murders last year, all related to meth. You just have to be careful.” A phone vibrated in his pocket and he yanked it out. He read the text, then said, “It’s Mattie. She’s out of court, back at the office and ready to see you.” “Wait, how did she know I would be with you?” “It’s a small town, Samantha.” 6 T hey walked along the sidewalk until they came to his office where they shook hands. She thanked him for his pro bono work as her attorney and complimented him on a job well done. And if she decided to hang around the town for a few months, they promised to do lunch at the Brady Grill someday. It was almost 5:00 p.m. when she hustled across the street, jaywalking and half expecting to be arrested for it. She glanced to the west, where the mountains were already blocking the late afternoon sun. The shadows consumed the town and gave it the feel of early winter. A bell clinked on the door when she entered the cluttered front room of the legal aid clinic. A busy desk indicated that someone was usually there to answer the phone and greet the clients, but for the moment the reception area was empty. She looked around, waited, took in the surroundings. The office layout was simple—a narrow hall ran straight down the middle of what had been for decades the busy domain of the town’s hardware store. Everything had the look and feel of being old and well used. The walls were whitewashed partitions that did not quite make it all the way to the copper-tiled ceiling. The floors were covered with thin, ragged carpet. The furniture, at least in the reception, was a mismatched collection of flea market leftovers. The walls, though, were exhibiting an interesting collection of oils and pastels by local artists, all for sale at very reasonable prices. The artwork. The prior year the equity partners at Scully and Pershing had gone to war over a designer’s proposal to spend $2 million on some baffling avant-garde paintings to be hung in the firm’s main foyer. The designer was ultimately fired, the paintings forgotten, and the money split into bonuses. Halfway down the hall a door opened, and a short, slightly stocky woman in bare feet stepped out. “I take it you’re Samantha,” she said, walking toward her. “I’m Mattie Wyatt. I understand you’ve had a rather rude welcome to Noland County. I’m so sorry.” “Nice to meet you,” Samantha said as she stared at the bright pink and square reading glasses perched on the end of Mattie’s nose. The pink of her glasses matched the pink tips of her hair, which was short, spiked, and dyed a severe white. It was a look Samantha had never seen before, but one that was working, here at least. Of course, she had seen looks far funkier in Manhattan, but never on a lawyer. “In here,” Mattie said as she waved at her office. Once inside, she closed the door and said, “I guess that nut Romey will have to hurt someone before the sheriff does anything. I’m very sorry. Have a seat.” “It’s okay. I’m fine, and now I have a story that I’m sure I’ll tell for many years.” “Indeed you will, and if you hang around here, you’ll collect a lot of stories. Would you like some coffee?” She fell into a rocking chair behind a desk that seemed perfectly organized. “No thanks. I just had coffee with your nephew.” “Yes, of course. I’m so glad you met Donovan. He’s one of the bright spots around here. I practically raised him, you know. Tragic family and all. He’s thoroughly committed to his work and rather pleasant to look at, don’t you think?” “He’s nice,” Samantha said cautiously, unwilling to comment on his looks and determined to stay away from his family’s tragedy. “Anyway, here’s where we are. I’m supposed to meet another castaway from Wall Street tomorrow and that’s it. I don’t have a lot of time to spend interviewing, you know. I got four more e-mails today and I’ve stopped answering them. I’ll check out this guy tomorrow and then our board will meet and pick the winner.” “Okay. Who’s on the board?” “It’s basically just Donovan and me. Annette is another lawyer here and she would be invited to the interviews but she’s out of town. We work pretty quick, not a lot of red tape. If we decide to go with you, when can you start?” “I don’t know. Things are happening pretty fast.” “I thought you weren’t that busy these days.” “True. I guess I could start sooner rather than later, but I would like a day or two to think about it,” Samantha said, trying to relax in a stiff wooden chair that tilted when she breathed. “I’m just not sure—” “Okay, that’s fine. It’s not like a new intern will make a big difference around here. We’ve had them before, you know. In fact, we had a full-blown fellow for two years a while back, a kid from the coalfields who went to law school at Stanford then hired on with a big firm in Philadelphia.” “What did he do here?” “She. Evelyn, and she worked with black lung and mine safety. A hard worker, and very bright, but then she was gone after two years and left us with a bunch of open files. Wonder if she’s on the streets these days. Must be awful up there.” “It is. Pardon me for saying so, Ms. Wyatt, but—” “It’s Mattie.” “Okay, Mattie, but you don’t seem too thrilled at the idea of an intern.” “Oh, forgive me. I’m sorry. No, actually we need all the help we can get. As I told you on the phone, there’s no shortage of poor folks with legal problems around here. These people can’t afford lawyers. Unemployment is high, meth use is even higher, and the coal companies are brilliant when it comes to finding new ways to screw people. Believe me, dear, we need all the help we can get.” “What will I be doing?” “Everything from answering the phone to opening the mail to filing federal lawsuits. Your r?sum? says you’re licensed in both Virginia and New York.” “I clerked for a judge in D.C. after law school and passed the Virginia bar exam.” “Have you seen the inside of a courtroom in the past three years?” “No.” Mattie hesitated for a second, as if this might be a deal breaker. “Well, I guess you’re lucky in one sense. Don’t suppose you’ve been to jail either?” “Not since this afternoon.” “Oh, right. Again, sorry about that. You’ll catch on quick. What type of work were you doing in New York?” Samantha took a deep breath and thought of ways to truthfully duck the question. Invention failed her and she said, “I was in commercial real estate, pretty boring stuff actually. Incredibly boring. We represented a bunch of unpleasant rich guys who build tall buildings up and down the East Coast, primarily in New York. As a mid-level associate I normally spent my time reviewing financing agreements with banks, thick contracts that had to be prepared and proofread by someone.” Just above the pink and square frames, Mattie’s eyes offered a look of pure pity. “Sounds awful.” “It was, still is, I guess.” “Are you relieved to be away from that?” “I don’t know how I feel, Mattie, to be honest. A month ago I was scrambling along in the rat race, elbowing others and getting elbowed myself, racing toward something, I can’t even remember what it was. There were dark clouds out there but we were too busy to notice. Then Lehman went under, and for two weeks I was afraid of my shadow. We worked even harder, hoping that someone might notice, hoping that a hundred hours a week might save us where ninety hours would not. Suddenly it was over, and we were tossed into the street. No severance, nothing. Nothing but a few promises that I doubt anyone can keep.” Mattie looked as if she might cry. “Would you go back?” “I don’t know right now. I don’t think so. I didn’t like the work, didn’t like most of the people in the firm, and certainly didn’t like the clients. Sadly, most of the lawyers I know feel the same way.” “Well, dear, here at the Mountain Legal Aid Clinic, we love our clients and they love us.” “I’m sure they’re much nicer than the ones I dealt with.” Mattie glanced at her watch, a bright yellow dial strapped to her wrist with green vinyl, and said, “What are your plans for the evening?” Samantha shrugged and shook her head. “Haven’t thought that far ahead.” “Well, you certainly can’t drive back to Washington tonight.” “Does Romey work the night shift? Are the roads safe?” Mattie chuckled and said, “The roads are treacherous. You can’t go. Let’s start with dinner and then we’ll go from there.” “No, seriously, I can’t—” “Nonsense. Samantha, you’re in Appalachia now, deep in the mountains, and we do not turn visitors away at dinnertime. My house is just around the corner and my husband is an excellent cook. Let’s have a drink on the porch and talk about stuff. I’ll tell you everything you need to know about Brady.” Mattie found her shoes and locked up the office. She said the Prius was safe where it was parked, on Main Street. “I walk to work,” Mattie said. “About my only exercise.” The shops and offices were closed. The two caf?s were serving an early dinner to thin crowds. They trudged up the side of a hill, passing kids on the sidewalk and neighbors on porches. After two blocks they turned onto Third Street, a leafy row of turn-of-the-century, neat, redbrick homes, almost all identical with white porches and gabled roofs. Samantha wanted to hit the road, to hurry back toward Abingdon where she had noticed several chain motels at the interchange. But there was no way to gracefully say no to Mattie’s hospitality. Chester Wyatt was in a rocking chair reading a newspaper when he was introduced to Samantha. “I told her you are an excellent cook,” Mattie said. “I guess that means I’m cooking dinner,” he said with a grin. “Welcome.” “And she’s starving,” Mattie said. “What would you like?” he asked. “I’m fine,” Samantha said. Mattie said, “What about baked chicken with Spanish rice?” “Just what I was thinking,” Chester said. “A glass of wine first?” They drank red wine for an hour as darkness settled around them. Samantha sipped slowly, careful not to have too much because she was worrying about her drive out of Noland County. There appeared to be no hotels or motels in Brady, and given the town’s declining appearance she doubted there was a suitable room anywhere. As they talked, she politely probed here and there, and learned that the Wyatts had two adult children who had fled the area after college. There were three grandchildren they rarely saw. Donovan was like a son. Chester was a retired postal worker who had delivered rural mail for decades and knew everyone. Now he volunteered for an environmental group that monitored strip-mining and filed complaints with a dozen bureaucracies. His father and grandfather had been coal miners. Mattie’s father had worked the deep mines for almost thirty years before dying of black lung at the age of sixty-one. “I’m sixty-one now,” she said. “It was horrible.” While the women sat and talked, Chester eased back and forth to the kitchen, checking on the chicken and pouring wine. Once, when he was gone, Mattie said, “Don’t worry, dear, we have an extra bedroom.” “No, really, I—” “Please, I insist. There’s not a decent room in town, believe me. A couple of hot-sheets joints that charge by the hour, but even they’re about to close. A sad commentary, I suppose. Folks used to sneak off to the motel for illicit sex; now they just move in together and play house.” “So there is sex around here?” Samantha asked. “I should hope so. My mother had seven kids, Chester’s had six. There’s not much else to do. And this time of the year, September and October, they’re popping out like rabbits.” “Why?” “Big storm just after Christmas.” Chester stepped through the screen door and asked, “What are we talking about?” “Sex,” Mattie said. “Samantha’s surprised that folks have sex around here.” “Some of them do,” he said. “So I’ve heard,” Mattie shot back with a grin. “I didn’t bring up sex,” Samantha said defensively. “Mattie mentioned an extra bedroom for the night.” “Yes, and it’s all yours. Just keep your door locked and we’ll stay out of trouble,” Chester said as he disappeared into the house. “He’s harmless, believe me,” Mattie whispered. Donovan arrived to say hello and thankfully missed that part of the conversation. He lived “on a mountain out in the country” and was on his way home from the office. He declined an offer of wine and left after fifteen minutes. He seemed distracted and said he was tired. “Poor thing,” Mattie said when he was gone. “He and his wife have separated. She moved back to Roanoke with their daughter, a five-year-old who’s about the cutest thing you’ll ever see. His wife, Judy, never adjusted to life here in the mountains and just got fed up. I don’t feel good about them, do you Chester?” 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 and 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.” “And this led to the ‘trouble’?” Samantha asked. Mattie replied, “It did. Five years ago, a dam broke in Madison County, West Virginia, about a hundred miles from here, and a wall of coal sludge slid down a valley and covered the small town of Prentiss. Four people were killed, virtually all the homes were destroyed, a real mess. Donovan got the case, teamed up with some other environmental lawyers in West Virginia, and filed a big federal lawsuit. He got his picture in the paper, lots of press, and he probably said too much. Among other things, he called the coal company ‘the dirtiest corporation in America.’ That’s when the harassment started. Anonymous phone calls. Threatening letters. Goons back there in the shadows. They began following him, and still do.” “Donovan is followed?” Samantha asked. “Oh yes,” Mattie said. “So that’s why he carries a gun.” “Guns, plural. And he knows how to use them,” Chester said. “Do you worry about him?” Chester and Mattie both managed a chuckle. Chester said, “Not really. He knows what he’s doing and he can take care of himself.” “How about some coffee on the porch?” Mattie said. “Sure, I’ll brew a pot,” Chester said as he rose from the table. Samantha followed Mattie back to the front porch and retook her position in a wicker rocker. The air was almost too cool to be outside. The street was silent; many of the homes were already dark. Encouraged by the wine, Samantha asked, “What happened to the lawsuit?” “It was settled last year. A confidential settlement that’s still under wraps.” “If the lawsuit was settled, why are they still following him?” “Because he’s their number one enemy. He plays dirty when he has to, and the coal companies know it.” Chester arrived with a tray of coffee, decaf, and left to do the dishes. After a few sips, and a few minutes of gentle rocking, Samantha was about to nod off. She said, “I have a small overnight bag in my car. I need to get it.” “I’ll walk with you,” Mattie said. “We won’t be followed, will we?” “No, dear, we’re not a threat.” They disappeared into the darkness. 7 T he two gentlemen to her right were slugging whiskeys and feverishly discussing ways to save Fannie Mae. The three to her left apparently worked at Treasury, which seemed to be the epicenter of the collapse. They were knocking back martinis, courtesy of the taxpayers. Up and down the bar of Bistro Venezia the talk was of nothing but the end of time. A windbag behind her was recounting at full volume his conversation that very afternoon with a senior advisor to the McCain/Palin campaign. He had unloaded a wave of solid advice, all of which was being ignored, he feared. Two bartenders were lamenting the crash of the stock market, as if they were losing millions. Someone argued that the Fed might do this, or it might do that. Bush was getting bad advice. Obama was surging in the polls. Goldman needed cash. Factory orders in China had dipped dramatically. In the midst of the storm, Samantha sipped a diet soda and waited for her father, who was running late. It occurred to her that no one in Brady had seemed even remotely aware that the world was teetering on the brink of a catastrophic depression. Perhaps the mountains kept the place isolated and secure. Or perhaps life there had been depressed for so long another crash wouldn’t matter. Her phone vibrated and she took it out of her pocket. It was Mattie Wyatt. “Samantha, how was your drive?” she asked. “Fine, Mattie. I’m in D.C. now.” “Good. Look, the board just met and voted unanimously to offer you the internship. I interviewed the other applicant this afternoon, a rather nervous young fellow, actually from your law firm, and he doesn’t interest us. I got the impression he was just passing through, probably got in his car and kept driving to some place far away from New York. Not sure how stable he is. Anyway, Donovan and I didn’t see much potential there and we nixed him on the spot. When can you start?” “Did he meet Romey?” Mattie cackled on the other end and said, “I don’t think so.” “I need to go to New York and get some things. I’ll be there Monday.” “Excellent. Call me in a day or so.” “Thanks Mattie. I’m looking forward to it.” She saw her father across the way and left the bar. A hostess led them to a table in a corner and hurriedly whipped out menus. The restaurant was packed and a nervous chatter roared from all directions. A minute later, a manager in a tuxedo appeared and announced gravely, “I’m so sorry, but we need this table.” Marshall replied rudely, “I beg your pardon.” “Please sir, we have another table for you.” At that moment, a caravan of black SUVs wheeled to a stop on N Street outside the restaurant. Doors flew open and an army of agents spilled onto the sidewalk. Samantha and Marshall eased away from the table, watching, with everyone else, the circus outside. Such shows were commonplace in D.C., and at that moment everyone was guessing. Could it be the President? Dick Cheney? Which big shot can we say we had dinner with? The VIP eventually emerged and was escorted inside, where the crowd, suddenly frozen, gawked and waited. “Who the hell is that?” someone asked. “Never seen him before.” “Oh, I think he’s that Israeli guy, the ambassador.” A noticeable rush of air left the restaurant as the diners realized that the fuss was over some lower-ranking celebrity. Though thoroughly unrecognizable, the VIP was evidently a marked man. His table—the Kofers’ old table—was pushed into a corner and shielded by partitions that materialized from nowhere. Every serious D.C. restaurant keeps lead partitions at the ready, right? The VIP sat with his female partner and tried to look normal, like an average guy out for a quick bite. Meanwhile, his gun thugs patrolled the sidewalk and watched N Street for suicide bombers. Marshall cursed the manager and said to Samantha, “Let’s get out of here. Sometimes I hate this city.” They walked three blocks along Wisconsin Avenue and found a pub that was being neglected by jihadists. Samantha ordered another diet soda as Marshall went for a double vodka. “What happened down there?” he asked. He had grilled her on the phone but she wanted to save the stories for a real conversation. She smiled and started with Romey. Halfway through the tale she realized how much she was enjoying the adventure. Marshall was incredulous and wanted to sue someone, but settled down after a few pulls on the vodka. They ordered a pizza and she described the dinner with Mattie and Chester. “You’re not serious about working down there, are you?” he asked. “I got the job. I’ll try it for a few months. If I get bored I’ll go back to New York and get a job at Barneys selling shoes.” “You don’t have to sell shoes and you don’t have to work in legal aid. How much money do you have in the bank?” “Enough to survive. How much do you have in the bank?” He frowned and took another drink. She continued, “A lot, right? Mom’s convinced you buried a ton offshore and gave her the shaft in the divorce. Is that true?” “No, it’s not true, but if it was do you think I’d admit it to you?” “No, never. Deny, deny, deny—isn’t that the first rule for a criminal defense lawyer?” “I wouldn’t know. And by the way, I admitted to my crimes and pled guilty. What do you know about criminal law?” “Nothing, but I’m learning. I have now been arrested, for starters.” “Well, so have I and I wouldn’t recommend it. At least you avoided the handcuffs. What else does your mother say about me?” “Nothing good. Somewhere in the back of my overworked brain I’ve had this fantasy of the three of us sitting down to a nice dinner in a lovely restaurant, not as a family, heaven forbid, but as three adults who might just have a few things in common.” “I’m in.” “Yeah, but she’s not. Too many issues.” “How did we get off on this subject?” “I don’t know. Sorry. Did you ever sue a coal company?” Marshall rattled his ice cubes and thought for a second. He had sued so many wayward corporations. Sadly, he said, “No, don’t think so. My specialty was plane crashes, but Frank, one of my partners, was once involved in some type of coal case. An environmental mess involving this gunk they keep in lakes. He doesn’t talk about it much, so that probably means he lost the case.” “It’s called sludge, or slurry, take your pick. It’s toxic waste that’s a by-product of washing coal. The companies store it behind earthen dams where it rots for years as it seeps into the ground and contaminates the drinking water.” “My, my, aren’t you the smart one now?” “Oh, I’ve learned a lot in the past twenty-four hours. Did you know that some of the counties in the coalfields have the highest rates of cancer in the country?” “Sounds like a lawsuit.” “Lawsuits are hard to win down there because coal is king and a lot of jurors are sympathetic to the companies.” “This is wonderful, Samantha. We’re talking about real law now, not building skyscrapers. I’m proud of you. Let’s sue somebody.” The pizza arrived and they ate it from the stone. A shapely brunette sauntered by in a short skirt and Marshall instinctively gawked and stopped chewing for a second, then caught himself and tried to act as though he hadn’t seen the woman. “What kind of work will you be doing down there?” he asked awkwardly, one eye still on the skirt. “You’re sixty years old and she’s about my age. When will you ever stop looking?” “Never. What’s wrong with looking?” “I don’t know. I guess it’s the first step.” “You just don’t understand men, Samantha. Looking is automatic and it’s harmless. We all look. Come on.” “So you can’t help it?” “No. And why are we talking about this? I’d rather talk about suing coal companies.” “I got nothing else. I’ve told you everything I know.” “Will you be suing them?” “I doubt it. But I met a guy who takes nothing but coal cases. His family was destroyed by a strip mine when he was a kid and he’s on a vendetta. He carries a gun. I saw it.” “A guy? Did you like him?” “He’s married.” “Good. I’d rather you not fall in love with a hillbilly. Why does he carry a gun?” “I think a lot of them do down there. He says the coal companies don’t like him and there’s a long history of violence in the business.” Marshall wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and took a sip of water. “Allow me to summarize what I’ve heard. This is a place where the mentally ill are allowed to wear uniforms, call themselves constables, drive cars with flashing lights, stop out-of-state drivers, and sometimes even haul them to jail. Others, who are evidently not mentally ill, go about the practice of law with guns in their briefcases. Still others offer temporary jobs to laid-off lawyers and don’t pay them anything.” “That’s a pretty fair analysis.” “And you’re starting Monday morning?” “You got it.” Marshall shook his head as he selected another slice of pizza. “I guess it beats Big Law on Wall Street.” “We’ll see.” Blythe was able to escape her firm for a quick lunch. They met in a crowded deli not far from her office and over salads managed to reach an agreement. Samantha would pay her share of the rent for the three months left on the lease, but beyond that she could not commit. Blythe was clinging to her job and slightly optimistic about not losing it. She wanted to keep the apartment but could not handle the full rent. Samantha assured her there was an excellent chance she would be back in the city in short order, doing something. Later in the afternoon, she met Izabelle for coffee and gossip. Izabelle’s bags were packed and she was on her way home, to Wilmington, to live with a sister who had a spare room in the basement. She would intern with a child advocacy group and scramble for real work. She was depressed and bitter and uncertain about her survival. When they hugged good-bye, both knew it would be a long time before they met again. Common sense told Samantha to lease a vehicle in the New York metropolitan area, load it up, and then head south. However, as she soon discovered while working the phone, any leased car would have New York license plates. She could probably find one in New Jersey, or maybe in Connecticut, but all three would be a red flag in Brady. She couldn’t get Romey off her mind. He was, after all, still at large, making his mischief. Instead, she loaded two suitcases and a large canvas bag with everything she deemed appropriate for where she was headed. A cab unloaded her at Penn Station. Five hours later, another cab collected her at Union Station in D.C. She and Karen ate carryout sushi in their pajamas and watched an old movie. Marshall was never mentioned. The Web site for Gasko Leasing over in Falls Church promised a wide selection of great used vehicles, convenient terms, paperwork that was virtually hassle-free, easy-to-buy insurance, complete customer satisfaction. Her knowledge of automobiles was limited, but something told her a domestic model might have less potential for causing trouble than something from, say, Japan. Browsing online, she saw a midsized 2004 Ford hatchback that looked suitable. On the phone, the salesman said it was still available, and, more important, he guaranteed her it would have Virginia tags. “Yes ma’am, front and back.” She took a cab to Falls Church, and met with Ernie, the salesman. Ernie was a flirt who talked far too much and observed very little. Had he been more astute, he would have realized how terrified Samantha was of the process of leasing a used car for twelve months. In fact, she had thought about calling her father for help, but let it pass. She convinced herself she was tough enough for this relatively unimportant task. After two long hours with Ernie, she finally drove away in a thoroughly unnoticeable Ford, one obviously owned by someone living in the Commonwealth of Virginia. 8 O rientation consisted of an 8:00 a.m. meeting with a new client. Fortunately for Samantha, who had no idea how to conduct such a meeting, Mattie assumed control. She whispered, “Just take notes, frown a lot, and try to look intelligent.” No problem—that was exactly how she had survived the first two years at Scully and Pershing. The client was Lady Purvis, a fortyish mother of three teenagers whose husband, Stocky, was currently in jail next door in Hopper County. Mattie did not ask if Lady was her real name; if important, that detail would emerge later. But, given her rustic appearance and salty language, it was difficult to imagine her parents officially naming her Lady. She had the look of a hard life earned somewhere deep in the hollows, and she became irritated when Mattie said she could not smoke in the office. Samantha, frowning, scribbled furiously and didn’t say a word. From the first sentence there was nothing but hard luck and misery. The family was living in a trailer, one with a mortgage, and they were behind on the payments; they were behind on everything. Her two oldest teenagers had dropped out of school to look for jobs that did not exist, not in Noland, Hopper, and Curry Counties. They were threatening to run away, somewhere out west where they could maybe find a paycheck picking oranges. Lady worked here and there, cleaning houses on the weekends, babysitting for five bucks an hour—anything, really, to make a dollar. Stocky’s crime: speeding. Which then led to an examination by the deputy of his driver’s license, which had expired two days earlier. His total fines and court costs were $175, money he did not have. Hopper County had contracted with a private outfit to strong-arm the money out of Stocky and other poor people unlucky enough to commit petty crimes and traffic offenses. If Stocky could have written the check, he would have done so and gone home. But because he was poor and broke, his case was handled differently. The judge ordered it to be administered by the crooks at Judicial Response Associates. Lady and Stocky met with a JRA operative the day they went to court, and he explained how the payment plan would work. His company tacked on fees—one called the Primary Fee at $75, one called the Monthly Service Fee at $35 per, and one at the end, assuming they ever got there, called the Termination Fee, a bargain at only $25. Court costs and a few other vague add-ons brought their total to $400. They figured they might be able to pay $50 a month, the minimum allowed by JRA; however, they soon realized that $35 of the $50 was gobbled up with the Monthly Service Fee. They tried to renegotiate, but JRA wouldn’t budge. After two payments, Stocky quit and that was when the serious trouble started. Two deputies came to their trailer after midnight and arrested Stocky. Lady protested, as did their oldest son, and the deputies threatened to zap them with their brand-new Tasers. When Stocky was dragged before the judge again, more fines and fees were added. The new total was $550. Stocky explained that he was broke and out of work, and the judge sent him back to jail. He’d been there for two months. Meanwhile, JRA was still tacking on its beloved monthly service charge, which for some mysterious reason had been increased to $45 per. “The longer he stays there the deeper we get,” Lady said, thoroughly defeated. In a small paper sack she had her paperwork, and Mattie began sorting through it. There were angry letters from the maker of the trailer who was also financing its purchase, and foreclosure notices, past-due utility bills, tax notices, court documents, and a stack of various papers from JRA. Mattie read them and handed them over to Samantha, who had no idea what to do except to make a list of all the misery. Lady finally broke and said, “I gotta smoke. Gimme five minutes.” Her hands were trembling. “Sure,” Mattie said. “Just step outside.” “Thanks.” “How many packs a day?” “Just two.” “What’s your brand?” “Charlie’s. I know I ought to quit, and I’ve tried, but it’s the only thing that settles my nerves.” She grabbed her purse and left the room. Mattie said, “Charlie’s is a favorite in Appalachia, a cheaper brand, though it’s still $4 a pack. That’s eight bucks a day, two-fifty a month, and I’ll bet Stocky smokes just as much. They’re probably spending $500 a month on cigarettes and who knows how much on beer. If there’s ever a spare dollar, they probably buy lottery tickets.” “That’s ridiculous,” Samantha said, relieved to finally say something. “Why? They could pay off his fines in one month and he’s out of jail.” “They don’t think that way. Smoking is an addiction, something they can’t simply walk away from.” “Okay, can I ask a question?” “Sure. I’ll bet you want to know how a person like Stocky can be thrown into a debtors’ prison, something this country outlawed about two hundred years ago. Right?” Samantha slowly nodded. Mattie continued, “More than likely, you’re also certain that throwing someone in jail because he cannot pay a fine or a fee violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. And, you are no doubt familiar with the 1983 Supreme Court decision, the name escapes me right now, in which the Court ruled that before a person can be thrown in jail for not paying a fine it must be proven that he or she was willfully not paying. In other words, he could pay but he refused. All this and more, right?” “That’s a nice summary.” “It’s happening everywhere. JRA hustles the misdemeanor courts in a dozen southern states. On the average, local governments collect about 30 percent of their fine monies. JRA rolls in and promises 70 percent, at no taxpayer expense. They claim it’s all funded by the folks like Stocky who get sucked into the scam. Every city and county needs money, so they sign up with JRA and the courts hand over the cases. The victims are placed on probation and when they can’t pay, they get thrown in jail, where of course the taxpayers start picking up the expenses again. They’re spending $30 a day to feed and house Stocky.” “This can’t be legal.” “It’s legal because it’s not specifically illegal. They are poor people, Samantha, at the bottom of the pile, and down here the laws are different. That’s why we’re in business, so to speak.” “This is awful.” “It is, and it can get worse. As a delinquent probationer, Stocky might be excluded from food stamps, housing assistance, a driver’s license, hell, in some states they might take away his right to vote, assuming he’s ever bothered to register.” Lady was back, reeking of tobacco smoke and still just as jumpy. They plowed through the rest of her unpaid bills. “Is there any way you can help me?” she said, her eyes moist. “Of course,” Mattie said with far too much optimism. “I’ve had some success negotiating with JRA. They’re not accustomed to lawyers getting involved, and for such tough guys, they’re easy to bully. They know they’re wrong and they’re afraid someone might bust them. I know the judge over there and by now they’re tired of feeding Stocky. We can get him out and get him back to work. Then we’ll probably consider a bankruptcy to save the home and wipe out some of these bills. I’ll haggle with the utility companies.” She clicked off these bold moves as if they had already been accomplished, and Samantha suddenly felt better. Lady managed a smile, the first and only. Mattie said, “Give us a couple of days and we’ll put together a plan. Feel free to call Samantha here if you have any questions. She’ll know everything about your case.” The intern’s heart skipped a beat as she heard her name mentioned. At the moment, she felt as though she knew nothing about anything. “So we have two lawyers?” Lady asked. “You certainly do.” “And you are, uh, free?” “That’s right, Lady. We are legal aid. We do not charge for our services.” Lady covered her eyes with both hands and began crying. Samantha had not recovered from the first client meeting when she was called in to her second. Annette Brevard, the “junior partner” at Mountain Legal Aid Clinic, thought it would be educational for their new intern to get a real taste of domestic violence. Annette was a divorced mother of two who had been in Brady for ten years. She had once lived in Richmond and practiced law in a midsized firm until a bad divorce sent her packing. She escaped to Brady with her children and took a job with Mattie because there was nothing else available in the Commonwealth. She certainly had no plans to stay in Brady, but then who’s smart enough to plan the rest of their life? She lived in an old house downtown. Behind her house was a separate garage. Above the garage was a two-room apartment, Samantha’s home for the next few months. Annette decided that if the internship was free, then so was the rent. They had haggled over this, but Annette was adamant. Samantha had no other viable option and moved in with promises of free babysitting. She was even allowed to park her hatchback in the garage. The client was a thirty-six-year-old woman named Phoebe. She was married to Randy, and they had just gone through a bad weekend. Randy was in jail about six blocks away (the same jail Samantha had narrowly avoided) and Phoebe was sitting in a lawyer’s office with a swollen left eye, a cut on her nose, and terror in her eyes. With compassion and feeling, Annette walked Phoebe through her story. Again, Samantha frowned intelligently without making a sound, took pages of notes, and wondered how many crazy people lived in those parts. With a voice so calm it soothed even Samantha, Annette prodded Phoebe along. There were a lot of tears and emotion. Randy was a meth addict and dealer, also a drunk who’d been beating her for a year and a half. He never hit her as long as her father was alive—Randy was terrified of him—but after he died two years ago the physical abuse started. He threatened to kill her all the time. Yes, she used meth too, but she was careful and certainly not an addict. They had three kids, all under the age of ten. Her second marriage, his third. Randy was forty-two, older, and had a lot of rough friends in the meth business. She was afraid of these people. They had cash and they would arrange for his bail any moment now. Once free, Randy would almost certainly track her down. He was furious that she had finally called the police and had him arrested. But he knew the sheriff well and they wouldn’t keep him in jail. He would beat her until she dropped the assault charges. She went through a pile of tissues as she sobbed her way through the story. Occasionally, Samantha would scribble important questions such as “Where am I?” And “What am I doing here?” Phoebe was afraid to go back to their rented home. Her three children were being hidden by an aunt in Kentucky. She was told by a deputy that Randy was scheduled to be in court sometime on Monday. He could even be there right now getting his bond set by the judge, and once it’s set his buddies will plop down the cash and he’ll walk. “You gotta help me,” Phoebe said over and over. “He’ll kill me.” “No he won’t,” Annette said with an odd sense of confidence. Judging from Phoebe’s tears, looks of fear, and body language, Samantha agreed with her and suspected Randy might show up any moment and start trouble. Annette, though, seemed perfectly unbothered by that possibility. She’s been here before a hundred times, Samantha thought. Annette said, “Samantha, go online and check the court docket.” She rattled off the Web site for Noland County’s government listings, and the intern was quick to open her laptop, start the search, and for a moment ignore Phoebe and her emotions. “I have to get a divorce,” Phoebe was saying. “There’s no way I’ll go back there.” “Okay, we’ll file for divorce tomorrow and get an injunction to keep him away from you.” “What’s an injunction?” “It’s an order from the court, and if he violates it he’ll really anger the judge, who’ll throw him back in jail.” This made her smile, but just for a second. She said, “I gotta leave town. I can’t stay here. He’ll get stoned again and forget the injunction and the judge and come after me. They gotta keep him locked up for a while. Can they do that?” “What’s he charged with, Samantha?” Annette asked. “Malicious wounding,” she said just as she found the case online. “Due in court this afternoon at 1:00. No bail has been set.” “Malicious wounding? What did he hit you with?” The tears poured instantly and Phoebe wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. “He had a gun, a pistol we keep in a drawer in the kitchen, unloaded because of the kids, but the bullets are on top of the refrigerator, just in case, you know. We were fighting and yelling and he pulled out the pistol like he was about to load it and I suppose finish me off. I tried to grab it and he hit me on the side of the head with the butt of it. Then it dropped to the floor and he slapped me around with his hands. I got out of the house, ran next door, and called the cops.” Annette calmly raised a hand to stop her. “That’s the malicious part—the use of a weapon.” She looked at Phoebe and Samantha as she said this, to enlighten both of them. “In Virginia, the sentence can be from five to twenty years, depending on the circumstances—weapon, injury, etc.” Samantha was once again taking furious notes. She had heard some of this in law school, so many years ago. Annette continued, “Now, Phoebe, we can expect your husband to say that you went for the gun first, that you hit him and so on, and he might even try to press charges against you. How would you respond to this?” “This guy is eight inches taller and a hundred pounds heavier. No one in their right mind would believe I picked a fight with him. The cops, if they tell the truth, will say he was drunk and out of his mind. He even wrestled with them until they Tasered his big ass.” Annette smiled, satisfied. She glanced at her watch, opened a file, and removed some paperwork. “I have to make a phone call in five minutes. Samantha, this is our divorce questionnaire. It’s pretty straightforward. Go through it with Phoebe and gather all the information you can. I’ll be back in half an hour.” Samantha took the questionnaire as if she had handled dozens of them. An hour later, alone and safe in her own makeshift office, Samantha closed her eyes and breathed deeply. The office appeared to be a former storage room, tiny and cramped with two unbalanced chairs and a round table with a vinyl covering. Mattie and Annette had apologized and promised an upgrade at some point in the future. One wall was dominated by a large window that looked out over the rear parking lot. Samantha was thankful for the light. As small as it was, her space in New York had not been much larger. Against her wishes, her thoughts stayed on New York, the big firm and all its promises and horrors. She smiled when she realized she was not on the clock; gone was the unrelenting pressure to bill more hours, to make more money for the big boys at the top, to impress them with the goal of one day becoming just like them. She glanced at her watch. It was 11:00 and she had not billed a single minute, nor would she. The ancient phone rattled and she had no choice but to pick it up. “There’s a call on line two,” Barb said. “Who is it?” Samantha asked nervously, her first phone call. “Guy named Joe Duncan. Doesn’t ring a bell.” “Why does he want to speak with me?” “He didn’t say that. Said he needs a lawyer and at the moment Mattie and Annette are tied up. He’s yours by default.” “What kind of case?” Samantha asked, glancing at her six skyscrapers standing together on top of an army surplus file cabinet. “Social Security. Be careful. Line two.” Barb worked part-time and ran the front. Samantha had spoken to her for only a few seconds early that morning as she was being introduced. The clinic also had a part-time paralegal named Claudelle. An all-girls show. She punched line two and said, “Samantha Kofer.” Mr. Duncan said hello and quizzed her to make sure she was really a lawyer. She assured him she was but at that moment had doubts. Soon he was off and running. He was going through a rough spell and really wanted to chat about it. All manner of misfortune had hit him and his family, and based on the first ten minutes of his narrative he had enough problems to keep a small law firm busy for several months. He was unemployed—had been wrongfully terminated but that would be yet another story—but his real problem was his health. He had ruptured a lower disk and couldn’t work. He had applied for disability status under Social Security, and had been denied. Now he was losing everything. Because Samantha had so little to offer, she was content to let him ramble. After half an hour, though, she got bored. Ending the conversation was a challenge—he was desperate and clinging—but she finally convinced him she would immediately review his case with their Social Security specialist and get back to him. By noon, Samantha was famished and exhausted. It was not the fatigue brought on by hours of reading and poring over thick documents, or the relentless pressure to impress people, or the fear of not measuring up and being shoved off the track to partnership. It was not the exhaustion she had lived with for the past three years. She was drained from the shock and fear of looking at the emotional wreckage of real humans, desperate people with little hope and looking to her for help. For the rest of the firm, though, it was a typical Monday morning. They met for a brown-bag lunch in the main conference room, a weekly ritual, to eat quickly while discussing cases, clients, or any other business deemed necessary. But on this Monday the main topic was the new intern. They were keen to examine her. Finally, she was encouraged to speak. “Well, I need some help,” Samantha said. “I just got off the phone with a man whose claim for Social Security disability was denied. Whatever that means.” This was met with a mix of laughter and amusement. The word “disability” seemed to draw a reaction from the rest of the firm. “We no longer take Social Security cases,” Barb said from the front line. She met the clients first, as they came through the front door. “What was his name?” Claudelle asked. Samantha hesitated and looked at the eager faces. “Okay, first things first. I’m not sure where we are with confidentiality. Do you—do we—discuss each other’s cases openly, or are we each bound by rules of the attorney-client privilege?” This drew even more laughter. All four talked at once, as they laughed and chuckled and nibbled on their sandwiches. It was immediately clear to Samantha that, within these walls, these four ladies talked about everyone and everything. “Inside the firm, it’s all fair game,” Mattie said. “But outside, not a word.” “Good enough.” Barb said, “His name was Joe Duncan. Kinda rings a bell.” Claudelle said, “I had him a few years ago, filed a claim, got denied. I think it was a bad shoulder.” “Well, now it’s spread to his lower lumbar,” Samantha said. “Sounds like a mess.” “He’s a serial claimant,” Claudelle said. “And that’s one reason we don’t take Social Security cases anymore. There is so much fraud in the system. It’s pretty rotten, especially around here.” “So what do I tell Mr. Duncan?” “There’s a law firm down in Abingdon that does nothing but disability cases.” Annette chimed in, “Cockrell and Rhodes, better known as Cock and Roach, or Cockroach for short. Really bad boys who have a racket with some doctors and Social Security judges. All of their clients get checks. They’re batting a thousand.” Mattie added, “A triathlete could file a claim and the Cockroaches could get him disability benefits.” “So we never—” “Never.” Samantha took a bite of her highly processed turkey sandwich and looked directly at Barb. She almost asked the obvious: “If we don’t take these cases, then why did you send the phone call back to me?” Instead, she made a mental note to keep the radar on high alert. Three years in Big Law had honed her survival skills razor sharp. Throat cutting and backstabbing were the norm, and she had learned to avoid both. She would not discuss it now with Barb, but she would bring it up when the moment was right. Claudelle seemed to be the clown of the group. She was only twenty-four, married for less than a year, pregnant, and having a rough time of it. She had spent the morning in the bathroom, fighting nausea and thinking vile thoughts about her unborn baby, a boy who had already been named after his father and was already causing as much trouble. The tone was surprisingly raunchy. In forty-five minutes they not only covered the firm’s pressing business but managed to explore morning sickness, menstrual cramps, labor and childbirth, men, and sex—no one seemed to be getting enough. Annette broke up the meeting when she looked at Samantha and said, “We’re in court in fifteen minutes.” 9 G enerally speaking, her experience with courtrooms had not been pleasant. Some visits had been required, others voluntary. When she was in the ninth grade, the great Marshall Kofer was trying an airline crash case in federal court in downtown D.C., and he convinced Samantha’s civics teacher that her students’ learning experience would be greatly enriched by watching him in action. For two full days, the kids sat in stultifying boredom as expert witnesses argued over the aerodynamics of severe icing. Far from being proud of her father, Samantha had been mortified at the unwanted attention. Fortunately for him, the students were back in class when the jury returned a verdict in favor of the manufacturer, handing him a rare loss. Seven years later she returned to the same building, but a different courtroom, to watch her father plead guilty to his crimes. It was a fine day for her mother, who never considered showing up, and so Samantha sat with an uncle, one of Marshall’s brothers, and dabbed her eyes with tissues. A pre-law class at Georgetown had required her to watch a portion of a criminal trial, but a mild case of the flu kept her away. All law students do mock trials, and she had enjoyed them to a point, but wanted no part of the real thing. During her clerkship she seldom saw a courtroom. During her interviews, she had made it clear she wanted to stay far away from litigation. And now she was walking into the Noland County Courthouse, headed for the main courtroom. The building itself was a handsome old redbrick structure with a sagging, bright tin roof over the third floor. Inside, a dusty foyer displayed fading portraits of bearded heroes, and one wall was covered with legal notices stapled slapdash to bulletin boards. She followed Annette to the second floor where they passed an ancient bailiff napping in his chair. They eased through thick double doors and stepped into the rear of the courtroom. Ahead, a judge was working at his bench as a few lawyers shuffled paperwork and bantered back and forth. To the right was the empty jury box. The high walls were covered with even more fading portraits, all men, all bearded and apparently serious about legal matters. A couple of clerks chatted and flirted with the lawyers. Several spectators watched and waited for justice to prevail. Annette cornered a prosecutor, a man she hurriedly introduced to her intern as Richard, and said they represented Phoebe Fanning, who would be filing for a divorce as soon as possible. “How much do you know?” she asked Richard. The three moved to a corner near the jury box so no one could hear. Richard said, “According to the cops, they were both stoned and decided they ought to settle their differences with a good fight. He won, she lost. Somehow a gun was involved, unloaded, and he whacked her in the head with it.” Annette recounted Phoebe’s version as Richard listened carefully. He said, “Hump’s his lawyer and all he wants now is a low bond. I’ll argue for a higher one and maybe we can keep this old boy in jail a few more days, let him cool off while she clears out.” Annette nodded, agreed, and said, “Thanks, Richard.” Hump was Cal Humphrey, a fixture from down the street; they had just walked past his storefront office. Annette said hello and introduced Samantha, who was appalled at the size of his stomach. A pair of gaudy suspenders strained under the load and seemed ready to pop, with consequences that would be too gross to consider. Hump whispered that “his man” Randy (for a second he could not remember his last name) needed to get out of jail because he was missing work. Hump didn’t buy Phoebe’s version of events, but instead suggested that the entire conflict had been started when she attacked his client with the unloaded pistol. “That’s why we have trials,” Annette mumbled as they eased away from Hump. Randy Fanning and two other inmates were escorted into the courtroom and placed on the front row. Their handcuffs were removed and a deputy stood close. The three could have been members of the same gang—faded orange jail overalls, unshaven faces, messy hair, hard looks. Annette and Samantha sat in the audience, as far away as possible. Barb tiptoed into the courtroom, handed Annette a file, and said, “Here’s the divorce.” When the judge called Randy Fanning to the bench, Annette sent a text message to Phoebe, who was sitting in her car outside the courthouse. Randy stood before the judge, with Hump to his right and Richard to his left, but farther away. Hump began a windy narrative about how much his client needed to be at work, how deep his roots were in Noland County, how he could be trusted to show up in court anytime he was needed, and so on. It was just a garden-variety marital dispute and things could be worked out without getting the judicial system further involved. As he rambled, Phoebe eased into the courtroom and sat beside Annette. Her hands were trembling, her eyes moist. Richard, for the prosecution, dwelt on the gravity of the charges and the real possibility of a lengthy jail term for Fanning. Nonsense, said Hump. His man was innocent. His man had been attacked by his “unbalanced” wife. If she insisted on pushing matters, she just might be the one going to jail. Back and forth the lawyers argued. The judge, a peaceful old gentleman with a slick head, asked calmly, “I understand the alleged victim is here in the courtroom. Is that correct, Ms. Brevard?” he asked, scanning the audience. Annette jumped to her feet and said, “She’s right here, Your Honor.” She walked through the bar as if she owned the courtroom, Phoebe in tow. “We represent Phoebe Fanning, whose divorce we’ll be filing within the next ten minutes.” Samantha, still safely in the audience, watched as Randy Fanning glared at his wife. Richard seized the moment and said, “Your Honor, it might be helpful to notice the apparent wounds to the face of Ms. Fanning. This woman has had the hell beaten out of her.” “I’m not blind,” replied the judge. “I don’t see any damage to your face, Mr. Fanning. The court also takes note of the fact that you’re over six feet tall and rather stout. Your wife is, let’s say, quite a bit smaller. Did you slap her around?” Randy shuffled his considerable weight from foot to foot, obviously guilty, and managed to say, “We had a fight, Judge. She started it.” “I’m sure she did. I think it’s best if you continue to settle down for a day or two. I’m sending you back to jail and we’ll meet again on Thursday. In the meantime, Ms. Brevard, you and your client tend to her pressing legal matters and keep me posted.” Hump said, “But, Your Honor, my client will lose his job.” Phoebe blurted, “He doesn’t have a job. He cuts timber part-time and sells meth full-time.” Everyone seemed to swallow hard as her words rattled around the courtroom. Randy was ready to resume the fight and glared at his wife with murderous hatred. The judge finally said, “That’s enough. Bring him back Thursday.” A bailiff grabbed Randy and led him away and out of the courtroom. Standing at the main door were two men, a couple of ruffians with matted hair and tattoos. They stared at Annette, Samantha, and Phoebe as they walked by. In the hallway, Phoebe whispered, “Those thugs are with Randy, all in the meth business. I gotta get out of this town.” Samantha thought: I might be right behind you. They walked into the office of the Circuit Court and filed the divorce. Annette was asking for an immediate hearing for a restraining order to keep Randy away from the family. “The earliest slot is Wednesday afternoon,” a clerk said. “We’ll take it,” Annette said. The two thugs were waiting just outside the front door of the courthouse, and they had been joined by a third angry young man. He stepped in front of Phoebe and growled, “You better drop the charges, girl, or you’ll be sorry.” Phoebe did not back away; instead, she looked at him in a way that conveyed years of familiarity and contempt. She said to Annette, “This is Randy’s brother Tony, fresh from prison.” “Did you hear me? I said drop the charges,” Tony said in a louder growl. “I just filed for divorce, Tony. It’s over. I’m leaving town as fast as I can, but I’ll be sure and come back when he goes to court. I’m not dropping the charges, so please get out of the way.” One thug stared at Samantha, the other at Annette. The brief confrontation ended when Hump and Richard walked out of the courthouse and saw what was happening. “That’s enough,” Richard said, and Tony backed away. Hump said, “Let’s go gals. I’ll walk you back to the office.” As Hump lumbered down Main Street, talking nonstop about another case he and Annette were contesting, Samantha followed along, rattled by the incident and wondering if she needed a handgun in her purse. No wonder Donovan practiced law with a small arsenal. The rest of her afternoon was client-free, thankfully. She had heard enough misery for one day, and she needed to study. Annette loaned her some well-used seminar materials designed for rookie lawyers, with sections on divorce and domestic relations, wills and estates, bankruptcy, landlord and tenant, employment, immigration, and government assistance. A section on black lung benefits had been added later. It was dry and dull, at least to read about, but she had already learned firsthand that the cases were anything but boring. At five o’clock, she finally called Mr. Joe Duncan and informed him she could not handle his Social Security appeal. Her bosses prohibited such representation. She passed along the names of two private attorneys who took such cases and wished him well. He was not too happy with the call. She stopped by Mattie’s office and they recapped her first day on the job. So far so good, though she was still rattled by the brief confrontation on the courthouse steps. “They won’t mess with a lawyer,” Mattie assured her. “Especially a girl. I’ve been doing this for twenty-six years and I’ve never been assaulted.” “Congratulations. Have you been threatened?” “Maybe a couple of times, but nothing that really scared me. You’ll be fine.” She felt fine leaving the office and walking to her car, though she couldn’t help but glance around. A light mist was falling and the town was growing darker. She parked in the garage under her apartment and climbed the steps. Annette’s daughter, Kim, was thirteen; her son, Adam, was ten. They were intrigued by their new “roommate” and insisted that she join them at mealtime, but Samantha had no plans to crash their dinner every night. With her crazy schedule, and Blythe’s, she had grown accustomed to eating alone. As a professional with a stressful job, Annette had little time to cook. Evidently, cleaning was not a priority either. Dinner was mac and cheese from the microwave with sliced tomatoes from a client’s garden. They drank water from plastic bottles, never from the tap. As they ate, the kids peppered Samantha with questions about her life, growing up in D.C., living and working in New York, and why in the world she had chosen to come to Brady. They were bright, confident, easy to humor, and not afraid to ask personal questions. They were courteous too, never failing to say “Yes ma’am” and “No ma’am.” They decided she was too young to be called Miss Kofer, and Adam felt as though Samantha was too much of a mouthful. They eventually agreed on Miss Sam, though Samantha was hopeful the “Miss” would soon disappear. She told them that she would be their babysitter, and this seemed to puzzle them. “Why do we need one?” Kim asked. “So your mother can go out and do whatever she wants to do,” Samantha said. They found this amusing. Adam said, “But she never goes out.” “True,” Annette said. “There’s not much to do in Brady. In fact, there’s nothing to do if you don’t go to church three nights a week.” “And you don’t go to church?” Samantha asked. So far, in her brief time in Appalachia, she had become convinced that every five families had their own tiny church with a leaning white steeple. There were churches everywhere, all believing in the inerrancy of the Holy Scripture but evidently agreeing on little else. “Sometimes on Sunday,” Kim said. After supper, Kim and Adam dutifully cleared the table and stacked the dishes in the sink. There was no dishwasher. They wanted to watch television with Miss Sam and ignore their homework, but Annette eventually shooed them off to the small bedrooms. Sensing that her guest might be getting bored, Annette said, “Let’s have some tea and talk.” With nothing else to do, Samantha said yes. Annette scooped up a pile of dirty clothes and tossed them into the clothes washer beside the refrigerator. She added soap and cranked a dial. “The noise will drown out anything we say,” she said as she reached into a cabinet for tea bags. “Decaf okay?” “Sure,” Samantha said as she stepped into the den, a room overrun with sagging bookshelves, stacks of magazines, and soft furniture that had not been dusted in months. In one corner there was a flat-screen TV (the garage apartment did not have one), and in another corner Annette kept a small desk with a computer and a stack of files. She brought two cups of steaming tea, handed one to Samantha, and said, “Let’s sit on the sofa and talk about girl stuff.” “Okay, what do you have in mind?” As they settled in, Annette said, “Well, sex for one. How often do you get laid in New York?” Samantha laughed at the frankness, then hesitated as if she couldn’t remember the last time. “It’s not that wild, really. I mean, it is if you’re in the game, but in my crowd we work too much to have any fun. A night out for us is a nice dinner and drinks, after which I’m always too tired to do anything but go to sleep, alone.” “That’s hard to believe, all those rich, young professionals on the prowl. I’ve watched Sex and the City, over and over. By myself, of course, after the kids go to bed.” “Well, I haven’t. I’ve heard about it, but I’m usually at the office. I’ve had one boyfriend in the past three years. Henry, a starving actor, really cute and fun in the sack, but he got tired of my hours and my fatigue. Sure, you meet a lot of guys, but most of them are just as driven. Women are disposable. A lot of jerks too, a lot of arrogant brats who talk of nothing but money and brag about what they can buy.” “I’m crushed.” “Don’t be. It’s not as glamorous as you think.” “Never?” “Oh sure, the occasional hookup, but nothing I care to remember.” Samantha sipped her tea and wanted to shift the conversation. “What about you? You get much action in Brady?” It was Annette’s turn to laugh. She paused, took a sip, and became sad. “There’s not much happening here. I made the choice, now I live it, and that’s okay.” “The choice?” “Yes, I came here ten years ago, in full retreat. My divorce was a nightmare and I had to get away from my ex. Get my kids away too. He has almost no contact. Now, I’m forty-five years old, somewhat attractive, in fairly good shape, unlike, well—” “Got it.” “Let’s just say there’s not much competition in Noland County. There have been a couple of nice men along the way, but no one I wanted to live with. One guy was twenty years older, and I just couldn’t do that to my kids. For the first few years, it seemed as though half the women in town were trying to fix me up with a cousin. Then I realized they really wanted me to get married so they wouldn’t have to worry about their own husbands. Married men, though, do not tempt me. Far too much trouble, here or in the city.” “Why do you stay?” “That’s a great question, and I’m not sure I will. It’s a safe place to raise kids, though we do worry about the environmental hazards. Brady’s okay, but not far from here, back in the settlements and hollows, kids are constantly sick from contaminated water and coal dust. To answer your question, I’ve stayed because I love the work. I love the people who need my help. I can make a small difference in their lives. You met them today. You saw their fear and hopelessness. They need me. If I leave, there may be someone to take my place, and maybe not.” “How do you turn it off when you leave the office?” “I can’t always do that. Their problems are too personal, so I lose a lot of sleep.” “I’m glad to hear that because I keep thinking about Phoebe Fanning, with her busted face and kids hidden with a relative, and a goon for a husband who’ll probably kill her when he gets out.” Annette offered a caring smile. “I’ve seen a lot of women in her situation, and they’ve all survived. Phoebe will be fine, eventually. She’ll relocate somewhere—we’ll help her—and she’ll divorce him. Keep in mind, Samantha, he’s in jail right now, getting a good taste of life behind bars. If he does something stupid, he could spend the rest of his days in prison.” “I didn’t get the impression he’s that much of a thinker.” “You’re right. He’s an idiot and an addict. I’m not making light of her situation, but she’ll be okay.” Samantha exhaled and set her cup on the coffee table. “I’m sorry, this is just so new to me.” “Dealing with real people?” “Yes, so caught up in their problems, and expected to fix them. The last file I worked on in New York involved a really shady guy, worth about a billion or so, our client, who wanted to build this very tall and sleek hotel in the middle of Greenwich Village. It was by far the ugliest model I ever saw, really gaudy. He fired three or four architects and his building just got taller and uglier. The city said hell no, so he sued and cozied up to the politicians and conducted himself like a lot of Manhattan developers. I met him once briefly when he came to the office to yell at my partner. A total sleazeball. And he was our client, my client. I detested the man. I wanted him to fail.” “And why not?” “He did fail, and we were secretly thrilled. Imagine that, we put in tons of hours, charged the guy a fortune, and felt like celebrating when his project got rejected. How’s that for client relations?” “I’d celebrate too.” “Now I’m worried about Lady Purvis whose husband is serving time in a debtors’ prison, and I’m fretting about Phoebe getting out of town before her husband is free on bond.” “Welcome to our world, Samantha. There’ll be even more tomorrow.” “I’m not sure I’m cut out for this.” “Yes, you are. You gotta be tough in this business, and you’re a lot tougher than you think.” Adam was back, homework suddenly finished, and he wanted to challenge Miss Sam to a game of gin rummy. “He thinks he’s a card shark,” Annette said. “And he cheats.” “I’ve never played gin rummy,” Miss Sam said. Adam was shuffling the deck like a Vegas dealer. 10 M ost of Mattie’s workdays began with coffee at eight o’clock sharp, office door closed, phone ignored, and Donovan sitting across from her sharing the latest gossip. There was really no need to close her door because no one else arrived for work until around 8:30, when Annette punched in after dropping her kids off at school. Nonetheless, Mattie treasured the privacy with her nephew and protected it. Office rules and procedures appeared to be lax, and Samantha had been told to show up “around nine” and work until she found a good stopping place late in the afternoon. At first, she worried that the transition from a hundred hours a week to forty might be difficult, but not so. She had not slept until seven in years and was finding it quite agreeable. By eight, however, she was climbing the walls and eager to start the day. On Tuesday, she eased through the front door, passed Mattie’s office, heard low voices, and checked the kitchen for the coffeepot. She had just settled behind her compact desk for an hour or two of studying, or until she was fetched to sit through another client interview, when Donovan suddenly appeared and said, “Welcome to town.” “Well, hello,” she said. He glanced around and said, “I’ll bet your office in New York was a lot bigger.” “Not really. They stuffed us rookies into what they called ‘quads,’ these cramped little work spaces where you could reach over and touch your colleague, if you needed to. They saved on rent so the partners could protect their bottom line.” “Sounds like you really miss it.” “I think I’m still numb.” She waved at the only other chair and said, “Have a seat.” Donovan casually folded himself into the small chair and said, “Mattie tells me you made it to court on your very first day.” “I did. What else did she tell you?” Samantha wondered if her daily movements would be recapped each morning over their coffee. “Nothing, just the idle chatter of small-town lawyers. Randy Fanning was once an okay guy, then he got into meth. He’ll wind up dead or in prison, like a lot of guys around here.” “Can I borrow one of your guns?” A laugh, then, “You won’t need one. The meth dealers are not nearly as nasty as the coal companies. Start suing them all the time and I’ll get you a gun. I know it’s early, but have you thought about lunch?” “I haven’t thought about breakfast yet.” “I’m offering lunch, a working lunch in my office. Chicken salad sandwich?” “How can I refuse that?” “Does noon work in your schedule?” She pretended to consult her busy daily planner, and said, “Your lucky day. I happen to have an opening.” He jumped to his feet and said, “See ya.” She studied quietly for a while, hoping to be left undisturbed. Through the thin walls she heard Annette discussing a case with Mattie. The phone rang occasionally, and each time Samantha held her breath and hoped that Barb would send the caller to another office, to a lawyer who knew what to do. Her luck lasted until almost ten, when Barb stuck her head around the door and said, “I’ll be out for an hour. You have the front.” She disappeared before Samantha could inquire as to what, exactly, that meant. It meant sitting at Barb’s desk in the reception area, alone and vulnerable and likely to be approached by some poor soul with no money to hire a real lawyer. It meant answering the phone and routing the calls to either Mattie or Annette, or simply stalling. One person asked for Annette, who was with a client. Another asked for Mattie, who had gone to court. Another needed advice on a Social Security disability claim, and Samantha happily referred him to a private firm. Finally, the front door opened and Mrs. Francine Crump walked in with a legal matter that would haunt Samantha for months. All she wanted was a will, one “that didn’t cost anything.” Simple wills are straightforward documents, the preparation of which can easily be undertaken by even the greenest of lawyers. Indeed, rookies jump at the chance to draft them because it’s difficult to screw them up. Suddenly confident, Samantha led Mrs. Crump back to a small meeting room and left the door open so she could keep an eye on the front. Mrs. Crump was eighty years old and looked all of it. Her husband died long ago, and her five children were scattered around the country, none close to home. She said she had been forgotten by them; they seldom came to visit, seldom called. She wanted to sign a simple will that gave them nothing. “Cut ’em all out,” she said with astonishing bitterness. Judging from her appearance, and from the fact that she was looking for a free will, Samantha assumed there was little in the way of assets. Mrs. Crump lived in Eufaula, a small community “deep in Jacob’s Holler.” Samantha wrote this down as if she knew exactly where it was. There were no debts, nothing in the way of real assets except for an old house and eighty acres, land that had been in her family forever. “Any idea what the land is worth?” Samantha asked. Mrs. Crump crunched her dentures and said, “A lot more than anybody knows. You see, the coal company came out last year and tried to buy the land, been trying for some time, but I ran ’em off again. Ain’t selling to no coal company, no ma’am. They’re blasting away not far from my land, taking down Cat Mountain, and it’s a real shame. Ain’t got no use for no coal company.” “How much did they offer?” “A lot, and I ain’t told my kids either. Won’t tell them. I’m in bad health, you see, and I’ll be gone pretty soon. If my kids get the land, they’ll sell to the coal company before I’m cold in the ground. That’s exactly what they’ll do. I know ’em.” She reached into her purse and pulled out some folded papers. “Here’s a will I signed five years ago. My kids took me down to a lawyer’s office, just down the street, and they made me sign it.” Samantha slowly unfolded the papers and read the last will and testament of Francine Cooper Crump. The third paragraph left everything to her five children in equal shares. Samantha scribbled some useless notes and said, “Okay, Mrs. Crump, for estate tax purposes, I need to know the approximate value of this land.” “The what?” “How much did the coal company offer you?” She looked as if she’d been insulted, then leaned in low and whispered. “Two hundred thousand and change, but it’s worth double that. Maybe triple. You can’t trust a coal company. They low ball everybody, then figure out ways to steal from you at the end.” Suddenly the simple will was not so simple. Samantha proceeded cautiously, asking, “All right, so who gets the eighty acres under a new will?” “I want to give it to my neighbor, Jolene. She lives across the creek on her own land and she ain’t selling either. I trust her and she’s already promised to take care of my land.” “You’ve discussed this with her?” “Talk about it all the time. She and her husband, Hank, say they’ll make new wills too, and leave their land to me in case they go first. But they’re in better health, you know? I figure I’ll pass first.” “But what if they pass first?” “I doubt it. I got high blood pressure and a bad heart, plus bursitis.” “Sure, but what if they pass first, and you inherit their land to go along with your land, and then you die, who gets all this land?” “Not my kids, and not their kids either. God help us. You think mine are bad.” “Got that, but someone has to inherit the land. Who do you have in mind?” “That’s what I came here for, to talk to a lawyer. I need some advice on what to do.” Suddenly, with assets on the line, there were different scenarios. The new will would certainly be contested by the five children, and other than what she had just skimmed in the seminar materials, Samantha knew nothing about will contests. She vaguely recalled a case or two from a class in law school, but that seemed like so long ago. She managed to stall, take notes, and ask semi-relevant questions for half an hour, and succeeded in convincing Mrs. Crump that she should return in a few days after the firm had reviewed her situation. Barb was back, and she proved skillful in helping to ease the new client out the front door. “What was that all about?” Barb asked when Mrs. Crump was gone. “I’m not sure. I’ll be in my room.” Donovan’s office was in much better shape than the legal aid clinic’s. Leather chairs, thick rugs, hardwood floors with a nice finish. A funky chandelier hung in the center of the foyer. Samantha’s first thought was that, finally, there was someone in Brady who might be making a buck or two. His receptionist, Dawn, greeted her politely and said the boss was waiting upstairs. She was off to lunch. As she climbed the circular staircase, Samantha heard the front door close and lock. There was no sign of anyone else. Donovan was on the phone behind a large wooden desk that appeared to be very old. He waved her in, pointed to a bulky chair, and said, “Gotta go.” He slammed the phone down and said, “Welcome to my domain. This is where all the long balls are hit.” “Nice,” she said, looking around. The room was large and opened onto the balcony. The walls were covered with handsome bookcases, all packed with the usual assortment of treatises and thick tomes meant to impress. In one corner was a gun rack displaying at least eight deadly weapons. Samantha didn’t know a shotgun from a deer rifle, but the collection appeared to be primed and ready. “Guns everywhere,” she observed. “I hunt a lot, always have. When you grow up in these mountains, you grow up in the woods. I killed my first deer at the age of six, with a bow.” “Congratulations. And why do you want to have lunch?” “You promised, remember? Last week, just after you were arrested and I rescued you from jail.” “But we agreed on lunch at the diner down the street.” “I thought we might have more privacy here. Plus, I try and avoid the local spots. As I told you, there are a lot of people around here who don’t like me. Sometimes they say things and make a scene in public. It can really ruin a good lunch.” “I don’t see any food.” “It’s in the war room. Come with me.” He jumped to his feet and she followed him down a short hallway to a long, windowless room. At one end of a cluttered table were two plastic carryout containers and two bottles of water. He pointed and said, “Lunch is served.” Samantha walked to a side wall and stared at an enlarged photo that was at least eight feet tall. It was in color, and it portrayed a scene that was shocking and tragic. A massive boulder, the size of a small car, had crashed through a mobile home, shearing it in half and causing serious damage. “What’s this?” she asked. Donovan stepped beside her and said, “Well, it’s a lawsuit, to begin with. For about a million years, that boulder was part of Enid Mountain, about forty miles from here, over in Hopper County. A couple of years ago, they began strip-mining the mountain, blew its top off, and dug out the coal. On March 14 of last year, at four in the morning, a bulldozer owned and operated by a roguish outfit called Strayhorn Coal was clearing rock, without a permit, and this boulder was shoved into the fill area down the valley. Because of its size, it picked up momentum as it descended along this steep creek bed.” He was pointing to an enlarged map next to the photo. “Almost a mile from where it left the blade of the bulldozer, it crashed into this little trailer. In the back bedroom were two brothers, Eddie Tate, age eleven, and Brandon Tate, age eight. Sound asleep, as you might expect. Their father was in prison for cooking meth. Their mother was at work at a convenience store. The boys were killed instantly, crushed, flattened.” Samantha gawked at the photo in disbelief. “That’s horrible.” “Indeed it was, and is. Life near a strip mine is never dull. The ground shakes and cracks foundations. Coal dust fills the air and blankets everything. The well water turns orange. Rocks fly all the time. I had a case two years ago in West Virginia where a Mr. and Mrs. Herzog were sitting by their small pool on a warm Saturday afternoon and a one-ton boulder came from nowhere and landed square in the middle of the pool. They got drenched. The pool cracked. We sued the company and got a few bucks, but not much.” “And you’ve sued Strayhorn Coal?” “Oh, yes. We go to trial next Monday in Colton, Circuit Court.” “The company won’t settle?” “The company was fined by our fearless regulators. Hit ’em hard for twenty thousand bucks, which they have appealed. No, they won’t settle. They, along with their insurance company, have offered a hundred thousand.” “A hundred thousand dollars for two dead kids?” “Dead kids are not worth much, especially in Appalachia. They have no economic value because they, obviously, are not employed. It’s a great case for punitive damages—Strayhorn Coal is capitalized at half a billion dollars—and I’ll ask for a million or two. But the wise people who make the laws in Virginia decided years ago to cap punitive damages.” “I think I remember this from the bar exam.” “The cap is $350,000, regardless of how bad the defendant acted. It was a gift from our General Assembly to the insurance industry, like all caps.” “You sound like my father.” “You want to eat or stand here for the next hour.” “I’m not sure I’m hungry.” “Well, I am.” They sat at the table and unwrapped their sandwiches. Samantha took a small bite but had no appetite. “Have you tried to settle the case?” she asked. “I put a million on the table, they countered with a hundred thousand, so we’re miles apart. They, the insurance lawyers along with the coal company, are banking on the fact that the family was screwed up and not that close. They’re also banking on the fact that a lot of jurors in these parts are either afraid of Big Coal or quietly supportive of it. When you sue a coal company in Appalachia you can’t always count on an unbiased jury. Even those who despise the companies tend to stay quiet about it. Everybody has a relative or a friend who’s got a job. It makes for some interesting dynamics in the courtroom.” Samantha tried another small bite and looked around the room. The walls were covered with enlarged color photos and maps, some marked as trial exhibits, others apparently waiting for trial. She said, “This reminds me of my father’s office, once upon a time.” “Marshall Kofer. I checked him out. He was quite the trial lawyer in his day.” “Yes, he was. When I was a kid, if I wanted to see him I usually had to go to his office, if he was in town. He worked nonstop. Ran a big firm. When he wasn’t jetting around the world chasing the latest aviation disaster, he was in his office preparing for trial. They had this large, cluttered room—come to think of it, they called it the war room.” “I didn’t invent the term. Most trial lawyers have one.” “And the walls were covered with large photos and diagrams and all sorts of exhibits. It was impressive, even to a kid. I can still feel the tension, the anxiety in the room as he and his staff got ready for the courtroom. These were big crashes, with lots of dead people, lots of lawyers and all. He explained later that most of his cases were settled right before trial. Liability was seldom an issue. The plane went down, it wasn’t the fault of the passengers. The airlines have plenty of money and insurance, and they worry about their image, so they settle. For huge sums.” “Did you ever consider working with him?” “No, never. He’s impossible, or at least he was back then. Massive ego, total workaholic, pretty much of an ass. I wanted no part of his world.” “Then he crashed himself.” “Indeed he did.” She stood and walked to another photo, one of a mangled car. Rescue personnel were trying to remove someone trapped inside. Donovan kept his seat and chewed on a chip. He said, “I tried that case in Martin County, West Virginia, three years ago. Lost.” “What happened?” “A coal truck came down the mountain, overweight and speeding, and it veered across the center line and ran over that little Honda. The driver was Gretchen Bane, age sixteen, my client, and she died at the scene. If you look closely, you can see her left foot at the bottom there, sort of hanging out the door.” “I was afraid of that. Did the jury see this?” “Oh yes. They saw everything. For five days I laid it all out for the jury, but it didn’t matter.” “How’d you lose?” “I lose about half of them. In that case, the truck driver took the stand, swore to tell the truth, then lied for three hours. He said Gretchen crossed the center line and caused the wreck, made it sound as though she was trying to kill herself. The coal companies are clever and they never send down one truck at a time. They travel in pairs, so there’s always a witness ready to testify. Trucks hauling coal that weighs a hundred tons, racing across old, twenty-ton bridges still used by school buses, and absolutely ignoring every rule of the road. If there’s an accident, it’s usually bad. In West Virginia, they’re killing one innocent driver per week. The trucker swears he was doing nothing wrong, his buddy backs him up, there are no other witnesses, so the jury falls in line with Big Coal.” “Can’t you appeal?” Donovan laughed as though she’d nailed her punch line. He took a swig of water and said, “Sure, we still have that right. But West Virginia elects its judges, which is an abomination. Virginia has some screwed-up laws, but at least we don’t elect judges. Not so over there. There are five members of the West Virginia Supreme Court. They serve four-year terms and run for reelection. Guess who contributes the big money to the campaigns.” “The coal companies.” “Bingo. They influence the politicians, the regulators, the judges, and they often control the juries. So it’s not exactly an ideal climate for us litigators.” “So much for a fair trial,” she said, still looking at the photos. “We win occasionally. In Gretchen’s case, we got a break. A month after the trial, the same driver hit another car. Luckily, no one was killed, just a few broken bones. The deputy on the scene got curious and took the driver in for questioning. He was acting weird and finally admitted he’d been driving for fifteen hours straight. To help matters he was drinking Red Bull with vodka and snorting crystal meth. The deputy turned on a recorder and quizzed him about the Bane accident. He admitted he’d been threatened into lying by his employer. I got a copy of the transcript and filed a bunch of motions. The court finally granted a new trial, one we’re still waiting for. Eventually, I’ll nail them.” “What happened to the driver?” “He became a whistle-blower and spilled the beans on Eastpoint Mining, his employer. Someone slashed his tires and fired two shots through his kitchen window, so he’s now in hiding, in another state. I give him cash to live on.” “Is that legal?” “That’s not a fair question in coal country. Nothing is black-and-white in my world. The enemy breaks every rule in the book, so the fight is never fair. If you play by the rules, you lose, even when you’re on the right side.” She returned to the table and nibbled on a chip. She said, “I knew I was wise to avoid litigation.” “I hate to hear that,” he said, smiling, his dark eyes absorbing every move she made. “I was thinking about offering you a job.” “I’m sorry.” “I’m serious. I could use some research, and I’ll pay you. I know how much you’re earning over at the legal clinic, so I figured you might want to moonlight as a research assistant.” “Here, in your office?” “Where else? Nothing that would interfere with your internship, strictly after hours and on weekends. If you’re not already bored here in Brady, it won’t be long.” “Why me?” “There’s no one else. I have two paralegals and one is leaving tomorrow. I can’t trust any other lawyer in town, nor anyone from any law office. I’m paranoid about secrecy, and you obviously haven’t been here long enough to know anything or anybody. You’re the perfect hire.” “I don’t know what to say. Have you talked to Mattie?” “Not about this, no. But if you’re interested, I’ll have a chat with her. She rarely says no to me. Think about it. If you don’t want to, I’ll understand completely.” “Okay, I’ll think about it. But I’ve just started one job and wasn’t planning on looking for another, not so soon anyway. Plus, I really don’t like litigation.” “You won’t have to go to court. Just hide in here, do the research, write the briefs, work the long hours you’re accustomed to working.” “I was trying to get away from that.” “I understand. Mull it over and we’ll chat later.” They worked on their sandwiches for a moment but the silence was too heavy. Samantha finally said, “Mattie told me about your past.” He smiled and shoved his food away. “What do you want to know? I’m an open book.” She doubted that. She could think of several questions: What happened to your father? How serious is the separation from your wife? How often do you see her? Maybe later. She said, “Nothing really. It’s an interesting background, that’s all.” “Interesting, sad, tragic, filled with adventure. All of the above. I’m thirty-eight years old, and I’ll die young.” She could think of no response. 11 T he highway to Colton snaked through the mountains, rising and falling, offering breathtaking views of the dense ridges, then dipping into valleys filled with clusters of dilapidated shacks and mobile homes with junk cars scattered about. It clung to creeks with shallow rapids and water clear enough to drink, and just as the beauty sunk in it passed another settlement of tiny, forlorn houses stuck close together and shaded eternally by the mountains. The contrast was startling: the beauty of the ridges against the poverty of the people who lived between them. There were some pretty homes with neat lawns and white picket fences, but the neighbors were usually not as prosperous. Mattie drove and talked while Samantha took in the scenery. As they climbed a stretch of road, a rare straightaway, a long truck approached from the other direction. It was dirty, covered with dust, with a canvas top over its bed. It was flying down the mountain, obviously speeding, but staying in the proper lane. After it passed, Samantha said, “I assume that was a coal truck.” Mattie checked a mirror as though she hadn’t noticed. “Oh, yes. They haul it out after it’s been washed and it’s ready for the market. They’re everywhere.” “Donovan talked about them yesterday. He doesn’t think too highly of them.” “I’ll bet good money that truck was overweight and probably couldn’t pass inspection.” “And no one checks them?” “It’s spotty. And usually when the inspectors arrive the coal companies already know they’re coming. My favorites are the mine safety inspectors who monitor the blasting. They have a schedule so when they show up at a strip mine, guess what? Everything is by the book. As soon as they leave, the company blasts away with little regard for the rules.” Samantha assumed Mattie knew everything about her lunch the day before with Donovan. She waited a moment to see if the job offer was mentioned. It was not. They topped a mountain and began another descent. Mattie said, “Let me show you something. Won’t take but a minute.” She hit the brakes and turned onto a smaller highway, one with more curves and steeper ridges. They were going up again. A sign said a picnic area with a scenic view was just ahead. They stopped at a small strip of land with two wooden tables and a garbage can. Before them lay miles of rolling mountains covered with dense hardwoods. They got out of the car and walked to a rickety fence built to keep people and vehicles from tumbling deep into a valley where they would never be found. Mattie said, “This is a good spot to see mountaintop removal from a distance. Three sites—” She pointed to her left. “That’s the Cat Mountain Mine not far from Brady. Straight ahead is the Loose Creek Mine in Kentucky. And to the right there is the Little Utah Mine, also in Kentucky. All active, all stripping coal as fast as humanly possible. Those mountains were once three thousand feet high, like their neighbors. Look at them now.” They were scalped of all greenery and reduced to rock and dirt. Their tops were gone and they stood like missing fingers, the nubs on a mangled hand. They were surrounded by unspoiled mountains, all ablaze with the orange and yellow of mid-autumn, and perfectly beautiful if not for the eyesores across the ridge. Samantha stood motionless, staring in disbelief and trying to absorb the devastation. She finally said, “This can’t be legal.” “Afraid so, according to federal law. Technically it’s legal. But the way they go about it is quite illegal.” “There’s no way to stop it.” “Litigation is still raging, has been for twenty years. We’ve had a few victories at the federal level, but all the good decisions have been overturned on appeal. The Fourth Circuit is loaded with Republican appointees. We’re still fighting, though.” “We?” “The good guys, the opponents of strip-mining. I’m not personally involved as a lawyer, but I’m on the right team. We’re in a distinct minority around here, but we’re fighting.” Mattie glanced at her watch and said, “We’d better go.” Back in the car, Samantha said, “Kinda makes you sick, doesn’t it?” “Yes, they’ve destroyed so much of our way of life here in Appalachia, so, yes, it makes me sick.” As they entered the town of Colton, the highway became Center Street and after a few blocks the courthouse appeared on the right. Samantha said, “Donovan has a trial here next week.” “Oh yes, a big one. Those two little boys, so sad.” “You know the case?” “Oh yes, it was quite the story when they were killed. I know more than I care to know. I just hope he wins. I advised him to settle, to take something for the family, but he wants to make a statement.” “So he doesn’t take your advice.” “Donovan usually does what he wants to do, and he’s usually right.” They parked behind the courthouse and walked inside. Unlike Noland County’s, the Hopper County Courthouse was a baffling modern structure that had undoubtedly once looked thrilling on paper. All glass and rock, it jutted here and folded there, and wasted a lot of space in its daring design. Samantha figured the architect had eventually lost his license. “The old one burned,” Mattie said as they climbed the stairs. “But then they all burn.” Samantha wasn’t sure what this meant. Lady Purvis was sitting nervously in the hallway outside the courtroom, and she smiled with great relief when she saw her lawyers. A few others loitered about, waiting for court to convene. After a few preliminaries, Lady pointed to a dough-faced young man in a polyester sports coat and shiny boots with pointed toes. “That’s him, works for JRA, name’s Snowden, Laney Snowden.” “Wait here,” Mattie said. With Samantha following her, she made a beeline for Mr. Snowden, whose eyes got bigger the closer she got. “You’re the representative for JRA?” Mattie demanded. “I am,” Snowden said proudly. She thrust a card at him as if it were a switchblade and said, “I’m Mattie Wyatt, attorney for Stocky Purvis. This is my associate, Samantha Kofer. We’ve been hired to get our client out of jail.” Snowden took a step back as Mattie pressed ahead. Samantha, treading water, wasn’t sure what to do, so she quickly adopted an aggressive posture and look. She scowled at Snowden as he looked blankly at her and tried to absorb the reality that a deadbeat like Stocky Purvis could hire not one but two lawyers. “Fine,” Snowden said. “Fork over the money and we’ll get him out.” “He doesn’t have any money, Mr. Snowden. That much should be clear by now. And he can’t make any money as long as you’ve got him locked up in jail. Tack on all the illegal fees you want, but the truth is my client can’t earn a dime sitting where he’s sitting right now.” “I have a court order,” Snowden said with bravado. “Well, we’re about to talk to the judge about his court order. It’s going to be amended so Stocky walks. If you don’t negotiate, you’ll get left holding the bag.” “Okay, what do you gals have in mind?” “Don’t call me a gal!” Mattie barked at him. Snowden recoiled fearfully, as if he might get hit with one of those sexual harassment claims you read about. Mattie, inching closer to Snowden as her face changed colors, said, “Here’s the deal. My client owes the county about $200 in fines and fees. You boys have tacked on four hundred more for your own fun and games. We’ll pay a hundred of that, total of three hundred max, and we’ll have six months to pay it. That’s it, take it or leave it.” Snowden put on a phony smile, shook his head, and said, “Sorry, Ms. Wyatt, but we can’t live with that.” Without taking her eyes off Snowden, Mattie reached into her briefcase and whipped out some papers. “Then try living with this,” she said, waving the papers in his face. “It’s a lawsuit to be filed in federal court against Judicial Response Associates—I’ll add you later as a defendant—for wrongful arrest and wrongful imprisonment. You see, Mr. Snowden, the Constitution says, quite clearly, that you cannot imprison a poor person for failing to pay his debts. I don’t expect you to know this because you work for a bunch of crooks. However, trust me on this, the federal judges understand it because they’ve read the Constitution, most of them anyway. Debtors’ prisons are illegal. Ever heard of the Equal Protection Clause?” Snowden’s mouth was open but words failed him. She pressed on. “Didn’t think so. Maybe your lawyers can explain it, at three hundred bucks an hour. I’m telling you so you can tell your bosses that I’ll keep you in court for the next two years. I’ll drown you in paperwork. I’ll drag your asses through hours of depositions and discover all your dirty little tricks. It’ll all come out. I’ll hound you into the ground and make your lives miserable. You’ll have nightmares about me. And in the end I’ll win the case, plus I’ll collect attorneys’ fees.” She pushed the lawsuit into his chest and he reluctantly took it. They wheeled about and marched away, leaving Snowden weak-kneed and shell-shocked and already having glimpses of the nightmares. Samantha, stunned in her own way, whispered, “Can’t we bankrupt the $300?” Suddenly composed, Mattie said with a grin, “Of course we can. And we will.” Thirty minutes later, Mattie stood before the judge and announced they had reached a deal for the immediate release of her client, Mr. Stocky Purvis. Lady was in tears as she left the courthouse and headed for the jail. Driving back to Brady, Mattie said, “A license to practice law is a powerful tool, Samantha, when it’s used to help little people. Crooks like Snowden are accustomed to bullying folks who can’t afford representation. But you get a good lawyer involved and the bullying stops immediately.” “You’re a pretty good bully yourself.” “I’ve had practice.” “When did you prepare the lawsuit?” “We keep them in inventory. The file is actually called ‘Dummy Lawsuits.’ Just plug in a different name, splash the words ‘Federal Court’ all over it, and they scatter like squirrels.” Dummy lawsuits. Scattering like squirrels. Samantha wondered how many of her classmates at Columbia had been exposed to such legal tactics. At two that afternoon, Samantha was sitting in the main courtroom of the Noland County Courthouse patting the knee of a terrified Phoebe Fanning. Her facial wounds had now turned dark blue and looked even worse. She had arrived at court with a thick layer of makeup, which Annette didn’t approve of. She instructed their client to go to the restroom and scrub it off. Once again, Randy Fanning was driven over with his escort and entered the courtroom looking even rougher than he had two days earlier. He had been served a copy of the divorce and appeared perturbed by it. He glared at his wife, and at Samantha, as a deputy removed his handcuffs. The Circuit Court judge was Jeb Battle, an eager youngster who looked no more than thirty. Since the legal aid clinic handled a lot of domestic work, Annette was a regular and claimed to get on well with His Honor. The judge called things to order and approved a few uncontested matters while they waited. When he called Fanning versus Fanning, Annette and Samantha moved with their client through the bar to a table near the bench. Randy Fanning walked to another table, with a deputy close by, and waited for Hump to waddle into place. Judge Battle looked closely at Phoebe, at her bruised face, and, without saying a word, made his decision. He said, “This divorce was filed Monday. Have you been served a copy, Mr. Fanning? You may remain seated.” “Yes sir, I have a copy.” “Mr. Humphrey, I understand a bond will be set in the morning, is that right?” “Yes sir.” “We are here on a motion for a temporary restraining order. Phoebe Fanning is asking the court to order Randall Fanning to stay away from the couple’s residence, the couple’s three children, Phoebe herself, and anyone in her immediate family. Do you object to this, Mr. Humphrey?” “Of course we do, Your Honor. This matter is getting blown way out of proportion.” Hump was on his feet, waving his hands dramatically, his voice getting twangier with each sentence. “The couple had a fight, and it’s not the first one, and not all fights have been caused by my client, but, yes, he was in a fight with his wife. Obviously, they are having problems, but they’re trying to work things out. If we could all just take a deep breath, get Randy out of jail and back to work, I feel sure these two can iron out some of their differences. My client misses his children and he really wants to go home.” “She’s filed for divorce, Mr. Humphrey,” the judge said sternly. “Looks like she’s pretty serious about splitting up.” “And divorces can be dismissed as quickly as they are filed, see it all the time, Your Honor. My client is even willing to go to one of those marriage counselors if that’ll make her happy.” Annette interrupted: “Judge, we’re far beyond counseling. Mr. Humphrey’s client is facing a malicious wounding charge, and possibly jail time. He’s hoping all of this will simply go away and his client walks free. That will not happen. This divorce will not be dismissed.” Judge Battle asked, “Who owns the house?” Annette replied, “A landlord. They’re renting.” “And where are the children?” “They’re away, out of town, in a safe place.” Other than a few pieces of mismatched furniture, the house was already empty. Phoebe had moved most of their belongings to a storage unit. She was hiding in a motel in Grundy, Virginia, an hour away. Through an emergency fund, the legal clinic was paying for her room and meals. Her plans were to move to Kentucky and live near a relative, but nothing was certain. Judge Battle looked directly at Randy Fanning and said, “Mr. Fanning, I’m granting the relief asked for in this motion, word for word. When you get out of jail, you are not to have any contact with your wife, your own children, or anyone in your wife’s immediate family. Until further orders, you are not to go near the home you and your wife are renting. No contact. Just stay away, understood?” Randy leaned over and whispered something to his lawyer. Hump said, “Judge, can he have an hour to get his clothes and things?” “One hour. And I’ll send a deputy with him. Let me know when he’s released.” Annette stood and said, “Your Honor, my client feels threatened and frightened. When we left court on Monday, we were confronted on the front steps of the courthouse by Mr. Fanning’s brother Tony and a couple of other tough guys. My client was told to dismiss the criminal charges, or else. It was a brief altercation, but unsettling nonetheless.” Judge Battle again glared at Randy Fanning, and asked, “This true?” Randy said, “I don’t know, Judge, I wasn’t there.” “Was your brother?” “Maybe. If she says so.” “I take a dim view of intimidation, Mr. Fanning. I suggest you have a chat with your brother and get him in line. Otherwise, I’ll call in the sheriff.” “Thank you, Your Honor,” Annette said. Randy was handcuffed and led away, Hump following along whispering that things were going to be okay. Judge Battle tapped his gavel and called for a recess. Samantha, Annette, and Phoebe left the courtroom and stepped outside, half expecting more trouble. Tony Fanning and a friend were waiting behind a pickup truck parked on Main Street. They saw the ladies and began walking toward them, both smoking and looking tough. “Oh boy,” Annette said under her breath. “He doesn’t scare me,” Phoebe said. The two men blocked the sidewalk, but just as Tony was about to speak, Donovan Gray appeared from nowhere and said loudly, “Well, ladies, how did it go?” Tony and his buddy lost every ounce of badness they’d had only seconds earlier. They backed away, avoiding eye contact, and wanting no part of Donovan. “Excuse us, fellas,” Donovan said in an effort to provoke them. As he walked by, his eyes flashed at Tony, who held the glare for only a second before looking away. After three straight dinners with Annette and her kids, Samantha begged off, saying she needed to study and retire early. She fixed a bowl of soup on a hot plate, spent another hour on the seminar materials, and put them aside. It was hard to imagine running a general practice on Main Street and trying to survive on no-fault divorces and real estate closings. Annette had said more than once that most of the lawyers in Brady were just scratching out livelihoods and trying to net $30,000 a year. Her salary was $40,000, same as Mattie’s. Annette had laughed when she said, “It’s probably the only place in the country where the legal aid lawyers make more than the average private practitioner.” She said Donovan made far more than anyone else, but then he took greater risks. He was also the biggest contributor to the clinic, where all funding was private. There was some foundation money, and a few big law firms from “up north” kicked in generously, but Mattie still struggled to raise the $200,000 annual goal. Annette said, “We’d love to pay you something, but the money’s just not here.” Samantha assured her she was content with the arrangement. Her Internet connection was through Annette’s satellite system, perhaps the slowest in North America. “It takes patience,” she had said. Luckily, patience was plentiful these days as Samantha found herself happily settling into a routine that included quiet nights and plenty of sleep. She went online to check the local newspapers, the Times out of Roanoke and the Gazette out of Charleston, West Virginia. In the Gazette she found an interesting story under the headline “Ecoterrorists Suspected in Latest Spree.” For the past two years, a gang had been attacking heavy equipment in several strip mines in southern West Virginia. A spokesman for a coal company referred to them as “ecoterrorists” and threatened all manner of reprisals if and when they were caught. Their favorite method of destruction was to wait until predawn hours and fire away from the safety of surrounding hills. They were excellent snipers, used the latest military rifles, and were proving quite efficient in disabling the hundred-ton off-road coal-mining trucks built by Caterpillar. Their rubber tires were fifteen feet in circumference, weighed a thousand pounds, and sold for $18,000 apiece. Each mining truck had six tires, and evidently these were easy targets for the snipers. There was a photo of a dozen yellow trucks, all idle and lined up neatly in an impressive show of muscle. A foreman was pointing to the flat tires—twenty-eight of them. He said a night watchman was startled at 3:40 a.m. when the assault began. In a perfectly coordinated attack, the bullets began hitting the tires, which exploded like small bombs. He wisely took cover in a ditch while calling the sheriff. By the time law enforcement arrived, the snipers had had their fun and were long gone. The sheriff said he was hard at work on the case but conceded it would be difficult to track down the “thugs.” The site, known as the Bull Forge Mine, was next to Winnow Mountain and Helley’s Bluff, both over three thousand feet in height and thick with untouched hardwoods. From deep in those forests, it was easy to hide and easy to fire at trucks, day or night. However, the sheriff said that in his opinion these were not just a bunch of guys with deer rifles having some fun. From wherever they were hiding, they were hitting targets a thousand yards away. The bullets found in some of the tires were 51-millimeter military-style slugs, obviously fired from sophisticated sniper rifles. The story recapped recent attacks. The ecoterrorists picked their targets carefully, and since there was no shortage of strip mines on the map, they seemed to wait patiently until the mining trucks were parked in just the right places. It was noted that the snipers seemed to be concerned with avoiding injury to others. They had yet to fire upon a vehicle that wasn’t parked, and many of the mines worked twenty-four hours a day. Six weeks earlier, at the Red Valley site in Martin County, twenty-two tires had been ruined in a barrage that seemed to last only seconds, according to another night watchman. As of now, four coal companies were offering rewards totaling $200,000. There was no link to the Bullington Mine attack two years earlier, where, in the most brazen act of sabotage in decades, explosives from the company’s own warehouse were used to damage six dump trucks, two draglines, two track loaders, a temporary office building, and the warehouse itself. Damages exceeded $5 million. No suspects had been arrested; none existed. Samantha dug through the newspaper’s archives, and found herself cheering for the ecoterrorists. Later, as she began to doze off, she reluctantly pulled up the New York Times. Except for a rare Sunday morning, back in her New York days, she seldom did more than scan it. Now, avoiding the Business section, she zipped through it but stopped cold in the Dining section. The food critic was trashing a new restaurant in Tribeca, a hot spot she had been to a month earlier. There was a photo of the bar scene, with young professionals stacked two deep, sipping and smiling and waiting for their tables. She remembered the food as excellent and soon lost interest in the reviewer’s complaints. Instead, she stared at the photo. She could hear the din of the crowd; she could feel the frenetic energy. How good would a martini taste right now? And a two-hour dinner with friends, all the while keeping an eye out for cute guys? For the first time she felt a bit homesick, but soon brushed it off. She could leave tomorrow if she wanted to. She could certainly earn more money back in the city than she was making in Brady. If she wanted to leave, there was nothing to hold her back. 12 T he hike began at the end of a long-abandoned logging trail no one but Donovan could have possibly found. The drive getting there required the skill and nerve of a stunt driver, and at times Samantha was certain they were sliding into the valley. But he made it to a small opening heavily shaded with oak, gum, and chestnut, and said, “This is the end of the road.” “You call that a road?” she said as she slowly opened her door. He laughed and said, “It’s a four-lane compared to some of these trails.” She was thinking that life in the big city had done nothing to prepare her for this, but she was also thrilled at the thought of adventure. His only advice had been to “wear boots to hike in and neutral clothing.” She understood the boots, but the clothing required an explanation. “We have to blend in,” he said. “They’ll be watching for us and we’ll be trespassing.” “Any chance of getting arrested again?” she had asked. “Slim. They can’t catch us.” The boots had been purchased the day before at the dollar store in Brady—$45 and a bit stiff and tight. She wore old khakis and a gray sweatshirt with “Columbia Law” across the front in small letters. He, on the other hand, wore green hunter’s camouflage and state-of-the-art, mail-order hiking boots with a thousand miles on them. He opened the rear hatch of the Jeep and removed a backpack which he slung over his shoulders. When it was in place, he removed a rifle with a large scope. When she saw it she said, “Hunting, are we?” “No, it’s for protection. A lot of bears in these parts.” She doubted that, but was not sure what to believe. For a few minutes, they walked a trail that someone had used before, but not often. The incline was slight, the undergrowth thick with sassafras, redbud, foamflower, and red catchfly, plant life he casually pointed out as if fluent in another language. For her benefit, he moved at an easy pace, but she knew he could sprint up the mountain anytime he wanted. Soon she was panting and sweating, but she was determined to stay on his heels. It was mandatory for all single professionals in the city to own a gym membership, and not just any gym. It had to be the right one—the right place and the right outfit, the right time of the day or night to be seen sweating and grunting and getting properly toned for $250 a month. Samantha’s membership had collapsed under the ruthless demands of Scully and Pershing, had expired two years earlier, and had not been missed in the least. Her workouts had been reduced to long walks in the city. Those, along with light eating habits, had kept the weight off, but she was far from fit. The new boots grew heavier with each turn as they zigzagged upward. They stopped at a small clearing and looked through the woods into a long, deep valley with mountain ridges in the distance. The view was spectacular, and she appreciated the break. He waved an arm and said, “These are the most biodiverse mountains in North America, much older than any other range. Home to thousands of species of plants and wildlife not found anywhere else. It took an eternity for them to become what they are.” A pause as he soaked in the scenery. Like a tour guide who needed no prompting, he went on. “About a million years ago, coal began to form, seams of it. That was the curse. Now we’re destroying the mountains as fast as possible to extract it so we can have all the cheap energy we can eat. Every person in this country uses twenty pounds of coal per day. I did some research into coal usage per region; there’s a Web site. Did you know that the average person in Manhattan uses eight pounds of coal each day that comes from strip-mining here in Appalachia?” “Sorry, I didn’t know that. Where do the other twelve pounds come from?” “Deep mines here in the East. Ohio, Pennsylvania, places where they mine coal the old-fashioned way and protect the mountains.” He sat his backpack on the ground and pulled out binoculars. Through them he scanned the view and found what he wanted. He handed them to her and said, “Over there, at about two o’clock, you can barely see an area that’s gray and brown.” She looked through the binoculars, focused them, and said, “Okay, got it.” “That’s the Bull Forge Mine in West Virginia, one of the largest stripping operations we’ve seen.” “I read about it last night. They had a little trouble a few months back. Some truck tires were used as target practice.” He turned and smiled at her. “Doing your homework, huh?” “I have a laptop and it can find Google in Brady. The ecoterrorists struck again, right?” “That’s what they say.” “Who are these guys?” “Hopefully, we’ll never know.” He was standing slightly ahead of her, still gazing in the distance, and as he spoke his left hand instinctively reached back an inch or two and touched the stock of his rifle. She barely caught it. They left the clearing and began the real climb. The trail, when there was one, was barely discernible, and Donovan seemed not to notice it. He went from tree to tree, looking ahead for the next landmark, glancing down to check his footing. The hike became steeper and Samantha’s thighs and calves began to ache. The cheap boots pinched the arches of her feet. Her breathing was labored, and after fifteen minutes of silent climbing she said, “Did you bring any water?” A rotting log made a pleasant resting place as they shared a bottle. He didn’t ask how she was doing and she didn’t inquire as to how much longer they would hike. When they caught their breath, he said, “We’re sitting on Dublin Mountain, about three hundred feet from the top. It’s next door to Enid Mountain, which you’ll see in a few minutes. If all goes as planned, in about six months Strayhorn Coal will bring in the dozers, thoroughly scalp this mountain, destroy all of these beautiful hardwoods, scatter all the animals, and start blasting away. Their application for a strip-mining permit is nearing approval. We’ve fought it for two years, but the fix is in.” He waved an arm at the trees and said, “This will all be gone before we know it.” “Why not at least harvest the trees?” “Because they’re brutes. Once a coal company gets the green light, it goes crazy. They’re after the coal, dammit, and nothing else matters. They destroy everything in their path—forests, timber, wildlife—and they run over anyone who gets in their way: landowners, local residents, regulators, politicians, and especially activists and environmentalists. It’s a war, with no middle ground.” Samantha looked at the dense forest and shook her head in disbelief. She said, “It can’t be legal.” “It’s legal because it’s not illegal. The legality of mountaintop removal has been litigated for years; it’s still in the courts. But nothing has stopped it.” “Who owns this land?” “Strayhorn does now, so we’re trespassing, and, believe me, they would love to catch me up here, three days before the trial. Don’t worry, though, we’re safe. For about a hundred years this land was owned by the Herman family. They sold out two years ago and built a mansion on a beach somewhere.” He pointed to his right and said, “There is an old family home just over that hill, about half a mile down the valley, been in the family for decades. It’s abandoned now, empty. It’ll take the bulldozers about two hours to level the house and outbuildings. There’s a small family cemetery under an old oak not far from the house, a little white picket fence around the graves. Very quaint. It’ll all be shoved down the valley—headstones, coffins, bones, whatever. Strayhorn doesn’t give a damn and the Hermans are rich enough to forget where they came from.” She took another sip of water and tried to wiggle her toes. He reached into his backpack, removed two granola bars, and handed her one. “Thanks.” “Does Mattie know you’re here?” he asked. “I’m living under the assumption that Mattie, and Annette and Barb and probably even Claudelle, know just about every move I make. As you like to say, ‘It’s a small town.’ ” “I’ve said nothing.” “It’s Friday afternoon and things were slow around the office. I told Mattie you asked me if I wanted to go sightseeing. That’s all.” “Good, then we went sightseeing. She doesn’t need to know where.” “She thinks you should settle the lawsuit, to at least get something for the mother of the two boys.” He smiled and took a large bite. Seconds passed, then a full minute, and Samantha realized that long gaps in conversation did not make him uncomfortable. Finally, he said, “I love my aunt, but she knows nothing about litigation. I left her little legal clinic because I wanted to do big things, take on big lawsuits, get big verdicts, make big coal companies pay for their sins. I’ve had big wins and big losses, and like a lot of trial lawyers I live on the edge. Up and down. Flush one year and broke the next. I’m sure you got a taste of that as a kid.” “No, we were never broke, far from it. I was aware that my father sometimes lost, but there was always plenty of money. At least, until he lost it and went to prison.” “What was that like, from your standpoint? You were a teenager, right?” “Look, Donovan, you’re separated from your wife and you don’t want to talk about it. Fine. My father went to prison and I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s make a deal.” “Fair enough. We should move on.” They trekked upward, slower and slower as the trail disappeared and the terrain became even steeper. Pebbles and stones trickled behind them as they grabbed saplings to pull themselves up. At one point, as they stopped to catch a breath, Donovan suggested that Samantha take the lead so that he could catch her if she stumbled and slid backward. She did so, and he stayed close, with one hand on her hip, sort of guiding, soft of shoving. Finally they reached the summit of Dublin Mountain, and as they emerged from the forest into a small, rocky clearing, he said, “We have to be careful here. This is our hiding place. Just over those rocks is Enid Mountain where Strayhorn is hard at work. They have some security guys who occasionally pay attention to this area. We’ve been in litigation for over a year, and we’ve had a couple of nasty altercations.” “Such as?” He removed his backpack and leaned his rifle against a rock. “You’ve seen the photographs in my office. The first time we came here with a photographer they caught us and tried to press charges. I ran to the judge and got an order which allowed us access on a very limited basis. After that, the judge told us to stay off their property.” “I haven’t seen any bears. Why the rifle?” “Protection. Get down and come here.” They crouched and walked a few steps to a gap between two boulders. Below them lay the remains of Enid Mountain, which in years past rose to thirty-two hundred feet, but was now reduced to a pockmarked landscape of dust and rock and crawling machinery. The operation was vast, stretching from the remains of the mountain and jutting over the ridges around it. Mining trucks hauling a hundred tons of fresh, unwashed coal bounced along a myriad of switchbacks, descending steadily like ants marching mindlessly in formation. A massive dragline the size of her apartment building swung back and forth, its bucket clawing into the earth and digging out two hundred cubic yards of overburden and dumping it into neat piles. Loaders with smaller buckets worked methodically to scoop it up and dump it into another fleet of trucks that hauled it to an area where bulldozers shoved it down the valley. Lower on the mountain, or the mine site, track shovels dug coal from the exposed seam and dumped it into the mining trucks that slowly inched away when loaded, straining under their cargo as they bounced along. Clouds of dust hung over every phase of the operation. Donovan, in a low, somber voice as if he might be overheard, said, “Quite a shock, huh?” “ ‘Shock’ is the right word,” she said. “Mattie showed me three strip mines on the way to Colton on Wednesday, but we were not this close. Kinda makes you sick.” “Yes, and you never get used to it. It’s an ongoing rape of the land, a new assault every day.” The violence was slow, methodical, and efficient. After a few minutes, he said, “In two years, they’ve knocked off eight hundred feet of the mountain. They’ve gone through four or five seams, with about that many left to strip. When it’s over, Enid Mountain will yield about three million tons of coal, at an average price of sixty bucks a ton. The math gets easy.” They huddled close together, careful not to actually touch, and watched the desolation. A bulldozer shoved a load perilously close to the edge, and the larger rocks tumbled down a wall of fill a thousand feet in height. The rocks bounced and fell until they were out of sight far below. He said, “And that’s how it happened. Try and imagine the mountain about five hundred feet higher, where it was nineteen months ago. That’s when one of those dozers pushed the boulder that traveled almost a mile before it hit the trailer where the Tate boys were asleep.” He found his binoculars and began searching, then handed them to her. “Stay low, now,” he said. “Far down in the valley there, beyond the fill, you can barely see a little white building. Used to be a church. Got it?” After a few seconds she said, “Got it.” “Just beyond the church there was a tiny settlement of a few houses and trailers. You can’t see it from here. As I said, it’s about a mile away and the trees are blocking the view. At trial, we plan to show a video that reenacts the path of the boulder. It actually flew over the church, probably at about eighty miles an hour, based on its weight, and bounced once or twice, then banged into the Tate trailer.” “You have the boulder?” “Yes and no. It weighs six tons, so we will not be hauling it into the courtroom. But it’s still there and we have plenty of photographs. Four days after the accident, the coal company tried to remove it with explosives and machinery, but we were able to stop them. Thugs, nothing but thugs. They actually showed up with a full crew the day after the funeral, entered onto property they had no claim to, and were all set to dismantle the boulder, regardless of how much damage they did to everything else. I called the sheriff and there were some tense moments.” “You had the case four days after the accident?” “No, I had the case the day after the accident. Less than twenty-four hours. I got to the mother’s brother. You have to be quick out here.” “My father would be impressed.” Donovan glanced at his watch and looked at Enid Mountain. He said, “They’re scheduled to blast at 4:00 p.m., so you’re in for some excitement.” “Can’t wait.” “You see that odd-looking truck with a tall boom attached to the rear, over there to the far left?” “Are you kidding? There are a hundred trucks.” “It’s not a haul truck; it’s much smaller. All by itself.” “Okay, yes, I got it. What is it?” “Don’t know if it has an official name, but it’s known as the blasting truck.” With the binoculars, Samantha zeroed in on the truck and the busy crew around it. “What are they doing?” “Right now, they’re starting to drill. The regulations allow them to go down sixty feet with a blast hole that’s seven inches in diameter. The holes are ten feet apart, sort of in a grid. The regulations limit them to forty holes per blast. Regs here and regs there, lots of rules on the books. Not surprisingly, they are routinely ignored and companies like Strayhorn are accustomed to doing whatever they want. No one is really watching, except for maybe an environmental group here and there. They’ll take a video, file a complaint, the company gets a nuisance fine, a slap on the wrist, life goes on. The regulators are drawing their checks and sleeping peacefully.” A large bearded man crept silently behind them and slapped Donovan on the shoulders with a loud “Boom!” Donovan yelled, “Shit!” as Samantha yelped and dropped the binoculars. Stricken, they wheeled about and gasped at the grinning face of a burly man you wouldn’t want to fistfight. “Sonofabitch,” Donovan hissed without reaching for his rifle. Samantha desperately looked for an escape trail. The man stayed low and laughed at the two. He stuck out a hand in Samantha’s direction and said, “Vic Canzarro, friend of the mountains.” She was trying to catch her breath and unable to extend a hand. “Did you have to scare the hell out of us?” Donovan growled. “No, but it sure is fun.” “You know him?” Samantha asked. “Afraid so. He’s a friend, or more of an acquaintance, actually. Vic, this is Samantha Kofer, an intern with Mattie’s legal clinic.” They finally shook hands. “A pleasure,” Vic said. “What brings you to the coalfields?” “It’s a long story,” she said, exhaling, heart and lungs now working. “A very long story.” Vic dropped a backpack and sat on a rock. He was sweating from the trek up and needed water. He offered a bottle to Samantha but she declined. “Columbia Law?” he asked, looking at her sweatshirt. “Yes. I worked in New York until ten days ago when the world crashed and I got laid off or furloughed or something like that. Are you a lawyer?” She sat on another rock where Donovan joined her. “Hell no. I used to be a mine safety inspector but managed to get myself fired. It’s another long story.” “We all have long stories,” Donovan said, taking a bottle of water. “Vic here is my expert witness. Typical expert—pay him enough and he’ll tell the jury anything you want. Next week he’ll spend a long day on the stand having a delightful time clicking off a never-ending list of Strayhorn Coal’s safety violations. Then the defense lawyers will eat his lunch.” Vic laughed at this. “I’m looking forward to it,” he said. “Going to trial with Donovan is always exciting, especially when he wins, which is not very often.” “I win as many as I lose.” Vic wore a flannel shirt, faded jeans, boots caked with old mud, and had the look of a veteran hiker who could whip out a tent from his backpack and spend the next week in the woods. “Are they drilling?” he asked Donovan. “Just started, supposed to blast at four.” Vic checked his watch and asked, “Are we ready for trial?” “Oh, yes. They doubled their offer this afternoon to two hundred thousand. I countered at nine-fifty.” “You’re crazy, you know that? Take the money and get something for the family.” He looked at Samantha and asked, “Do you know the facts?” “Most of them,” she said. “I’ve seen the photographs and maps.” “Never trust a jury around here. I keep telling Donovan this but he won’t listen.” “Are you filming?” Donovan asked, changing the subject. “Of course.” They chatted for a few minutes as both men kept glancing at their watches. Vic removed a small camera from his backpack and took a position between two boulders. Donovan said to Samantha, “Since the inspectors are not watching, it’s safe to assume Strayhorn will break a few rules when they start blasting. We’ll catch it on video, and maybe show it to the jury next week. It’s not that we really need it, because we have so much dirt on the company. They’ll put their engineers on the stand and they’ll lie about how closely they follow all regulations. We’ll prove otherwise.” He and Samantha eased into positions next to Vic, who was filming and lost in his work. Donovan said, “They fill each hole with a concoction known as ANFO—an acronym for a combination of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. It’s too dangerous to transport so they mix it on the site. That’s what they’re doing now. That truck is funneling diesel fuel into the blast holes while that crew to the left there is rigging up the blasting caps and detonators. How many holes, Vic?” “I count sixty.” “So they’re clearly in violation, which is typical.” Samantha watched through binoculars as men with shovels began backfilling the blast holes. A wire ran from the top of each one and two men were busy gathering them into a bundle. Sacks of ammonium nitrate were dropped into the blast holes, which were topped off with gallons of diesel fuel. The work was slow; 4:00 p.m. came and went. Finally, when the blasting truck backed away, Donovan said, “It won’t be long now.” The grid was cleared as the crews and trucks disappeared. A siren sounded and that area of the site became still. The explosions were a distant rumble as plumes of dust and smoke shot into the air, each blast only a split second after the one before it. The plumes rose in perfect formation, like fountains in a Vegas water show, and the earth began to crumble. A wide swath of ancient rock fell in violent waves as the ground shook. Dust boiled from the blast site and formed a thick cloud above it. With no wind, the cloud hung over the rubble with nowhere to go. Much like a play-by-play announcer, Donovan said, “They’re blasting three times a day. Their permit allows only twice. Multiply all of this by dozens of active surface mines, and they’re using about a million pounds of explosives every day here in coal country.” “We got a problem,” Vic said calmly. “We’ve been spotted.” “Where?” Donovan asked, taking the binoculars from Samantha. “Up there, by the trailer.” Donovan focused on the trailer. On a platform next to it, two men with hard hats were apparently watching them through their own binoculars. Donovan waved; one of the men waved back. Donovan shot him the bird; the man returned the greeting. “How long have they been there?” he asked. “Don’t know,” Vic said. “But let’s get outta here.” They grabbed their backpacks and the rifle, and began a hurried descent down the mountain. Samantha slipped and almost fell. Vic caught her and kept her hand tight in his. They followed Donovan, ducking around trees, dodging boulders, clawing through underbrush, with no trail visible. After a few minutes, they stopped in a narrow open area. Vic pointed and said, “I came in this way. Call me when you get to your Jeep.” He disappeared into the woods, and they continued downward. The trail was not as steep and they managed to carefully jog for a few hundred yards. “Are we okay?” Samantha finally asked. “We’re fine,” he said calmly. “They don’t know the trails like I do. And if they catch us they can’t kill us.” She found little comfort in that. They picked up speed as the trail continued to flatten. The Jeep came into view a hundred yards away and Donovan paused for a second to search for other vehicles. “They haven’t found us,” he said. As they drove away, he sent a text to Vic. All was clear. They bounced down the mountain, dodging holes and ravines wide enough to swallow the Jeep, and after a few minutes he said, “We’re no longer on Strayhorn’s property.” He turned onto a paved road just as a large, dust-covered pickup truck raced around a curve. “That’s them,” he said. The truck moved to the middle of the road to block the Jeep, but Donovan hit the gas and passed it on the shoulder. At least three rough-looking characters in hard hats were in the truck, scowling and looking for trouble. They stopped abruptly and began turning around to give chase, but the Jeep left them behind. Racing through the back roads of Hopper County, Donovan kept one eye on his mirror and said nothing. “Do you think they got your license plate number?” she asked. “Oh, they know it’s me. They’ll run to the judge Monday morning and cry like babies. I’ll deny it all and tell them to stop whining. Let’s pick a jury.” They passed the courthouse on Center Street in Colton. Donovan nodded in its direction and said, “There it is. Ground zero. The ugliest courthouse in Virginia.” “I was there Wednesday, with Mattie.” “Did you like the courtroom?” “It’s kind of weird, but I’m not much of an expert on courtrooms. I’ve always tried to avoid them.” “I love them. It’s the only place where the little guy can go toe-to-toe on a level field with a big, crooked corporation. A person with nothing—no money, no power—nothing but a set of facts can file a lawsuit and force a billion-dollar company to show up for a fair fight.” “It’s not always fair, is it?” “Sure it is. If they cheat, then I cheat. They play dirty, I get even dirtier. You gotta love justice.” “You sound like my father. It’s frightening.” “And you sound like my wife. She has no stomach for the work I do.” “Let’s talk about something else.” “Okay, do you have plans for tomorrow?” “Saturday in Brady. The clinic is closed, so what are my options?” “How about another adventure?” “Does it involve guns?” “No, I promise I will not carry a gun.” “Will we trespass on someone’s property? Is there a chance of getting arrested?” “No, I promise.” “Sounds pretty dull. I’m in.” 13 B lythe called bright and early on Saturday morning with the incredible news that she had the day off, a rarity in her world. Her employment situation had stabilized; her firm had apparently stopped its bloodletting. No one had been shown the door in the past five days and promises were finally trickling down from above. A gorgeous fall day in the city with nothing to do but shop and worry about lunch and enjoy being young and single. She missed her roommate, and at that moment Samantha was painfully homesick. She had been away now for only two weeks, but given the distance it seemed like a year. They talked for half an hour before both needed to get on with their day. Samantha showered and dressed quickly, eager to ease out of the driveway before Kim and Adam came bouncing out of the house with a list of things to do. So far, it seemed as though Annette and her children allowed their guest to come and go without notice. She lived as quietly as possible, and had yet to see them peeking through screens and around curtains. But, she was also quite aware that most of Brady was curious about the alien from New York. For that reason, and because his marital situation was unstable, Donovan had suggested that she meet him at the county airport, eleven miles east of town. They would rendezvous there and begin the next adventure, the details of which he kept to himself. She was surprised to learn there was an airport within a hundred miles of Brady. Late Friday night, she searched it online and found nothing. How can an airport not have a Web site? Not only was it missing a Web site, it also lacked aircraft, or at least none that she could see as the gravel road came to an end at the Noland County Airfield. Donovan’s Jeep was parked next to a small, metal building, and was the only vehicle in sight. She walked through the only door she saw and crossed through what appeared to be the lobby, with folding chairs and metal tables strewn with flying magazines. The walls were covered with fading photos of planes and aerial shots. The other door opened onto the ramp, and there was Donovan puttering around a very small airplane. She walked outside and said, “What’s that?” “Good morning,” he said with a big smile. “Did you sleep well?” “Eight hours. Are you a pilot?” “I am, and this is a Cessna 172, better known as a Skyhawk. I practice law in five states and this little dude helps me get around. Plus, it’s a valuable tool when it comes to spying on coal companies.” “Of course. And we’re going spying?” “Something like that.” He gently folded down and locked a cowling that covered the engine. “Preflight is finished and she’s ready to go. Your door is on the other side.” She didn’t move. “I’m not so sure about this. I’ve never flown in anything that small.” “It’s the safest airplane ever built. I have three thousand hours and I’m highly skilled, especially on a perfect day like this. Not a cloud in the sky, ideal temperature, and the trees are alive with the colors of autumn. Today is a pilot’s dream.” “I don’t know.” “Come on, where’s your sense of adventure?” “But it only has one engine.” “That’s all it needs. And if the engine quits it’ll glide forever and we’ll find a nice pasture somewhere.” “In these mountains?” “Let’s go Samantha.” She slowly walked around the tail and to the right-side door under the wing. He helped her into the seat and gently secured the seat belt and shoulder harness. He closed the door, locked it, and went around to the left side. She looked behind her at the cramped rear seat, and she looked in front of her at the wall of instruments and gauges. “Are you claustrophobic?” he asked as he snapped his seat belt and harness into place. Their shoulders were about an inch apart. “I am now.” “You’re gonna love it. You’ll be flying it before the day is over.” He handed her a headset and said, “Stick this on. It’s pretty loud in here and we’ll talk through these.” They arranged their headsets. “Say something,” he said. “Something.” Thumbs-up, the headsets were working. He grabbed a checklist and ran through the items, carefully touching each instrument and gauge as he went. He pulled the yoke back and forth. An identical one on her side moved in tandem. “Please don’t touch that,” he said. She shook her head quickly; she wasn’t touching anything. He said, “Clear,” and turned the key. The engine jumped to life as the propeller began spinning. The airplane shook as he pushed the throttle. He announced his intentions over the radio, and they began taxiing down the runway, which seemed short and narrow, to her anyway. “Is anyone listening?” she asked. “I doubt it. It’s very quiet this morning.” “Do you have the only airplane in Noland County?” He pointed to some small hangars ahead, along the runway. “There are a few more down there. Not many.” At the end of the runway, he revved the engine again and rechecked the controls and instruments. “Hang on.” He pushed the throttle forward, gently released the brakes, and they were rolling. As they picked up speed he calmly counted, “Eighty miles an hour, ninety, a hundred,” then he pulled the yoke back and they left the asphalt. For a moment, she felt weightless and her stomach flipped. “You okay?” he asked without looking at her. “Fine,” she said with clenched jaws. As they were climbing, he began banking to the left and completed a 180-degree turn. They were low, not far above the trees, and he picked up the main highway. “See that green truck parked down there in front of that store?” he asked. She nodded. “That’s the asshole who followed me this morning. Hang on.” He jiggled the yoke and the wings dipped and rose, a salute to the asshole in the green truck. When it was out of sight, he began climbing again. “Why would they follow you on a Saturday morning?” she asked, her white knuckles digging into her knees. “You’ll have to ask them. Maybe because of what happened yesterday. Maybe because we show up in court Monday for a big trial. Who knows. They follow me all the time.” Suddenly she felt a bit safer in the air. By the time they reached Brady she was relaxed and taking in the scenery not far below. He buzzed the town at five hundred feet and gave her a bird’s view of where she lived and worked. Except for a ride in a hot air balloon in the Catskills, she had never seen the earth from such a low altitude, and it was fascinating, even thrilling. He climbed to a thousand feet and leveled off as they skipped across the hills. The radio was as silent as the one in Romey’s old fake patrol car, and she asked, “What about radar and air traffic controllers and stuff like that? Is anybody out there?” “Probably not. We’re flying VFR—visual flight rules—so we’re not required to check in with air control. On a business trip, I would file a flight plan and get plugged into the air traffic system, but not today. We’re just joyriding.” He pointed to a screen and explained, “That’s my radar. If we get close to another plane, it’ll show up there. Relax, I’ve never had a crash.” “A close call?” “None. I take it very seriously, like most pilots.” “That’s nice. Where are we going?” “I don’t know. Where do you want to go?” “You’re the pilot, and you don’t know where we’re going?” He smiled, banked to the left, and pointed to an instrument. “This is the altimeter; it monitors the altitude, which is pretty important when you’re in the mountains.” They were inching up to fifteen hundred feet, where they leveled off. He pointed outside and said, “That’s Cat Mountain, or what’s left of it. A big operation.” Ahead and to her right was the strip mine, which looked like all the rest: a barren landscape of rock and dirt in the midst of beautiful mountains, with overfill shoved far below into the valleys. She thought of Francine Crump, the client in search of a free will, and the land she wanted to preserve. It was somewhere down there, somewhere close to Cat Mountain. There were small homes along the creeks, a settlement here and there. The Skyhawk banked steeply to the right, and as it did a perfect 360, Samantha looked straight down at the mining trucks and loaders and other machinery. A blasting truck, front-end loaders, a dragline, mining trucks and haul trucks, track shovels, track loaders. Her knowledge was expanding. She spotted a supervisor who was standing beside an office, straining to watch the airplane. “They work on Saturday, huh?” she asked. He nodded and said, “Seven days a week, sometimes. All the unions are gone.” They climbed to three thousand feet and leveled off. “We’re over Kentucky now, heading west and north,” he said. If not for the headsets, he would have been yelling into the roar of the engine. “Just look. Too many to count.” The strip mines dotted the mountains like ugly scars, dozens of them as far as she could see. They flew directly over several. Between them she noticed vast open areas covered with patches of grass and a few small trees. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing just ahead. “That flat spot with no woods?” “A casualty, a reclaimed site that was once a strip mine. That one in particular used to be Persimmon Mountain, elevation twenty-five hundred feet. They took off the top, got the coal, then set about to reclaim it. The law requires it to have the ‘approximate original contour’—that’s the key language—but how do you replace a mountain once it’s gone?” “I’ve read about that. The land must be equal to or better than it was before the mining.” “What a joke. The coal companies will tell you that reclaimed land is great for development—shopping centers, condos, and the like. They built a prison on one in Virginia. And they built a golf course on another. Problem is, nobody plays golf around here. Reclamation is a joke.” They flew over another strip mine, then another. After a while they all looked the same. “How many are active, as of today?” she asked. “Dozens. We’ve lost about six hundred mountains in the last thirty years to strip-mining, and at the rate we’re going there won’t be many left. Demand for coal is rising, the price is up, so the companies are aggressively seeking permits to start stripping.” He banked to the right and said, “Now we’re going north, into West Virginia.” “And you’re licensed to practice there?” she asked. “Yes, and in Virginia and Kentucky.” “You mentioned five states before we took off.” “Sometimes I go into Tennessee and North Carolina, but not that often. We’re litigating a coal ash dump in North Carolina, a lot of lawyers involved. Big case.” He loved his big cases. The lost mountains in West Virginia looked the same as those in Kentucky. The Cessna zigzagged right and left, banking steeply so she could take another look at the devastation, then leveling off to check out another one. “That’s the Bull Forge Mine, straight ahead,” he said. “You saw it yesterday from the ground.” “Oh yes. The ecoterrorists. Those guys are really pissing off the coal companies.” “That seems to be their intention.” “Too bad you didn’t bring a rifle. We could blow out a few tires from the air.” “I’ve thought about it.” After an hour in the air, Donovan began a slow descent. By then, she was familiar with the altimeter, the airspeed indicator, and the compass. At two thousand feet, she asked, “Do we have a destination?” “Yes, but first I want to show you something else. Coming up on your side is an area known as Hammer Valley.” He waited a minute for them to clear a ridge; a long, steep valley appeared. “We’re gonna start down here at the end of it, near the town of Rockville, population three hundred.” Two church steeples rose through the trees, then the town came into view, a picturesque little village hugging a creek and surrounded by mountains. They flew over the town and followed the creek. Dozens of homes, mainly trailers, were scattered along narrow county roads. “This is what’s known as a cancer cluster. Hammer Valley has the highest rate of cancer in North America, almost twenty times the national average. Bad cancers—liver, kidney, stomach, uterine, and lots of leukemia.” He gently pulled back on the yoke and the plane ascended as a large hump rose before them. They cleared it by two hundred feet and were suddenly over a reclaimed mine site. “And this is why,” he said. “The Peck Mountain strip mine.” The mountain was gone, replaced by small hills smoothed by bulldozers and covered in brown grass. Behind an earthen dam, a large body of black liquid sat ominously. “That’s the slurry pond. A company called Starke Energy came in here about thirty years ago and stripped out all the coal, one of the first big removal sites in Appalachia. They washed it right here and dumped the waste into a small lake that was once pristine. Then they built that dam and made the lake a lot bigger.” They were circling the slurry pond at one thousand feet. “Starke eventually sold out to Krull Mining, another faceless ape of a company that’s really owned by a Russian oligarch, a thug with his finger in a bunch of mines around the world.” “A Russian?” “Oh yeah. We got Russians, Ukrainians, Chinese, Indians, Canadians, as well as the usual lineup of Wall Street cowboys and local turncoats. There are a lot of absentee owners here in the coalfields, and you can imagine how much they care about the land and the people.” He banked again and Samantha was staring straight down at the slurry, which, from a thousand feet, appeared to have the texture of crude oil. “That’s pretty ugly,” she said. “Another lawsuit?” “The biggest ever.” They landed on a runway even smaller than Noland County’s, with no hint that a town was anywhere close. As they taxied to the ramp, she saw Vic Canzarro leaning on a fence, waiting. They stopped near the terminal; there was not another aircraft in sight. Donovan killed the engine, ran through his postflight checklist, and they crawled out of the Skyhawk. As expected, Vic drove an all-wheel-drive muscle truck, suitable for off-road encounters with security guards. Samantha sat in the rear seat with a cooler, some backpacks, and, of course, a couple of rifles. Vic was a smoker, not of the chain variety, but an enthusiastic one nonetheless. He cracked the window on his driver’s side about an inch, just enough for half of his exhaust to escape while the other half whirled around the club cab. After the second cigarette, Samantha was gagging and lowered the rear window behind Donovan. He asked her what she was doing. She told him in plain language, and this touched off a tense conversation between Donovan and Vic about his habits. He swore he was trying to quit, had in fact quit on numerous occasions, and freely admitted that he fretted over the likelihood of an awful death from lung cancer. Donovan hammered away, leaving Samantha with the clear impression that these two had been bickering over the same issue for some time. Nothing got resolved and Vic fired up another. The hills and trails led them deep into Hammer Valley, and finally to the crumbling home of one Jesse McKeever. “Who is Mr. McKeever, and why are we visiting him?” she asked from the rear seat as they turned in to the driveway. “A potential client,” Donovan said. “He’s lost his wife, one son, one daughter, one brother, and two cousins to cancer. Kidney, liver, lung, brain, pretty much entire body.” The truck stopped, and they waited a second for the dog. An angry pit bull flew off the porch and raced at them, ready to eat the tires. Vic honked and Jesse finally emerged. He called the dog, struck him with his cane, cursed him, and ordered him into the backyard. The stricken dog obeyed and disappeared. They sat on crates and battered lawn chairs under a tree in the front yard. Samantha was not introduced to Jesse, who completely ignored her. He was a rugged old cuss who looked much older than sixty, with few teeth and thick wrinkles made permanent by a hard life and a harsh scowl that never left his face. Vic had tested the water from the McKeever well, and the results, while predictable, were grim. The water was polluted with VOCs—volatile organic compounds—poisons such as vinyl chloride, trichloroethylene, mercury, lead, and a dozen others. With great patience, Vic explained what the big words meant. Jesse got the gist of the message. Not only was it unsafe to drink; it should not be used for anything, period. Not for cooking, bathing, brushing teeth, washing clothes or dishes. Nothing. Jesse explained that they had started hauling in their drinking water some fifteen years earlier, but had continued to use well water for bathing and household cleaning. His boy died first, cancer in his digestive tract. Donovan turned on a tape recorder and placed it on a rubber milk crate. Casually, and with complete empathy, he elicited an hour’s worth of background on Jesse’s family and the cancers that had ravaged it. Vic listened and smoked and occasionally asked a question himself. The stories were gut-wrenching, but Jesse went through them with little emotion. He had seen so much misery and he had been hardened by it. “I want you to join our lawsuit, Mr. McKeever,” Donovan said after he turned off the recorder. “We’re planning to sue Krull Mining in federal court. We think we can prove that they dumped a lot of waste in their pond up there, and that they’ve known for years that it was leaking into the groundwater down here.” Jesse rested his chin on his cane and seemed to doze. “No lawsuit’ll bring ’em back. They’re gone forever.” “True, but they didn’t have to die. That slurry pond killed them, and the men who own it should have to pay.” “How much?” “I can’t promise you a dime, but we’ll sue Krull for millions. You’ll have plenty of company, Mr. McKeever. As of now I have about thirty other families here in Hammer Valley signed up and ready to go. All lost someone to cancer, all within the past ten years.” Jesse spat to his side, wiped his mouth on a sleeve, and said, “I heard about you. Plenty of talk up and down the valley. Some folks want to sue; others are still scared of the coal company, even though it’s finished up there. I don’t know what to do, really. I’ll just tell you that. Don’t know which way to go.” “Okay, think about it. But promise me one thing; when you get ready to fight, call me, not some other lawyer. I’ve been working on this case for three years, and we haven’t even filed suit yet. I need you on my side, Mr. McKeever.” He agreed to think it over, and Donovan promised to come back in a couple weeks. They left Jesse in the shade, the dog once again by his side, and drove away. Nothing was said until Samantha asked, “Okay, how do you prove the company knew its sludge pond was contaminating Mr. McKeever’s water?” The two in the front seat exchanged a look, and for a few seconds there was no response. Vic reached for a cigarette and Donovan finally said, “The company has internal documents that clearly prove it knew of the contamination and did nothing; in fact it has covered up everything for the past ten years.” She opened her window again, took a long breath, and asked, “How did you get the documents if you haven’t filed suit yet?” “I didn’t say we have the documents,” Donovan said a bit defensively. Vic added, “There have been a few investigations, by the EPA and other regulatory agencies. There’s a lot of paperwork.” “Did the EPA find these bad documents?” she asked. Both men seemed tentative. “Not all of them,” Vic replied. There was a gap in the conversation as she backed off. They turned onto a gravel road and bounced along for a mile or so. “When will you file the lawsuit?” she asked. “Soon,” Donovan said. “Well, if I’m going to work in your office, I need to know these things, right?” Donovan did not respond. They turned in to the front yard of an old trailer and parked behind a dirty car with no hubcaps and a bumper hanging by a wire. “And who is this?” she asked. “Dolly Swaney,” Donovan said. “Her husband died of liver cancer two years ago, at the age of forty-one.” “Is she a client?” “Not yet,” Donovan said as he opened the door. Dolly Swaney appeared on the front porch, a crumbling addition with broken steps. She was huge and wore a large, stained gown that fell almost to her bare feet. “I think I’ll wait in the truck,” Samantha said. They had an early lunch at the only diner in downtown Rockville, a hot, stuffy caf? with the smell of grease heavy in the air. The waitress placed three glasses of ice water on the table; all three glasses went untouched. Instead, they ordered diet sodas to go with their sandwiches. With no one sitting close, Samantha decided to continue the questioning. “So, if you already have thirty clients, and you’ve been working on the case for three years, why haven’t you filed suit by now?” Both men glanced around as if someone might be listening. Satisfied, Donovan answered in a low voice, “This is a huge case, Samantha. Dozens of deaths, a defendant with enormously deep pockets, and liability that I think we can make clear at trial. I’ve already spent a hundred thousand bucks on the case, and it’ll take much more than that to get it before a jury. It takes time: time to sign up the clients, time to do the research, time to put together a legal team that can fight the army of lawyers and experts Krull Mining will throw at its defense.” “It’s also dangerous,” Vic added. “There are a lot of bad actors in the coalfields, and Krull Mining is one of the worst. Not only is it a ruthless strip miner, it’s also a vicious litigator. It’s a beautiful lawsuit, but dealing with Krull Mining has scared away a lot of lawyers, guys who are usually on board in the big environmental cases.” Donovan said, “That’s why I need some help. If you’re bored and looking for some excitement, then let’s go to work. I have a ton of documents that need to be reviewed.” She suppressed a laugh and said, “Great, more document review. I spent the first year with the firm buried in a vault doing nothing but document review. In Big Law, it’s the curse of every rookie associate.” “This will be different, I assure you.” “Are these the incriminating documents, the good stuff?” Both men glanced around again. The waitress arrived with the diet sodas and left them. It was doubtful she cared anything about litigation. Samantha leaned in low and hit them hard with “You already have these documents, don’t you?” Donovan replied, “Let’s just say we have access to them. They went missing. Krull Mining knows they’re missing, but they don’t know who has them. After I file the lawsuit, the company will learn that I have access to them. That’s all I can say.” As he spoke, Vic stared at her intently, watching for her reaction. His look said, “Can she be trusted?” His look was also skeptical. He wanted to talk about something else. She asked, “What will Krull Mining do when it knows you have access?” “Go berserk, but what the hell. We’ll be in federal court, hopefully with a good judge, one who’ll hold their feet to the fire.” Their platters arrived, scrawny sandwiches beside piles of fries, and they began eating. Vic asked her about New York and her life there. They were intrigued by her work in a firm with a thousand lawyers in the same building, and by her specialty in building skyscrapers. She was tempted to make it sound slightly glamorous, but couldn’t muster the necessary deceit. As she ignored the sandwich and played with the fries, she couldn’t help but wonder where Blythe and her friends were lunching; no doubt some chic restaurant in the Village with cloth napkins, a wine list, and designer cuisine. Another world. 14 T he Skyhawk climbed to five thousand feet, leveled off, and Donovan asked, “Are you ready?” By then she was enjoying flying at lower altitudes and absorbing the views, but she had no desire to take the controls. “Gently grab the yoke,” he said, and she did. “I’ve got it too, so don’t worry,” he said calmly. “The yoke controls the pitch of the nose, up and down, and it also turns the airplane. All movements are small and slow. Turn it slightly to the right.” She did and they began a gradual bank to her side. She turned back to the left and they leveled off. She pushed the yoke forward, the nose dipped, and they began losing altitude. She glanced at the altimeter. “Level off at forty-five hundred,” he said. “Keep the wings level.” From forty-five hundred feet, they ascended back to five thousand, and Donovan put his hands in his lap. “How does it feel?” “Awesome,” she said. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. It’s so easy.” The Skyhawk responded to the slightest movement of the yoke. Once she realized she was not going to crash it, she managed to relax a little and enjoy the thrill of her first flight. “It’s a great airplane, simple and safe, and you’re flying it. You could go solo in a month.” “Let’s not rush things.” They flew straight and level for a few minutes without talking. Samantha watched the instruments closely, glancing only briefly at the mountains below. He asked, “So, Captain, where are we going?” “I have no idea. Not sure where we are and not sure where we’re going.” “What would you like to see?” She thought for a moment. “Mattie told me about your family’s place and what happened there. I’d like to see Gray Mountain.” He hesitated for a second and said, “Then look at the heading indicator and turn left to a heading of 190 degrees. Do it slow and stay level.” She executed the turn perfectly and kept the Skyhawk at five thousand feet. After a few minutes, she asked, “Okay, what would happen right now if the engine quit?” He sort of shrugged as if this never crossed his mind. “First, I would try and restart it. If that didn’t work, I’d start looking for a flat surface, a pasture or pipeline, maybe even a highway. At five thousand feet, a Skyhawk will glide for about seven miles so there’s a lot of time. When I found my spot, I would circle around it, try and gauge the wind on the descent, and pull off a perfect emergency landing.” “I don’t see any open areas down there.” “Then just pick your mountain and hope for the best.” “Sorry I asked.” “Relax. Fatalities in these planes are rare, and they’re always caused by pilot error.” He yawned and went quiet for a while. Samantha found it impossible to relax entirely, but was growing more confident by the minute. After a long break in conversation, she glanced at her co-pilot, who appeared to be dozing. Was he joking with her, or was he really asleep? Her first impulse was to yell into her mike and startle him; instead, she checked the instruments, made sure the airplane was flying straight and the wings were perfectly level, and fought the urge to panic. She caught herself gripping the yoke and let go for a second. The fuel gauge showed half a tank. If he wanted to sleep, go ahead. She would give him a few minutes to nap, then panic. She released the yoke again and realized the plane would fly by itself, with only a light touch here and there for corrections. She glanced at her watch. Five minutes, ten, fifteen. The mountains were slowly passing under them. There was nothing on the radar to indicate traffic. She kept her cool, but there was a growing sense that she needed to scream. He awoke with a cough and quickly scanned the instruments. “Nice job, Samantha.” “How was your nap?” “Fine. Sometimes I get sleepy up here. The drone of the engine gets monotonous and I have trouble staying awake. On long trips, I’ll turn on the autopilot and doze off for a few minutes.” She wasn’t sure how to respond to this and let it pass. “Do you know where we are?” she asked. He looked ahead and without hesitation said, “Sure, we’re approaching Noland County. At eleven o’clock is Cat Mountain. You’ll fly just to the left of it, and I’ll take over from there. Descend to four thousand feet.” They flew over the edge of Brady at three thousand feet, and Donovan took the controls. “You want to fly it again sometime?” he asked. “Maybe, I don’t know. How long does it take to learn everything?” “About thirty hours of ground school, or self-study, and another thirty in the air. The problem is there’s no instructor around here. Had one, but he died. In a plane crash.” “I think I’ll just stick to cars. I grew up in a world of plane crashes so I’ve always been wary of aviation. I’ll let you do the flying.” “Anytime,” he said, smiling. He kept the nose pitched downward until they were a thousand feet above the terrain. They flew beside a strip mine where blasting was under way; a thick cloud of black smoke hung close to the ground. On the horizon, steeples were peeking above the trees. “Have you been to Knox?” he asked. “No, not yet.” “It’s the seat of Curry County, where I was born. Nice town, about the same size and sophistication as Brady, so you haven’t missed much.” They flew over the town, but there wasn’t much to see, at least not from one thousand feet. They began climbing again, weaving around the taller peaks until they were deep in the mountains. They topped one and Donovan said, “There it is, what’s left of Gray Mountain. The company abandoned it twenty years ago, but by the time they left most of the coal was gone. Lawsuits tied up everything for years. Obviously, the site did not get reclaimed. Probably the ugliest spot in all of Appalachia.” It was a desolate landscape, with open gashes where coal was being extracted when the crews suddenly stopped, and mounds of overfill left to sit forever, and all over the site scrawny trees trying desperately to survive. Most of the mine was rock and soil, but patches of brown grass had grown up. The valley fill dropping from the site was partially covered with vines and shrubbery. As Donovan began to circle, he said, “The only thing worse than a reclaimed strip mine is one that’s been abandoned. That’s what happened here. It still makes me sick.” “Who owns it now?” “My father, it’s still in the family, but it’s not worth much. The land is ruined. The streams disappeared under the valley fill, all the fish are gone. The water is poison. The wildlife ran off to a safer place. Did Mattie tell you what happened to my mother?” “She did, but not in detail.” He descended and banked steeply to the right so she looked straight down. “Do you see that white cross down there, with rocks around it?” “Yes, I see it.” “That’s where she died. Our home was over there, an old family place built by my grandfather, who was a deep miner. After the flood destroyed the home, my mother found a spot there, near the rocks, and that’s where it happened. My brother, Jeff, and I found some old timbers from the house and built that cross.” “Who found her?” He took a deep breath, and said, “So Mattie didn’t tell you everything?” “I guess not.” “I found her.” Nothing was said for a few minutes as Donovan buzzed the valley on the east side of Gray Mountain. There were no roads, homes, or signs of people. He banked again and said, “Just over this ridge here is the only part of the property that wasn’t ruined. The water flows in another direction and the valley was safe from the strip mine. You see that creek down there?” He banked steeper so she could. “Yes, I got it.” “Yellow Creek. I have a little cabin on that creek, a hiding place few people know about. I’ll show it to you sometime.” I’m not so sure about that, Samantha thought. We are now close enough, and pending some change in your marital status, I have no plans to get closer. But she nodded and said, “I’d like to see it.” “There’s the chimney,” he said. “It’s barely visible, both from here and on the ground. No plumbing, no electricity, you sleep in hammocks. I built it myself, with help from my brother, Jeff.” “Where’s your father?” “Last I heard he was in Montana, but I haven’t spoken to him in many years. Have you seen enough?” “I believe so.” At the Noland County Airfield, Donovan taxied close to the terminal but did not kill the engine. Instead, he said, “Okay, I want you to get out here, carefully, and walk behind the airplane. The prop is still spinning.” “You’re not getting out?” she asked, pulling the latch on her shoulder harness. “No, I’m going to Roanoke to see my wife and daughter. Be back tomorrow, and at the office.” Samantha got out under the wing, felt the rush of air from the propeller, walked behind the tail, and waited at the door. She waved at Donovan, who gave her the thumbs-up and began taxiing away. She watched him take off and drove back to Brady. Saturday dinner was a pot of Chester’s legendary Texas chili. He’d never been to Texas, as best he could remember, but found a great recipe (only two years ago) on a Web site. The legend part seemed more or less a creation of his own imagination, but his enthusiasm for cooking and entertaining was infectious. Mattie baked corn bread and Annette brought a chocolate pie for dessert. Samantha had never learned to cook and was now living in a tiny apartment with only a hot plate and a toaster, so she got a pass. While Chester stirred the pot and added spices and talked nonstop, Kim and Adam made a pizza in Aunt Mattie’s kitchen. Saturday was always pizza night for them, and Samantha was delighted to be at the Wyatts’ and not stuck again with Annette and the kids. In their eyes she was no longer a roommate/babysitter, but in one week had risen to the hallowed status of big sister. They loved her and she loved them, but the walls were closing in. Annette seemed content to allow the kids to smother her. They ate in the backyard, at a picnic table under a maple tree ablaze with bright yellow leaves. The ground was covered with them too, a beautiful carpet that would soon be gone. Candles were lit as the sun disappeared behind the mountains. Claudelle, their paralegal, joined them late. Mattie had a rule that over dinner there would be no shop talk—nothing about the clinic, their work, their clients, and, especially, nothing even remotely related to coal. So they dwelt on politics—Obama versus McCain, Biden versus Palin. Politics naturally led to discussions about the economic disaster unfolding around the world. All news was bad, and while the experts disagreed on whether it would be a minor depression or just a deep recession, it still seemed far away, like another genocide in Africa. Awful, but not really touching Brady, yet. They were curious about Samantha’s friends in New York. For the third or fourth time that afternoon and evening, Samantha noticed a detached coolness in Annette’s words and attitude toward her. She seemed fine when talking to everyone else, but slightly abrupt when she said anything to Samantha. At first, she thought nothing of it. But by the time dinner was over, she was certain something was gnawing at Annette. It was puzzling because nothing had happened between them. Finally, she suspected it had something to do with Donovan.