“ROAD TRIP!” Kevin yelled, leaping out of his car, picking me up, and twirling me around.
Fall wasn’t just around the corner anymore. We were smack-dab in the middle of it. The oppressive summer heat was gone and the trees had changed into their fall wardrobe. Some had already stripped naked and, lucky them, snuggled into a deep sleep. The weather was perfect. Late fall in West Virginia. A great reminder of why I loved living here.
“Kevin?” Britt asked, tugging on his arm. “Can I go with you? Please? I really, really, really want to go? Please?”
“Shut up, Britt!” I said. “You’re not going. Get out of his face and leave us alone!”
“Why can’t she go?” Kevin asked. “Everyone should see this.”
“Yes, yes, yes!” Britt squealed.
“Oh my God, Kevin,” I said. “She’s not anyone. She’s my little sister!”
“I swear,” Britt said, “I’ll turn my back and close my eyes if the two of you want to hook up! And I won’t tell Dad anything! I promise! These lips are sealed!” Britt zippered her mouth shut.
“Britt!” I yelled. “What part of get lost don’t you understand!”
Britt went running into the house. “Dad!” she yelled, her mouth unzippered already. “Kevin said I could go! Kevin said I could go!” Britt came tearing back with her backpack and her stuffed bunny. She was twelve years old but, depending on the moment, she was twelve going on twenty or twelve going on four.
“I call shotgun!” she yelled.
“In your dreams!” I yelled back.
•
We were off to Kayford Mountain, seventy miles away. One of the many West Virginia mountains whose top had already been blown off by a coal company. We were joining a group that was taking a tour of the mountaintop removal site.
At the last KABOOM meeting we had watched YouTube videos of mountaintop removal. It was hard to watch them and think they were actually real. It was hard to watch them and not think, Yeah, right, as if that could actually happen. You’d look at those videos and you’d think, No way! People wouldn’t do something like that to a mountain. They just wouldn’t.
It was almost too horrible to believe.
So we decided to go and see for ourselves. Up close and personal. Take a . . .
“Road trip!” Kevin yelled again, picking me up, and hurling me upside down into the front seat while Britt, laughing and screaming, tumbled into the back.
“Bunny stays up front with us, or we ain’t going nowhere!” Kevin said.
“Mister Wiggins,” Britt said, giggling. “Her name is Mister Wiggins.”
“Whoa, it’s a chick bunny with a dude’s name?” Kevin asked.
“Don’t let her age fool you,” I said. “She’s got a twelve-year-old body but a four-year-old brain.”
“The bunny’s twelve years old?” Kevin asked.
“Oh my God!” I said, “I’m surrounded by morons!”
I had to admit there was something totally sweet about how Kevin dealt with my family. He was super-nice to my father and all big-brother, palsy-walsy around Britt. And it wasn’t fake. It was genuine. It was who Kevin was. And, in return, they liked him. They liked him a lot. After all, what was not to like?
Depending on calculations, I had been going out with Kevin for 63 days (if you defined clubbing him with a peg leg as “going out with him”), 56 days (from the time I saved his life from the wayward rammer), or 35 days (the thingamabob at the recycling center and the oh-so-yummy first real kiss). We had gone to the movies, bowling, miniature golf, football games to see Marc the Mascot make a complete ass out of himself, walks on Mount Tom, out to eat, and lots of awesome fooling around whenever and wherever we could. We still hadn’t gone dancing. The Civil War cotillion thing had been postponed to the end of November due to the fiddler in the old-time band breaking his finger.
Wonder of all wonders, Kevin was now my official boyfriend!
I loved how the word sounded. I said it over and over again in my head.
My boyfriend!
I know it sounds pathetic, but I had a permanent bruise from pinching myself so many times.
Anyway, back to the road trip.
Kevin, Britt and I swung around town to pick up Ashley and Marc (also totally a couple) and then drove over to Fas Chek to meet up and caravan with our fellow KABOOMers. Becky was driving Piggy, Frank, Tammy, and Rich. Sam was off fishing, Jason was running track, Shannon was working, and Jon Buntington was, well, who knows where.
We had asked Mr. Cooper if he wanted to come but he made up some lame excuse about needing weekend alone time away from us teenagers lest he wind up in the lunatic asylum. Anyway, he said, he had seen mountaintop removal sites before and, at his age, his heart was fragile enough as it was. One more look might just break it.
“Look at Piggy!” Ashley whispered.
We stuck our necks out of the car windows, trying not to be too obvious but gawking anyway.
“He’s dressed like a human being!” I whispered back to Ashley. “What happened to the spikes in his hair?”
“Do you think he’s hitting on Becky?” Ashley asked.
“I thought Becky was a lesbian?” Britt said.
“Maybe he’s hitting on Frank.” Ashley said.
“Frank has a girlfriend,” Britt said. “It must be Becky. Look at him looking at her!”
I was rubbernecking so far into Kevin that I knocked up against the steering wheel and the car horn blared. Piggy and Becky jumped. I scrunched down behind the seat.
“Hey!” Kevin called out to Piggy. “Nice hair!”
And then off we went to Kayford Mountain.
•
Kevin had become obsessed with the old John Prine song “Paradise.” It was the perfect soundtrack for a mountaintop removal road trip. After the fifth time around on his car’s CD player, we were all screaming the lyrics, tragic as they were:
When I was a child my family would travel
Down to western Kentucky where my parents were born
And there’s a backwards old town that’s often remembered
So many times that my memories are worn.
And Daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I’m sorry, my son, but you’re too late in asking
Mister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away.
Of course, what’s a road trip without getting totally and completely lost. We had pulled off the interstate and could not for the life of us figure out which way to go. Kevin was sure it was to the right; I was convinced it was to the left. No one in the back seat had been paying any attention at all.
“Let Mister Wiggins decide!” Britt said.
Just then we saw this old-timer walking down the road.
He was a picture-perfect hillbilly, straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon. He had his hillbilly swag on: patched overalls, crazy-ass hat, and a beard that exploded out of his face. And, for the love of God, he was carrying a jug. A jug! It was like we had gone back in time a hundred years ago to the good ol’ moonshining days and here, walking among us, was the chief moonshiner himself.
Kevin stopped the car and rolled down the window. “Excuse me, sir?” he asked. “Do you know how to get to Old County Road?”
The reek of a lifetime of frequent drinking and infrequent bathing drifted into the car. I stifled back a gag.
’Billy scratched his beard, picked his nose, and thought for a moment.
“Turn your car around, take a left at that barn over there, and go three sees,” he said. “At the third see take another left. One more see and that’s Old County.”
Kevin looked confused.
“I’m sorry?” Kevin said. “Can you say that again?”
“Turn your car around, take a left at that barn over there, and go three sees. At the third see take another left. One more see and that’s Old County.”
“Three C’s?” Britt whispered. “Cars, condoms, and curfews? How are those even directions?”
“Shhh!” I shushed, both to Britt and to Ashley. Ashley had her fist in her mouth, biting back giggles.
“Ummm,” Kevin said. “What exactly is a ‘see’?”
The old-timer sighed and looked longingly at his jug.
“Turn your car around, take a left at the barn over there and go as far as you can see. Then go as far as you can see again. Do it one more time and take another left. One more see and that’s Old County.”
“Thank you, sir,” Kevin said. “Have a great day.”
So that was it! Three sees! And we thought we needed a GPS!
Just lucky it wasn’t nighttime.
Then the coal company came with the world’s largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.
And Daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I’m sorry, my son, but you’re too late in asking
Mister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away.
Finally, hoarse voices and all, we pulled into the parking lot to meet the tour group, barely on time. We would have been there an hour earlier but Ashley had to stop to pee every thirty seconds.
“Are you pregnant?” Britt asked her.
“Shut up, Britt,” I told her.
“I’m not pregnant,” Ashley said.
“When you’re pregnant you pee a lot,” Britt said.
“I said shut up, Britt. She’s not pregnant.”
“I’m just saying . . .”
“Don’t say anything!”
“I’m not pregnant,” Ashley said. “I just drank, like, five gallons of coffee before we started this morning. Sorry.”
“I guess when you’re pregnant,” Britt continued, clearly not getting the keep-your-mouth-closed memo, “the baby, like, kicks you in the bladder all of the time, which makes you have to ...”
I whacked Britt in the arm. “What part of zip it don’t you get! Earth to Britt: you’re twelve years old! You do know that you have to have sex to get pregnant!”
I turned to the back seat for confirmation from Ashley.
“I’m not pregnant, Britt,” Ashley said, giving me a look that I had never seen before. A look that moved mountains. Marc turned away, his blush a beet red. “I’m on the pill. Unless you’re like, totally unlucky, you don’t get pregnant when you’re on the pill.”
•
We were walking down an old dirt logging road heading toward Hell’s Gate, the entrance to Kayford Mountain. There were fifteen of us in the tour group. Nine of us from KABOOM, Britt, a couple of old hippies from Massachusetts, two stoners with dreadlocks, and our tour guide, a local activist from the group Keeper of the Mountains.
I had had no idea that there were so many groups fighting mountaintop removal in Appalachia. When Ashley and I first started KABOOM we thought we were the only ones. That no one cared but us.
Come to find out there was a swarm of like-minded groups fighting the good fight. We were not alone!
As we walked, Elise, the activist, gave us her talk about mountaintop removal. She had lived here all of her life. Born and bred in the holler the next town over.
“They are blowing the mountains out of the mountains,” she said, her wonderful West Virginia drawl making her words come alive. “They are destroying the most diverse forest in the United States. When I was a little girl there were more species of plants and animals here than you could shake a stick at. And now they’re gone. Gone! I thought the mountains would be here forever, but I was wrong. They’re gone and they aren’t coming back.”
Ashley was walking a step behind me and I felt her tap me on my shoulder.
“Don’t be mad,” Ashley whispered. “I was going to tell you.”
“Shhh!” I shushed. There was a time and a place to talk about losing your virginity, and this was neither.
“They dump the debris into the hollers, and it destroys the headwaters of the streams,” Elise continued, walking backwards, tour guide–style, while she continued to talk. “You can’t begin to believe how polluted the water is. It makes a skunk smell sweet.”
“Wednesday night was the first time,” Ashley whispered. “Oh my God. It was unreal!”
“Shhh!”
“Logging is one thing. When you log, trees come back. When you blow the top off a mountain, there is no place for them to come back to. Without trees to hold in the water, when it rains it does more than pour. We all live downstream. The river rises and people’s homes get flooded. Businesses close. It is an absolute nightmare. People watch the weather channel and pray to God for sunshine.”
“He was so gentle,” Ashley whispered. “So nice.”
“Ashley, please, not now!”
“When they set off the explosions,” Elise said, “it was like living in a war zone. You’d have thought you were in Baghdad or Gaza. It cracked the foundation of my mama’s house. It brought the chimney down at my auntie’s.”
Ashley just couldn’t contain herself. “I thought it would hurt a lot. You know, the first time and all, but it didn’t that much. It really didn’t.”
I tried the ignore routine.
Elise continued, “I don’t know a single family where people haven’t gotten sick. I am so, so tired of going to visit people in the hospital. Seems as though the only businesses booming around here are the florists and the funeral homes.”
“Are you listening to me?” Ashley whispered.
“No!” I said, a little too loudly. The group stopped and looked at me.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m just getting a little emotional.”
“Not to worry, darling,” Elise said, coming over and putting her hand gently on my shoulder. “That’s what we need around here. A little more emotion!”
I glared at Ashley.
This was totally crazy! Here we were walking towards Armageddon and Ashley couldn’t stop talking about doing it for the first time. It was more than a little weird.
“This whole mountaintop removal business has taken the coal miner right out of mining,” Elise continued. “Instead of going under the mountain they just blow it up. It’s one big job suck. What took a whole union to do now takes a single machine. And the guys they brought in to do the dirty work were all from out of town. Not a single soul from Kayford.”
“Don’t be mad!” Ashley whispered again. “I was going to tell you!”
“So it’s not like the buck stops here,” Elise went on. “Amazing as it is, people still buy the coal company lies. About jobs and economic growth and the good times to come. The truth is that the companies take the money and run. Extracting the greatest wealth from one of the most impoverished places in our country. Leaving us even poorer than before, and with a shattered moonscape of a mountain.”
Elise stopped talking and we walked in silence for the last few minutes. Finally we rounded the last bend, looked ahead, and stopped dead in our tracks. Immobilized. Stunned.
Hell’s Gate.
There wasn’t a place on Earth more appropriately named.
The work of the devil in all his infinite horror stretched out before us. An absolute nightmare. The mother of all shitshows. Hell on Earth.
The YouTube videos were nothing compared to this.
Even Ashley was speechless.
There was not a living thing in sight. Nothing. Just a desolate, dug up, blown-up, alien shitscape stretching on and on, see after see after see. What used to be the height of nature’s glory, the pinnacle of creation, was now reduced to ruin. An absence of color: no green in sight. Just the dull, endless monotony of flattened, gray, dusty, pulverized rock.
It was like before there was life on the planet, when everything was nothing and the world was desolate and raw and scary and formless. It was like after the apocalypse, when the world has gone crazy and beauty has turned ugly and good is evil and none of it makes any sense. It was like another planet, absent of the beauty, the joy, the miracle of life. It was like an alternate universe where a sickly gray was the only color.
They say seeing is believing, but I could not believe what I saw. I just couldn’t. I closed my eyes. I opened them again. I closed and opened, closed and opened. But the topless mountain, the ghostly grave of Kayford, would not go away.
The haunting words of John Muir that Coop had quoted came roaring back to me:
God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought,
disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling
tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools!
If this was not the work of fools then there was no such thing as foolishness.
John Prine’s “Paradise” was still locked in my brain:
Then the coal company came with the world’s largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.
Progress? If this was “progress,” then . . .
Britt started crying and held my hand. I started crying and held Kevin’s hand. Kevin looked like he was ready to kill someone. Ashley had turned away into Marc’s arms and Frank had closed his eyes as if in prayer. Next to seeing my mother dead, next to seeing her lovely body withered and lifeless and spent in the hospital room, this was the worst moment of my life. The absolute worst.
No one said anything. There was nothing that could be said. Words would only screw it up even more.
So we just stared and cried and cried and stared and then, when we couldn’t take it anymore, we turned and walked away.