Elmer Ain’t Easy

It was a spring day of sun after rain clouds brought gushes of water that now were pushing stem growth up and out in a riot of life. Elmer Droutfort looked out from his front porch at the old over story of oaks, poplars, hickories and ashes that were leafed out for another season, joining the pines and hemlocks as green summits to his domain. Underneath and lower, redbuds, dogwood, paw paw and mountain laurel, that was nearly ready to proclaim a flowery flourish, carpeted the under story. The old pasture field looked like it was ready for the first cutting. He’d seen these sights in his sixty-seven years and he never grew disinterested or too bothered to notice. If only if he could look at it all without his mind’s eye seeing through to the beyond. His family had been on this land long enough to bury dozens in a fenced rectangle up on top of the eighty acres. Up there he used to talk with his mother and grandfather, and look out at Paint Mountain, Cherry Pond Mountain and Coal River Mountain and feel God’s hand on his shoulder. He doesn’t go up there much anymore. God’s still there, and so are his relatives, but the view is gone.

Last week he visited his wife, Iris Mae, over in Whitesville. She moved there two years ago, not because she didn’t love him anymore, for she loved him more than ever, but because she could not live with him where he was and keep on living. The blasting of kiloton strength explosives that shook everything with Richter scale magnitude, the creeping and crawling of mountain moving Caterpillars, pushing trees, soil and rocks to monster, earth eating draglines and shovels that filled Euclids and Macks was only part of it. He had become an obsessed thinking and acting, crazed man, whose only mission was impossible opposition to the brute force of economic and national security demands pushing in all around him. She was tired of living in an island in the sky that wore her out coming, going and being there. When she stopped pleading with him to do like everyone else and take the money and leave, was when she left for good. Now when he visited her, when he wasn’t busy going to meetings with lawyers and going to Charleston, she would always have him for as long as he stayed.

Leaving. That’s what Massive Energy, Parch Coal and the others depended on for their blitzkrieg operations that convinced people to choose a form of death - selling their farms, instead of staying where their families have stayed for generations. Over the years they’d gobbled up most of the mineral rights and land outright from people who either didn’t know any better or had never seen the kinds of money thrust at them by slick men who had a variety of ways of saying they were getting the deal of a lifetime. Somehow those who came before Elmer had held onto the last piece of ancestral land and now he was in a holy war to keep hold of it. He was a pawn and a king in that war with shades of true believers, ideologues, and people looking to make a name for themselves taking up with him against the brute force who regarded his zealotry as an unnecessary irritant to swat at as if he were a fly stuck inside a vehicle they were driving. The more he bore witness to the permanent destruction, the more he walked across the half mile of gutted and raped landscape to his pickup parked in the same area that the workman used, the more he thought of the legal victory that overturned claims of trespassing and established that walk a necessary easement to his property, the more he knew he could not and would not leave. This was much bigger than him and more important than anything. He wasn’t educated, but he’d learned enough to not be ignorant.

Yesterday at the bottom of the steps that connected his land to the lowered land around it, he met a devil of a man. He was known by all in these parts as the face of what was happening to the land. And Elmer thought that he surely was created by the devil. He had an evil combination of brains, a willingness to work all his waking hours, a motivation that seemingly was driven by a simple desire to make as much money as there was, and a meanness that could whip all the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s and still have plenty left for anyone else who wanted a piece of him. He was fearless and thought of himself as a local boy made good.

“You’re Elmer Droutfort aren’t ya?”

“Yes I am.”

“I’m Dick Blastingame.”

He knew who it was before being told. The hulking Massive Energy executive was well known from photos. He’d seen the combed back, dark hair, fat face with trimmed mustache and shiny teeth on a wide, well fed body. Besides, who else would wear a shirt and tie here? As he took him in, he kept his hands to his side when a hand was offered, and continued to look.

“Alright, suit yourself. Can we talk?”

Looking directly at him,” I don’t have anything to say to you.” Then he looked down at the bare rocks at his feet.

“Well then listen to what I have to say. Look, I know what you’re going through and I’m prepared to make it a whole lot easier for ya by offering ya an additional $300 an acre for your land. You’ll get the highest price we’ve ever given anyone around here. What do ya say to that?”

“Stop wasting my time.”

“Elmer, you’re not dealing with an outsider here. Just like you I was born and raised in Boone County. What’s going on around here is a good thing for everyone. Why the place I grew up was taken years ago and I moved to a much better place not too far away. It’s called progress and with the offer I’m making, you can do the same. All you have to do is make a deal and get out of the way.”

Looking at the man full of intent with an impatient gaze, “Do you have anything else to say?”

“Let me say this Elmer. You can’t win by holding out. That’s a losing proposition. You have a chance to be set for the rest of your life. You’re a fool for not taking it. And remember this; none of those lawyers you’re working with stand a chance. There’re a bunch of little suburban boys and girls who think this is a glorious, righteous cause and who don’t know anything about the coalfields or the people they’re dealing with. When we start playing hardball, they’ll run crying to their mommy and pappy’s. Elmer, we can’t be stopped. You’re sitting on something that has to be had. We got to get at it. Don’t you understand that?”

Pushing his neck towards the source of this, “One thing I understand is what you’re doing is wrong and opposing it is right.” Striding forward, “Now get out of my way. I have no time for you and your talk.”

“You’re making the worst mistake of your life.”

Pausing and turning his head to look at Blastingame,“No I’m not. This is the best thing I’ve done in my life.”

Somehow the last statement had some validity. In Elmer’s last visit to the doctor, his prescriptions for high blood pressure and cholesterol were stopped because he didn’t need them anymore. He’d lost thirty pounds and the doctor told him what ever he was doing to keep doing it. While his knees still hurt after coming down from his land, climbing up the 613 steps no longer winded him. When he got to the top, his spirits were lifted far in excess of the modest elevation gain. He knew how many steps there were because he counted them. And he contemplated each one in a slow ascent that had become a worship service. There were special places along the way. The first coal was steps 37 to 41, the next at 85 to 88, then 156 to 160, followed by the biggest one at 254 to 262, and at 317 to 320, 393 to 395, 444 to 447, 502 to 506 and way up at 555 to 558. As he passed each one, he’d stroke them like they were pets.