Gray Mountain: A Novel(107)

Later, Andy




The spy phone buzzed at 2:30 as Samantha was rereading Strayhorn’s notice of appeal and reviewing the rules for appellate procedure. “Are you outside my office standing in the snow?” she asked, walking to the kitchen, which she assumed was bug-free.

“No, I’m in Pikeville meeting with some investigators. I enjoyed last night, slept warm and sound. You?”

“I slept well. What time did you leave this morning?”

“Just after four. I’m not sleeping much these days, you know. Somebody’s back there, always watching. Kinda hard to sleep.”

“Okay. What’s on your mind?”

“Saturday, hiking around Gray Mountain, in the snow. Grilling a steak on the cabin porch. Drinking some red wine. Reading by the fire. That sort of thing. Are you up to it?”

“Let me think about it.”

“What’s there to think about? I’ll bet that if you’ll glance over at your calendar you’ll see that there’s nothing written down for this Saturday. Go ahead.”

“I’m busy right now. I’ll have to call you back.”


Though it had not been mentioned by anyone at the clinic, Samantha was learning that the cold weather and short days of January slowed business considerably. The phone rang less and Barb spent more time away from her desk, always “running errands.” Claudelle was eight months pregnant and on bed rest. The courts, never in a hurry, clunked along at even slower paces. Mattie and Annette were as busy as ever with existing cases, but new ones were not dropping in. It was as if conflict and misery took a break as the wintertime blues settled in. At least for some.

As Samantha was puttering around the office after dark on Friday, she heard the front door open. Mattie was still in with her door closed; everyone else was gone for the weekend. Samantha walked to the reception area and said hello to Buddy and Mavis Ryzer. They had no appointment; they had not called. Instead, they had driven an hour and a half from West Virginia to Brady late on a Friday afternoon to seek solace and guidance from their attorney. She hugged them both and knew immediately that their world had come to an end. She showed them to the conference room and offered a soft drink; they declined. She closed the door, asked what was going on, and both started crying.

Buddy had been fired by Lonerock Coal that morning. The foreman said he was physically unfit to work; thus the immediate termination. No exit package, no farewell bonus, no cheap watch for a job well done and certainly no golden parachute, just a hard kick in the ass with a promise that the last paycheck was in the mail. He’d barely made it home when he collapsed on the sofa and tried to collect himself.

“I got nothing,” he said between breaths as Mavis wiped tears and rattled away. “I got nothing.”

“Just like that, he’s outta work,” Mavis said. “No paycheck, no black lung benefits, and no prospect of finding any kind of work. All he’s ever done is work in the coalfields. What’s he supposed to do now? You gotta help us, Samantha. You gotta do something. This ain’t right.”

“She knows it ain’t right,” Buddy said. Each word was labored as his chest rose and fell with each noisy breath. “But there’s nothing you can do. They busted our union twenty years ago, so we got no protection from the company. Nothing.”

Samantha listened with great sympathy. It was odd to see such a tough guy like Buddy wiping his cheeks with the back of a hand. His eyes were red and puffy. Normally, he would have been embarrassed at such emotion, but now there was nothing to hide. Eventually, she said, “We’ve filed our claim and we have a strong report from the doctor. That’s all we can do right now. Unfortunately, in the states around here an employee can be terminated at will for any cause, or for no cause.”

She thought the obvious but wasn’t about to mention it: Buddy was in no shape to work. As much as she despised Lonerock Coal, she understood why the company would not want an employee in his condition operating heavy equipment.

There was a long silence, broken only by Mattie, who pecked on the door and stepped inside. She greeted the Ryzers, realized an unpleasant meeting was under way, and started a quick exit. “I’ll see you for dinner, Sam?”

“I’ll be there. Around seven?”

The door closed and they returned to the silence. Mavis finally said, “It took my cousin eleven years to get his black lung benefits. He’s on oxygen now. My uncle, nine. I hear the average is something like five years. That about right?”

“For contested claims, yes, five to seven is the average.”

“I’ll be dead in five years,” Buddy said, and they thought about this. No one argued with him.

“But you said all claims are contested, right?” Mavis asked.

“I’m afraid so.”

Buddy just shook his head, slightly but without stopping. Mavis went silent and stared at the table. He coughed a few times and seemed on the verge of a gagging fit, but managed to swallow hard and fight it. His deep desperate breaths sounded like muffled roars from within. He cleared his throat again and said, “You know, I should’ve got my benefits ten years ago, and if I had I could’ve got out of the mines and found work somewhere else. I was only thirty back then, the kids were little, and I could’ve done something else, away from the dust, you know. Something that didn’t make the disease any worse. But the company fought me and it won, and so I had no choice but to keep working in the mines, and keep breathing the dust. I could tell it was getting worse. You just know it. It creeps up on you but you know that walking up the four steps to the front porch is harder now than it was a year ago. Walking to the end of the driveway takes a bit longer. Not much, but things get slower.” A pause for deep breaths. Mavis reached over and patted his hand. “I remember those guys in court, in front of the administrative law judge. Three or four of them, all in dark suits and shiny black shoes, all strutting around so important. They would look over at us like we was white trash, you know, just an ignorant coal miner with his ignorant wife, just another deadbeat trying to game the system for a monthly check. I can see them right now, arrogant little shits, so smart and smug and cocky because they knew how to win and we didn’t. I know it’s not very Christian-like to hate, but I really, really despised those guys. It’s even worse now because we know the truth, and the truth is that those crooks knew I had black lung. They knew, yet they covered it up. They lied to the court. They brought in another set of lying doctors who said, under oath, that I didn’t have black lung. Everybody lied. And they won. They kicked me outta court, put me back in the mines, for ten years now.”