Authors: Thomas Cater
“You mean there could be stocks and bonds in the house?”
“That’s the rumor, Mr. Case.”
I stared at Virgil.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?”
“I didn’t want to trouble you with rumors,” he
replied.
“Trouble me? You troubled me with all those…troubling
stories. Why didn’t you want to trouble me with some good news?”
“I wouldn’t invest too much stock in those old stories,”
he said.
The mention of coal, oil and gas made me think of
another issue we failed to discuss.
“What about utilities,” I asked. “How about heat? It
must cost a bundle to heat that place in the winter?”
Mrs. Holmes laughed. “It’s easy to see you’re from
out of state, Mr. Case. You think a coal baron is going to give his ‘spoils’
away to a utility company? In those days, they built their homes on or near the
coal seam, which they mined. All they had to do was tunnel into a basement wall
for fuel. If you kick a little dirt from the ground, you’re standing on coal.
When gas came in, a well was drilled on your property and you were entitled to
free gas.”
“You mean the house is sitting on a seam of coal?”
“Right below the floorboards,” she said.
“Is it valuable?” I asked.
Mrs. Holmes smile grew expansive. “It depends, Mr.
Case; it’s the Mercer seam and it used to be called the ‘cream of the Mercer.’
My late husband said it was the dirtiest god-damned seam of coal the Almighty
ever created.”
“Mother!” Violet shouted.
“What do you mean, dirty?” I asked. “How dirty can
coal get?”
“It’s full of impurities,” she continued. “Slate,
bone, iron pyrites, it has something to do with geology. Upshyre County is one
of the few places in the world you can find Mercer Coal. A hundred million years
ago, that seam formed when the earth was in turmoil, giving birth to
monstrosities. That coal is the afterbirth, but it does have some value,” she
continued, “about ten dollars a ton when it sells, which isn’t often, and
that’s run o’the mine.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“From the mine mouth to the buyer, no freight or
cleaning and washing charges included.”
I was thrilled by the thought my impulsive and
compelling purchase might also include the possibility of mineral wealth.
“I’m fascinated; how many tons in an acre?” I asked.
“It varies, depending on the thickness,” she said.
“Out there it’s less than 10,000 tons to an acre.”
I made a quick calculation of my holdings. “That’s…
$100,000 an acre! In 26 acres, that’s about $2.6 million dollars!”
Mrs. Holmes smile did little to bolster my enthusiasm.
“Yes, but you see, there aren’t very many people or companies who want to buy
coal as dirty as the Mercer. It takes a lot of time and money to get it out of
the ground, clean it and sell it. You’d be lucky to get five hundred down and a
thirty cent royalty per ton.”
I was incensed by the impropriety of robber coal
barons, even though I’d never met one, but might be one.
“Then I won’t sell,” I said.
“C’est la vie, Mr. Case, C’est la vie.”
Things were becoming more and more convoluted. I
couldn't understand why the mineral rights weren't purchased years ago, since
there were very few ghosts who could intimidate D-8 dozers.
“The land has already been extensively mined,” she continued.
“At least 60 percent of the coal is gone. I suppose you met your new neighbors
at Elanville. They’ve been scavenging coal for generations. Those hills are
honey combed with abandoned coal tunnels and drifts. They cook and heat with it
and consider it their birthright. Some people say that’s what’s wrong with
them; the fumes and ashes from that coal have been known to poison everything
it comes in contact with.”
I could feel my newly acquired fortune slipping
through my fingers.
“You did notice Scary Creek, the little stream that
passes in front of the house?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“No matter how dirty or polluted it may look to you,
it is a protected stream, and the Department of Natural Resources will castrate
you if you try to strip that coal.”
“Mother, please!” Violet pleaded.
“Oh, be still you silly child. I’m just trying to
point out the pitfalls of the mining industry to Mr. Case. I’ve lived in this
county all my life. I’ve seen good times and I’ve seen bad. There has always
been coal, but as a rule, it does more harm than good. It provides few jobs,
but only for the short term. In the end, it leaves nothing but a mess and many
unemployed, uneducated men hanging around doing nothing but making trouble for
people who like the land the way it is and want to keep it that way. If I had
my way, they’d never mine another ton of coal in this county and we’d all be
better off.”
“Mother, you old hypocrite! How can you sit there and
talk like that when there are strip miners on your property right now taking
every pound of coal they can get their hands on.”
Mrs. Holmes squirmed uneasily on the couch. “A body’s
got to live, Violet. Besides, they don’t steal it from me the way they do other
people. I make them pay big money up front and fifty cents a ton royalty. I
don’t know whose money they’re spending to get at that coal, but you can bet
it’s not their own. No one in his or her right mind would pay that kind of
money for Mercer today. You can get better out of a gob pile.”
I could see we were on a collision course if the
subject didn’t change. “Mrs. Holmes, I am interested in your views on the coal
industry, especially now that I have become the owner of choice mineral
rights.” I glanced at Virgil for confirmation.
“The mineral rights are included with the property,”
he said. “That is a condition of the sale. There is also an old codicil
attached to the title that states they are not to be sold independently of
surface rights, which means the house and timber, though I’m afraid there is
very little that could be done if a new owner chose to sell them separately.”
I was relieved to learn that as a property owner I did
have recourse to a few liberties with the land.
“Thank you
.
Mrs. Holmes, I’m anxious to learn all I can about the
house and its previous owner. Virgil and I have been trying to figure out where
we could find information about the builder of the wall that surrounds the
house. Do you know anything at all?”
She turned the question over in her mind, almost as if
she were turning back pages in a magazine.
“I can remember the first time I ever laid eyes on
him. He came into town on the train. I was just a child, five or ten years old.
I watched him unload his equipment from the baggage car. He had a whole
wagonload of trowels and wooden levels, a wheelbarrow and hoes, picks, hammers.
It was all bleached white from working in concrete. I remember how everyone
stood around and didn’t say a word to him. He had a way about him that didn’t
encourage familiarity. Dr. Farnsworth was standing on the depot platform not
ten feet from me. He was behaving neighborly, but that man never gave him a
second look. He kept loading the wagon with his tools and rode out of town
without stopping once to ask directions. He knew exactly where he was going,
and so did everyone else.”
“The man
,
you say, the mason, do you remember his name? Did you
ever see him again?”
She shook her head. “I saw him once or twice poking
around in the old section of the graveyard. We were putting flowers on papa’s
grave. I don’t know what he was doing, but he was checking out those old stone
markers real close.”
“Did you ever see him working on the Ryder wall?”
She shook her head. “No, but I heard he worked night
and day to finish. I can’t imagine why the big hurry. I think he was out there
for maybe two or three years.”
I never thought about how long it might take to
enclose 26 acres, but that sounded like more than enough time. Still, there
were undoubtedly many factors to consider.
“Did he work alone, or hire help?”
“Oh my, yes. At one time or another, nearly everyone
in Elanville worked on that wall. You would have thought they were building the
great pyramid of Egypt.”
I had been under the curious impression that the
residents of Elanville, who all seemed to be suffering from genetic deformities
of one kind or another, worked in the mines. Where had the stone workers come
from?
“How many laborers were there?”
“I think there were nearly half a dozen every day of
the week.”
“I thought it was a small mining community?”
She rolled her head back in that silent laugh once
more. “No one could keep track of those people,” she said. “School officials
and census takers had a devil of a time with them.”
“Do you know where he lived?” I asked, hopeful that a
few artifacts might be salvaged and add dimension to the story.
“Samuel put him up at the Abacas’ hotel for awhile. He
eventually moved into one of the company houses. He took in a woman with a
child to cook and clean for him. I know the name, if you can give me a
minute…Kirk! Yes, that’s it. Her name was Kirkwood, and she had a little girl
whose name was…”
She slumped back on the couch in a silence. “Oh, my!
That child’s name was Alicia!” Her eyes become glossy with tears.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
She kept gazing off into space as if she were gathering
up more loose ends.
“They both died in a fire, Mr. Case, not long after
the stone mason arrived. It was the first of several fires that took the lives
of many people out there. No one gave it much thought since the houses were
board and batten and coal was used for cooking and heating.”
I still did not understand the alarm that had driven
the ever-present smile from her face.
“Why should that upset you?”
Her fingers writhed nervously in her hands. “The
people who died in those fires weren’t transients, but locals down on their
luck or people in desperate need of shelter or work.”
Her insinuation needed little in the way of further
explanation.
“I never thought about that before,” she said, staring
at me as if for the first time.
“It probably doesn’t mean a thing,” I said, unwilling
to concede that some kind of conspiracy may have occurred more than 70 years
ago in that remote wilderness.
“If it doesn’t mean anything, then what are you doing
here, and why are you asking all these questions?” She replied,
I felt intimidated by the charges in her voice, but the
anxiety I felt was gathering momentum.
“Mother, just because the stone mason was living there
doesn’t mean he had anything to do with the fires. For Pete’s sake, let’s not
forget, it’s been
a very long time!
”
I meant to say something similar, but I was silent in
the face of her emotion. I did however appreciate Violet’s attempt to extricate
me from a tense and confusing situation.
“Were the bodies of the victims buried in local
cemeteries?” I asked.
Mrs. Holmes gazed at me with resignation in her eyes.
“There wasn’t anything left to bury,” she said, “just a few scorched bones,
which were buried in makeshift graves.”
I leaned back in the chair, sated on grisly
information that needed time to digest.
“You see,” she said. “There was and may still be
something wicked at work out there. I don’t know what it is, but I can see you
are right in the middle of it, Mr. Case. If my children are going to be
involved, I want to take some precautions. So if you don’t mind, I’m going to
call a friend of mine and ask him for a blessing and some prayers.”
Violet bolted from her chair. “Mother, please, we
don’t need Father Rooney’s blessing.”
Mrs. Holmes squirmed and wiggled off the couch and
waddled to the phone.
“I’m not going to sit by idly while my daughter pokes
her nose into God knows what kind of diabolical goings on…”
“Oh, God!” Violet moaned and pretended to pull her
hair in a fury of impatience.
“Mother, I think it’s time we left. I know Mr. Case is
probably very tired and anxious to get some sleep.”
Mrs. Holmes replaced the phone, took her grandchildren
in her arms and kissed them both.
“Don’t you take these innocents out there,” she said.
“If you must poke into things that don’t concern you, leave the children here.”
“Yes, Mother; and thank you. We’ll be seeing you in a
few days.”
She kissed her mother’s cheek in a gesture of good
will. Virgil pressed his cheek to hers and I reached for a hand.
“Thank you, Mrs. Holmes,” I said. “If you think of
anything else that might be helpful, I’d love to hear about it. I will be here
awhile; I’m living in an RV. Virgil knows where I’m parked.” I quickly added, “probably
in his driveway.”