Redemption Mountain (3 page)

“Lucien, hello. Yes, I'm fine. How was China?”

“Got back this morning. Oh Charlie, you've got to see it; the model doesn't do it justice. It's spectacular, and what beautiful people. Charlie, do you realize that the first phase of this project alone is going to bring low-cost dependable electricity to nearly a
hundred million
people, so they can finally stop choking on coal soot, nitrous oxide, and sulfuric acid.… You know all about it as well as anyone, I guess.” He put a hand on Charlie's shoulder. “Come on, Charlie, let's go have a cigar. Not too many guys around here to have a smoke with anymore. All those kids downstairs want to do is suck on Tic Tacs and drink bottled water.”

“As a matter of fact, I was just on my way down to your office to steal one of those Cubans,” admitted Charlie.

“We'll have a nice cigar together, Charlie, and you can tell me why you're not on your way home to be with your beautiful wife for the Easter weekend.”

Charlie always welcomed the opportunity to sit down with Lucien Mackey, and,
yes,
he certainly had things on his mind, things that were weighing him down, that had changed him and changed his relationship with his wife, and now it was all coming to a boil.
Where should he start?
How about,
Why does life without children in the house feel so pointless?
Or,
Why does my job get more and more boring and my career feel so unfulfilling as I get wealthier and more successful?
And what had become a constant theme in Charlie's introspections,
Why, as everyone I know gets wealthier and wealthier, do so many others continue down the road to poverty, losing hope of ever improving their condition in life?

Charlie was genuinely troubled over the polarization of the classes in America and where it would lead. The rich were getting richer much quicker than at any other time in history, and the numbers of the poor were growing, with little relief in sight. Life had been good to Charlie, but what family was going hungry because his stock portfolio had nearly doubled in value in a ridiculous three years? He wasn't an economist, but he knew there was a connection. And he knew that he'd long been part of the
winning team,
the side that had the corporations and the politicians, the lawmakers and regulators, the lobbyists and the lawyers, bankers, and venture capitalists. He was on the team that made the rules, and he wasn't sure he belonged anymore.

No, he wouldn't burden Lucien with his personal whining, problems with no solutions
. But he would tell his boss about Ellen. He needed to talk to someone, and Lucien certainly had some experience with marital discord. When he was fifty-one, after his two children had left home for college and career, Lucien had informed his wife of thirty years that he was gay and moved out of their palatial home in Bergen County and into the apartment in Manhattan where he still resided. For many years now, Lucien's partner was a slender, light-skinned Jamaican named Carlos Marché, the owner of an extremely successful women's salon in the elegant first-floor retail shops of the Dietrich Delahunt & Mackey building.

In Lucien's office suite, they relaxed on oversize leather chairs and filled the air with billowing clouds of cigar smoke. Lucien rambled for a while about the merits of traveling first-class on international flights, while Charlie searched for the right words to describe the phone call from Marchetti.

Ellen's been fucking some hedge-fund guy—no, that's not fair, that's not how it would have been with Ellen.
Charlie took a long pull on his cigar as he reflected on his marriage.
Ellen has had a brief relationship with … who? An old friend she respected, who was there for her when she needed someone after her husband told her suddenly that the life they'd been working so hard for just wasn't working out for him.…

Charlie thought about Ellen and how it had become harder and harder to share her interests and ambitions. The last few years, with the kids gone, had been so different from the first twenty years of their marriage. They'd been gradually growing apart, developing new interests and priorities and discarding old ones, and now they were on different paths, leading away from each other. They were still husband and wife, a couple at parties, caring parents of successful children, good neighbors. They talked, though not as often as they used to, and discussed things, though not as intimately or intensely as before. They still had sex but more physical than emotional. They never fought about anything. But, more and more, life seemed to be happening to them separately. Charlie envied Ellen. She was so certain of what she wanted, so at ease with her enjoyment of life.

Charlie knew that he had changed over the last few years. The more successful he'd become, the less certain he was about what he wanted in life. Since becoming a partner, his job had changed. Working as the OntAmex account supervisor was much more about money, influence, and connections than it was about building things. He hadn't become an engineer to sit in meetings with lawyers and accountants.

And he knew he missed his children—his young children, not the successful, confident young adults he now spoke with on the phone or saw on holidays and the occasional ski weekend at the house in Vermont. He missed everything about the early years of parenting—their first house, in Windsor, Connecticut, a little five-room ranch, with the huge backyard, and the flowering crab tree, and the little hill they would all roll down in the kids' overloaded wagon, crashing in the grass at the bottom. He missed the stories—the Roald Dahl years—the vacations, the wide-eyed wonderment of so many Christmases and birthdays, and the celebration of so many excellent report cards.

He still had vivid memories of the kids' sports and the many teams Scott and Jennifer had played on, the T-ball, softball, baseball, and soccer games that he and Ellen had dragged their folding chairs to, and the basketball games at the rec center in the winter—pretending, along with the other adults, that they didn't really care who won.

“Charlie, you still with us?” Lucien's voice got Charlie's attention. “What's up?”

Charlie looked over at his friend and blew out a cloud of smoke.
No, Ellen's private life was her own. She didn't deserve to have it discussed by two men smoking Cuban cigars, like they were debating whether the Yankees had enough starting pitching. And it wasn't Lucien's problem.
Charlie would use his time with Lucien for another purpose.

“Lucien, I've been thinking about going outside, about building something. Being an engineer again.”

Lucien Mackey leaned back in his chair and smiled. “Happens to all of us, Charlie. But you're pretty damn important to the company right where you are. OntAmex is a huge account, and you're the one who makes it happen.”

“OntAmex isn't going anywhere, Lucien. It doesn't need me anymore.”

Lucien raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “It's
your
bonus, Charlie. We'll give it some thought. Maybe we can find a good project for you.”

 

CHAPTER 3

 

N
atty used the downhill run to South County Road as her warm-up, jogging easily until she turned east toward Old Red Bone. Then she picked up the pace. Her first two miles were always her fastest, then slower for the steep climb up to Main Street and around the long tail of the mountain that would bring her back down to the top of Oakes Hollow. Today she planned to take a detour, which would add about a mile to her regular five-mile circuit.

Natty Oakes loved to run, and she loved to run fast and hard. When she got her wind and her rhythm just right, she felt as if she could run forever. After a while she'd enter a runner's trance, conscious of every muscle and joint, feeling the inside of her rib cage as her lungs expanded and contracted, the blood and oxygen coursing through her body. The trance would clear her mind and allow her to enter a fantasy world far away from West Virginia.

Today, Natty couldn't daydream. She didn't want to miss the turnoff on the north side of the road halfway to Red Bone. She was surprised to see a pickup coming toward her. It was unusual to find anyone out this early. The truck slowed down and made a right-hand turn onto the road Natty was looking for.

She followed it down the narrow road, which, like most of the local roads in McDowell County, was cracked and rutted from years of use by overloaded coal trucks. There was no sign of the pickup, but it could only be going to one place, which made Natty uneasy. This was the road to the new electric-generating plant being built by OntAmex Energy. It was the biggest construction project in McDowell County's history.

Two years earlier, Natty, Buck, the kids, and the rest of the Oakes clan, along with several hundred other residents of Red Bone and surrounding towns, came down this road one Saturday in late June for a public picnic and a rare visit by the governor. A joint announcement was to be made with officials of the OntAmex Energy Company regarding a project that would have a
monumental impact on the future of McDowell County.
It was a show that the people of Red Bone would long remember and a day that Natty Oakes would never forget.

The picnic took place at the site of the new plant, a two-hundred-acre plateau hidden from view by a ring of heavily wooded hills. The site had been a surface mine, leveled down to the bedrock in the early seventies. The celebration was scheduled to start at noon, and it was obvious that an army of people had been working since early morning to get the site ready. Two large trucks were parked off to the side of the field, behind a stack of cargo boxes from a Charleston catering company. A huge three-masted circus tent had been set up to shelter several long buffet tables filled with food of an endless variety.

Behind the tent was a battery of aluminum-framed charcoal stoves, manned by several dozen white-clad cooks. Half chickens and pork chops, along with hamburgers, hot dogs, and sausages, covered the smoking grills. At each end of the tent was a complete bar and a large cooler filled with ice and bottles of several types of Molson beer. It was a mystery why only Molson was on hand, but it was ice-cold and there was plenty of it, so no one complained. Uniformed bartenders mixed and poured, while some obviously imported waitresses circulated to take drink orders. It only took a little while for the Oakes brothers and the rest of the crowd to get comfortable with the idea that the drinks were actually free.

The show really got started when a man from a public relations firm in Charleston mounted a stage at one end of the field and started talking over a huge loudspeaker system. He welcomed everyone and made a little speech about what a great day it was for McDowell County and how some very important people would soon be dropping by. He was still talking when he was drowned out by a deafening roar coming straight toward them through the woods. The ungodly noise sent the adults out of the tent and the children jumping around in circles, wide-eyed with both fright and glee. The PR man yelled something over the microphone and pointed up in the air. Suddenly four helicopters appeared just over the treetops. One after the other they flew over the tent and banked into a sharp left turn before landing, one by one, in a roped-off area at one side of the clearing.

The crowd burst into applause. The helicopters were magnificent twelve-passenger jet-powered Bell 430s, finished entirely in high-gloss black with dark-tinted windows. Silver lightning bolts adorned both sides of the cabins, over the distinctive logo of
ONTAMEX ENERGY
.

Natty sat at a picnic table, eating lunch with her sisters-in-law Sally and Charlotte and Buck's mother, Rose. Cat had scrambled up onto her lap at the first sound of the helicopters, holding a ketchup-covered hot dog in one hand and a can of orange soda in the other. Pie was running around with Sally's boys, trying to get close to the helicopters.

Buck and his brothers and a half dozen of their buddies had found a comfortable spot inside the tent. They'd moved one of the picnic tables inside and kept one of the young waitresses on a continuous circle between them and the bar.

Natty nursed a Molson Light, engrossed by the show unfolding before her. She'd never seen the governor before, and was eager to see the people arriving on the helicopters, but she couldn't help taking a quick glance every few minutes over at Buck. He always enjoyed himself so much when he was drinking with his friends. It wasn't about being drunk; he could be plenty miserable when he was drunk. It was about rehashing the old times with old pals, recalling past adventures that men loved to talk about with a beer bottle in hand. Buck became animated, gesturing with his hands, laughing, always at the center of attention—just like he was as a child when Natty first saw him, when he was in sixth grade and she was in fourth, many years before he even knew she existed. She wished he'd bring some of that good nature home occasionally and share it with his children.

The helicopters unloaded their passengers. Natty picked out the governor right away, from his distinctive silver hair, and thought she recognized a few other county officials. One of the helicopters unloaded a television crew. On her mother's lap, Cat was wilting in the hot sun and had rubbed her ketchup-covered face against Natty's white tank top.

The passengers from the third helicopter were introduced as OntAmex executives. There were five men and a very attractive professionally dressed woman, who carried a leather notebook and was talking on a cellphone. One of the men from OntAmex was obviously in charge. He looked to be in his midforties, with black hair combed straight back. His charcoal suit was perfectly cut to his athletic build. The governor made his way through the throng to lead him to the stage, the woman with the notebook following closely behind.

The man at the microphone welcomed the passengers from the last helicopter, introducing them as representatives of an engineering company from New York and a law firm from Charleston. Natty watched as another group of expensively dressed men joined the others near the stage.