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Heartbroken Dad Buys A $59 Abandoned Chapel — The Haunting Notebook Inside Changed Everything — Transcript

by The Forgotten Acre Farm · 20,628 words · 2,960 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00Orig in October. A chapel the color of
0:03wet bark. Its tin roof gone copper with
0:06rust. Two narrow boat-shaped windows
0:09watching the valley like a face that has
0:11been waiting a long time to be
0:13recognized.
0:14Below the ridge, the Elk River runs
0:16clear. Underground in a plume 60 ft
0:19beneath the yellow maples. Something
0:21that has been moving since before the
0:23century turned keeps moving. Inch by
0:26patient inch. A pickup climbs a
0:28switchback. A 98 Ford Ranger mud on the
0:31quarter panels. It stops in the
0:33clearing. A man steps out with his back
0:36to us. Dark brown canvas and leather
0:38jacket hood bunched soft at the collar.
0:41Heavy brown pack on his shoulders. Dark
0:44curls lifting in the wind off the river.
0:47In his hand, a brass key on a stub of
0:49red string. 29 years old. $541 to his
0:54name. A 2-year-old daughter asleep in
0:56the back seat. and a notebook inside
0:58open on a stool waiting. The hospital
1:01hallway smelled like bleach and lemon
1:03candy. Jonah Driscoll sat in the plastic
1:06chair with his elbows on his knees and
1:07his hands held open in front of him like
1:09a man waiting for something to be placed
1:11there. His palms were marked with the
1:14old topography of his trade. Welder's
1:17callouses. A silver seam along the base
1:20of his left thumb from a grinder slip
1:22when he was 19. a newer burn on his
1:25right wrist from a tack bead that spit
1:27the wrong way last August. His hands
1:29were 29 years old and they looked like
1:31they had worked for 40. Behind the
1:34second set of double doors, his daughter
1:35Posie was finishing a dialysis session.
1:382 years old, 22 lb, a kidney the size of
1:42a walnut. Because that was the thing
1:45nobody told you about having a child
1:47born sick. The world kept turning. Rent
1:51came due. The electric bill came due.
1:54The clinic bill came due in installments
1:56of $640 that his bank account understood
2:00only as a kind of weather it could not
2:02survive. He glanced at his phone. The
2:05screen was dim. The screen was always
2:07dim now. Bank of Appalachia.
2:11Available balance $541.17.
2:16He turned it face down on his thigh.
2:19Across the hall, a nurse in burgundy
2:21scrubs was reading a magazine with a
2:23bride on the cover. She chewed her gum
2:26in slow, deliberate rounds and did not
2:28look up when Jonah coughed into his
2:30fist. He didn't want her to. He had
2:32become allergic to being seen. Hannah
2:35used to tell him he had a face that
2:36photographed sad even when he was happy.
2:39A jaw too square for his cheekbones.
2:42Eyes a color somewhere between slate and
2:44the river in March. a pale scar nicking
2:47the hinge of his left jaw, where a TIG
2:49arc had kicked backward into him at the
2:51pipe fitter academy in Huntington back
2:53when he was 21, and still believed that
2:55if you worked hard enough, the world was
2:57obligated to be fair. Hannah had died 23
3:00months ago, preeacclampsia,
3:02then a stroke, then nothing. She had
3:06held Posie for 41 minutes. Jonah had
3:08watched her hold Posie. He had watched
3:11her hand go slack.
3:13He had watched the nurse take Posie away
3:16and then watched the other nurse try to
3:18find a pulse that was no longer there.
3:20And he had thought with the slow clarity
3:23of a man watching a building collapse in
3:25another country that the universe did
3:27not care about him and had never cared
3:30about him and had only pretended to. And
3:32still Posie had lived. That counted.
3:36That had to count. The doors opened. A
3:39technician wheeled Posie out in a kitty
3:41wagon they had decorated with yellow
3:42duck stickers. Her hair stuck up in soft
3:45toughs the color of dark honey. There
3:48was a band-aid taped to the inside crook
3:50of her elbow. She saw him and announced
3:53that her juice box was gone. He
3:55crouched.
3:56He kissed the top of her head and
3:58smelled saline and baby shampoo and the
4:01faintly metallic smell of her blood when
4:03the machine had been working on it. He
4:06promised another juice box was waiting
4:08in the truck. She asked about her
4:10pacifier
4:12also in the truck. She started a third
4:15item.
4:17He cut her off, grinning for the first
4:18time all morning and told her everything
4:21she loved was in the truck. She
4:23considered this and seemed for the
4:25moment to accept the terms. The nurse
4:27with the bridal magazine finally looked
4:29up. The next appointment was Thursday.
4:32if the swelling returned, he should call
4:34the clinic line. She said the words
4:37pediatric nefrology, the way other
4:39people said the weather. And he nodded
4:42and thanked her and carried his daughter
4:44out through the sliding doors into a
4:46parking lot that smelled like diesel and
4:48wet leaves. October in West Virginia,
4:51everything the color of rust. He
4:53strapped Posie into her car seat. He
4:55kissed her forehead. He closed the door
4:58with the softness of a man who had
4:59learned in the last two years that doors
5:01could be weapons if you weren't careful.
5:03Then he sat in the driver's seat of the
5:051998 Ford Ranger. His father had left
5:08him and he looked at his hands on the
5:10steering wheel and he thought about the
5:11$541
5:13and the no job and the child with a
5:15kidney that was not finished growing and
5:18the mother in Charleston who had started
5:19asking what year it was and the 23
5:22months of being alone in a bed that
5:24still smelled like someone else. He
5:26didn't finish the thought. He never
5:28finished it. He turned the key and the
5:30ranger coughed and caught and he pointed
5:32it toward Deerlick, West Virginia
5:33because the funeral was at 11. Burl
5:36Rafferty had died on a Tuesday. Kidney
5:39cancer, stage 4 by the time they found
5:42it. 61 years old. A pipe fitter for
5:45Argenton fuochemical for 36 of those
5:48years, which was long enough that his
5:50hands had taken the shape of a wrench
5:52even when he was holding nothing. Burl
5:54had taught Jonah how to lay a bead when
5:56Jonah was 14. Burl had been Clayton
5:59Driscoll's shift foreman and Clayton's
6:02best friend and the man who had carried
6:05Clayton's coffin at the front left
6:07corner because Clayton had been Jonah's
6:10father and Burl had announced that day
6:1311 years ago that the boy was not going
6:16to lift his old man alone. Burl had been
6:20one of those people a certain kind of
6:22American town built itself around
6:24without noticing.
6:26A quiet man, a churchgoing man,
6:30a man who kept his promises in a
6:33notebook in his shirt pocket and crossed
6:35them off with a stub of carpenters's
6:36pencil. The funeral was at Deerlick
6:39Methodist, a clabboard church the color
6:41of skimmed milk, with a steeple that
6:44leaned very slightly east as if
6:46listening for something. Jonah parked
6:48the ranger behind a hearse. He carried
6:51Posie up the stone steps on his hip. She
6:54was wearing a corduroy jumper the color
6:56of a pumpkin, which was the one dressy
6:58thing she owned, and he had put a yellow
7:01barret in her hair that had belonged to
7:03Hannah. The pews were full. He slid into
7:06the back row. Pastor Delphine Albbright
7:09was already at the pulpit. She was a
7:11thin black woman in her 60s with reading
7:14glasses pushed up into her gray hair.
7:16And she had known Burl since the 1980s.
7:19And when she spoke his name, her voice
7:21did the thing voices did when a name
7:24belonged to a person you had actually
7:26loved.
7:28The vowels got longer. The consonants
7:31got softer. The name became a small
7:34weighted thing instead of a label. She
7:37called Burl a man of few words and many
7:40deeds. She reminded them that when the
7:42Elk River flooded in '04, he had carried
7:45the pastor's own mother out of her
7:47kitchen with the water up to his belt.
7:50Several women in the pews were weeping
7:52quietly. One of them was pulling tissue
7:55after tissue from a travel pack of
7:57Kleenex the way a magician pulled
7:58scarves. Jonah held Posie against his
8:01shoulder. She was heavy and warm and
8:03asleep. She had a small bubble of drool
8:06at the corner of her mouth. He felt it
8:09dampen the collar of his jacket, and the
8:11sensation of a sleeping child's drool on
8:13a borrowed collar was so specifically a
8:15thing Hannah would have laughed about
8:16that he had to close his eyes for a long
8:18second. Because grief was not a wave.
8:21Grief was a chair in every room you
8:22walked into for the rest of your life.
8:25You just learned eventually not to sit
8:27in it unless you had the time. The
8:29pastor finished. The choir sang two
8:32verses of softly and tenderly, which was
8:35Burl's favorite hymn, which Jonah had
8:37not known.
8:38There were things you learned about a
8:40man only at his funeral, which was
8:42unfair, because by then he could not
8:45confirm them.
8:47The casket closed with a sound Jonah
8:49felt in his sternum. Afterward, in the
8:51fellowship hall, the women of Deerlick
8:53Methodist had laid out a spread that
8:55reminded Jonah of every potluck of his
8:58childhood.
8:59Pyrex dishes of green bean casserole, a
9:02ham on a cutting board, develed eggs
9:05arranged in concentric rings on a glass
9:07tray that was older than Jonah, sweet
9:10tea in a pitcher sweating onto a lace
9:13doily, a jello salad with marshmallows
9:16and shredded carrots that Jonah had
9:18never in any of his 29 years seen anyone
9:21actually eat, and yet which appeared at
9:23every funeral like a tradition no one
9:26would admit to maintaining. He got Posie
9:28a paper plate of grapes. He got himself
9:31coffee in a styrofoam cup. He stood by
9:34the window and watched the parking lot
9:36and tried not to be noticed. Burl's
9:38widow found him anyway. Odessa Rafferty
9:41was 71 years old and small the way a Ren
9:44is small, which is to say in a way that
9:46was mostly bones and attentive
9:48stillness.
9:50She wore a navy cardigan over a black
9:52dress and her white hair was pinned up
9:54in a bun with a small enamel yellow bird
9:57at the base. Her eyes were the color of
9:59weak coffee. Her hands were folded in
10:02front of her the way a woman's hands
10:04folded when she had spent a lifetime
10:06being the one in the room responsible
10:08for the next thing. She touched Jonah's
10:10elbow very lightly and asked him by name
10:12to come walk with her. He followed her
10:15out of the fellowship hall and down a
10:17corridor that smelled like old himnels
10:18and furniture. polish. She led him into
10:21the pastor's small office. The pastor
10:24was not there. The desk was stacked with
10:27offering envelopes. Odessa shut the
10:30door. She did not sit down. She did not
10:34ask him to sit down. She looked at him
10:37with an expression that was neither
10:38grief nor pity, but something older than
10:41both, which Jonah would later recognize
10:43as resolve.
10:46Burl had told her. She explained that if
10:48he went first, this had to come to
10:50Jonah. Not the lawyer, not the bank,
10:54him.
10:55She pulled a manila envelope from her
10:57tote bag. The envelope was teacolled at
11:00the edges. It had been handled over
11:02years by hands that respected it. His
11:05name was written on the front in blue
11:07ballpoint pen in a hand that was not his
11:10father's and not Odessa's.
11:12He realized with a slow turn of the
11:14chest that it was Burl's handwriting.
11:17Jonah Clayton Driscoll
11:20only. He took it. It weighed almost
11:24nothing. The weight of three sheets of
11:26paper and something small and metal.
11:29Odessa warned him softly. If he chose to
11:32open it tonight, he would have questions
11:33she could not answer. If he chose to
11:36burn it, she would understand. Burl had
11:39said either was all right. The only
11:42wrong thing she repeated slower now was
11:44to open this halfway and set it down. He
11:47meant to say yes, ma'am. He meant to
11:49thank her for lunch. He meant to tell
11:52her he was sorry for her loss.
11:55What came out was a stammered question
11:57about what Burl had been to his daddy.
11:59Odessa's mouth did something that was
12:01almost a smile and almost not. The one
12:04who warned him, she answered. And then
12:06she opened the office door and walked
12:08back out toward the fellowship hall. and
12:10Jonah stood for a long time holding an
12:12envelope. He did not understand in a
12:14room that smelled like old himnels with
12:17his daughter asleep against his
12:18shoulder. He waited 2 days, not because
12:22he was afraid, although he was. He
12:24waited because Posie had a bad night
12:26Wednesday, a low fever, a cry that
12:29wouldn't settle. and he spent 11 hours
12:32walking her up and down the hallway of
12:34their double wide in a town called
12:36Harker Creek, humming the only song he
12:40could remember all the words to which
12:42was, "You are my sunshine."
12:45He hummed it slow, then slower, then
12:49slower still until it became a kind of
12:51lullabi. He was singing to himself as
12:53much as to her.
12:55She fell asleep at 6:00 a.m. He laid her
12:58in the crib. He went to the kitchen. The
13:01envelope sat on the formica table where
13:03he had left it next to a stack of
13:04unopened bills and a dish of car keys
13:07and a wooden coaster Hannah had bought
13:09at a craft fair in Lewisburg the summer
13:11before she died. He made coffee. He
13:14drank it standing up. Then he sat down
13:17at the table and opened the envelope.
13:20Three things. One, a brass key old the
13:23color of an old penny with a stub of red
13:25string tied through the eye. to a
13:27handdrawn map on a sheet of graph paper
13:29folded in quarters. Pencil a road he did
13:33not recognize. A ridge. A creek. A small
13:37square marked with the letters CH inside
13:40it. Three. A photocopy of a tax notice
13:43from the McDow County Clerk's Office. A
13:467.4 acre parcel. Delinquent property
13:49taxes totaling $59.17.
13:53The parcel was listed as sold through
13:55taxdeed at the county's monthly online
13:57auction lot 211 open for assignment to
14:00the first qualified private party.
14:03The parcel was in a holler called
14:04Breakers Fold, which was a place Jonah
14:07had not thought about in a long time,
14:09because Breaker's Fold was where his
14:11father used to disappear to on
14:12Saturdays. Where Clayton would say he
14:15was going up to clear my head, which
14:17Jonah, at 7 years old, had understood
14:19only as a code adults used for I am
14:22leaving, and you cannot come until the
14:24Saturday. Clayton came home with a
14:26splinter in his thumb and let Jonah pull
14:29it out with a pair of eyebrow tweezers
14:30from Merrily's bathroom drawer.
14:33Clayton had told him, "Good job, bud."
14:35He had never said what the splinter was
14:37from. Jonah had been eight 21 years ago.
14:42He sat at the kitchen table with his
14:43father's splinter in his memory and the
14:45brass key in his hand, and he understood
14:48for the first time that there had been a
14:50place.
14:51The hands you remembered a father by
14:53were the hands you remembered a father
14:55by, which was not nothing, which was
14:58almost everything.
15:00He paid the $59 at the Mcdow County
15:03Clerk's office at 10:14 the next
15:06morning. The clerk was a middle-aged
15:07woman in a cardigan the color of old
15:09mustard, and she looked at the parcel
15:11number, and she looked at Jonah, and she
15:14looked at the parcel number again. She
15:16asked in the tone of a person asking if
15:18he was certain about the last slice
15:20whether he knew what he was buying. He
15:23told her he was sure. She printed the
15:25tax deed. She stamped it. She slid it
15:27across the counter in a plastic sleeve,
15:29remarking that the parcel had been on
15:31their books 10 years, that nobody wanted
15:33it, that the access road was barely a
15:36road, that the power line did not go up
15:38that far, that he would have no
15:40neighbors for a mile, that he said
15:42quietly was all right. She asked, half
15:45kind and half warning if he knew what
15:47was up there. He thought he was about
15:49to. She stamped a second form. She
15:52wished him luck. He put the deed in his
15:54glove box and he drove home and he
15:56picked up Posie from his cousin Lena's
15:58trailer at the end of the road and he
15:59fed her macaroni with cut up hot dogs.
16:02And he put her in her car seat and he
16:04told her they were going on a drive. She
16:07wanted to know where to see something
16:09her granddaddy had left for him. He said
16:11she wanted to know why. He didn't know
16:14how to answer that, so he started the
16:16truck. The road up to Breakers Fold
16:18began as asphalt and became gravel and
16:21became packed dirt and became in the
16:22last mile two parallel ruts through
16:25yellow leaves so deep the ranger made no
16:27sound at all. Only the suspension
16:30creaking, only Posy's small voice in the
16:33back seat singing something she had made
16:35up syllables with no words. The maples
16:38had turned. The oaks had turned. The
16:40sumac along the ditches was a red so
16:43saturated it looked wet. Jonah drove
16:45with one hand on the wheel and the other
16:47wrapped around the brass key in his
16:48jacket pocket. The key was warm from
16:51being held. He could feel the hole in
16:53the eye where the red string had gone
16:55through. The road rose, rose again,
16:59switched back. Then the trees opened and
17:02he saw it. He stopped the truck. He got
17:05out. He walked three paces up the slope,
17:08which was a shelf of gray granite the
17:10size of a kitchen, and he stood there
17:12with the wind coming up off the Elk
17:14River behind him, and he looked. The
17:16chapel was built into the hillside the
17:18way a thing is built, when the people
17:20building it did not have the money to
17:22level ground. The pitch of the roof was
17:24severe, an A-frame so steep it looked
17:27like praying hands. The tin had gone the
17:30color of old copper, the rust, so even
17:33it was almost beautiful.
17:36The siding was dark walnut stained board
17:38and batten weathered to the color of wet
17:41bark. The front wall held two narrow
17:44windows shaped like upended boats. The
17:47glass was fogged from the inside, but
17:49Jonah could see the ghost of mullions
17:51behind the fog, handworked, not
17:53storebought. The door was oak 3 in
17:56thick. The hinges were iron and had been
17:59forged, not stamped.
18:02He knew the difference because his
18:03father had taught him the difference,
18:05and he had forgotten that his father had
18:07taught him the difference until the
18:09moment he saw them. To the right of the
18:11chapel, a low concrete silo, chest high,
18:14was swallowed in Virginia creeper gone
18:16fire red for the season. Behind the
18:19forest fell down toward the river, and
18:21he could hear the river. He had
18:23forgotten he could hear the river from
18:25here. He had been eight. The sun was
18:28going behind the ridge. The sky above
18:31the roof was turning the color of a
18:32peach that had been cut and left on the
18:34counter. A long pink cloud lay across
18:37the west like something unraveling.
18:40Below the cloud, the sky was a blue so
18:42soft it looked like the inside of a
18:44shell. And Jonah Driscoll stood with his
18:46back to the camera of his own life. Tall
18:49shoulders squared dark brown hair in the
18:52kind of wind tossed curl his mother used
18:54to call. That boy's hair runs its own
18:57schedule in his worn canvas and leather
18:59work jacket. The hood bunched soft at
19:02his collar, his heavy brown pack on his
19:05back with its buckled front pockets and
19:07its frayed shoulder straps, his faded
19:09jeans going dark at the knee from
19:11kneeling to tie Posy's shoe 20 minutes
19:14earlier. He looked, he did not move.
19:17Posy's voice came up from behind him.
19:20She had climbed down out of the truck.
19:22She was holding the hem of his jacket.
19:25She said one word, "House."
19:28He confirmed it quietly. Grandpa's
19:31house. She tried another big. He agreed.
19:36Then she said, "Pretty witch from a
19:382-year-old was a sentence that could
19:40knock a man's knees out from under him
19:42if he was not standing right." He
19:44crouched. He picked her up. He walked
19:47her down the slope and across the
19:48clearing to the door. The key fit. Of
19:51course, it fit. The tumblers turned with
19:54the small, bright sound of a thing that
19:56had been oiled once by a man who
19:58intended to come back. The door swung
20:01inward on its iron hinges and did not
20:03creek. It swung the way a door swings
20:06when it has been hung by someone who
20:08respected doors. Jonas stepped in. He
20:12did not step in like a man who had
20:14bought a thing for $59.
20:17He stepped in like a man who had been
20:18invited. Inside was not a chapel. Not in
20:22any sense he had expected. There were no
20:25pews. There was no altar. There was no
20:27cross on the back wall. There was no
20:30pulpit. There was a workbench. There
20:33was, in fact, the most beautiful
20:35workbench Jonah had ever seen in his
20:37life. It ran the length of the back
20:39wall, hard maple, dovetailed at the
20:42corners. The top worn smooth and
20:44slightly dished in the center from
20:46decades of hands and tools and pressure.
20:49A vice at either end, one wood, one
20:52metal. A tool rack above, hand cut, with
20:55the silhouettes of each tool traced in
20:57pencil behind their pegs, so you would
20:59know at a glance which tool was out of
21:01place. A chisel outline was empty. One
21:05chisel out of place. Jonah set Posie on
21:08her feet. She toddled immediately toward
21:10a sawdust pile and sat down in it like a
21:12cat finding sun. He stepped forward
21:15slowly. The chapel windows let in a dim
21:18honey light that fell across the bench
21:19in two slanted bars. Dust moved through
21:22the bars like something being decided.
21:25To the left of the bench stood a tool
21:26chest the size of a church pew lid open
21:30trays nested wooden handled gouges
21:32carving knives, calipers, a set of
21:34marking gauges, a dovetail saw with a
21:37brass back and a block plane. He
21:40recognized immediately, because it had
21:42sat on the shelf above his father's
21:43workbench at home when Jonah was little,
21:46and he had been told by Clayton, in a
21:47voice that permitted no negotiation,
21:49that he was not to touch it until he was
21:5110. He had never touched it. Clayton had
21:54died when he was 18. The block plane had
21:57in the intervening years disappeared. It
21:59had not disappeared. It had come up
22:02here. He touched it. The brass adjuster
22:06was cool. The soul was clean. There was
22:09a thin film of chameleia oil on the
22:12body, which was what you oiled a plane
22:14with if you knew what you were doing. If
22:16you were a man who cared, if you were a
22:18man who had been raised by a man who
22:20cared. He set the plane down. He turned.
22:24On the far side of the workbench, on a
22:26stool that had been pulled out as if
22:28someone had been sitting there until a
22:30moment before Jonah walked in, lay an
22:32open book, a leather notebook,
22:35handstitched. The cover the color of a
22:38wet creek stone. Open. Open to a page.
22:43Jonah walked toward it the way you walk
22:45toward a dog you do not know yet. He did
22:48not touch it. Not immediately. He
22:51looked. The page was dated July 11th,
22:542013. The handwriting was his father's.
22:58He knew it the way you know the sound of
23:00your own name shouted in a crowd.
23:03Clayton Driscoll's handwriting had
23:05always been a tidy, blocky, slightly
23:07leaning print. The letters pressed too
23:10hard into the paper the way a man who
23:11had learned to write before computers
23:13tended to press.
23:16The dot on the eye was always a short
23:18dash. The S always closed at the bottom.
23:22Jonah read Dr. Pendergrass in Beckley
23:24had confirmed what Burl and Clayton were
23:26afraid of elevated serum levels. The
23:31number was in the second column of the
23:32lab report attached in the back pocket
23:35of the book.
23:36The compound was identified as
23:38perfluinoic acid which the plant called
23:42C6 feed in internal memos but which was
23:47actually per the SDS.
23:50Burl had copied last month the longchain
23:52variant. They had been telling the men
23:54it was the short chain. It was not. It
23:58had not been for at least nine years.
24:00Jonah read the sentence twice, then a
24:02third time. Then he sat down on the
24:05stool because his legs had made that
24:07decision for him. He turned the page.
24:11July 18th, 2013.
24:13Clayton had mapped out the well cluster
24:15on the north side of Deerlick. if the
24:18plume was moving at the rate Burl's old
24:19man at the pump house had estimated it
24:22had reached their well in Harker Creek
24:23around 1998.
24:25Maril Lee had been pregnant with Jonah
24:27in 1996.
24:29His father two decades later had
24:30written, "I am afraid to do the math."
24:33July 29th. He would not speak of this at
24:35home. The boy was 17. Merrily was
24:39Merrily. If he said the word cancer in
24:41that house, she would stop sleeping.
24:45August 3rd. He had started this book. He
24:49would keep it here. Burl knew the
24:51location. If something happened to him
24:54before the thing was finished, Burl
24:56would know what to do. Jonah's hands
24:58were shaking. He was not aware they were
25:01shaking until he saw them against the
25:03pages which were still and his hands
25:05which were not. He turned another page
25:07and another and another lists. The lists
25:12went on for 40 pages. Column one name.
25:16Column two, Argent Melon employee
25:18number. Column three, hire date. Column
25:23four, date of first reported symptom.
25:26Column 5, diagnosis.
25:28Column six, date of death when
25:30applicable. The list ran 47 names long,
25:3447 men. The entries ran from 2001 to
25:382015. Clayton Driscoll's own name
25:41appeared on page 39. Higher date 1983.
25:46First symptom June 2014.
25:49Diagnosis September 2014.
25:53Renal cell carcinoma stage 3 likely
25:56attributable per Dr. Pendergrass to
26:00chronic PFOA
26:02exposure water source consistent with
26:04plant effluent plume. Date of death,
26:07blank to be filled by witness. Burl
26:10Raffert's handwriting in blue ballpoint
26:13had filled in the blank.
26:16February 19th, 2015.
26:19Jonah pressed the heel of his hand
26:21against his mouth. Posie in the sawdust
26:23pile had found a wooden peg and was
26:25examining it with the gravity of a child
26:27who had been handed a planet. He turned
26:30one more page, and here the handwriting
26:33changed. Here Clayton had drawn a
26:36bracket at the top of the page and
26:38labeled it Gian two children of listed
26:41men suspected unconfirmed.
26:45Below it a second list shorter 12 names
26:49birth years suspected congenital
26:52conditions. Jonah's eyes went down the
26:54column. Driscoll Posey projected D O
26:58late 2024.
27:00Suspected renal cardiac or cleft
27:03monitor. The entry had been written in
27:062014,
27:0710 years before Posie was born. his
27:11daughter.
27:12Posie had been predicted in his dying
27:14father's handwriting in a notebook, on a
27:16stool, in a chapel, on a ridge, in a
27:19holler, in a county nobody wanted 10
27:21years before she had drawn her first
27:23breath. which was the moment Jonah
27:25Driscoll understood with the kind of
27:26understanding that arrives all at once
27:29and reorganizes a man's entire life
27:31around itself that his father had not
27:34died by accident and his daughter had
27:37not been sick by chance and the water in
27:39his kitchen tap in Harker Creek, West
27:42Virginia, had been poisoning three
27:44generations of his bloodline since
27:46before he was born. He did not scream.
27:49He did not cry. He closed the notebook
27:52very gently, the way you close the door
27:53of a child who had just fallen asleep.
27:56He laid his hand flat on the cover. He
28:00spoke to the room to the workbench to
28:02the empty chisel outline on the pegboard
28:04above him to the father who had been
28:06dead 11 years and had still somehow been
28:08writing to him. Okay, just that. Just
28:13the one word. Posie looked up from the
28:16sawdust pile and asked if daddy was mad.
28:19He told her no. Daddy was just listening
28:23to who? She wondered to Grandpa. She
28:26considered this and asked with the
28:28serious logic of a 2-year-old whether
28:30Grandpa was in the wood. He told her,
28:32"Yes, sugar." Grandpa was in the wood.
28:35She accepted this and returned to the
28:37peg. He stayed in the chapel until the
28:40honey light went out of the windows. He
28:42did not touch the notebook again. He did
28:44not need to. the 47 names and the 12
28:48children and the bracket and his
28:49daughter's name in it had moved into him
28:52and taken up residence in the place
28:54behind the breastbone where important
28:56things lived and he knew he would not
28:58need to reread them to remember them. He
29:01would carry them. He walked the workshop
29:04slowly. He understood piece by piece
29:06what his father had made here. A
29:08doveetailed cedar hope chest lid propped
29:10open was half finished. The pins cut,
29:13the tails not yet cut. A set of mortise
29:16chisels laid out on a strip of felt
29:18beside it in order of width the way a
29:19surgeon's instruments were laid out. A
29:22rocking chair and walnut. The arms
29:23shaped by hand with a spokes have three
29:25of the four back spindles complete. A
29:28pencil sketch pinned to the wall above
29:30it. A woman's name in the margin.
29:32Merrily
29:34Christmas 2015. The question mark had
29:37been written harder than the rest of the
29:39words. Christmas 2015 had been 10 months
29:42after Clayton died. The chair had never
29:45been given. Behind the chair, a small
29:47pine shelf.
29:49On the shelf, three objects.
29:52A tin coffee can full of hand cut wooden
29:55pegs. A framed photo of Marilie and
29:58seven-year-old Jonah standing in front
29:59of a half-built birdhouse. And a King
30:02James Bible worn to softness at the
30:04corners bookmarked with a strip of red
30:06ribbon.
30:08Jonah lifted the Bible. It opened at the
30:10ribbon. Isaiah 61. underlined in pencil,
30:15to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion,
30:17to give unto them beauty for ashes, the
30:20oil of joy for mourning, the garment of
30:22praise, for the spirit of heaviness,
30:24that they might be called trees of
30:26righteousness, the planting of the Lord
30:28that he might be glorified,
30:30beauty for ashes. Jonah closed the
30:33Bible. He set it back on the shelf
30:35exactly where it had been. He adjusted
30:37it by a/4 in so the spine lined up with
30:40the edge of the pine. He did not know
30:43why he did this. He did it because his
30:46father would have done it. Then he
30:48picked up Posie. She was heavy with
30:51sleep. She fit against his shoulder like
30:53a thing designed for that shoulder. He
30:56stepped out into the clearing. The sky
30:58had gone purple at the top and pink at
31:00the bottom. The Elk River was running
31:03low and clear below the ridge. The silo
31:06stood against the chapel wall covered in
31:08red vine. A barred owl called from the
31:12maples once and once more and then went
31:15quiet. Jonah stood with his daughter
31:17asleep against his collar. They had been
31:20poisoning the water in his daughter's
31:22bottle since before she was born. His
31:24father had spent the last two years of
31:26his life writing down the names of men
31:28they had already killed. Burl Rafferty
31:31had died knowing all of this and had not
31:34said. And then because the mind is a
31:37thing that will do anything to keep
31:38moving, Jonah thought something simpler.
31:42He knew how to use every tool on that
31:44pegboard, which was his father's gift,
31:47which was not nothing, which was almost
31:50everything. He drove home in the dark.
31:52The rers's headlights cut through a
31:54corridor of yellow maples that closed
31:56behind him as he went. Posie slept in
32:00the back seat. He drove slow because the
32:02deer were moving at dusk and because he
32:05could not afford to replace a bumper and
32:08because he needed the drive to be long.
32:11He did not call anybody. He did not call
32:14Rafferty Dunn, the lawyer in Charleston,
32:16whose name was taped to the inside of
32:18his father's old wallet. He did not call
32:20his cousin Lena. He did not call his
32:23mother at the memory care wing in
32:25Charleston because what would he tell a
32:28woman who was no longer sure what year
32:30it was? Hi mom. Dad was murdered by a
32:34chemical over 14 years by the company
32:38that paid our mortgage. He did not call
32:40anyone. He drove. He got home to the
32:43double wide at 10:20. He carried Posie
32:46to her crib. He changed her diaper
32:49without waking her.
32:51He turned on the owl nightlight that
32:53threw stars on the ceiling. He stood
32:55over the crib for one long minute,
32:57watching her chest rise and fall,
32:59watching the pulse in her soft neck,
33:02watching the twitch of her small foot
33:04kick against the sleep sack. He
33:06whispered that he was sorry, sugar. He
33:09whispered that she was not supposed to
33:11be in that book. He whispered that he
33:13was going to get her name out of it.
33:15Then he walked out of the room and he
33:17closed the door very softly.
33:20He went to the kitchen. He stood at the
33:22sink. He turned on the tap. The water
33:25ran clear. Which was the thing about
33:28Appalachia and the thing about water and
33:30the thing about 47 men on a list in a
33:33leather notebook on a stool in a chapel
33:36on a ridge. The water always ran clear.
33:40That was the whole point. That was why
33:43nobody had believed Burl Raerty when
33:46Burl Rafferty had almost in 2008 tried
33:49to say something at a town meeting and
33:51then had looked out at the 200 faces of
33:53his neighbors. His neighbors who worked
33:56at the plant, whose kids worked at the
33:58plant, whose fathers had worked at the
34:00plant, whose mortgages were paid by the
34:02plant, whose grocery money and insulin
34:05money and little league registrations
34:07were paid by the plant, and had closed
34:10his mouth and sat down, and had carried
34:12the closing of his mouth as a stone in
34:14his chest for 11 years, until the cancer
34:18finally sat down on his kidney, and told
34:20him in the only language left to it that
34:23he had sat down for too long. Jonah
34:26turned the tap off. He got a mason jar
34:28from the cabinet above the stove.
34:30Hannah's mason jars. She had canned
34:33tomatoes in them. She had canned the
34:35pickles her grandmother had taught her
34:37to can.
34:39There were 48 of them in that cabinet.
34:41Still lids kept, rings kept in case he
34:44ever did it again, which he wouldn't
34:46because he did not know how and she had
34:49not finished teaching him. He took the
34:51jar to the sink. He filled it from the
34:53tap. He screwed the lid on. He labeled
34:57it in black Sharpie.
34:59Harker Creek kitchen tap. 10:26 2026.
35:06He said it on the counter. He thought
35:08about the 22 other houses in the Harker
35:10Creek well cluster that his father's
35:12notebook had circled. He thought about
35:14Pace Analytical in Pittsburgh, which was
35:16a lab that would run a PFAS panel on a
35:20sample for about $89, which he knew
35:22because he had looked it up on his phone
35:24in the parking lot of the hospital on
35:26Tuesday while Posie was in dialysis,
35:29which he had looked up because even
35:31before the envelope, even before the
35:33chapel, even before the notebook, he had
35:36already begun to suspect something in
35:38the dim animal way a man suspects things
35:41when his daughter's blood is wrong. He
35:43had $541.
35:46$89* 23 jars was $2,047.
35:51He laughed. It wasn't a laugh. It was
35:54the sound a man made when the math was
35:57so bad it circled back around to funny.
35:59He sat down at the formica table. He put
36:02his head in his hands and he spoke to
36:04the empty kitchen to the mason jar on
36:06the counter to his father in the ground
36:08in Oakill Cemetery to Hannah wherever
36:10Hannah was now to Burl Rafferty who had
36:13sat down at a town meeting in 2008 and
36:15sat down for the last time this Tuesday.
36:19All right. All right, Daddy. I hear you.
36:23Which was the sentence a man said when
36:24the only thing left to do was begin.
36:27Outside the wind came up off the Elk
36:29River and moved through the yellow
36:30maples and made a sound like somebody
36:33turning the page of a long book.
36:36Inside in a crib three rooms away, Posie
36:39Driscoll turned in her sleep and sighed
36:42a sigh too old for her. And the owl
36:45nightlight threw its slow stars across
36:47the ceiling. And Jonah sat at the
36:50kitchen table with his head in his hands
36:52and did not move until the clock on the
36:54microwave said 3:14 a.m.
36:57Then he stood up. He walked to the hall
37:00closet. He took down the toolbox his
37:02father had given him for his 16th
37:04birthday. A red craftsman dented on the
37:06lid where Clayton had dropped it in the
37:08driveway. In 2007, the dent that Clayton
37:13had refused to pound out because Clayton
37:15had said a tool that's never been
37:17dropped is a tool that's never been
37:19used.
37:21Jonah opened it. Inside were his welding
37:24gloves, his autod darkening hood, his
37:26tungsten grinder, his map torch, three
37:28stripped TIG rods, and a set of $20
37:31bills. He had been hiding from himself
37:33in a Ziploc bag at the bottom of the box
37:36since the last paycheck Argent Melon had
37:38cut him. He counted the bills. 420.
37:43420 + 541 in checking was 961.
37:49961 divided by 89 was 10. He could do 10
37:53jars. 10 of the 23 houses. It was not
37:57enough. It was a start. He put the money
37:59on the kitchen table beside the mason
38:01jar labeled Harker Creek. He laid his
38:04palm flat on the table beside the money
38:06the way he had laid his palm flat on the
38:08notebook in the chapel. They would start
38:11Monday. And he went to the window and he
38:13looked out at the dark yard and the dark
38:15trees and the dark sky over West
38:17Virginia. And somewhere in his chest the
38:20small quiet door of grief that had been
38:22locked for 23 months unlatched by
38:25exactly one inch. And through the inch
38:28came not light exactly, but the
38:31possibility of it, which for a man who
38:34had been living without any possibility
38:36at all for the better part of two years,
38:38was enough. He turned off the kitchen
38:40light. He walked down the hall. He
38:42paused outside Posy's door. He listened
38:45for her breath. He heard it. He went to
38:48bed. He did not sleep. But he lay in the
38:51dark with his hands folded on his chest
38:53the way his father had taught him to lie
38:55when he could not sleep as a boy, flat
38:58on his back, palms down, breath slow.
39:02And he thought about the chapel on the
39:04ridge, and the workbench along its back
39:07wall, and the 47 names, and the 12
39:10children, and his daughter's name among
39:12them. And he thought about the brass key
39:14still in his jacket pocket in the next
39:16room. And he thought about the river
39:18running below the ridge. And he thought
39:20about his father writing in the leather
39:22notebook by lamplight in 2013 with a man
39:25he loved dying inside his own body and
39:28no one to tell. Daddy, I'm here. Daddy,
39:32I came. Daddy, you waited. And somewhere
39:36between the fourth and fifth repetition
39:38of that last word, Jonah Driscoll, 29
39:41years old, widowed, laid off $961
39:44to his name in a double wide in Harker
39:46Creek, West Virginia, with a 2-year-old
39:48daughter whose kidney was the size of a
39:50walnut, fell for the first time in 23
39:53months into a sleep that was not
39:55interrupted by dreams. Outside the
39:57trailer, the Elk River ran south under a
39:59low moon. underground in a plume of
40:02water, 60 feet below the roots of the
40:04yellow maples, carrying the molecular
40:06signature of a company town that had
40:09sold its own children for a payroll,
40:11something that had been moving since
40:12before Jonah was born, continued inch by
40:15patient inch to move. But above it, in a
40:18chapel, on a ridge in Breakers Fold, on
40:21a stool, beside a workbench made of
40:23maple that his father had cut and
40:25dovetailed with his own two hands, a
40:27leather notebook lay closed with a brass
40:30key beside it, and a photograph of a
40:33seven-year-old boy on a pine shelf, and
40:36the 12th name on the Gen 2 list had, for
40:39the first time in 10 years a reader.
40:43And the reader had come home, and the
40:45reader was listening. Monday came the
40:48way bad weather came, slow at the
40:50horizon. Then all at once, Jonah
40:52Driscoll woke at 4:40 with Posies
40:54breathing in his ear from the baby
40:56monitor and the taste of yesterday's
40:58coffee still in his mouth. The ceiling
41:00of the double wide was textured with
41:02those tiny plaster peaks that caught
41:04shadows at a certain angle. And in the
41:06gray before dawn, Jonah lay flat on his
41:09back and counted the peaks above his
41:11head because counting was better than
41:12thinking.
41:14He got to 94. Then he thought anyway,
41:17because that was the thing about grief
41:19and about rage. They did not ask
41:21permission. They did not knock. They
41:24came through the walls of a man's
41:25attention like weather through a window
41:27somebody had forgotten to close. 23
41:30jars, 23 doors, 23 families. four of
41:35those families. Daddy was already in the
41:37ground. He got up. He put on the coffee.
41:41He stood at the kitchen window in a
41:42thermal shirt and his boxers and watched
41:45the dark yard become the gray yard
41:47become by degrees a yard.
41:50The maples at the fence line were still
41:52holding their yellow. The chain link had
41:54a layer of frost along the top rail. His
41:58breath when he breathed on the window
42:00made a small cloud that disappeared
42:01almost before he had seen it. He thought
42:04about the mason jar on the counter and
42:05the 10 $89 lab tests he could afford and
42:09the 13 he could not. And he thought
42:12about his daddy's handwriting in the
42:14leather notebook on the ridge. And he
42:17thought about Posie. And he thought
42:19because he could not help thinking it
42:21about Hannah. Hannah would have known
42:24what to do about the 13. Hannah had been
42:26the kind of woman who could walk into a
42:28church fellowship hall and leave with
42:30the problem solved in three new friends
42:31and a casserole for the drive home.
42:34Hannah had grown up in Deerlick. Hannah
42:36had sung in the choir at Deerlick
42:38Methodist from the age of 6 to the age
42:41of 22. Hannah had in her short life
42:44known more people than Jonah had ever
42:46met. And Hannah was gone. And Jonah was
42:48going to have to learn at 29 how to walk
42:50into a stranger's kitchen in a dying
42:52town and ask for a jar of their tap
42:54water. He drank his coffee at the sink.
42:57He woke Posie at 6:15. He fed her a
43:00scrambled egg and half a banana and
43:01watched her put the other half of the
43:03banana into her hair methodically like a
43:06scientist running an experiment.
43:09He dropped her at Lena's trailer at
43:117:05.
43:13He drove to Fastenol in Beckley and
43:15bought a case of 48 new mason jars for
43:19$22.60.
43:22He drove to Dollar General and bought a
43:24black Sharpie and a yellow legal pad and
43:26a package of chain of custody labels he
43:28printed at the FedEx counter off a
43:31template he had downloaded on his phone
43:33at the hospital on Tuesday. He drove to
43:35Pace Analytical's dropoff location in
43:37Pittsburgh. He did not drive to the lab
43:40itself. The lab was 6 hours. He drove to
43:44the shipping partner in Charleston that
43:46FedExed overnight to the lab. He paid
43:48the overnight. He paid for 10 PFAS
43:51panels prepaid. He showed the receipt
43:54the clerk gave him to his own face in
43:56the rear view on the way home as if to
43:58make sure the receipt was real, as if to
44:00make sure the day had happened. By 4:00
44:03Monday afternoon, Jonah Driscoll had
44:05committed himself to a thing he could
44:07not take back. The thing was simple. He
44:10was going to knock on 23 doors. The
44:13first door was Earl Wetburns. Earl was a
44:16man of about 70 retired from the plant
44:18since '08. And he lived in a brick ranch
44:21at the end of the gravel branch that ran
44:23off the Harker Creek main road. His yard
44:26was neat as a drill sergeant. His truck
44:29was a 2004 F250 in cherry condition. His
44:33wife, Loretta Wetburn, grew
44:34prize-winning Dalia every summer and had
44:37four summers ago won a blue ribbon at
44:39the Faget County Fair. Jonah knocked.
44:41Loretta answered. She was wearing a
44:44church blue house dress and had her
44:45white hair pin curled under a chiffon
44:48scarf. She peered at him through the
44:50storm door and greeted him by his
44:51father's fullgiven name, Jonah Clayton,
44:54the way Appalachian women of a certain
44:56generation did when they had held you as
44:58a baby and wanted you to know they
45:00remembered. She asked before he could
45:02speak whether the baby was all right. He
45:05assured her Posie was fine at his
45:07cousins. Then why she wanted to know did
45:10he look like somebody had kicked his
45:11dog? He had not planned the next
45:14sentence. He had not written it on the
45:16legal pad. He had planned the end of the
45:18conversation and not the beginning,
45:20which was always the way, because the
45:22beginning was the part that cost. He
45:25forced the words out. He had come to ask
45:27if he could have a jar of her wellwater.
45:30She blinked. Through the screen, he
45:32could see her tracking back through his
45:33face, through his father's face. in his
45:36face through the long row of Driscoll
45:37men who had worked at Argent Melon from
45:391962
45:41to the day the plant laid off the C6
45:43line and spit 200 of them out onto a
45:46parking lot with cardboard boxes under
45:48their arms. She looked at him the way a
45:51woman looked at a man when she was
45:52trying to decide which of several
45:53possible truths he had arrived to tell.
45:55Her wellwater she repeated flatly. Her
45:59husband had worked at that plant 39
46:00years. He knew he had. She was quiet for
46:04a long moment.
46:05The storm door between them was fogging
46:07a little from her breath on the inside
46:09and his breath on the outside, and the
46:12heat of her kitchen behind her, and the
46:13cold of the November afternoon behind
46:15him. Then Loretta Wetburn did a thing
46:18Jonah would remember for the rest of his
46:20life. She opened the door. She held it
46:22open with her hip and told him to come
46:24in the kitchen. Earl was at the VFW.
46:28He would be back by 5. If Jonah was
46:31asking what she thought he was asking,
46:33he was going to need coffee.
46:35He stepped in. The kitchen smelled like
46:37yeast rolls and furniture polish. On the
46:40refrigerator under a Dalia magnet was a
46:42photo of a baby boy in a blue onesie.
46:44Jonah knew that baby. That was Earl and
46:48Loretta's grandson Tyler who had been
46:50born in 2017 and who Jonah suddenly
46:53remembered had been in and out of
46:54Charleston area Medical Center for most
46:57of his first year with something nobody
46:59in Deerlick had quite agreed on the name
47:01of. Loretta followed his eyes and told
47:04him flat. Hers sprungs.
47:07He almost didn't make it. The way a
47:09woman named a thing she had already said
47:11a thousand times and was tired of
47:13carrying alone. She told him to sit. He
47:17sat. She poured him coffee from a Mr.
47:19Coffee that had been running since 6:00
47:21a.m. and she put a plate of yeast rolls
47:24in front of him that he did not want.
47:26and she sat across from him with her own
47:28cup and asked straight across the table
47:30who he was doing this for. He thought
47:32about Posie. He thought about Clayton.
47:36He thought about Burl in the
47:37brasshandled coffin at the front of Deer
47:40Lick Methodist.
47:4212 kids, he told her on a list in a
47:45notebook. One of them was his. Loretta
47:49Wetburn sat down her coffee cup. She
47:52reached across the formica table and
47:54took his hand in both of hers. Her hands
47:58were small and dry and very warm. She
48:01did not say anything for a count of
48:03about 8 seconds. Then she stood up and
48:05told him to wait right there. She walked
48:07to the pantry. She came back with a
48:09quart mason jar lid screwed on already
48:12full of water. She had pulled it out of
48:14the tap Sunday morning for canning, she
48:16explained, and never got around to it.
48:18Same source, same depth, same well. She
48:22handed it to him. He started to say he
48:24couldn't take. She cut him off with his
48:26full given name. Her Tyler was 5 years
48:28old and he could not eat corn. She said
48:30it the way a woman stated a weather
48:32fact. The way a woman who had wept over
48:35a thing in private did not weep over it
48:37in public. She told him to take that
48:39jar, put her name on it, find out what
48:42was in it, and if it was what he thought
48:44it was, come back here and tell her so
48:47she could tell her son what to say to
48:49his wife about why their boy was five.
48:51and still couldn't eat corn. Jonah
48:53nodded. He could not speak for a moment.
48:56He wrote on the chain of custody label.
48:58Wetburn kitchen tap. Well number WH-14
49:041027 2026.
49:07He initialed. He had her initial. He put
49:11the jar in the plastic crate on the
49:13floor beside his chair. Loretta watched
49:15him do this the way a woman watched a
49:17priest handle a chalice. Then she wanted
49:20to know who was next on his list. He
49:23hesitated. She repeated the question.
49:26The old droids, he answered. She told
49:28him to tell Mavis she sent him. She
49:30wrote on the back of a church bulletin
49:32in a hand that had taken the minutes at
49:34the United Methodist women for 41 years.
49:38Mavis Clayton Driscoll's boy is on the
49:40right side of this. Open the door.
49:44She signed it Loretta W. and slid it
49:47across the table. He took it. He stood
49:50up. At the door, she caught his sleeve.
49:54She called him honey. He turned. She had
49:57known his mother back when his mother
49:59still remembered her name. She had known
50:02his father when his father still had
50:04hair. She had held Jonah when he was 6
50:07weeks old, and his mama had had the
50:09collic worse than he did. He was not to
50:12walk out of there thinking he was doing
50:14this alone. He wasn't. He just hadn't
50:17told the rest of them yet. She squeezed
50:20his wrist once. She let him go, and
50:23Jonah Driscoll walked out of Earl
50:25Wetburn's kitchen onto Earl Wetburn's
50:28spotless brick stoop with a jar of water
50:30in a plastic crate and a church bulletin
50:33in his back pocket. and a feeling he did
50:35not have the vocabulary for which was
50:37the feeling of a man who had expected to
50:39carry a thing alone and had been told by
50:42a 70-year-old woman in pin curls that he
50:45had been reading the weight of the thing
50:47wrong. He got in the ranger. He sat for
50:51a minute. He wiped his eyes with the
50:53heel of his hand. He drove to the old
50:55roids. By Friday, Jonah had 18 jars, 18
50:59out of 23. Each one had come with a
51:02kitchen. Each kitchen had come with a
51:05coffee pot. Each coffee pot had come
51:07with a woman who had at some point in
51:10the 22 years of the plume's existence
51:12buried someone or watched someone she
51:15loved almost die. Mavis Oldroid had a
51:18daughter who had lost a second trimester
51:20pregnancy in 2011 and never conceived
51:23again. Tilda Monahan had a husband who
51:25had in 2016 been diagnosed with
51:28testicular cancer at the age of 44 and
51:30had by the grace of God and the
51:32Charleston area Medical Center lived.
51:35Delpha Henrix had a brother who had died
51:37in 2004 of the same renal cell carcinoma
51:41that killed Jonah's father. Audra
51:44Shifflet had a 7-year-old granddaughter
51:46who had been born without a thyroid.
51:49Carla Bogard Cop had two cousins and a
51:52sister-in-law gone. Freda Lamb
51:54Ratcliffe, who was 83 and the oldest
51:56woman in Harker Creek, had a wall of
51:58framed photographs in her front hall
52:00that Jonah counted while she poured him
52:01sweet tea.
52:0322 photographs.
52:0512 of the people in the photographs were
52:07dead.
52:09Freda did not have to tell him which.
52:12The frames of the dead were a slightly
52:14different wood than the frames of the
52:16living because Freda had bought the dead
52:18people frames in a bulk pack at Walmart
52:20during a sale in 2019 and use them in
52:22order and nine of them had been used.
52:24Nine out of 15 frames gone.
52:27Jonah drank the sweet tea. He asked for
52:30the jar. Freda handed it to him with
52:33both hands and told him in a voice that
52:35had carried hymns and lullabibis and
52:37more funerals than she could count that
52:39she did not need the lab report.
52:42She had known what was in it the day
52:44they put her Harland under at Oak Hill.
52:46She told him to go on with his business.
52:49By Thursday night, Jonah had learned to
52:51recognize the gesture of a woman holding
52:53out a mason jar with both hands as the
52:55gesture of a woman handing over evidence
52:58she had been protecting for a decade
52:59without having the word evidence.
53:02By Thursday night, Jonah had also
53:04understood something his father's
53:06notebook had not quite spelled out. The
53:08men had worked at the plant. The men had
53:11died, but the women had been watching.
53:15The women knew. The women had always
53:17known. They just had not been asked.
53:20Rafferty Dunn was the fifth name in his
53:22father's old wallet after Burls, after
53:24Pastor Deli, after a dentist in Oak Hill
53:27who had retired in 2017 after a man
53:29named Lonnie whose last name had been
53:32smudged by a thumb.
53:34Rafferty Dunn was the only lawyer. The
53:37address was 211 Lee Street, East
53:39Charleston, West Virginia. Jonah drove
53:41up on a Monday afternoon when the clouds
53:43were the color of lead sheeting and the
53:46first real cold had come down out of the
53:48Alaganis. He parked on the street. He
53:51fed the meter $3 and quarters. He stood
53:54in front of a brick rowhouse with a
53:55brass plaque beside the door that read,
53:58"R done, attorney at law, by
54:00appointment." He did not have an
54:02appointment. He rang the bell anyway. A
54:06dog barked somewhere inside. Then
54:08nothing. Then more nothing. Then the
54:11door opened six inches. The man in the
54:13doorway was in his 60s, maybe older.
54:16Hair gone the color of ash. A face that
54:19had done its drinking. Reading glasses
54:21on a chain around his neck. A cardigan
54:24buttoned wrong by one button, which was
54:26the kind of detail that told Jonah that
54:28the man had not expected company had not
54:30planned to be seen, had not been
54:32bothering to see himself in a mirror
54:34lately. Rafferty Dunn told him no. Jonah
54:37hadn't asked yet. He answered. The old
54:39lawyer informed him that he didn't have
54:41to ask. He looked like a client. Dunn
54:44didn't take clients. He started to close
54:47the door. Jonah put his boot in it. The
54:51move surprised them both. His name was
54:54Jonah Driscoll, he said steadily. His
54:57daddy was Clayton Driscoll. His daddy
55:00had written Dunn's name on a piece of
55:01paper and kept it in his wallet for the
55:03last two years of his life. Rafferty
55:06Dunn stopped pushing on the door. He
55:08looked at Jonah through the 6 in.
55:11Something behind his eyes moved slow.
55:15The way a big fish moved under a slick
55:17of ice.
55:19Clayton Driscoll, he repeated almost to
55:22himself.
55:23Shift Foreman 1983 to 2015. renal cell
55:28carcinoma.
55:30Jonah held his eyes and gave a single
55:32steady nod to each. Rafferty Dunn
55:35exhalded a sound that was mostly air. He
55:38opened the door the rest of the way and
55:40told Jonah to come inside before the
55:41godamn dog got out. The dog was a bassad
55:44hound, 12, maybe 13 years old, named, as
55:49Jonah learned later, Theonius.
55:52Theonius was asleep on a rug in the hall
55:54and had no intention of getting out. The
55:57dog's barks had been performative. The
55:59dog's barks were the only part of the
56:01greeting ritual Rafferty Dunn had kept
56:03running since his wife died in 2021.
56:06Jonah followed him down a hall lined
56:08with framed newspaper clippings. He did
56:11not read them. He did not need to. He
56:14could tell from the yellowing that they
56:15were old and from the headlines that
56:17they were about one case, one long case,
56:20a chemical case, a county in southern
56:23Ohio.
56:25He had looked up Rafferty Dunn before
56:27driving. Rafferty Dunn had between 2001
56:30and 2017 served as second chair council
56:33on Hendricks versus Vermillion Chemical,
56:36the longest running environmental class
56:38action in the fourth circuit's history.
56:41Settlement $412 million.
56:45Rafferty Dunn's share of fees had bought
56:47this rowhouse, paid off two mortgages,
56:49and funded a daughter's medical school.
56:53Rafferty Dunn had retired in 2019 after
56:56his wife's diagnosis.
56:58Rafferty Dunn had not taken a case
57:00since. The kitchen Jonah was led into
57:03had a bottle of Weller 12 on the counter
57:05and a cross word puzzle open on the
57:07table and a window that looked out onto
57:09a brick alley with a green dumpster.
57:12Rafferty Dunn did not offer him coffee.
57:15He told the boy to sit down. Jonah sat.
57:18Rafferty Dunn poured himself two fingers
57:20of the weller. He looked at the glass.
57:23He pushed it away. He got up. He put the
57:26kettle on. He had been going to drink
57:28that. He muttered, but he wasn't going
57:30to drink that in front of Clayton's boy.
57:33The kettle sang in about 4 minutes. He
57:36made two cups of instant folders. He set
57:39one in front of Jonah. He sat. Talk. He
57:43told him. Jonah talked. He talked for 41
57:46minutes. He told the lawyer about the
57:49funeral, about Odessa,
57:51about the envelope, about the chapel,
57:55about the notebook, about the 47 men and
57:58the 12 children in Posy's name in his
58:00father's hand before she was born. He
58:04told the lawyer about Loretta Wetburn
58:06and the yeast rolls and the 18 jars in
58:08the plastic crate in the back of the
58:10Ranger. He told the lawyer about the
58:13overnight FedEx receipts and the $810
58:16and the five jars still to go. He did
58:19not cry. He had done his crying at Freda
58:22Lam Ratcliffe's wall of photographs on
58:24Wednesday, and he had decided in Freda's
58:26hallway that he was out of crying for
58:29the week. Rafferty Dunn listened. He did
58:33not interrupt.
58:34He drank his coffee.
58:37He sat it down. He looked at the
58:39ceiling. He looked at the brick alley
58:42through the window. He looked at Jonah.
58:45Then he spoke in a voice that was quiet
58:47the way a loaded rifle was quiet. He was
58:5068 years old. He had retired because he
58:53was tired. He had retired because his
58:56Darla had died and he had promised her
58:58he would rest. He had retired because
59:00the last chemical company he had taken
59:02to court had spent 11 years burying him
59:04in paper. and he had only one because he
59:07had three associates and a forensic
59:09accountant and a client with a family
59:11hog farm she had been willing to sell to
59:13fund discovery.
59:16Jonah had come into his house, said the
59:18name Argent Melon. Argent Melon had 400
59:22lawyers.
59:24Jonah had a 2-year-old daughter and
59:26$600.
59:28Why, in the name of a merciful God, Dun
59:31demanded, would he ever say yes to this?
59:34Jonah set his coffee cup down. He did
59:36not speak for a long moment because he
59:39began, "Mr. Dunn," because Dunn was the
59:43only person in the state of West
59:45Virginia his daddy had written down in
59:48pencil on a piece of paper that he had
59:52carried in his wallet for 2 years while
59:56he was dying.
59:58If his father had written that name,
1:00:01there had been a reason.
1:00:03Jonah wasn't asking him to say yes
1:00:05today, he added. He was asking him to
1:00:08read what was in the notebook. He stood
1:00:10up. He put the leather notebook which he
1:00:13had carried in the inside pocket of his
1:00:14canvas jacket for 7 days in the center
1:00:17of the formica table. He slid it toward
1:00:20Rafferty Dunn. He would be at the
1:00:22Hampton Inn on Washington Street
1:00:24tonight. If Dunn didn't call by 8
1:00:26tomorrow morning, Jonah would come get
1:00:28it on his way out of town, and he would
1:00:31never bother him again.
1:00:33He walked out of the kitchen. He walked
1:00:35down the hall past the framed clippings.
1:00:37He stepped over Theonius, who had not
1:00:39moved. He let himself out. He got in the
1:00:43ranger. He drove to the Hampton Inn. He
1:00:46did not eat dinner. He lay on top of the
1:00:48quilted polyester bedspread with his
1:00:51boots on and his hands folded on his
1:00:53chest. And he stared at the ceiling
1:00:55tile, and he counted the holes in the
1:00:56ceiling tile, and he got to 139. And he
1:00:59thought, "Of course." He fell asleep at
1:01:0210:00. His phone rang at 6:42 the next
1:01:05morning. The old lawyer's voice came
1:01:07through flat as a slab. He wanted a jar
1:01:10count. Jonah, half upright in a sea of
1:01:13hotel bedding, told him 18 houses to go.
1:01:17Five.
1:01:18Dun pushed no pause between questions,
1:01:21and Jonah pushed back with the numbers
1:01:22he had been living inside for a week.
1:01:26$21 left in checking after the first 10
1:01:28tests. Rafferty Dunn took the Lord's
1:01:31name in vain under his breath, and the
1:01:33silence that followed was long enough
1:01:34for Jonah to hear Thelonius the Basset
1:01:36Hound sigh audibly through the receiver,
1:01:39which was somehow the thing that made
1:01:40Jonah believe the old man was going to
1:01:42say yes. Dun would front the other 13.
1:01:46He wasn't thanking him. He wasn't done
1:01:48yet. Jonah was to come back to the
1:01:50office at 2, bring the notebook, bring
1:01:53the jars, bring everything in that
1:01:55chapel he could carry.
1:01:57They had work to do before Argent
1:01:59Melon's lawyers heard his name. The line
1:02:02clicked off. Jonah sat on the edge of
1:02:04the hotel bed with the phone still at
1:02:05his ear and the cheap blackout curtain
1:02:07throwing a bar of winter light across
1:02:09the carpet and his hands shaking the way
1:02:10they had shaken on the stool in his
1:02:12father's chapel one week ago. All right,
1:02:15Daddy. You weren't wrong about the
1:02:17lawyer. You weren't wrong about
1:02:19anything.
1:02:21The next three weeks were a tunnel.
1:02:23Jonah did not sleep more than 4 hours a
1:02:26night. He worked, he drove, he welded,
1:02:29welded because the money he had
1:02:31committed to the lab done had covered.
1:02:33But the money for the mortgage on the
1:02:35double wide, the money for Posy's
1:02:37dialysis co-pays the money for the
1:02:39formula and the diapers and the gas and
1:02:41the Ranger, that money Jonah had to
1:02:43make. And Jonah was a laid-off pipe
1:02:46fitter in Deerlick in November. And
1:02:48nobody was hiring pipe fitters in
1:02:50Deerlick in November because Deerlick
1:02:52was a company town and the company had
1:02:54just laid off 200 men. So Jonah went
1:02:57underground. He put a handlettered sign
1:03:00in the window of the Dollar General. He
1:03:02put a flyer at the VFW. He put a line on
1:03:05the marketplace page. Mobile welder,
1:03:08gates, fences, hitches, trailer repairs,
1:03:12honest work, cash.
1:03:15The phone started ringing on day two. He
1:03:18welded a horse trailer tongue for an
1:03:1980-year-old woman in Clandan who paid
1:03:22him in a brown paper bag containing $180
1:03:25and a chocolate pound cake. He welded a
1:03:28cattlegate for a man outside Clay who
1:03:30paid him $200 and threw in a quart of
1:03:32homemade apple butter.
1:03:35He welded the chassis crack on a male
1:03:36carrier's Jeep for $60 because the male
1:03:39carrier was a widow and he could not
1:03:41look at a widow and charge her the full
1:03:43rate. He worked at night by headlamp and
1:03:45by the shoplight he strung from the
1:03:47branch of a sycamore. He welded in the
1:03:49cold with his bare neck exposed and his
1:03:51autod darkening hood snapping down and
1:03:54up and down and up in the smell of hot
1:03:56metal in his sinuses and his father's
1:03:59voice in his head from 20 years ago
1:04:01saying, "Keep your puddle moving, son.
1:04:03Don't marry it." And his daughter's face
1:04:05in his head from Monday morning asking
1:04:07about her juice box. He slept 4 hours a
1:04:10night. He paid the mortgage. He paid the
1:04:12diialysis co-pay.
1:04:14He did not pay the electric bill in
1:04:16full, but he paid half, which
1:04:19Appalachian Power accepted with a note.
1:04:22By the fourth Monday after Burl's
1:04:24funeral, Jonah Driscoll had done enough
1:04:26mobile welding to keep his daughter in
1:04:28Pampers for another month and his truck
1:04:30in gas for another two weeks. He had
1:04:33also in that same four weeks driven to
1:04:35Charleston nine times to sit at Rafferty
1:04:38Dunn's for Micah kitchen table. While
1:04:40the old lawyer read the notebook,
1:04:42underlined the notebook, took notes,
1:04:46called a forensic accountant in
1:04:48Pittsburgh, called a toxicologist in
1:04:50Durham, called a public records clerk at
1:04:54EPA Region 3 in Philadelphia.
1:04:57Rafferty Dunn did not announce that he
1:04:59was taking the case. He said he was
1:05:01looking, which Jonah learned from a man
1:05:04like Rafferty Dunn was the same thing.
1:05:06The lab results came back on a Thursday.
1:05:09Jonah was welding a cracked bush hog in
1:05:11a field outside Nitro when his phone
1:05:14buzzed on the tailgate of the Ranger. He
1:05:16saw the Pittsburgh area code. He pulled
1:05:19up the autod darkening hood. He thumbmed
1:05:21the voicemail. A woman named Dr. Mina
1:05:24Woladarsski, lab director at Pace
1:05:26Analytical, had called at 10:14 a.m. She
1:05:30left a message that was six words long
1:05:32and had been delivered in the slow
1:05:33clinical voice of a scientist who had
1:05:35been doing this long enough to know how
1:05:36to say a thing without flinching.
1:05:39Mr. Driscoll, please call back today. He
1:05:42called back from the field. He stood
1:05:44with one boot on the dropped tailgate of
1:05:46the Ranger and one boot in the frost
1:05:49silvered grass, and he listened to Dr.
1:05:51Volodarski recite numbers for 7 minutes.
1:05:55The numbers were in parts per trillion.
1:05:58[clears throat] The EPA's health
1:06:00advisory limit for PFOA
1:06:02as of April 2024 was four parts per
1:06:06trillion. Jonah's Kitchen Tap in Harker
1:06:09Creek
1:06:111,842
1:06:12parts per trillion. Loretta Wetterburns
1:06:161,711
1:06:18Mavis Oldroids 2,16
1:06:22Freda Lamb Ratcliff's The Deepest Well,
1:06:24the oldest house the woman who had
1:06:25buried nine of 15 frames. 2844
1:06:30The lowest sample of the 23 was Delpha
1:06:32Henrik's at 988.
1:06:34Delpha Henriks was 247 times the federal
1:06:37limit. Dr. Voladarkski's voice did not
1:06:40change through the recitation. At the
1:06:43end, she asked how many people lived in
1:06:44the sample area. 340.
1:06:47She was quiet for a moment. Then she
1:06:50told him he was going to want to tell
1:06:51them very carefully. And he was going to
1:06:54want a lawyer. He had one. Good. She
1:06:57answered. She was not going to be filing
1:06:59these samples in PAC's standard
1:07:01commercial database. She would be filing
1:07:04them under their legal hold protocol,
1:07:07which meant Sergeant Melon's compliance
1:07:09officer, who was on a subscription to
1:07:11the commercial feed, would not see them,
1:07:13which meant Jonah had about 90 days of
1:07:16quiet before the opposing side knew what
1:07:18he had. He should use them. She was
1:07:20sorry about his daughter. She hung up.
1:07:23Jonah sat down on the tailgate. He put
1:07:26the phone face down on the metal next to
1:07:27his hip. He did not weld for the next 40
1:07:30minutes. He sat in the field with the
1:07:33wind coming across the stubble and the
1:07:35Ranger ticking as the engine cooled and
1:07:37the sun going sideways through the bare
1:07:39locusts. And he thought about the number
1:07:422,844
1:07:44and the number of frames on Freda Lamb
1:07:47Ratcliffe's wall and the way Loretta
1:07:49Wetburn had taken his hand across the
1:07:51Formica table.
1:07:53We were right.
1:07:55You were right. And now we have to tell
1:07:58340 people they have been drinking it.
1:08:02The second blow came two days later.
1:08:05Rafferty Dunn called at 6:52 in the
1:08:07morning. His voice had the sanded down
1:08:10quality of a man who had been awake all
1:08:12night. He asked whether Jonah had read
1:08:15the news that morning. Jonah hadn't. He
1:08:18had been feeding the baby. Dun delivered
1:08:20it flat. Argent Melon had just announced
1:08:23the final closure of the Deerlick plant.
1:08:27effective January 2nd. All three
1:08:29remaining lines severance per union
1:08:32contract. Local 1 193 was holding a town
1:08:36meeting that night at the plant hall at
1:08:387. Silence on the line. Then the old
1:08:42lawyer asked if Jonah understood what
1:08:44that meant. Yes, sir. Which was the
1:08:47sentence a man said when he did not want
1:08:48to say the sentence that would come
1:08:50next. Rafferty Dunn said it for him. 112
1:08:54more men had just lost their paychecks.
1:08:57Every single family in Jonah's
1:08:58wellcluster was about to be dependent on
1:09:00the severance package. If Jonah walked
1:09:03into Deerlick Methodist tonight and
1:09:05announced that Argent Melon had been
1:09:06poisoning them for 22 years, half of
1:09:09them were going to hate him for it
1:09:11because half of them needed the plant to
1:09:13reopen under new ownership. because half
1:09:16of them had medical bills that only a
1:09:18lawsuit against Argent Melon could pay,
1:09:20and half of them did not want to think
1:09:22about why their husbands were dead. Was
1:09:24Jonah hearing him?
1:09:26Yes, sir. Tonight, Rafferty Dunn
1:09:29concluded, was the wrong night to tell
1:09:31them. Tonight, Jonah answered, "Was the
1:09:34only night to tell them?" Rafferty Dunn
1:09:37was quiet for a long time. Then he
1:09:40conceded he would meet Jonah at the
1:09:43plant hall at 6:45.
1:09:46Jonah was to wear his father's jacket.
1:09:49The line clicked off. Jonah stood in his
1:09:51kitchen in his thermal shirt and his
1:09:53boxers with Posie on his hip and her
1:09:55bowl of oatmeal cooling on the counter
1:09:57and the mason jar labeled Harker Creek,
1:09:59still sitting next to the sink where he
1:10:01had put it four weeks ago. He told
1:10:03Posie, who was sucking her thumb and had
1:10:05no interest in English, that they were
1:10:06going to a meeting tonight.
1:10:09meeting. She echoed. He confirmed it.
1:10:11Why? She wanted to know. Because daddy
1:10:14was about to make a lot of people real
1:10:15mad. Okay. She said the way she said
1:10:19okay to everything without weighing it,
1:10:22without doubting him. The way a child
1:10:25trusted a father because a father was
1:10:27the only shape she knew of in a world
1:10:29full of shapes.
1:10:31He kissed the top of her head. He put
1:10:34the oatmeal spoon in her hand. He went
1:10:37to shower. In the shower, he put his
1:10:39forehead against the tile, and he let
1:10:41the water run for a long time. And he
1:10:44thought about his father's voice telling
1:10:46him to keep the puddle moving. And he
1:10:48thought about Freda Lamb Ratcliff's nine
1:10:50frames. And he thought about the fact
1:10:52that the water he was standing under was
1:10:541,842
1:10:56parts per trillion of a chemical his
1:10:58body had been drinking since 1996. and
1:11:01he thought with the specific calm of a
1:11:03man who had been afraid for a long time
1:11:05and had finally run out of room to be
1:11:07afraid in. All right. All right, Daddy.
1:11:11We tell them tonight. The plant hall was
1:11:14a stealsed structure the size of a
1:11:16Costco set in a parking lot the size of
1:11:18a small airfield.
1:11:21By 6:45, the lot was full. pickup
1:11:24trucks, mostly a few sedans, four UAW
1:11:28banners hanging from the eaves because
1:11:30local 1193 had, in the plant's heyday
1:11:33been 1,400 members strong and had that
1:11:36night maybe 340 left to lose. Jonah
1:11:39parked at the back of the lot. He got
1:11:41out. He put on his father's jacket, the
1:11:44dark brown canvas and leather one
1:11:46Clayton had worn for 22 winters, the one
1:11:48Jonah had taken off the hook in his
1:11:50father's workshop two months after
1:11:52Clayton died and never put down. The
1:11:55hood bunched soft at his collar. The
1:11:58jacket was slightly too big in the
1:12:00shoulders. It still smelled faintly of
1:12:03Clayton, of pine, of oil, of the
1:12:07specific sweet smoke scent of a man who
1:12:09had lived his life next to a torch. He
1:12:11pulled his heavy brown pack onto his
1:12:13back. In it were 23 mason jars relabeled
1:12:17with chain of custody tape, each in a
1:12:19padded sleeve. In it was the leather
1:12:21notebook. In it was a Manila folder
1:12:24containing the Pace Analytical Lab
1:12:26report, every page counter signed by Dr.
1:12:28Voladarkski, every parts per trillion
1:12:31number circled in red Sharpie. He walked
1:12:34across the parking lot. Rafferty Dunn
1:12:37was waiting under the awning. He was
1:12:39wearing a suit.
1:12:41He looked in a suit 10 years younger
1:12:42than he looked in a cardigan. He saw
1:12:45Jonah coming and nodded once, which was
1:12:47the entirety of his hello. Jonah wasn't
1:12:50sure about this. Neither was done. He
1:12:52confirmed back. Was Jonah no good. Men
1:12:57who were sure made bad lawyers and worse
1:12:59witnesses. They went in. The hall held
1:13:02about 400 folding chairs set up in rows
1:13:05under fluorescent light so bright they
1:13:07made everyone's skin look pale green. A
1:13:10low stage at the front held a card
1:13:12table, a podium with a local 11 193
1:13:14banner, and a half empty picture of
1:13:16water. In the chairs sat the men of
1:13:19Deerlick and the women of Deerlick, and
1:13:21the grown children of Deerlick, who had
1:13:23moved to Charleston or Beckley or
1:13:25Columbus, and had driven back for the
1:13:27night, because this was the night the
1:13:28plant was going dark. Jonah saw faces he
1:13:31had grown up next to. He saw Earl
1:13:33Wetburn in the fourth row with Loretta
1:13:35beside him in her good blue coat. He saw
1:13:38Mavis Oldroid. He saw Delpha Henrix. He
1:13:42saw a man he had gone to high school
1:13:43with, Tucker Vain, now 30, now a father
1:13:46of three, sitting with his arm around
1:13:48his wife, both of them looking at the
1:13:50floor. He saw Freda Lamb Ratcliffe in
1:13:53the second row with her cane propped
1:13:54against the chair in front of her. He
1:13:56saw in the very back two men in suits
1:13:58who were not from Deerlick, who were
1:14:00sitting with legal pads on their knees,
1:14:02who were taking notes before the meeting
1:14:04had begun. Argent Melon. Rafferty Dunn
1:14:08saw them, too. He did not react. He
1:14:11squeezed Jonah's shoulder once as they
1:14:13walked up the center aisle. The Union
1:14:15president was a man named Hollis
1:14:17Birfield. He was 62. He had worked at
1:14:21Argent Melon since he was 18. He had
1:14:24buried his own father in 2007 and his
1:14:27brother in 2014, and he had not, as far
1:14:30as Jonah knew, ever connected the dots.
1:14:33Hollis called the meeting to order at
1:14:357:02. He talked for 12 minutes about the
1:14:37plant closure, about severance, about
1:14:41the health insurance extension
1:14:42negotiated through Cobra,
1:14:45about the pension protections,
1:14:48about the retraining funds, about the
1:14:51jobs
1:14:53board. The UAW was setting up at the
1:14:55hall for the following month. Men stood
1:14:58up. Men asked questions. Men sat down. A
1:15:02man named Rich Dalby stood up and asked
1:15:05whether Argent Melon was going to be
1:15:06sued over the closure. Hollis told him
1:15:09no. There was no legal basis. Rafferty
1:15:13Dunn next to Jonah in the second to last
1:15:15row cleared his throat very quietly.
1:15:18Jonah stood up. Hollis Birfield looked
1:15:20at him from the stage and acknowledged
1:15:22him by his father's name. Driscoll,
1:15:26Clayton's boy. Did he have a question?
1:15:30He had a different kind of question,
1:15:32Jonah answered. The hall quieted. Not
1:15:35entirely, but enough that his voice
1:15:37carried.
1:15:39He walked up the center aisle. He did it
1:15:42slow because he was in his father's
1:15:44boots, and his father's boots had always
1:15:46been a half size too big. And because he
1:15:49was aware, with every step of 340 pairs
1:15:52of eyes on his back, he stepped up on
1:15:55the stage. He did not go to the podium.
1:15:58He went to the card table. He slid his
1:16:00pack off his shoulder. He unzipped it.
1:16:03He took out the 23 mason jars one by one
1:16:06and he set them in a line across the
1:16:07card table. 23 mason jars of tap water
1:16:12labeled in Sharpie, each name legible,
1:16:15each date legible, each address legible.
1:16:19He set the manila folder beside the
1:16:21jars. He turned to the microphone. His
1:16:25name was Jonah Clayton Driscoll. His
1:16:27daddy had worked at this plant 32 years.
1:16:30His daddy had died of kidney cancer 11
1:16:32years ago. He had in his hand a lab
1:16:34report from Pace Analytical in
1:16:36Pittsburgh showing that the water in 23
1:16:39homes in the Harker Creek whed,
1:16:41including the home he lived in with his
1:16:432-year-old daughter, contained an
1:16:45industrial chemical called PFOA
1:16:49at concentrations between 200 and 700
1:16:53times the federal safety limit.
1:16:56He paused. The hall had gone the kind of
1:16:59quiet that was not quiet at all. The
1:17:02kind of quiet that was 300 people
1:17:04breathing shallow at the same time. He
1:17:07also had in his possession a notebook
1:17:09kept by his father between 2013 and his
1:17:12death in 2015 listing 47 men of this
1:17:15plant who had died or became terminally
1:17:18ill from illnesses consistent with this
1:17:20chemical and 12 children of this plant's
1:17:22men who had been born with birth defects
1:17:25consistent with this chemical.
1:17:27His daughter was one of the 12. He had
1:17:29not come here tonight to accuse any of
1:17:31them of anything they had not known. He
1:17:33had come here tonight because he wanted
1:17:35them to know that he knew and that his
1:17:38daddy had known and that Burl Rafferty
1:17:41had known and that Burl Rafferty had
1:17:43tried to tell this hall in 2008 and had
1:17:46sat down because he had thought he was
1:17:48protecting their jobs and he had carried
1:17:51that stone until it killed him. The
1:17:53plant was closing anyway. The paycheck
1:17:55they had been protecting was already
1:17:57gone.
1:17:59What was left was the water. He turned.
1:18:02He pointed at the two men in suits in
1:18:04the back row. Those gentlemen worked for
1:18:06Argent Melon. They were welcome to stay.
1:18:09They were welcome to take notes. They
1:18:12were welcome to call their general
1:18:13counsel in Wilmington right now. He
1:18:16looked at the hall. He was not asking
1:18:18anything of any of them tonight. He was
1:18:20not asking them to sign anything. He was
1:18:22not asking them to sue anybody. He was
1:18:25asking only that they take a hard look
1:18:27at the jar with their name on it on this
1:18:29table.
1:18:30And when they went home tonight, he was
1:18:32asking them to pour the water out of
1:18:33their pitchers and bring the formula for
1:18:35their babies up with store-bought
1:18:37bottled until they figured out what to
1:18:39do next. There would be coffee at
1:18:41Deerlick Methodist tomorrow morning at
1:18:438. Pastor Deline Albbright had agreed to
1:18:46open the fellowship hall. Mr. Rafferty
1:18:49Dunn, the attorney standing in the back,
1:18:51had agreed to be there with him. If they
1:18:54had questions, come. If [clears throat]
1:18:55they didn't, don't. Thank you for your
1:18:58time. He stepped down from the stage. He
1:19:02walked back up the center aisle in his
1:19:04father's jacket with his pack over his
1:19:05shoulder and his heart pounding like he
1:19:07had just finished a six-minute burn with
1:19:09a TIG torch on a bad line. Nobody spoke.
1:19:13Then Loretta Wetburn stood up. She did
1:19:16not clap. She did not speak. She just
1:19:19stood. Then Mavis Oldroid stood. Then
1:19:22Delpha Henrix. Then Freda Lamb
1:19:25Ratcliffe, slowly using her cane, stood.
1:19:28Then Tucker Vain stood with his wife.
1:19:30Then Earl Wetterburn stood, which was a
1:19:32thing Jonah had not expected, because
1:19:34Earl Wetterburn had worked at Argent
1:19:36Melon 41 years and had a pension he
1:19:38could not afford to see questioned. Then
1:19:40more, rowby row. Not all of them, maybe
1:19:4460 people. Not applause, not cheers,
1:19:47just standing.
1:19:49The two men in suits in the back row
1:19:51stayed in their chairs. They were Jonah
1:19:53noticed riding very fast. He walked out
1:19:56through the double doors into the cold
1:19:58in the parking lot under a sodium light
1:20:00that threw everything the color of a
1:20:02bruise Rafferty done caught up with him
1:20:04and gripped his elbow. He told Jonah in
1:20:07a low, rough voice that what Jonah had
1:20:09just done was either the beginning of
1:20:11the worst year of his life or the
1:20:13beginning of the first good one. He
1:20:15didn't know which yet, but Jonah's daddy
1:20:18done added would have stood up tonight.
1:20:20He did stand up tonight. Jonah answered.
1:20:23Quiet, not for effect, not for the
1:20:26lawyer, just because it was true. He was
1:20:29wearing him. Rafferty Dunn looked at the
1:20:32jacket. He looked at Jonah. He nodded
1:20:35once and told him to go home. Kiss his
1:20:38girl.
1:20:40Dun would see him at 8 at the church. He
1:20:43walked away. Jonah got in the ranger. He
1:20:46sat behind the wheel with his hands on
1:20:48the wheel and he looked at the darkened
1:20:50parking lot and he thought about Burl
1:20:52Rafferty in 2008 standing up in the same
1:20:55hall and sitting back down. And he
1:20:57thought about Burl Rafferty handing an
1:20:59envelope to Odessa and telling her this
1:21:01had to come to Jonah, not the lawyer,
1:21:04not the bank. And he thought about his
1:21:06father on a maple stool in a chapel on a
1:21:08ridge in 2013 writing the names of men
1:21:11he loved into a column that ended in the
1:21:13word dead. and he thought about Posie
1:21:15asleep right now in Lennena's trailer
1:21:17with her thumb in her mouth and a kidney
1:21:19the size of a walnut. He had not made
1:21:21them stand up. They had already been
1:21:23standing. They had been standing for 20
1:21:25years in private. He had only moved the
1:21:27chair. He turned the key. The ranger
1:21:30coughed. It caught. He drove home
1:21:33through deer lick with his headlights
1:21:34low because the deer were moving and the
1:21:37river was running south under a low moon
1:21:39and above the trees far off. The blue
1:21:43security lights at the Argent melon
1:21:45plant were already starting to go dark
1:21:47for the night, one by one, like a
1:21:50candle, a child was blowing out slowly,
1:21:54one wick at a time. Underneath in a
1:21:56plume 60 ft beneath the frost and the
1:21:58maple roots and the roads and the
1:22:00trailers and the wells and the mason
1:22:02jars labeled in black Sharpie on 23 for
1:22:05mica tables and 23 warm kitchens.
1:22:08Something old continued inch by patient
1:22:10inch to move.
1:22:12But above it now, for the first time in
1:22:1422 years, the people above it were
1:22:16awake, and Jonah Driscoll drove home
1:22:19through them in his father's jacket,
1:22:20with his father's notebook in his pack
1:22:22and his father's voice in his chest,
1:22:24saying, "Keep your puddle moving, son."
1:22:27And the chapel on the ridge, waiting
1:22:29behind him in the dark. And his daughter
1:22:32waiting in a crib ahead of him. in the
1:22:34dark and the long middle of the thing.
1:22:37The hard middle, the real middle, the
1:22:39middle where the lawyers and the
1:22:41hearings and the subpoenas and the
1:22:42midnight phone calls were about to start
1:22:44opening in front of his headlights like
1:22:46a tunnel. He drove into it. He did not
1:22:49look back.
1:22:51The fellowship hall at Deerlick
1:22:52Methodist filled up at 7:40 the next
1:22:55morning. Jonah had expected 40 people.
1:22:57He had counted on 60 if the Lord was
1:22:59feeling generous. He had planned to make
1:23:02three large Mr. coffees worth of
1:23:03grounds, and had bought two sleeves of
1:23:06styrofoam cups at the Dollar General the
1:23:08night before, and had told Pastor Deline
1:23:11Albbright at 9:15 the previous evening
1:23:14on her front porch, that he would be
1:23:16grateful if she could leave the
1:23:17fellowship hall door unlocked, and the
1:23:19heat kicked up, and the coffee started
1:23:21by 7:30. She had told him, "Honey, she
1:23:24would start the coffee at 6:00. At 7:40,
1:23:27the parking lot was full. By 7:50, the
1:23:30overflow was parked along both shoulders
1:23:32of Route 60 for a quarter mile in either
1:23:34direction, and the state troopers out of
1:23:37Beckley had sent two cruisers to help
1:23:39with traffic, which neither Jonah nor
1:23:42Pastor Deline had asked for, and neither
1:23:44of them was going to turn down. By 8:00,
1:23:47the Fellowship Hall held 212 people. By
1:23:518:04, the Fellowship Hall held 260.
1:23:54By 8:09, the Fellowship Hall held 319
1:23:58people. and pastor Delphine Albbright
1:24:00with a calm that only 68-year-old black
1:24:03Methodist pastors from West Virginia
1:24:05possessed had unlocked the sanctuary and
1:24:07set up a sound feed so the overflow
1:24:10could hear from the pews.
1:24:12Jonah stood at the fellowship hall
1:24:14podium in his father's jacket. His hands
1:24:16were shaking. He put them in his
1:24:18pockets. Rafferty Dunn stood beside him
1:24:21in a different suit than the one from
1:24:23the night before, which meant he had
1:24:24driven back to Charleston at 11:00,
1:24:26slept four hours, and driven back out at
1:24:284. His eyes were bright, the way an old
1:24:31man's eyes could get bright when the
1:24:33last thing he thought he was going to do
1:24:35with his life turned out not to be the
1:24:37last thing. Pastor Delphine Albbright
1:24:39opened the meeting with a prayer. It was
1:24:4090 seconds long. It did not mention
1:24:43Argent Melon. It did not mention
1:24:45lawyers. It mentioned Isaiah 61. It
1:24:48mentioned beauty for ashes. It mentioned
1:24:51by name nine of the people in the room
1:24:53who had lost someone to the plant in the
1:24:55last 10 years.
1:24:58She prayed each of their dead by their
1:24:59given names. She did not hurry. Then she
1:25:02said, "Amen." And she sat down and she
1:25:04looked at Jonah. He stepped up to the
1:25:07microphone. He thanked them for coming.
1:25:09He admitted he had been planning to have
1:25:11donuts. He had not planned for 300 of
1:25:14them. There was a small ripple of
1:25:17laughter. It was not big, but it
1:25:19existed, which was more than he had
1:25:22hoped for. Mr. Dunn, he explained, was
1:25:24going to walk them through what the lab
1:25:26report said in plain English for as long
1:25:30as it took, and then he was going to
1:25:32tell them what they thought the options
1:25:34were. He would not tell them what to do.
1:25:38Nobody in this room was going to tell
1:25:40them what to do.
1:25:42The last time somebody had told the
1:25:44people of Deer Lick what to do, it had
1:25:46been a plant foreman in 1998 telling
1:25:49their husbands to drink the water from
1:25:50the plant tap because the bottled water
1:25:53budget had been cut. They were not here
1:25:56to be that man. Jonah was going to go
1:25:58pour coffee. He stepped back. 319 people
1:26:01watched a 29-year-old laid-off pipe
1:26:04fitter in a dead man's jacket walk down
1:26:06from the podium and pick up a Mr. coffee
1:26:08corff and begin filling styrofoam cups
1:26:11along the back table. And in that small
1:26:14act, the small act of a man refusing to
1:26:17be the hero of the room, when a lawyer
1:26:19and a pastor and the people themselves
1:26:21were already in it, a thing shifted in
1:26:24Deerlick that had been stuck for 22
1:26:26years.
1:26:28Rafferty Dunn took the microphone. He
1:26:30spoke for 47 minutes. He did not use the
1:26:34word lawsuit until minute 39. He used
1:26:37the word U261
1:26:39times. By the end of the first week,
1:26:42Rafferty Dunn had collected signed
1:26:44intake forms from 148 households.
1:26:47By the end of the second week, from 242.
1:26:50By the end of the third week, from all
1:26:53340 of the Harker Creek wersheds
1:26:55registered addresses, plus 81 additional
1:26:58households in the adjacent Mud Lick and
1:27:00Painters branch clusters whose wells Dr.
1:27:02Voladarski's follow-up panels confirmed
1:27:05were also inside the plume.
1:27:07421 households,
1:27:10126 individuals, the largest
1:27:13environmental class action in the state
1:27:15of West Virginia since Robot and the
1:27:17Parkerburg case and it had begun.
1:27:21Rafferty Dunn told a reporter from the
1:27:23Charleston Gazette Mail in December with
1:27:2623 jars of water in a plastic crate in
1:27:28the back of a 98 Ford Ranger. The
1:27:31reporter asked if he could speak to
1:27:33Jonah. Rafferty Dunn told him no. The
1:27:37boy was not the story. The water was the
1:27:40story. The men who had died were the
1:27:43story. The children were the story.
1:27:46Jonah Driscoll was going home to his
1:27:48daughter. The reporter printed it. The
1:27:50AP picked it up. By the first week of
1:27:53January, the AP wire had run the story
1:27:55in 63 regional papers. and a producer
1:27:58from a national Sunday morning show had
1:28:01left a voicemail on Jonah's phone. And
1:28:03Jonah had deleted the voicemail without
1:28:05listening to it because Posie had a
1:28:08dialysis appointment at 11:00 and he was
1:28:10in the parking lot of Charleston area
1:28:12Medical Center with a bottle warmer
1:28:14plugged into the rers's cigarette
1:28:16lighter and a sippy cup of Pedialyte on
1:28:18the dash. He did not want to be on
1:28:20television. He wanted Posie to live past
1:28:235. Argent Melon's response came in two
1:28:26stages. Stage one was the lawyers. They
1:28:30were from Wilmington. They were from a
1:28:33firm whose name occupied an entire wall
1:28:35of brass plaques in a lobby in Delaware.
1:28:39They flew into Charleston on a Tuesday
1:28:42in January in a chartered King Air and
1:28:45they walked into Rafferty Dunn's
1:28:47rowhouse on Lee Street East in overcoats
1:28:49worth more than Jonah's truck. There
1:28:52were six of them. Rafferty Dunn that
1:28:54morning had put on a cardigan.
1:28:56Deliberately he let them talk for an
1:28:58hour. He did not interrupt. He drank his
1:29:01instant folders. He underlined things on
1:29:04a yellow legal pad. He let Theonius the
1:29:07Basset Hound snore under the table. He
1:29:10let the lead council, a woman named
1:29:12Camille Oster, finish her presentation
1:29:15about collaborative resolution pathways
1:29:18about the significant risk to all
1:29:20parties of protracted litigation about a
1:29:22one-time exgradia community support
1:29:25package in the amount of $14.2 million
1:29:28contingent upon the dismissal of all
1:29:30current and future claims. When she
1:29:33finished, Rafferty Dunn set down his
1:29:34pen. He had one question for Ms. Oster.
1:29:38She invited it politely. His client he
1:29:41began had 421 households. Divide 14.2
1:29:46million by421.
1:29:48Show your work. Camille Oster blinked.
1:29:51That was $33,738.72
1:29:56per household. He continued voice level.
1:29:59Over the lifetime of a chemical with a
1:30:01half-life in the human body of 3 to 5
1:30:03years for families whose children per
1:30:06Dr. Eleanor Persing of Duke University
1:30:09now carried a demonstrable elevated risk
1:30:11of five discrete carcinomomas across the
1:30:14next 30 years. He paused. He had run the
1:30:17math for her, he explained, because he
1:30:18was 68 years old, and he had been raised
1:30:21to be polite to a lady. He would not
1:30:24have wanted her to have to run it in
1:30:25front of her senior partners this
1:30:27evening when she called Wilmington.
1:30:29The number was no. She was to please
1:30:32drive safely to the airport. The 119 had
1:30:36deer this time of year. He stood up. He
1:30:39showed them out. He locked the door
1:30:41behind them. Then he went to the kitchen
1:30:43window and he waited until the black
1:30:45SUVs had cleared the end of Lee Street
1:30:47East. Then he laughed. He laughed for
1:30:50about 40 seconds. He wiped his eyes. He
1:30:55poured himself three fingers of the
1:30:56Weller 12 for the first time in 4
1:30:58months. and he drank one of them and he
1:31:00poured the other two down the sink
1:31:02because as he explained later to Jonah
1:31:04on the phone he had promised Darla. Then
1:31:07he called Jonah. They had opened with
1:31:0914.2. That was low. Jonah observed
1:31:12adjusting Posie on his hip. That was an
1:31:15insult. Rafferty Dunn corrected. It
1:31:17meant they were scared. Why would they
1:31:20be scared this early? Rafferty Dunn was
1:31:23quiet for a count of three. Then he
1:31:26answered one word.
1:31:29Odessa.
1:31:30Jonah had been changing a bulb in Posy's
1:31:33nightlight. He put the bulb down on the
1:31:35dresser and asked carefully what Odessa
1:31:38his old lawyer was talking about. Not
1:31:40Burl's Odessa Dunn clarified.
1:31:43A different Odessa. Jonah was to come up
1:31:46tomorrow. Dunn had something to show
1:31:48him. Odessa Chalmer's Pembridge was 58
1:31:51years old and for 19 years she had been
1:31:53the executive assistant to the plant
1:31:55manager at Argent Melon's Deerlick
1:31:57facility.
1:31:58She had three grandchildren. The
1:32:00youngest, Posie, a different Posie, 5
1:32:03years old, named for her great-g
1:32:05grandandmother, the way Jonah's Posie
1:32:07had been named for Hannah's grandmother
1:32:09had been born with a bilateral renal
1:32:11anomaly that required weekly peritineal
1:32:14dialysis in Charleston. Odessa
1:32:16Chomemer's Pimridge had read about Jonah
1:32:18Driscoll's granddaughter, his daughter.
1:32:20She had caught herself in the AP story.
1:32:23The names were the same. The condition
1:32:25was the same. The watershed was the
1:32:28same. Her son and daughter-in-law lived
1:32:30in Mudlick on Painters Branch Road. She
1:32:34came to the fellowship hall at Deerlick
1:32:36Methodist on the second Tuesday in
1:32:38January. She did not sit in the front,
1:32:40sit in. [clears throat] She sat in the
1:32:41back row. She wore a tan trench coat and
1:32:44no makeup. She had with her a small
1:32:46nylon tote bag. She waited until the end
1:32:49of the meeting. She waited until Pastor
1:32:51Deline had closed in prayer. She waited
1:32:54until the room had thinned to about 40
1:32:56people lingering over coffee. Then she
1:32:59walked up the center aisle and she
1:33:00stopped in front of Rafferty Dunn and
1:33:02Jonah and she introduced herself in a
1:33:04voice flat as a plank. Odessa Chalmer's
1:33:07Pembridge, executive assistant to Victor
1:33:10Herodon, the plant manager, 19 years at
1:33:12Argent Melon. In the bag at her feet was
1:33:15the backup copy of every internal memo,
1:33:17consent order, remediation estimate,
1:33:19legal strategy document, and quarterly
1:33:21PFOA, groundwater sampling report that
1:33:24had crossed her boss's desk since 2007.
1:33:27She said it the way Loretta Wetburn had
1:33:29named Hersprungs,
1:33:31the way a woman named a thing she had
1:33:33already named a thousand times in
1:33:35private and would not permit her voice
1:33:37to break on. She set the bag on a
1:33:40folding chair. She unzipped it. Inside
1:33:43was an external hard drive, four
1:33:46terabytes
1:33:47encased in a hard shell cover that had
1:33:49been dropped at least once. A sticky
1:33:52note on top read in her handwriting.
1:33:55Password is the plant's phone extension
1:33:58for the breakroom microwave backwards.
1:34:00You'll figure it out.
1:34:03Rafferty Dunn stared at the hard drive,
1:34:06then at Odessa, then at Jonah, then at
1:34:09the hard drive again. Why? Jonah asked
1:34:12quietly. Why was she doing this? Odessa
1:34:16Chalmer's Pembridge did not look at
1:34:18Jonah when she answered. She looked at
1:34:20the stained glass window behind him. The
1:34:23window depicted a shepherd carrying a
1:34:25lamb. The window had been donated to
1:34:27Deerlick Methodist in 1947 by a man
1:34:30named Elbert Chalmer's who was Odessa's
1:34:33grandfather. Her granddaughter Posie was
1:34:355 years old. She began and the sentences
1:34:37came out of her then without pause,
1:34:39without theater. The way a woman emptied
1:34:41a drawer she had been pretending for 19
1:34:43years was locked. Posie could not go on
1:34:47the slide at the playground because the
1:34:48exertion blew her blood pressure out.
1:34:51Posie wore a feeding tube because her
1:34:53kidneys could not process a normal
1:34:55child's calorie load. Odessa had been
1:34:58typing memos about this chemical for 19
1:35:00years, formatting the quarterly reports
1:35:03that said detection level exceeded
1:35:05shredding things when her boss had told
1:35:07her to shred them. printing things when
1:35:09her boss had told her to print them,
1:35:11smiling at the wives of the men she had
1:35:13known were going to die. She had thought
1:35:15she was keeping her paycheck. She had
1:35:17been keeping her paycheck, her health
1:35:19insurance, her 401k, the roof over her
1:35:22son's head, and then her granddaughter
1:35:24had been born with the same kidney as
1:35:26his. She looked at Jonah for the first
1:35:28time. Her eyes were dry. Not because she
1:35:32was not grieving, because she had done
1:35:34her grieving at home in private over 19
1:35:36years in a bathroom with the fan on so
1:35:38her husband couldn't hear her. She was
1:35:40not asking for immunity. She was not
1:35:43asking for witness protection. She was
1:35:45not asking for a thing. She was telling
1:35:48him she was 62 days from retirement and
1:35:51she did not care if they took the
1:35:53pension.
1:35:54She cared that her posie got to try a
1:35:57cheeseburger before she died. The
1:36:00password she repeated was the breakroom
1:36:02microwave extension
1:36:05backwards.
1:36:06She picked up the empty tote bag. She
1:36:09folded it. She put it under her arm. She
1:36:11walked out of the fellowship hall.
1:36:13Pastor Delphine Albbright, who had been
1:36:15standing by the coffee earn with her
1:36:17hands folded, watched her go and then
1:36:19crossed the room without a sound and
1:36:21knelt beside Jonah's chair and put her
1:36:23hand on the hard drive the way a woman
1:36:24placed her hand on a Bible she was about
1:36:26to swear an oath on. She addressed him
1:36:29as son and told him flat. He was not
1:36:31touching that hard drive without a chain
1:36:33of custody. She had been reading legal
1:36:35thrillers for 40 years. She was not
1:36:38watching him blow this on a Tuesday
1:36:40night. Mr. Dunn. She pressed on,
1:36:43pivoting her gaze to the old lawyer. Did
1:36:46he bring his evidence log? Rafferty
1:36:49Dunn, who had not stopped staring at the
1:36:51hard drive, admitted very slowly that he
1:36:53had not. but he was going to go to the
1:36:56Office Depot in Beckley right now and
1:36:58buy one. Good pastor Delphine answered
1:37:00she would babysit the drive. She picked
1:37:03it up. She placed it inside her own tote
1:37:05bag. She hung the tote bag over her
1:37:08shoulder. Mr. Driscoll, she instructed
1:37:11was to go home, kiss his girl. Mr. Dunn
1:37:14was to buy the log. She was going to the
1:37:17pastor's office to make a pot of coffee
1:37:20and she was going to sit beside this
1:37:21hard drive with her himnil and her Smith
1:37:23and Wesson until they came back. She
1:37:25said it with the matterof factness of a
1:37:27woman who had in 2003 served two tours
1:37:30as a Navy chaplain in Iraq.
1:37:33Nobody argued the hard drive broke the
1:37:36case. It did not break the case the way
1:37:39lightning breaks a tree. It broke the
1:37:42case the way water broke a dam.
1:37:45slowly, then all at once. Inside the 4
1:37:48terabytes were 17 years of internal
1:37:50communications,
1:37:52including a 2009 memo from Argent
1:37:54Melon's then chief toxicologist to the
1:37:57then plant manager stating in a sentence
1:37:59that would be quoted on the front page
1:38:01of a national newspaper in April that
1:38:03the longchain compound currently used in
1:38:05the C6 feed line represents a
1:38:08non-trivial public health exposure to
1:38:10the Harker Creek wershed and should be
1:38:12substituted with a short-chain
1:38:14alternative at a one-time retrofit cost
1:38:16of approximately imately $4.1 million.
1:38:19The retrofit had been declined. The
1:38:21decline memo had been signed by the then
1:38:24vice president of operations.
1:38:26The then vice president of operations
1:38:28was now the chief executive officer of
1:38:30Argent Melon. Rafferty Dunn, when he
1:38:33read that memo at 2:14 a.m. on the
1:38:35morning of January 14th, 2027 in his
1:38:38rowhouse on Lee Street East with
1:38:40Theonius. The basset hound snoring at
1:38:42his feet laughed the second laugh he had
1:38:44laughed in 6 months. Then he picked up
1:38:46his phone. He called Jonah and told him
1:38:49half whisper, half growl that they had
1:38:50just moved from a civil case to a
1:38:52criminal referral. Argent Melon hadn't
1:38:55just poisoned his water. They had done
1:38:58the math and they had decided Jonah's
1:39:00father was not worth $4.1 million.
1:39:05Jonah was to go to sleep. Dunn would
1:39:08call the US attorney in the morning. The
1:39:10federal grand jury convened in Beckley
1:39:12in March. By June, four Argent Melon
1:39:15executives had been indicted. The
1:39:17sitting CEO,
1:39:19the former VP of operations, who had
1:39:21signed the 2009 decline memo, the chief
1:39:25financial officer who had co-signed the
1:39:272014 quarterly report in which an
1:39:29elevated groundwater reading had been
1:39:31edited down by a factor of 10.
1:39:34and the regional environmental
1:39:36compliance officer who had in 2011
1:39:38driven to the EPA region 3 office in
1:39:41Philadelphia and personally handed a
1:39:44sealed envelope to a mid-level regulator
1:39:46named Dalton Furnace who as it turned
1:39:48out had been receiving quarterly
1:39:50payments from an Argent Melon adjacent
1:39:53LLC called Blue Ridge Watershed
1:39:55Analytics ever since. Dalton Furnace was
1:39:58indicted too. Argent Melon stock dropped
1:40:0041% in a week. The civil case moved in
1:40:03parallel. In August, after 6 months of
1:40:06discovery, Argent Melon's lead council
1:40:08sat across a conference table from
1:40:10Rafferty Dunn in the Sheran in
1:40:12Charleston and offered a settlement
1:40:14figure of $312 million for the 421
1:40:19households with a separate medical
1:40:21monitoring trust for the 12 children
1:40:24identified in Clayton Driscoll's
1:40:25notebook uncapped. Rafferty Dunn that
1:40:28day was wearing the cardigan. He
1:40:30accepted. He accepted because he had
1:40:32calculated in his notebook that $312
1:40:35million was the number that would clear
1:40:38every family's past medical debt pay for
1:40:41every surviving child's future care
1:40:43through age 30 and leave each household
1:40:46a median of $224,000
1:40:49in direct compensation.
1:40:51He accepted because the mothers of
1:40:53Deerlick had been waiting 22 years. He
1:40:56accepted because as he told Jonah later
1:40:58that night, justice delayed was justice
1:41:00that half the plaintiffs did not live to
1:41:03spend. Jonah's family's share came to
1:41:05$842,000.
1:41:08He paid off Posy's medical debt. 41,000.
1:41:12He paid off the double wide. 58,000. He
1:41:16paid off the ranger. 3,200. He set up a
1:41:20trust for Posy's future dialysis and
1:41:22transplant costs. 200,000. He moved his
1:41:25mother merrily from the state-f funded
1:41:26memory care unit in Charleston to a
1:41:29private memory care home in Beckley with
1:41:31a sunlit garden and a music therapist
1:41:33who came 3 days a week. 300,000 into a
1:41:36prepaid annuity.
1:41:38The music therapist that first week
1:41:40played Merrily a song called You Are My
1:41:42Sunshine. And Merrily, who had not
1:41:44spoken a full sentence to Jonah in 9
1:41:46months, had looked at him across the
1:41:48courtyard and told him that Clayton used
1:41:50to sing that to Jonah. Did he remember
1:41:52Jonah?
1:41:54She asked it as if she were asking a
1:41:56stranger whether he knew her son. Jonah
1:41:59had held her hand and promised her,
1:42:00"Yes, mama." He remembered Jonah. Jonah
1:42:04loved her very much. She had told him,
1:42:06"That was good. That was good, honey."
1:42:10And then she had closed her eyes against
1:42:12the sun and slept. He had cried on the
1:42:14way out. He had cried the whole way back
1:42:17to Deerlick. That left $240,000.
1:42:21He put it in the chapel. The chapel on
1:42:23the ridge by October 2027.
1:42:26One year after the funeral at Deerlick
1:42:28Methodist was no longer a chapel. It was
1:42:31no longer exactly a workshop. It was
1:42:34something new which did not quite have a
1:42:36name yet, which Jonah had been building
1:42:38for 10 months with his own hands and the
1:42:41hands of 12 men he had grown up with and
1:42:4316 women who had during the lawsuit
1:42:45learned to use a drill press. The sign
1:42:48over the oak door read, "The Carpenters
1:42:50Hymn, a free trade school for the
1:42:52children of Harker Creek Mudlick and
1:42:54Painters Branch. Clayton Driscoll
1:42:57Foundation established 2027." Underneath
1:43:00in smaller letters, also community
1:43:03wellwater testing free and by
1:43:05appointment. Inside the chapel had been
1:43:07expanded. Clayton's original workbench
1:43:10still ran along the back wall. Jonah had
1:43:13not touched it, had not sanded it. had
1:43:17not refinished it, had not moved it a
1:43:20half inch.
1:43:22The dish in the center, the chisel
1:43:25outlines on the pegboard,
1:43:28the old block plane, all of it exactly
1:43:31as his father had left it on the day in
1:43:342014
1:43:35when his father had stopped being able
1:43:38to stand up at a workbench. Around that
1:43:40original bench, Jonah had built new
1:43:42ones, six of them, simpler pine. Each
1:43:46one with a vice at both ends, each one
1:43:48at a height to suit the elbows of a
1:43:50growing teenager. Along the north wall
1:43:52ran a small clinical grade laboratory
1:43:55bench with a mass spectrometer donated
1:43:57by Dr. Mina Voladarkski from Pace
1:44:00Analytical, who had in April driven down
1:44:02from Pittsburgh in a rented U-Haul with
1:44:04the mass spec in the back and had
1:44:05refused payment and had only accepted as
1:44:08compensation a mason jar of Loretta
1:44:10Wetburn's Blackberry Preserves and a
1:44:13tour of the ridge. Along the south wall
1:44:15ran a small library.
1:44:17Clayton's old King James Bible sat on
1:44:20the top shelf next to a copy of The
1:44:22Essential Woodworker by Robert Wearing
1:44:25next to a copy of The Boys in the Boat.
1:44:28Next to a copy of a book called Tom's
1:44:30River by Dan Fagan, which Rafferty Dunn
1:44:33had sent in the mail with a post-it
1:44:36stuck on the cover that read, "Read this
1:44:39boy how it ends."
1:44:41The silo outside had been cleaned out
1:44:43and converted into a kiln drying room
1:44:45for green walnut and maple cut on site.
1:44:48The clearing had been leveled and a
1:44:49gravel lot put in. A small playground
1:44:52sat beside the gravel lot. Three swings,
1:44:56a sandbox, a slide. On the first
1:44:59Saturday of every month between May and
1:45:01October, the clearing filled with pickup
1:45:02trucks and sedans and the children of
1:45:04Harker Creek and the mothers of Harker
1:45:06Creek and Pastor Delphine Albbright
1:45:08preached a short service from the
1:45:10chapel's front porch. And afterward the
1:45:12children went inside to the workbenches,
1:45:14and the mothers went to the picnic
1:45:15tables, and Jonah stood by the kiln and
1:45:17ran the saws.
1:45:19The first thing he taught the children
1:45:21was how to make a wooden peg. He taught
1:45:23them because that was the first thing
1:45:25Clayton Driscoll had taught him. And
1:45:28because a wooden peg was useful, and
1:45:30because a wooden peg was something a
1:45:32child could hold in a small hand,
1:45:34examine with gravity and claim as the
1:45:36first object they had ever made with
1:45:38their own two hands. Posie, now three,
1:45:41had a collection of 41 wooden pegs in a
1:45:44mason jar on the windowsill of her
1:45:46bedroom in the double wide. She called
1:45:49them her grandpa coins. She paid for
1:45:52things with them. Jonah bought every one
1:45:54of them with a kiss. Odessa Chalmer's
1:45:57Pembridge did not retire. She came to
1:45:59work the Monday after her grand jury
1:46:01testimony and found a corner office with
1:46:04her name on the door. Odessa Chalmer's
1:46:06Pembridge director of operations, the
1:46:08Carpenters Hymn Foundation, and a salary
1:46:11of $76,000,
1:46:13which was $18,000 more than Argent Melon
1:46:16had been paying her. The office had a
1:46:18window. The window looked out at the
1:46:20ridge. She started crying when she sat
1:46:23down behind the desk and she cried for
1:46:24about 3 minutes and then she stopped
1:46:26crying and opened her laptop and started
1:46:28organizing the foundation's intake
1:46:30schedule for the fall testing drive
1:46:32because that was the woman she was and
1:46:34that was the woman she had always been.
1:46:36And the 22 years she had spent sitting
1:46:38in a corporate anti- room typing memos
1:46:40she did not believe in had not changed
1:46:42that woman. They had only kept her in a
1:46:44room too small for her. The chapel on
1:46:46the ridge was not too small for her. The
1:46:49chapel on the ridge was, as it turned
1:46:50out, exactly the right size. Rafferty
1:46:53Dunn moved out of the rowhouse on Lee
1:46:55Street East in September. He did not
1:46:58sell it. He kept it. He rented it to a
1:47:01young associate at the firm his daughter
1:47:02had joined, a woman named Sylvie Yun
1:47:05Breenidge, who promised to feed
1:47:07Theelonius the Basset Hound sardines on
1:47:09Tuesdays, and to not touch the framed
1:47:11newspaper clippings in the hallway.
1:47:13Rafferty Dunn bought a cabin on 14 acres
1:47:163 mi from the chapel on the ridge. He
1:47:18put in a vegetable garden. He kept bees.
1:47:21He showed up at the chapel every
1:47:23Wednesday morning at 9 for what he
1:47:25called office hours, which meant that
1:47:27any family in the 4ount watershed could
1:47:30come sit at his kitchen table with their
1:47:32legal problems and get an answer. He did
1:47:35not charge. He did not accept gifts with
1:47:38the exception of baked goods and
1:47:39homemade apple butter of which he had by
1:47:42Christmas accumulated enough to open a
1:47:44small store. In November on his 69th
1:47:47birthday, he taught his first class at
1:47:48the Carpenters's hymn. The class was
1:47:51called How to Read a Document: A Company
1:47:54Does Not Want You to Read and it was
1:47:56open to anyone in the watershed over the
1:47:58age of 16. And the first session had 42
1:48:01attendees. and Loretta Wetburn sat in
1:48:04the front row with her reading glasses
1:48:06on and took notes in a yellow legal pad
1:48:09which Rafferty done at the end of the
1:48:11class autographed for her. She framed
1:48:14the page. She hung it in her kitchen
1:48:16next to the Dalia blue ribbon. The
1:48:18chemical did not leave Jonah's body. It
1:48:21did not leave Posy's body. It did not
1:48:24leave Merrily's body or the bodies of
1:48:26the 340 surviving households or the body
1:48:29of the Elk River or the aquafer or the
1:48:32Yellow Maples whose roots had been
1:48:34drinking it for 22 years. The chemical
1:48:37was there. It would be there in some
1:48:39form in some quantity for the rest of
1:48:41their lives and the lives of their
1:48:44children and probably the lives of their
1:48:46children's children.
1:48:49This was the thing nobody wanted to say
1:48:51out loud at the ribbon cutting in May.
1:48:54This was the thing Pastor Deline did not
1:48:56quite put into her prayer. This was the
1:49:00thing the AP wire did not quote. The
1:49:03chemical was there. The lawsuit did not
1:49:05remove it from a single cell. What the
1:49:08lawsuit had done was something smaller
1:49:09and harder and more durable than
1:49:11removal. The lawsuit had moved the
1:49:14burden. Before the lawsuit, every family
1:49:17in Harker Creek had carried the cost of
1:49:19the chemical alone in doctor's visits,
1:49:23in funerals,
1:49:25in quiet shame, in the private math of a
1:49:28wife wondering if her baby's cleft
1:49:30pallet was somehow her fault. After the
1:49:34lawsuit, Argent Melon carried the cost.
1:49:36The medical monitoring trust was
1:49:38uncapped. The dialysis for the children
1:49:41was paid. The transplants when the
1:49:43children grew old enough to need them
1:49:45were paid. The scholarships to West
1:49:48Virginia University's nursing program so
1:49:50that the daughters of Harker Creek could
1:49:52themselves become the women who would
1:49:54take care of the next 12 children were
1:49:56paid. The chemical did not leave, but
1:49:59the loneliness of it did, which Pastor
1:50:02Delphine told the Ridge one Sunday
1:50:04standing on the porch of the chapel in a
1:50:06yellow stole was the only kind of
1:50:08healing that most people ever actually
1:50:10got in this world.
1:50:12beauty for ashes.
1:50:14Not instead of ashes.
1:50:17Four,
1:50:18you still had the ashes. You just had
1:50:21the beauty now, too, which was more than
1:50:24most of them had started with. On the
1:50:26first Saturday of October 2027, almost
1:50:29exactly 1 year to the day after Burl
1:50:32Raffert's funeral at Deerlick, Methodist
1:50:34Jonah Driscoll drove up the ridge road
1:50:36to the carpenters's hymn with Posie
1:50:38strapped in the backseat of the Ranger.
1:50:40The maples were turning again. The sumac
1:50:43along the ditches was the red of a
1:50:45struck match. The ridge was quiet. The
1:50:49sky above the chapel was gradient peach,
1:50:51then pink, then the softest shell blue,
1:50:54and a single long cloud lay across the
1:50:57west like something being unraveled by a
1:50:59careful hand. He parked in the gravel
1:51:02lot. He got Posie out of the car seat.
1:51:05She was almost three now. She wore a
1:51:07corduroy jumper the color of a pumpkin
1:51:09and a yellow barret in her hair, which
1:51:11was Hannah's barret, which she had asked
1:51:13for in the mornings for the last two
1:51:14months. She was holding a wooden peg in
1:51:17her left hand. In her right hand, she
1:51:20was holding her father's finger. They
1:51:22walked up the slope. The chapel stood
1:51:25where it had stood in 1948, and where it
1:51:27had stood on the Saturday in 1998, when
1:51:30Clayton Driscoll had bought it with
1:51:32$1,100 he had saved by not drinking for
1:51:35a year. and where it had stood when
1:51:37Clayton Driscoll had died of kidney
1:51:39cancer in 2015. And where it had stood
1:51:42when Jonah Driscoll had opened the door
1:51:43with a brass key on a red string one
1:51:45year ago yesterday. It stood it stood a
1:51:48little straighter now. The roof had been
1:51:51patched. The windows had been reglazed.
1:51:54The silo had been cleaned. The oak door
1:51:57had been oiled. But it was the same
1:52:00chapel. Jonah stopped at the top of the
1:52:03slope. He turned Posie around. He
1:52:07crouched down behind her and he pointed
1:52:09over her shoulder, past the chapel, past
1:52:12the kiln, past the gravel lot, down
1:52:15through the maples to the Elk River,
1:52:17running south under the low light. He
1:52:20asked if she saw that river down there.
1:52:22She hummed back that she did. Her
1:52:24grandpa, he told her, used to walk down
1:52:26there with him when he was her size. She
1:52:29wanted to know why, to skip rocks. She
1:52:32did not know what that was.
1:52:34He promised to show her. He straightened
1:52:36up. He hoisted her onto his hip. He
1:52:39walked carrying her past the chapel
1:52:41through the clearing down the deer path
1:52:43to the river. Behind them from the
1:52:45parking lot, Rafferty Dunn in a wool
1:52:47coat holding a thermos of coffee watched
1:52:49them go. Beside Rafferty Dunn stood
1:52:52Pastor Delphine Albbright in her yellow
1:52:54stole. Beside Pastor Deline stood Odessa
1:52:57Chmer's Pimbridge with her posie on her
1:53:00hip. The two posies having become over
1:53:02the summer the kind of inseparable
1:53:03friends that only three-year-olds and
1:53:0570year-olds became. Beside Odessa stood
1:53:08Loretta Wetterburn in her good blue
1:53:10coat. Beside Loretta stood Earl Wetburn,
1:53:14who had in June been diagnosed with the
1:53:16same renal cell carcinoma that had taken
1:53:18Clayton and who had with the Uncapped
1:53:21Medical Monitoring Trust begun treatment
1:53:23at John's Hopkins the week after
1:53:25diagnosis and who was as of this
1:53:28Saturday 4 months into remission.
1:53:32Beside Earl stood Mavis Oldroid.
1:53:35Beside Mavis stood Dela Henrix. Beside
1:53:38Delpha stood Freda Lamb Ratcliffe with
1:53:40her cane. Beside Freda stood Tucker Vain
1:53:43and his wife and their three children.
1:53:45Beside the vein stood Dr. Mina
1:53:47Vololadarsski, who had driven down from
1:53:49Pittsburgh that morning, because Pastor
1:53:52Deline had asked her to, and who had
1:53:54brought her two teenage sons, because
1:53:56she wanted them to see what a mass
1:53:58spectrometer looked like when it was
1:54:00being used, as she put it, for a purpose
1:54:02instead of a profit. Beside Dr.
1:54:05Voladarski stood 41 more people and
1:54:08behind them stood 60 more and behind
1:54:10them stood the 120 children of the
1:54:12carpenters's hymns inaugural class each
1:54:15one holding a wooden peg. They had
1:54:18turned on their own lathe that morning,
1:54:20and behind the children stood the
1:54:22mothers of the children. And behind the
1:54:24mothers stood the few surviving fathers
1:54:26and the many surviving widows. And
1:54:28behind them stood the ridge itself. And
1:54:31behind the ridge stood the Alaganis
1:54:34going blue in the 5:00 light. And above
1:54:36all of them stood a sky the color of
1:54:39peach and pink and shell blue, with one
1:54:41long cloud unraveling slowly across the
1:54:44west. Jonah did not know they were
1:54:46watching. He had walked ahead down to
1:54:49the river with his daughter on his hip.
1:54:51He was crouched at the waterline. He was
1:54:54looking for a flat stone. He found one.
1:54:57He put it in Posy's small hand. He
1:55:00closed her fingers around it. He stood
1:55:02up behind her. He wrapped his hand
1:55:05around hers. He swung her arm. The stone
1:55:08skipped once, twice, a third time.
1:55:13[clears throat]
1:55:14Posie made a sound. It was the sound a
1:55:16child made when the world was still
1:55:18after everything, a place where a stone
1:55:20could fly across water. Jonah closed his
1:55:23eyes. He let the sound settle because
1:55:26this was the thing he had learned in the
1:55:27one year since he had stood on this
1:55:29ridge with $59 in his pocket and a brass
1:55:32key in his hand. He had learned that his
1:55:35father had not left him a chapel. His
1:55:37father had left him a hymn. A hymn was
1:55:40not an object. A hymn was a thing you
1:55:43sang. A hymn was a thing other people
1:55:45could sing with you if you began it in
1:55:47the right key. A hymn was a thing that
1:55:50outlived the singer because another
1:55:52throat picked it up, and another and
1:55:54another until the song did not belong to
1:55:56anyone and belonged to everyone. Clayton
1:56:00Driscoll had sung his hymn in a leather
1:56:02notebook alone on a stool by lamplight,
1:56:05with his lungs filling up with the thing
1:56:07that was going to kill him. Burl
1:56:08Rafferty had sung his in silence for 11
1:56:11years and had sent it on in an envelope.
1:56:13Loretta Wetburn had sung hers across a
1:56:16formica table over yeast rolls. Odessa
1:56:19Chomemer's Pembridge had sung hers with
1:56:21a hard drive. The 319 people in a
1:56:25fellowship hall on a Thursday morning in
1:56:27November had sung theirs by standing up.
1:56:30And Jonah Driscoll, kneeling at the Elk
1:56:32River with his daughter in his arms, had
1:56:34sung his by refusing to walk away. That
1:56:37was all. That was everything. He stood
1:56:40up with her. He turned. He saw them. All
1:56:44of them on the slope above him,
1:56:46watching. He did not wave. He did not
1:56:49call out. He just stood with his
1:56:52daughter in his arms in his dark brown
1:56:54canvas and leather jacket, with the hood
1:56:56bunched soft at his collar, and his
1:56:58heavy brown pack set at his feet in the
1:57:00gravel. The last of the afternoon light
1:57:03caught the side of his jaw where the
1:57:05pale scar was.
1:57:07The wind came up off the Elk River and
1:57:09lifted the dark curls at the back of his
1:57:11head and dropped them again. Posie in
1:57:14his arms waved. She waved to all of
1:57:17them. She called out, "Hi. Hi,
1:57:19everybody." She announced she had made a
1:57:22rock go. The slope answered her. Loretta
1:57:25Wetterburn called down that yes, she had
1:57:27baby. Yes, she had.
1:57:30Odessa Chalmer's Pemrid's posie from her
1:57:33grandmother's hip hollered that she
1:57:35wanted to do it too. Freda Lamb
1:57:37Ratcliffe, both hands on her cane, said
1:57:39hallelujah to no one in particular.
1:57:42Pastor Deline, her hand resting lightly
1:57:44on Rafferty Dunn's elbow, breathed amen.
1:57:47Rafferty Dunn said nothing. He only
1:57:50lifted his thermos of coffee in a small
1:57:52deliberate salute that Jonah at the
1:57:54bottom of the slope caught and
1:57:55understood and answered with a nod. Then
1:57:57Jonah turned back to the river. He
1:57:59crouched down beside Posie. He picked up
1:58:02another flat stone from the bank. He put
1:58:04it in her hand. He asked if she wanted
1:58:07to try one by herself. "By myself?" she
1:58:10echoed back, savoring the words. "By
1:58:12herself?" he confirmed. "Okay," she
1:58:16decided. She stood at the edge of the
1:58:18river in her pumpkin corduroy jumper
1:58:19with her yellow barret and her small
1:58:21fist closed around a flat gray stone
1:58:24from the bed of the elk. And she drew
1:58:26her arm back the way her father had just
1:58:28showed her and she threw. The stone
1:58:31skipped once. She shrieked. He laughed.
1:58:36He laughed the way a man laughed who had
1:58:38not laughed in a long time and was
1:58:41discovering that his throat still
1:58:42remembered how. That was his girl. He
1:58:45told her that was your girl. She parided
1:58:47back triumphantly because she had
1:58:49already decided that was the game. He
1:58:52kissed the top of her head. Behind them
1:58:54on the ridge the sun went another inch
1:58:56down toward the Alaganis, and the sky
1:58:58went the color of the inside of a shell,
1:59:01and the chapel stood with its lights on
1:59:03in the windows. And in the chapel the
1:59:05mass spectrometer hummed, and the wood
1:59:08stove ticked, and the 41 wooden pegs in
1:59:11a mason jar on a window sill, in a
1:59:13double wide and Harker Creek, waited for
1:59:16their 42nd brother. Below the ridge the
1:59:18Elk River ran south under a lowfall
1:59:21moon. Below the river in the aquifer,
1:59:23the plume continued inch by patient inch
1:59:26to move. But above the plume, now for
1:59:29the first time in 22 years, the people
1:59:31above it were not alone. They were
1:59:33awake. They were together. They were
1:59:36holding wooden pegs in their small
1:59:38hands. They were throwing flat stones
1:59:40across the river that had been poisoning
1:59:42them. And one of the stones thrown by a
1:59:45three-year-old girl whose name had been
1:59:46written in her grandfather's hand before
1:59:49she was born, skipped once across the
1:59:51water, and then rested on the far bank
1:59:54in the yellow leaves, and did not sink.
1:59:57Jonah Driscoll stood at the Elk River
1:59:59with his daughter in his arms. He looked
2:00:01up at the ridge. He looked at the
2:00:03chapel. He looked at the people on the
2:00:06slope. "Thanks, Daddy." He breathed
2:00:09under his breath, so quiet it was more
2:00:10breath than word. "I'm home. She's
2:00:13safe." And up on the ridge, the long
2:00:16pink cloud finished unraveling across
2:00:19the west, and the first star came out
2:00:21above the chapel roof, and somebody
2:00:23later, Jonah would never be sure, who
2:00:25began very quietly to sing.
2:00:28The song was softly and tenderly. It had
2:00:31been Burl Raffert's favorite hymn.
2:00:33[clears throat]
2:00:34By the second verse, 40 voices had it.
2:00:37By the third, a hundred. By the fourth,
2:00:40the whole ridge. And Jonah Driscoll
2:00:42carried his daughter up the slope toward
2:00:44the singing in his father's jacket, in
2:00:46his father's boots, in his father's
2:00:48work. and the Chapel on the Ridge in
2:00:50Breakersfold, West Virginia, bought for
2:00:53$59 from the McDow County Clerk's
2:00:56Office, by a 29-year-old laid-off pipe
2:00:59fitter with a 2-year-old daughter and no
2:01:01plan, opened its oak door to the voices
2:01:04coming up the hill. And the voices went
2:01:07in, and the door closed softly behind
2:01:09them, and the light in the two narrow
2:01:11boat-shaped windows burned warm and
2:01:13steady into the gathering dark. And the
2:01:16hymn kept

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