'Surely the verdict will attract clients.'
'Of course, but most of it'll be junk.'
By using the word 'bankrupt,' Wes had gently placed Huffy back in his box, along with old Prickhead and the bank. The verdict could not be classified as an asset, and without it the Paytons' balance sheet looked as bleak as it did a day earlier.
They had lost virtually everything already, and to be adjudged bankrupt was a further indignity they were willing to endure. Pile it on.
They would be back.
'I'm not giving you a plan, Huffy. Thanks for asking. Come back in thirty days and we'll talk. Right now I've got clients who've been ignored for months.'
'So what do I tell Mr. Prickhead?'
'Simple. Push just a little bit harder, and he can use the paper to wipe with. Ease off, give us some time, and we'll satisfy the debt.'
'I'll pass it along.'
At Babe's Coffee Shop on Main Street, Mary Grace and Tip Shepard sat in a booth near the front windows and talked about the town. She remembered Main Street as a busy place where people shopped and gathered. Bowmore was too small for the large discount stores, so the downtown merchants survived. When she was a kid, traffic was often heavy, parking hard to find. Now half the storefronts were covered with plywood, and the other half were desperate for business.
A teenager with an apron brought two cups of black coffee and left without a word.
Mary Grace added sugar while Shepard watched her carefully. 'Are you sure the coffee is safe?' he asked.
'Of course. The city finally passed an ordinance forbidding the use of its water in restaurants. Plus, I've known Babe for thirty years. She was one of the first to buy her water.'
Shepard took a cautious sip, then arranged his tape recorder and notebook.
'Why did you take the cases?' he asked.
She smiled and shook her head and kept stirring. 'I've asked myself that a thousand times, but the answer is really simple. Pete, Jeannette's husband, worked for my uncle. I knew several of the victims. It's a small town, and when so many people became ill, it was obvious there had to be a reason. The cancer came in waves, and there was so much suffering. After attending the first three or four funerals, I realized something had to be done.'
He took notes and ignored the pause.
She continued. 'Krane was the biggest employer, and for years there had been rumors of dumping around the plant. A lot of folks who worked there got sick. I remember coming home from college after my sophomore year and hearing people talk about how bad the water was. We lived a mile outside of town and had our own well, so it was never a problem for us. But things got worse in town. Over the years, the rumors of dumping grew and grew until everyone came to believe them. At the same time, the water turned into a putrid liquid that was undrinkable. Then the cancer hit-liver, kidney, urinary tract, stomach, bladder, lots of leukemia. I was in church one Sunday with my parents, and I could see four slick, shiny bald heads. Chemo. I thought I was in a horror movie.'
'Have you regretted the litigation?'
'No, never. We've lost a lot, but then so has my hometown. Hopefully, the losing is over now. Wes and I are young; we'll survive. But many of these folks are either dead or deathly ill.'
'Do you think about the money?'
'What money? The appeal will take eighteen months, and right now that seems like an eternity. You have to see the big picture.'
'Which is?'
'Five years from now. In five years, the toxic dump will be cleaned up and gone forever and no one will ever be hurt by it again. There will be a settlement, one big massive settlement where Krane Chemical, and its insurers, are finally brought to the table with their very deep pockets and are forced to compensate the families they have ruined. Everybody gets their share of damages.'
'Including the lawyers.'
'Absolutely. If not for the lawyers, Krane would still be here manufacturing pillamar 5 and dumping its by- products in the pits behind the plant, and no one could hold them accountable.'
'Instead, they are now in Mexico- '
'Oh yes, manufacturing pillamar 5 and dumping its by-products in the pits behind the plants. And nobody gives a damn. They don't have these trials down there.'
'What are your chances on appeal?'
She sipped the stale and heavily sugared coffee and was about to answer when an insurance agent stopped by, shook her hand, hugged her, said thanks several times, and appeared to be on the verge of tears when he walked away. Then Mr. Greenwood, her junior high principal, now retired, spotted her as he entered and practically crushed her in a bear hug. He ignored Shepard while rambling on about how proud he was of her. He thanked her, promised to keep praying for her, asked about her family, and so on.
As he withdrew in a windy farewell, Babe, the owner, came over for a hug and another lengthy round of congratulations.
Shepard finally stood and eased out the door. A few minutes later, Mary Grace made her exit. 'Sorry about that,' she said. 'It's a big moment for the town.'
'They are very proud.'
'Let's go see the plant.'
The Krane Chemical Bowmore Plant Number Two, as it was officially known, was in an abandoned industrial park on the east side of the city limits. The plant was a series of flat-roofed cinder-block buildings, connected by massive piping and conveyors.
Water towers and storage silos rose behind the buildings. Everything was overgrown with kudzu and weeds. Because of the litigation, the company had secured the facility with miles of twelve-foot chain-link fencing, topped with glistening razor wire.
Heavy gates were chained and padlocked. Like a prison, where bad things happened, the plant shut out the world and kept its secrets buried within.
Mary Grace had visited the plant at least a dozen times during the litigation, but always with a mob-other lawyers, engineers, former Krane employees, security guards, even Judge Harrison. The last visit had been two months earlier when the jurors were given a tour.
She and Shepard stopped at the main gate and examined the padlocks. A large, decaying sign identified the plant and its owner. As they stared through the chain-link fence, Mary Grace said, 'Six years ago, when it became apparent that litigation was inevitable, Krane fled to Mexico. The employees were given three days' notice and $500 in severance pay; many of them had worked here for thirty years. It was an incredibly stupid way to leave town, because some of their former workers were our best witnesses during the trial. The bitterness was, and is, astounding. If Krane had any friends in Bowmore, it lost every one of them when it screwed its employees.'
A photographer working with Shepard met them at the front gate and began snapping away. They strolled along the fence, with Mary Grace directing the brief tour. 'For years, this place was unlocked. It was routinely vandalized. Teenagers hung out here, drinking and doing drugs. Now people stay as far away as possible. The gates and fences are really not needed. No one wants to get near this place.'
From the north side, a long row of thick metal cylinders was visible in the midst of the plant. Mary Grace pointed and explained, 'That's known as Extraction Unit Two. The bichloronylene was reduced as a byproduct and stored in those tanks. From there, some was shipped away for a proper disposal, but most was taken into the woods there, farther back on the property, and simply dumped into a ravine.'
'Proctor's Pit?'
'Yes, Mr. Proctor was the supervisor in charge of disposal. He died of cancer before we could subpoena him.' They walked twenty yards along the fence. 'We really can't see from here, but there are three ravines in there, deep in the woods, where they simply hauled the tanks and covered them with dirt and mud. Over the years, they began to leak-they were not even sealed properly-and the chemicals soaked into the earth. This went on for years, tons and tons of bichloronylene and cartolyx and aklar and other proven carcinogens.
If you can believe our experts, and the jury evidently did, the poisons finally contaminated the aquifer from
