Dead Silver

17

Tom's connection with the dead Silver Mine had come about by way of a radical environmentalist group, a few of whom had snuck onto the site and were caught damaging equipment. But before they could be tried, Astrid's murder took place, making the Dodd Mining Company leery of more bad publicity-this time, really ugly. They backed off taking all the defendants to court and instead chose a scapegoat, a young man with no money or clout, figuring they could railroad him to a long prison term. Tom knew his family and offered to represent him pro bono. He used the company's reluctance as leverage, threatening not just a trial, but a very noisy one. In the end, he was able to plead the sentence down to three years; the kid actually served less than half that.

In the process, Tom had learned a very interesting piece of information.

Astrid had belonged to that same radical group, and she had talked seriously about blowing up the mine itself.

That news had surfaced in Phosphor County at the time of the equipment-damaging incident and made its way around the rumor mill, stepping up antagonism toward Astrid. But then her death gave it a reverse spin, because it strengthened suspicion that the killer was a local resident or mining company employee. The gossip quieted, the Sheriff's Department ignored it, and it never played a part in the investigation.

I thought about it all through the drive back to Helena, but by itself, it wasn't much to go on. Maybe it was an important factor that could play a part in exonerating Professor Callister, maybe just another complication.

But it underscored one of the saddest aspects of situations like that, where the conflicts themselves weren't intrinsically violent, but got people riled up to the point of hatred-sadder still because the majority just wanted to improve their lives and would gladly have come to a peaceful compromise. It tended to be extremists who barred that and created bitter polarization, with each side roundly blaming the other.

Most environmentalists were well intentioned, but easy targets for dislike because they often took a moral high ground-including groups like Astrid's that felt justified in destruction. There were also wealthy interests that wanted to close off wilderness and make it their private playground, and used conservationism to disguise their real object. They had a lot of money and knew how to work the system. The result was a gridlock of litigation that blocked even the most sensible proposals, like salvaging fire-damaged timber that would otherwise rot. Sometimes it seemed like a lawsuit got filed every time somebody walked into the woods and opened a pocketknife.

At the other end of the spectrum were corporations contemptuous of both the land and its residents, resorting to barefaced lying and manipulation to gouge fast bucks out of a place, then leave it bleeding and move on. The landscape had plenty of those scars from companies that had flagrantly violated regulations and defaulted on promises of cleanup, then stonewalled authorities or simply dissolved. Mines like the Dead Silver project were particular offenders. There were several thousand abandoned mines in Montana alone and several hundred thousand in the nation that had been polluting for decades. The cost of detoxifying a typical site ran well into the millions; the overall amount was staggering and would have to come mostly from taxpayer money. Not much of that had been found for the purpose.

Caught in the middle of the conflict were the working people who had depended for generations on resource extraction industries. As they lost their way of life and sank into unemployment and poverty, it was only natural that many blamed the environmentalists, especially affluent outsiders. The hovering business concerns weren't shy about fueling the fire, knowing that would put pressure on politicians and intimidate activists.

I'd once harbored a naive belief that most of those issues could be resolved if the money interests would take a step back from the trough; the purists would admit that everything they ate, wore, lived in, traveled via, and so on came from natural resources; and both sides accepted the fact that the people who did the hard, dangerous work of obtaining those resources should be paid and treated fairly. Encouraging breakthroughs came along once in a while, but in general, the bulb of reasonable compromise wasn't giving off much light.