Rachel's Blue. Zakes Mda

anti-fracking business and about Schuyler’s bad influence she throws a tantrum and tells her grandma to mind her own business, that she is not a kid any more and should be left alone to make her own decisions. She says she is entitled to her own mistakes. Whoever heard such moonshine?

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      Members and supporters of Appalachia Active, and some curious citizens, have assembled in the Arts West theatre building. Rachel sits in the front pew – this used to be a church some years back before the community bought it as a multipurpose performance space; it still has rows of pews for theatre seats. She is among a group of young women from the city and outlying townships. She sits next to Schuyler, her best friend from Rome Township. Occasionally they throw a glance at the two men and two women at a table on the stage, but most of their attention is on the people who are trickling in, filling the pews.

      “Hey, there’s Jason. You remember him, don’t you? We called him the stinky kid,” says Schuyler, glancing at the two men walking down the aisle and looking for space in the opposite pews. One of them is Jason and the other is Genesis de Klerk, his father.

      “I didn’t. You and the other yapping yentas called him that,” says Rachel. “Is that him? Where has he been?”

      “Yapping yentas” elicits screams of excitement from Schuyler, and the girls forget all about Jason as they reminisce about high school and the lisping teacher who gave Schuyler and her friends that label because indeed they were busybodies. They mimic the teacher and the other young women in the pew join the conversation with their own memories of the trouble they used to get into as a result of not minding their own business.

      One of the women on the stage, the older one, uses her clenched fist as a gavel to call the meeting to order and the assembly falls silent. She welcomes everyone to the workshop, especially the visitors from West Virginia who have come to help the people of Athens organise against the fracking companies.

      “I always have a flashback to the sixties when I’m with members of Appalachia Active,” she says, rubbing her hands together with glee.

      She then introduces everyone on the stage: the young woman is from the university where she recently graduated with an engineering degree; and the man is a legal practitioner in Athens, “a lawyer to love” because he fought for the Wayne Forest. Everyone laughs at the characterisation of the handsome middle-aged man because lawyers are generally reputed to be unlovable. This is quite a good generational mix because the fourth facilitator on the stage is a young man, Skye Riley, perhaps in his early twenties, who is a coal miner from West Virginia.

      The young engineer is the first to address the meeting. She is using Microsoft PowerPoint to illustrate what hydraulic fracturing is all about. She tells the assembly that fracking technology has been in existence for sixty years, but horizontal drilling is a new technology.

      “You get oil and gas, but you also get a lot of waste water that no one knows what to do about,” she says.

      She shows slides of the different classes of wells and explains in detail how water is injected into them, and the potential for pollution this presents. And then she talks about the abandoned and orphaned wells throughout southeast Ohio and the ground water contamination that they cause, besides the fact that they are great conduits of this poison to the surface.

      Although this is called a workshop, it is really a lecture. All the technical stuff cannot hold Rachel’s attention for much longer and she begins to fidget. Her eyes wander and catch Jason de Klerk gazing at her. He smiles. She smiles back.

      People have lots of questions after the engineer’s presentation. Rachel is most impressed by her age – she is definitely younger than Rachel and yet here she is on stage addressing all these people, talking with eloquence and authority, and teaching people far older than her, some of whom are respected professionals in the county, things they knew nothing about. Because of her education she is more of an asset to Appalachia Active than Rachel is.

      All of a sudden she now sees her role as only to increase the numbers at demonstrations and protest marches. She does not add much value to the organisation. Nana Moira was right, she concludes, she must go back to school. She may not be an engineer like the young lady, but she can be something that people look up to. She is even more impressed when the engineer answers the questions with confidence and humour, and how she tries to be fair and honest. When she has no information on the advantages and disadvantages of a specific fracking method she says so, and directs the questioner to other sources that are more knowledgeable than she is.

      The lawyer to be loved takes the stage with more panache. Perhaps he imagines he is addressing a jury. He talks of well blow-outs that release millions of gallons of polluted water into creeks, of how natural water streams are hit when fracking companies prepare the ground for fracking, and of numerous occasions when the valves of trucks are “accidentally” left open so that the brine can be spilled along the road. All the while he gives specific examples of towns, villages and townships where these things have happened, and what the response or lack of response of Ohio government agencies was.

      This angers the people; some yell that this must not be allowed to happen. Rachel steals a glance at Jason. She catches him still staring at her. She wonders if he is paying attention to the proceedings at all. She finds his gaze discomfiting. He waves furtively. She responds with a weak smile, and quickly redirects her eyes back to the stage.

      “Every well in Athens County is an old well that has been converted, most before we even had laws,” says the lawyer, before outlining what legal recourse the communities have. It becomes obvious to Rachel that his role is to teach Appalachia Active how to get around things, how to stay within the law in their protests, how to use the loopholes in the law to fight the fracking companies. He is arming the members with legal tools on how to beat the fracking industry at its own game. He has really studied the law as it pertains to extractive industry and has explored the many avenues that aggrieved communities can follow to take their cases to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, to city and county officials, to state representatives, to the state governor and to the courts.

      The chairperson seems to have a different view, at least that’s what her facial expression shows as the lawyer uses PowerPoint slides to sum up his argument. She does not directly challenge him, though. After he has answered a few questions from the assembly and taken his seat, she calls upon Skye Riley to make his presentation. When he stands up one can see how scrawny he is, yet he moves and gesticulates as though he has just been ejected from a dynamo. His is not a meticulously prepared PowerPoint presentation. He just speaks off the cuff.

      “We can’t play by their rules,” he says. “They are pillaging our land and poisoning our water. We need direct action.”

      The audience is immediately electrified, especially the front pew of young women. Rachel is all agog.

      “You can actually change the situation you live in without dealing with politicians,” Skye Riley continues. “You need no one’s permission to confront the industry that is killing our families. We can’t wait for two years dealing with the courts; we need direct action now.”

      There is prolonged applause. The lawyer is trying very hard to hide his wounded look behind a smile. But it is a very mechanical smile. He takes the young man’s utterances as a personal attack on him.

      “Direct action,” someone shouts from the floor, “what does it mean exactly?”

      All eyes turn on the heckler. It is Genesis de Klerk.

      “It means you chain yourselves to pieces of equipment,” says Skye.

      Everyone knows exactly what he is talking about. Some people are already resorting to that line of action. An Appalachia Active member is currently on trial for doing exactly that. The news has been on Power 105 FM and in the Athens News. It is what scared Nana Moira; the way things are going Rachel may suffer the same fate.

      “It means you sit in the governor’s office and refuse to leave. It takes endless energy and money to go into the community organising. Slow and patient work needs resources and time, which we don’t have.