Chapter 10 2

2 I went to hell, where you can't see and you can't breathe.The black mud surrounded me, and I couldn't breathe.Surround yourself with shame. The last few weeks, months.The days that made Dirk feel exhausted but excited started in the morning and ended in the early hours of the morning.Dirk ignored the other guests—the ones who paid him, all because of the canal of love. That's right, Dirk is filing an appeal in Niagara County District Court.He is suing the City of Niagara Falls, the Niagara Falls Board of Health, the Niagara Falls Board of Education, the Swann Chemical Company, the Niagara Mayor's Office, and the Niagara Medical Testing Service on his client's behalf.Never before has he written such a powerful statement.But his main job is to detect and collect evidence. He drives a car, occasionally walks, and goes deep into this hell on earth.

Dirk sometimes felt like those early hapless explorers who struggled to paddle across the wide river that connects two lakes, realizing too late that they had crossed the "final limit" when the current was strong. —The raging white rapids just hit Goat Island.At first, I felt that if I rowed the oars at such a speed, the boat would definitely move forward; but later I realized that the speed and thrust had nothing to do with me.Such things are happening. Dirk brought himself back to the fact that he had crossed the river Styx into places he knew nothing about, usually in the county archives building, or on his big, luxurious ship, which seemed to be the ferryman of the underworld. the ship of the dead.

Beyond the City of Industry in Niagara Falls, they entered another area.This sparkling tourist city on the Niagara River is really different.Wonder of the world, the world's first choice honeymoon place, on the Scenic Avenue, retains the old and grand hotels left by another era, and only began to replace them with some more modern hotels and "motels" in the early 1960s. The park also has gardens.Rising mist from a roaring waterfall.Dirk couldn't understand that this was a second city in hell, stretching many miles to the east and having nothing to do with the inhabitants of the river.They are twins, but deformed.There's Niagara Falls, and there's the city of Niagara Falls.One is beautiful, horribly beautiful; the other is ugly, and people make it so ugly for their own benefit.

Man-made poisons, man-made deaths. "As long as it's premeditated, it's murder. It goes beyond negligence. 'Vicious disregard for human life.'" The huge energy output from the Great Falls has enabled some industries in the Niagara Falls area to operate, which is the only link between the Great Falls and this prosperous industrial city.But one must be aware of the existence of this link, which is a multimillion-dollar business: the Niagara Hydropower Station.But to the ignorant, it seems like it doesn't exist at all. In the eyes of ignorant people, many things do not exist.

"They have no conscience, I'm kind." My good Dirk is trying to find out everything. People in those places had rudely rejected Nina Oshek, obstructed her inquiries, and lied to her, but Dirk had been treated kindly in these places.He's a lawyer, licensed, so he's entitled to practice law in New York State, and he understands the rights of citizens and lawyers alike.He asked to see the county files, the business ownership contracts.He also asked to see county health records, as well as Niagara County Divisional Board meeting minutes.Around the city and county buildings, he knew where to go, the Niagara County courthouse, the Niagara Falls district attorney's office.He asks questions and insists on getting answers.He didn't just threaten to call witnesses, although he did say so.He didn't listen to the ambiguous "nonsense" that tried to put him off, even from Mayor Wayne, from his entourage.Dirk had always been like this with his fellow lawyers, administrators, and directors of the Swan Chemical Company employed by the local government.

The chief lawyer of the Swan Chemical Company was named Brandon Skinner, and Dirk had studied his situation carefully.He also knew Dirk Burnaby.Even if they don't greet warmly and politely when they meet, they still respect each other.Skinner was more than a decade older than Burnaby, fairly wealthy, and lived on a riverside estate near Charlotte. "At least, we never pretended to be friends. There is no need for hypocrisy between you and me." Dirk felt hopeful.He is optimistic.He knew the signs: the excitement before a fair fight. Of course he knew Skinner and the other lawyers, because advocacy was about delaying, delaying, delaying.He knew the tricks, and he used them himself.Tricks are as essential to a lawyer's profession as surgical instruments are to a surgeon.But these can't fool him.The surge in legal costs caused by the delays also couldn't break the plaintiffs, because Decker didn't charge anything for working for them.

Dirk may have begun to realize that it is time to stop taking money out of his own pocket. "So what. I have plenty of money." into hell.I'll be drowning here. Dirk was shocked to find the name "Angus McKenna" next to the name "Hyram S. Swain."Angus, patron of Virgil Burnaby!The old man looked very nice, and Dirk called him Papa, and that was a long time ago. Dirk also discovered that Virgil Burnaby was a partner in the McKenna Experimental Company, which was reorganized in 1939 and renamed the McKenna-Swann Chemical Company; Swann bought it in 1941 McKenna's share of the investment formed what became known as the Swan Chemical Company.The company took advantage of the boom in the wartime arms manufacturing industry and became one of the most prosperous businesses in the northern United States.

"How come I've never heard of this? My father—" Dirk's father rarely talked to him about it.In his later years he seemed to have lost all interest in, or rather resented, business and social life.His life at the time consisted of boating, fishing, and golf.He always seemed affable and gentlemanly, and he used these to mask (as Dirk now surmises: he didn't show it) a deep melancholy.Dirk's parents grew estranged from middle age, Claudine was social, but Virgil was stubborn and withdrawn.Vivid images of sailing and traveling with his father came to Dirk's mind, just the two of them, they rarely communicated, as if the rough river had merged them into one, where anything could happen.At other times, Virgil Burnaby kept a respectful smile.A man who lives a life that is not his own.

Years later, Dirk wondered if his father, a member of the Big Island country club, had come to disgrace Reginald Burnaby because he had married a woman who had inherited a large fortune.The bearded, reckless and brave man, with a few hundred dollars in honor, died in the Falls.Or maybe Virgil secretly felt proud all along.Dirk felt a little lost that his father had never mentioned his personal life and emotional world to him. As Dirk grew older, he knew vaguely that his father was involved in many of the ventures of Angus McKenna, and his sons, Lyle and Elistair.One of their successes was the development of insecticides and herbicides; McKenna Experiments acquired several patents that remained in place when the company was sold, and now Virgil's heirs still receive dividends from them . (And for a substantial amount.) Two years before Swann bought McKenna and his partners’ investment share, the firm had acquired at auction an unfinished seven-mile canal, the Canal of Love, to dump scrap.This mysterious canal was never used as a shipping lane.Construction began in 1892, with investment from a local developer named William T. Love; he had an ambitious plan to bypass the Niagara Gorge and connect the upper and lower Niagara Rivers.But Love later went bankrupt, leaving only a partially dug ditch.It sits in the middle of nowhere on the east side of a city of 20,000 inhabitants, where industry is just beginning to develop.Like the larger port city of Buffalo, the suburbs of North Tonawanda, and Lackawanna, the local economic boom began in 1941 with the outbreak of World War II.Military vehicles, planes, munitions, cans, but also boots, gloves, uniforms, and even flags!There are also various chemical products.The war gave the biggest boost to the development of Niagara Falls, even more than the tourism industry in the 1850s.

Dirk thought of the excitement he felt when he was 24 and running off to join the army with a few friends.It would never have occurred to him that the war would be a great thing for those Americans who stayed at home, including Virgil Burnaby and his partners. Between 1936 and 1952, the so-called Canal of Love, actually a ditch, was used by the city government and Swann's company to dispose of garbage and chemical waste.The Swann Chemical Company dumped tons of trash here and sold the rights to dispose of it to the city of Niagara, and in the 1940s, to the U.S. Army, who dumped a lot of the Manhattan Project here. mysterious (radiated) chemical waste of war. In 1953, the Swan Chemical Company stopped dumping chemical waste into the Canal of Love, buried the dangerous waste with earth, and then sold the heavily polluting, seven-mile-long canal to Niagara Board of Education.one dollar!

The contract stipulated that Swan Chemicals was permanently released from liability for any injury - "bodily injury or death" caused by the hazardous waste. Dirk looked at these materials over and over again and was stunned. How could this happen?How could this be allowed to happen?And not far from now in 1953?That is, eight years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed.When the hazards of radiation have been known to people. Swann Chemicals is the main polluter, but the dumping has been going on since Macinda-Swann.Pesticides, herbicides and toxic substances.Dirk knew that the patent dividends his family received could be traced back to here.Dirk had said he didn't care about the patents, but like the Burnabys, he had long taken them for granted. Dirk felt sick and ashamed.He himself was involved in it. He got himself into it completely, without knowing it. (But how can you not know?) When Alia spoke of "the rich Burnabys," it was reprimanding.Dirk didn't know if she was joking or scolding him.I don't know if her words are just for fun, or if she is really so cold and heartless.She really put on a pretentious air like she was crazy. (No wonder Clarice and Sylvia don't like their sister-in-law. Dirk really doesn't blame them at all.) Aaliyah despises money because she's married to Dirk, who makes her and the kids Live a life without worrying about food and clothing.What else is there to be proud of? Dirk's concern now was that Nina Oshek would find out that he, Dirk Burnaby, was also inextricably linked to the Canal of Love.No matter how roundabout the connection, no matter how innocent he was. (But how could it be innocent?) When the waste-filled canal was sold to the Niagara Falls Board of Education for a dollar, they immediately sold most of the land to a local developer named Corwin and built an elementary school on the site. When the Ninety-ninth Street Elementary School was completed in the autumn of 1955, Cowen Manor had already been built, and many small wooden bungalows had already been sold.Decker felt that the school administration and teachers knew nothing about the construction site—they didn't know that they were actually working on a toxic waste dump.Even the principal doesn't necessarily know.The Board of Education must keep the deal with Hiram H. Swan a secret.Cowen, the contractor, was supposed to keep it a secret too, but did he really know? According to county health records, almost all residents of Corwin Estates complained of the disgusting smell, "black sludge" seeping from basements and soft grass, and "burning" children and small animals; The "mining barrels" in the yard contained poisonous tar.Corvin arranged for some of the worst places to be cleaned up, and the city of Niagara had done something similar.Two miles to the east of the Swann Chemical Company, there is a crescent of land that has been zoned for residential development but has remained undeveloped. (Kids still play here, even though it's fenced in. It's now a dumping ground for homeowners—dirty mattresses, broken household items, old building materials and trash. burning Christmas tree.) In 1957, the County Board of Sanitation medical investigators "tested" Ninety-ninth Street Elementary School, declaring that it was "free of any dangerous substances that could threaten physical health."They also examined some of the complaining residents, and found no "reason" to panic.They came to the same conclusion: there was nothing wrong with Corvin Manor, and if there was, it had been taken care of and dealt with. Dirk consulted the 1952 Board of Education records.At the time of the transaction with Swan, the chairman of the committee was a local businessman named Yili, who has now passed away.Dirk remembered that Ely, or another of the same name, was a business partner of Hiram Swann.He probably knew McKenna, and of course Virgil Burnaby. That's why the Board of Education accepted Swann's unprecedented contract -- his company was permanently shielded from liability.This is mutual help among friends.They belong to the same private club, and they have close business contacts, and even made the relationship even closer through marriage.And there may well be a money transaction.It is possible that Erie was a secret investor in one of the lands, the Cowen estate.Ely might have been one of Hiram Swann's poker friends, or McKenna's golfing companion.He is likely to be a regular there in Charlotte.He is a member of the Board of Education, involved in many political events, and is a volunteer philanthropist among other activities.no salary.But the chairmanship is highly respected. Dirk sat there with his head in his hands, heavy and dizzy.He had been at the municipal building a few hours earlier, and now he didn't even know where he was, alone, wandering among the dusty, echoing aluminum shelves that looked a bit like books. In the library, but what is placed on it is not books, but documents.He was taking notes frantically, his right hand was now a bit like a crab claw, and he could barely hold the pen.He felt a burnt taste in his nose, mouth, and throat, as if he had inhaled so much smoke from a blast furnace.What was he going to say to Nina Oceana?But he had to explain something to her.Dirk felt yearning for the river.When he looked up, the mottled and dilapidated concrete walls seemed to disappear, and he saw the unglamorous autumn sun, the sky above the river, and the breeze blowing gently.Yet it was still the sun.It was Virgil Burnaby's thirty-foot dinghy, the Lukes 2, and Dirk and his father were standing on the slippery deck.She was a neat, shining white boat, and though she seemed pretty to Dirk, he preferred his father's sailboat.In the last years of his life, however, Virgil disliked sailing, as it was too strenuous for a man of frail health. (Heart attack? Dirk never knew.) It was a time when they sailed alone, alone together, and it was such a pleasure.It was their longest voyage yet: across vast Lake Erie and up Lake Huron to Sault Ste. Marie, a few hundred miles north of Michigan, just on the border with Canada.Virgil Burnaby and Dirk Burnaby.father and son.Shielding his eyes with his hands, Dirk saw his father standing in the bow of the boat, looking out over the lake and the blurry horizon.The way he stood seemed to be out of place, shoulders hunched, head tilted, and Dirk felt uneasy. "Daddy?" Dirk yelled, cupping his hands to his mouth. "Hey, Daddy?" His voice sounded childish and desperate.But the noise of the engine was too loud, and there was the whirring of the wind, and Virgil Burnaby didn't hear it.