Elmore Leonard - Raylan

This was before Otis came up the mountain.

F irst, headlights swept the trailer and a black stretch limo pulled up next to the office. Boyd watched a woman get out and he stepped to the door and opened it. He saw her talking to her driver, giving him a few words, and the limo took off. Now she turned to the trailer, in the light from the open door, and Boyd was looking at Carol Conlan, the one person everybody saw in the newspaper or on TV when the mine company had something to say. Jesus Christ, Carol Conlan coming in smiling at him, saying, “You’re Boyd, aren’t you? The one dropped the rock on the guy’s house.”

How’d she know that already? Boyd started to ask her, but Carol Conlan was talking on her cell now, telling somebody, “I’m not going to hear that, Bob. Start over and give me a report I’m sure to love, okay?” She said, “I have to go to the bathroom,” and set down her phone.

She said to Boyd, “Where is it?” Boyd pointed and watched her go in and raise her skirt as she sat down, leaving the door open. Man, Carol Conlan.

She said, “You did a job on that house.”

“Only took me the one boulder,” Boyd said. He picked up her cell from the desk and sniffed to see if it had her scent.

“I thought it was cool,” Carol said, “flip the bucket and take out the entire house. What’s the guy doing about it?”

“Otis? Nothin,” Boyd said, “he’s an old man.”

“That Mick fairy Gracie-you always call him mister?”

“It’s what he told me,” Boyd said.

“He took it much too far,” Carol said, “destroying the home when we have a public hearing coming up.”

Boyd heard the toilet flushe t up and Carol came out straightening her skirt. She said, “Now we’re the bad guys. That pond sounded like it was nice before we fucked it up.” She said, “I never liked Gracie much. I’ll have your jobs switched around and make you the boss. We have anything to drink?”

“Half a pint of vodka and all kinds of water,” Boyd said and saw the good-looking company Disagreements woman make a face and pick up her phone.

“I’ll call Brian, have him get a bottle of scotch. I hate vodka.”

Otis had shot an elk up near the summit of Big Black, the mountain covered in a forest of old pine and aspen: came on the stag so close they both jumped at the sight of each other. Otis put him down with one shot, bled him out and they had meat the whole winter. This time he followed switchbacks up the grade to what was left of Looney Ridge, the side of the mountain carved into contoured benches. They drilled holes in the rock above the veins, and blew charges to get the coal out. Otis’s house-still a thousand feet down the mountain-would shake and pictures of his dad and Marion’s kin would fall off the wall. He’d told her, “By the war, they was a hundred and thirty thousand miners diggin coal in Kentucky. Now they’s a few dozen up there scrapin it out with Cats. It ain’t like coal mining no more.”

Marion asked him what it was like and Otis said, “Livin on the goddamn moon.”

He saw the bulldozer standing at the edge of the fall line, he saw lights on inside the double-wide they used for their office, didn’t care somebody was inside counting beans, Otis stepped out of his truck racking the twelve-gauge and began blowing out the trailer’s glass. Paused and looked around at the earthmoving machines standing idle, shut down for the night. Good, he wouldn’t have to shoot anybody come yellin at him.

Otis circled the double-wide blowing out windows, reloading twice on the way. He couldn’t see was anybody inside till Boyd Crowder stuck his head out the door.

O tis, you done?”

“I’m on come in there next,” Otis said, “shoot up the office and put you out of business for an hour.”

“Otis,” Boyd said, “I had the key to the dynamite locker I’d give it to you. I feel I owe you for the damage done your house, even though it was Mr. Gracie said to do it.”

“I don’t have a house,” Otis said. “It’s gone.”

“All right,” Boyd said, keeping his tone down, “but you got it totaled account of your fishpond.”

“What’d you tell Mr. Gracieell for the n,” Otis said, “you gonna knock my house down soon as you get done kissin his ass? I remember you, Boyd, standin up like a man the time we struck Duke Power. But tell me what we got out of it.”

“Not much that time,” Boyd said.

“We got nothin. The whole country watchin, the company says they gonna play square with us. The country stops watchin. The company tells us it takes time to change ways of getting the coal out. They take twenty years thinking about it. It’s how it is and always been. The company builds a slurry pool gonna hold all the mess they make washing coal. The wall busts and poisons dump in the stream feeds my pond. I work for those people or ones like ’em forty years underground. They kill my fish and don’t think nothin of it.”

Close behind him Carol Conlan said, “He’s a threat.”

Boyd turned his head to the side.

“He broke some windows.”

He felt the company lady pull out the waist of his Levi’s and shove something hard against his spine. Boyd knew it was a gun, he’d packed guns stuck in there before. Now she was telling him, “I know all about you, Mr. Crowder, how you become different people whenever you feel the need.”

“I follow my instincts,” Boyd said. “Do the first thing comes to mind like my Higher Power is slippin me the word and I go with it. I’ve learned to think without arguing with myself.”

“Well, I’ve slipped you a Glock nine,” Carol said. “A loose cannon’s a high risk. He raises the shotgun, shoot him.”

“Otis? I told you, he broke some window’s all.”

“I’m not going to court on this,” Carol said, “while we’re the bad guys, and I won’t take risks with nothing at stake. We handle this right now. He raises his shotgun, shoot him.”

Otis, standing no more than twenty feet away, said to Boyd, “Who you talkin to?”

“Tell him,” Carol said.

“I got a lady visitin,” Boyd said. “One of the coal company high-ups come by to see how we’re doin up here. I told her well, the mountain keeps gettin lower, don’t it?”

Carol stepped into the doorway, gave Boyd a shove and he had to step outside. She said to Otis, “I’m the one looks into whatever we disagree on.”

“You want,” Otis said, “I’ll disagree on what you done to my pond, my home. How doy hhei you like being disagreed with?”

Carol began with a pleasant tone saying, “In a couple of days I’m coming back to put on a big open meeting and hear from both sides, friends of coal and complainers.” Carol changed her tone to a whine, pretending to rub her finger over a flat surface as she said, “They’s soot all over my organ I play at Sunday worship.” Herself again, Carol said, “You know that old coal song? ‘We have to dig the coal from wherever mother nature puts it.’ That’s what coal mining is all about.”

“It don’t mention the mess,” Otis said, “strip-minin makes of your home. You ever live in coal country you know that.”

“I was born and raised in Wise, West Virginia,” Carol said, “till I went away to law school.”

“Was any soot on you,” Otis said, “it’s gone now. My wife’s never been belowground, but she’s dyin of black lung, sleepin next to me forty-seven years breathin my snores.”

“That’s sweet,” Carol said, “but I think you have revenge in your mean old heart, you say the company destroyed your home-”

“And his fish pond,” Boyd said.

“Blames the company,” Carol said, “for his wife coming to the end of a miserable life.” She said to him, “Otis, you’re here to pay us back, aren’t you? Looking at me thinking I’m the goddamn company. All you have to do is raise the shotgun.”