Elmore Leonard - Raylan

“I was a miner at one time,” Raylan said, “and live to tell about it?”

“Wait for my questions,” Carol said.

I n the gym, Carol got up from her chair next to Casper Mott’s, gave his shoulder a pat and walked up to the mike, its stand in the middle of the movable stage at the far end of the Redskin gym. She looked out at three hundred folding chairs all occupied, signs sticking up in the crowd; unemployed miners in clean shirts and dirty baseball caps outnumbering the ones with jobs three to one, maybe more, their wives waiting to have a say.

She glanced to her right, where Winona sat at her stenotype machine. Carol had listened to Casper reading the names of court reporters. He came to Winona’s, mentioning she was Raylan’s ex, and Carol said get her for the meeting, whatever she wants. Casper asked should he bill M-T, and Carol said, “I would.”

To Carol’s left, Raylan stood where he’d mount the stage if he had to. While she was still seated Carol had watched him lookingree cont at Winona, trying to catch her eye. But she couldn’t tell if he did without turning around.

Beyond Raylan, off to the side of the crowd, Boyd was talking a mile a minute to a girl Carol saw as a babe, in heels and a showy yellow dress, the neck cut just low enough. She had to be Ava, attractive but still a babe, the one who’d shot her husband while he was having supper. Boyd’s brother. Ava was living with Boyd now-he’d mentioned it-as brother and sister. Carol asked him why.

Boyd said, “We’re seein can we trust each other enough to fall in love and make it work.” Whatever that meant.

Carol didn’t ask.

She took the mike from the stand now and said, “Good afternoon. I’m Carol Conlan, a vice president of M-T Mining.”

She got a wave of boos, a few whistles she believed had nothing to do with her job, and questions fired at her:

“When’s M-T gonna do right by us?”

“Lady, we miss a day sick we’re laid off.”

Carol said, “My dad mined coal in West Virginia. I grew up in coal camps, so I know what you all are talkin about,” her accent taking her closer to West Virginia as she spoke.

A voice in the crowd asked her: “How’d you escape the life?”

“I got out on a scholarship to college, worked my tail off studying about industry, supply and demand and the coal business. I went on to get a law degree and was hired by the company that’s given you fellas your jobs.”

A man’s voice said, “They’s way less jobs workin mountaintop. What are all us miners sittin around the house suppose to do?”

Carol said, “Times change, don’t they? You’re drivin a car now stead of a team of mules. The blacksmith used to shoe your mules, what’s he doin? He’s gone, workin at something else now. Most coal mines are still underground, but you know it’s changing. There more and more surface operations workin today.”

From the crowd: “You mean desecratin the mountains.”

Carol said, “We restore the mountains, don’t we?”

The same voice: “Wait a hunnert years for the trees to grow? I doubt we’ll be around.”

She had something to say about future generations, but saved it. A man in the front row wae f" justify"›s standing now. He said: “My name’s Hazen Culpepper from over by Mayfield? I like to know why one of your gun thugs shot and killed my brother Otis for breakin a few windows.”

Carol softened her voice saying, “Hazen, I can’t tell you how sorry we are. But it wasn’t a gun thug shot your brother. We don’t hire gun thugs.” She said, “Otis lost his home because of someone carelessly dumping debris from a work site. I don’t blame Otis for gettin mad, but-and I hate to say this-your brother fired a shotgun at me. He was ready to fire again and one of our employees intervened.”

“You mean Boyd Crowder,” Hazen said, “standin over there against the wall?” He said, “Boyd, you tell her Otis missed?”

“Ms. Conlan was there, ” Boyd said. “She saw him.”

“Then you’re both liars,” Hazen said. “Otis don’t miss with a twelve-gauge. You shot him when he wasn’t lookin.”

Raylan watched Hazen walk over to Boyd and say something to him, a few words, on his way through the crowd, having hands put on him, patting his shoulder. Raylan caught a whiff of Carol’s scent and turned his head to her standing next to him.

She said, “You’re not going to arrest him?”

Raylan said, “Which one?”

Now a woman in the front row stood up and said to Carol, “You don’t live anywheres near a mine, do you? You know what it does for people livin below? It covers everything you own in coal dirt. It’s all over the house on every surface. Is that why they call it surface coal? It’s in your bathtub, your well-you can’t drink the water no more. Every mornin a coat of coal dirt coverin my car. I have to wash my car before I can go to work.”

“Wait now,” Carol said. “You’re surprised it gets things dirty? Ma’am, it’s coal. You live in the heart of coal country. A boy comes home from playin, his mom says, ‘Junebug, your hands are black as coal. Wash ’em before grampa gets after you.’ This old man with fifty years of coal dust you’re complainin about, embedded in his pores. Ma’am, coal powers more than half the electricity in the U.S. Do we quit minin coal cause it’s dirty? My dad use to come home so filthy all you could see were his eyes. The coal industry mines forty million tons of coal a year. Half of it’s taken from the surface.”

A woman’s voice said, “You people dig it all up, what’s future generations gonna do?”

“What have future generations ever done for us?” Carol said. “I’m kiddin. You know who said that? Groucho Marx. Listen, I don’t think we should worry our heads about running out of coal. I know we’ve got enough in the ground for the next two hundred and fifty years.”

A man’s voice piped up: “We can have windmill power right now, like in Holland. Clean wind, no soot blowin on us.”

“If the wind lovers ever get it right,” Carol said. “The trouble is, wind turbines can cause health problems, headaches and sleep disorders, kids having nightmares.”

Man’s voice: “All this strippin goin on, your company gets rich while we’re the poorest county in the state, most of us laid off.”

“It tells me,” Carol said, “we got to do more strippin, get more work for you fellas.”

A miner’s voice: “We work for a time, the company digs while the price of coal is high. The price dips, the coal company files bankruptcy, forfeits its bond, and slips away in the night.”

“You know they’re always risks,” Carol said. “It costs a fortune to set up a mine operation. They don’t find as much coal as expected, they have to try again someplace else. Mister, it’s the price of coal on the market keeps us in business.”

“You clear out,” a voice said, “without cleanin up the mess you always leave behind. A ’poundment breaks loose where you’re holdin three hundred million gallons of slurry, fulla poison, toxic chemicals, and it pours down in the holler and contaminates the water. You know what your boss, the CEO of M-T Mining, called it?”

“An Act of God,” Carol said. “I believe my boss, bless his heart, is sincere when he says that. He’s a churchgoer, he believes the Lord moves in mysterious ways we don’t always understand. Why couldn’t it be an Act of God? The Lord tellin us, if you gonna build impoundments to catch slurry, then God damn it, try buildin one that holds.” Carol said, “Sometimes we have to learn the hard way.”

She was getting sounds of approval, whistles, a woman saying, “A-men” and Carol felt closer to the crowd.

She said, “I know the pay’s decent for surface-mine work. I believe it comes to eleven hundred and twenty dollars a week,” and said right away, “Raylan Givens,” extending her hand in his direction, “I bet most of you know him. A judge assigned Raylan as my personal bodyguard. I asked His Honor, ‘What do I need protection for? Aren’t we all friends?’ ” That drew some noise. “Raylan works for Uncle Sam, he’s a federal marshal and has been decorated a number of times, I understand, for drawing down on outlaws.”