Raylan

  “It stops them in their tracks,” Casper said.

  “I say, ‘Heck, if God put it there . . .’ Or I might say, ‘Hell, is God tryin to hide it on us?’ I smile. ‘Playin a game on us?’ I tell them, ‘But gettin it out gives you men jobs and heats your homes,’ and I go through all the coal rewards.”

  She turned to Raylan.

  “I’m warmed up. How are you doing? Wait. ‘Har you doin, big boy?’ I start thinkin that way and it comes out of my background naturally.” She said to Raylan, “You don’t comment? My security, Marshal One-Liner?”

  “I haven’t thought of anything,” Raylan said, “worth saying.”

  “You just did it again. You make one-line declarations. You sort of mope around, so to speak, while your mind is flicking lines at you.”

  Raylan said, “Wait’ll I tell Art.”

  Carol said, “See?” She said, “When I finish my chore we’ll go back to the house—where you picked me up and told me how smart you are, but it didn’t work, did it?”

  Raylan said, “When I take you back to Woodland Hills, my time’s up, isn’t it?”

  Carol said, “I’ll let you decide.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  She talked all the way back to Woodland Hills.

  “The woman asks, ‘What’s the matter, don’t you like beauty?’ Like I’m color-blind, void of any appreciation of nature. I was tempted to go with the usual, the more heavy-handed. ‘You’d rather look at the view than your husband having a job?’ But I tried something else, agreeing with her. ‘Of course I’d rather have the view. I watch the work going on, your husbands operating those giant machines, and all I can wonder is, How long will it take us to restore that grandeur, home for all of our animal friends.’ I don’t know why I said that, it just came out. So I added, ‘And some like skunks who aren’t especially our friends.’ ”

  In the limo going back to Carol’s place, Raylan said, “You could hold your nose as you’re saying it.”

  “Isn’t that obvious?”

  “Get a laugh,” Raylan said, “from the ones who don’t know you’re putting them on.”

  Neither spoke again—Boyd watching then in the rearview—until they pulled up the drive to the Colonial and Carol said to Raylan, “I want you to come in with me.”

  Boyd wasn’t told anything. He sat there.

  She took him into a paneled study with pictures of horses and furniture covered in Black Watch plaid, the room done, Raylan believed, by someone other than Casper. He said, “Casper loans out his house to the company, doesn’t worry about guests looting the place? Ones he doesn’t even know?”

  “You think I’m a looter?” Carol said.

  She was at the tea table bar pouring, Raylan believed, cognac. He wasn’t sure until she handed him a wineglass half full and he raised it to his face, Raylan thinking, Don’t clink glasses with me.

  She did and he clinked hers back.

  She said, “Snifters require care. These glasses are easier, quicker too, and I’m dying of thirst.”

  It was dark in the house, lamps on, and almost dark outside.

  Raylan told himself she was taking a moment with the sip of cognac to become a different Carol, someone he hadn’t met before. He had watched her all day going from down-home to mine company executive with the facts. Now she looked up at him and said:

  “Tomorrow Boyd and I are driving up to Piney Run to see Pervis. He’s staying there while, as he puts it, he shakes off the deaths of his boys. I have to admire Pervis. He makes his bullshit sound nearly as authentic as mine. I do my West By-God Virginia accent and they believe me.”

  “You want to know,” Raylan said, “did Pervis will Black Mountain to Dewey or not.”

  “He wouldn’t,” Carol said. “I might make Pervis an offer, or, it might not be the right time.”

  Raylan was thinking of Carol offering Otis Culpepper a settlement for his property. And Boyd shooting him.

  She came close to Raylan, moving in on him, saying, “You’ve seen me at work playing different roles. It’s exhausting. Well, finally it’s done and I get to be myself.”

  Looking at him over her glass.

  Raylan believed if he took her glass and set it on the bar with his, he could put his arms around her, give Carol a soulful kiss, and he’d get laid.

  Man, she was right there waiting.

  It turned out he didn’t have to take their glasses and set them aside. She did, and turned to him, he believed, not having a lot of time; wanting him to get to it. He wondered if she’d be serious and do a lot of gasping or grin, having fun?

  He wondered why she was so sure he’d want to jump her.

  Picks some guy to be her security and says, “Him.”

  Because she read about him and Layla. Carol wondering what Layla saw in him.

  He didn’t care for what he was doing here.

  Raylan said, “Carol, I’m sorry but my time’s up,” and offered his hand.

  She said, “You’re turning me down?” Surprised but not showing it much. But then she said it, “I’m surprised.”

  Raylan said, “You aren’t the only one.” He gave Carol a kiss on the cheek and got out of there.

  His cell buzzed.

  Raylan in the front seat with Boyd. It was Winona.

  “Am I interrupting something?”

  “I’m on my way home,” Raylan said, “the Mount-Aire Motel. I got a cabin almost off the property, but still hear these people from Ohio revving their ATVs.”

  Winona said, “She bet me she’d seduce you.”

  Raylan said, “I hope you bet a pile.”

  “She make the moves on you?”

  “She’s standin in the room nekked, I told her I had a headache.”

  “You dog—call me tomorrow,” Winona said. “Okay?”

  Boyd said, “She took all her clothes off?”

  Raylan’s cell buzzed again.

  It was Art. “You at her house?”

  “I’m in a car,” Raylan said, “on the way to Harlan and still a virgin.”

  “I’m proud of you,” Art said, “staying pure. You through with Ms. Conlan come on back, I got something else for you.”

  “I’m near done,” Raylan said, “but want to check on Carol in the morning. I think she’s gonna try to pull something. I’ll call you later.” Raylan said, “I’m sittin with Boyd Crowder listenin to every word I say,” and turned off Art before he could start yelling at him. He said to Boyd:

  “What time you seeing Pervis tomorrow?”

  Boyd said, “Oh, that’s where I’m goin? You know more about my future whereabouts’n I do.”

  “What I keep thinking,” Raylan said, “Carol must’ve offered that old man a settlement before you shot him.”

  “Which one?” Boyd said, looking at Raylan. “You mean Otis, you’re beatin a dead horse.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Pervis was sitting in his white socks, his drawers and an undershirt. “A wife-beater,” Rita told him. “I’m not your wife, so you can’t ever get mad and hit me.”

  “You’re my precious girl,” Pervis said, “I’m givin my business to, my fields, my leaves of grass, my mountain . . . and my store, everything.”

  “What I always wanted,” Rita said, “run a store and get paid in food stamps. You not puttin me on you say all I’m gettin?”

  “You know my heart’s pure,” Pervis said. “You get the works, every last thing I own.”

  “You be the first man ever gave me anything from his heart. Usually it’s from lower down.” Rita came over in her pure white shirt hanging over her pure white panties and curled up on Pervis’s lap saying, “You don’t think Dewey’ll give me a hard time?”

  “The poor soul’s waitin for me to pass. The way I’m feelin, it may never happen.”

  She kissed Pervis’s bare skull and stuck her tongue in his ear. “You want to wait a while for the main event?”

  “I thought we’d smoke a little as I build up steam.”
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  She ran her hand over Pervis’s bare skull.

  “You gettin your head tan. That’s what’s different about you. You not wearin your rug no more,” running her tongue over his skull. “You look younger without that old thing, you know it? Got some sun on you for a change.” She got up and went in the kitchen still talking. “I know we got salt pork. You want, I’ll fry up a mess of eggs.”

  “You bet,” Pervis said. “I’m hungry enough to eat the ass out of a skunk.”

  “Honey . . . ?”

  “Yeah . . . ?”

  “You know you got a coffeepot on the stove has a gun in it?”

  “For varmints,” Pervis said.

  “It’s a .38.”

  “For big varmints.”

  What Raylan did the next morning, he watched the house where Carol was staying from a patch of trees in Woodland Hills, kept watch close to two hours before the limo arrived. He saw Boyd get out and ring the bell, Boyd waiting now. The door opened for a moment and closed and Boyd returned to the limo.

  A half hour went by before Carol came out in her Levi’s and heels and slipped into the front seat next to Boyd.

  Raylan got in the Audi he’d been using and followed the limo through Harlan and out past Baxter.

  About a mile up 413 Raylan saw the limo pull off the road and he braked to a crawl and saw Dewey—it was, in his suit too big for him—walking up the road, Raylan thinking the limo was waiting for him. But now a few seconds later a red pickup was coming up on Raylan with M-T MINING on the door as it passed, and pulled in behind the limo. Raylan turned into a service station long out of business. In his rearview there was Dewey running toward him.

  Dewey in the passenger window now saying, “Raylan, I wonder could you help me out. I loaned Pervis my Hornet to get home? Only it wasn’t where he said he’d leave it, so I’m thinkin he took the car home . . . if he didn’t run out of gas and left it somewheres.”

  “Get in,” Raylan said. “You know who’s in the pickup?”

  “Rifle mounted in the window,” Dewey said. “You start yelling at him about his driving? Better think about it first. They’re company people in the truck. Look—the guy gettin out—goin up to the limo, leans in . . .”

  “Jumps back,” Raylan said. “Five dollars Carol raised the window on him.”

  “That one by the car’s Billy the Kid.”

  Raylan said, “He’s fifty years old he’s a day.”

  “He musta been Billy the Kid at one time and it stuck. I’m told he’s known to have shot people.”

  “That mean nobody’s seen him do it?”

  “The ones got shot did,” Dewey said. “I know he’s one of M-T’s intimidators. Goin to talk to Pervis about his mountain. See if he’ll listen to figures. He don’t, he better have a good reason.”

  Raylan said, “You know why they’re called intimidators?”

  “Means they pack.”

  “We called ’em gun thugs,” Raylan said.

  He watched Billy get back in the pickup—another guy in there with him—and start up. Raylan got in line and followed the limo and the company truck all the way through Piney Run to Pervis Crowe’s rented house.

  Rita saw the limo from the kitchen window, she turned off the fire under the salt pork and went out to the sitting room, still holding the cooking fork.

  “Honey, we got company.”

  Pervis said, “You gonna stick ’em with that?”

  Rita said she’d get his pants and ran upstairs to the bedroom. She brought his Levi’s he called his dungarees—Pervis at a front window now—and helped him put on a shirt.

  “Who do we know comes to visit in a stretch?” Rita said, stepping into a pair of denim shorts.

  “Must be the company woman, Ms. Conlan,” Pervis said, “come to buy a mountain.”

  “How much she gonna offer?”

  “She starts, we’ll say, ‘You kiddin?’ We won’t tell her you own the mountain,” Pervis said. “See how high she wants to go.”

  They watched a pickup now easing its way up the grade to stop behind the limo.

  “Company woman,” Pervis said, “bringin some company people.” He looked at Rita. “You turn off the stove?”

  She went out to the kitchen and Pervis watched two men step out of the truck. He recognized Billy the Kid as the skinny guy put on his hat, cocking it over one eye. The other one, standing there in kind of a lazy slump, Pervis believed went by the name of Wayne. He looked hungover.

  “They’s another car,” Pervis said, “pullin in behind the company truck.”

  Rita came from the kitchen smoothing her white shirttails over her shorts, saying, “How many’s that woman need?”

  Pervis waited till he saw a sight for sore eyes step out of the Audi and said, “It’s Raylan, bless his heart.”

  Rita said, “Yeah . . . ?” Watching Raylan with keen eyes and heard Pervis say:

  “And Dewey. What in the world he bring Dewey for?”

  Dewey hurried to catch up to Raylan while counting the people in the yard, Raylan turning to him.

  “You gonna go up there and say anything?”

  “Ask Pervis where my Hornet’s at.”

  “I mean about the mountain.”

  “I told you last night she guessed I’m gonna own it, and I let her think it. She makes a deal with the old man before he passes? I get a stretch limousine goes one-fifty full out. I figure ought to sixty—that’s a load to get off from standin still—but she’ll do it’n less’n ten seconds.”

  Raylan was looking at the two thugs waiting for him, Carol and Boyd closer to the porch where Pervis stood calm as could be, his girl Rita right there close by.

  Dewey said, “The company woman ever wants to offer a deal at a future date, I’ll get some tips from Casper, smartest man I ever met.”

  Raylan said, “It’s four to four I count you on my side.”

  “Me and you,” Dewey said, “Pervis and his colored girl?”

  “That’s our team,” Raylan said. “You don’t have to say nothing you don’t feel like it, all right?”

  “You come due to own a mountain,” Dewey said, “they’s all kind of people asking about it.”

  He hung back now watching Raylan approach the two company thugs in the yard.

  Kid,” Raylan said to the middle-aged guy, “tell me what you’re doing here.”

  “Mine company business,” Billy the Kid said. “It sure ain’t none of yours.”

  Raylan said, “You come armed?”

  “One I’m licensed to pack. So’s Wayne here.”

  Carol called to Raylan, “Leave them alone. They’re my security people.”

  Raylan said, “You afraid of Pervis?”

  She didn’t bother to answer. Raylan watched her turn and walk toward the house, Boyd still facing Raylan until she stopped and looked back at him.

  “You coming?”

  The company thugs turned and followed Boyd.

  Pervis stood on the porch waiting, Rita close by, hands on her hips, slim brown legs coming out of her shirttails.

  Carol, turning to Pervis said, “You going to invite me in?”

  “What for?” Pervis said.

  “Talk about mineral rights.”

  “I’m not sellin none today.”

  Billy the Kid was facing Raylan again. The Kid turned his head to say something to his partner and now Wayne, wearing dark sunglasses, was looking this way like he’d just now woke up. The Kid seemed alert but anxious, loosening the hat on his head, an old businessman’s Stetson, and setting the curled brim over his eye again.

  Pervis said, “You want to talk business—” and stopped, the company woman looking at Raylan. Pervis said, “Miss, I’m talkin to you,” and waited for Carol to look up at him.

  He said, “You come to talk about buyin my mountain, tell me why you bring these thugs along?”

  Carol said in her nice tone of voice, “Mr. Crowe, I represent M-T Mining. I come to Harlan, I know full well I’m
not gonna win any popularity contest.”

  “You sure aren’t,” Pervis said, “puttin on that West Virginia voice. Case we forgot your dad mined.”

  The Kid said, “Grampa sees how it is. Talks hard to us, huh, in front of his nigger puss.”

  Raylan saw Rita’s hands ease down to her thighs.

  He said, “Pervis, why don’t you and Rita step in the house while we finish up here.”

  He said to Carol, “Pervis is thinking how you did business with Otis Culpepper and what Otis got out of the deal.”

  “They musta got Otis drunk,” Pervis said, “and shot him he’s got his eyes closed. That’s what I think of this company girl’s story.” He said to her, “Honey, you want to talk bout a mountain I’m leavin to my kin? He swears he’ll honor my wishes and never sell it.”

  He looked out at Dewey standing across the yard, not close to anybody, and waved to him.

  “Come on up here, boy. Show this girl we standin together on this.”

  Raylan said, “Go on up there,” getting Dewey out of the way. Watched him edge around the gun thugs heading for the porch. Watched Dewey step up there as Pervis put his arm around his shoulders.

  “Tell this little girl,” Pervis said, “a time comes I ever pass, you ain’t sellin. Remember what I said about my gravestone?”

  Dewey standing small under Pervis’s arm, people in the yard watching him, said, “You want it up on top of Big Black.”

  “Laid to rest in the trees,” Pervis said.

  “Yes sir, you don’t want no trees cut down.”

  “You don’t either,” Pervis said, “or any coal taken out of your mountain.”

  Raylan watched Dewey hesitate, a look of pain on his face. He said, “No matter how much they offer me.”

  “Mr. Crowe,” Carol said, “if I thought for a moment Dewey was your heir, I wouldn’t be here to make you an offer, would I?”

  “Since I’m never gonna sell it,” Pervis said, “I believe you’re thinkin of puttin a gun to my head and have me sign a deed over to you. Then have the Kid shoot me and make up a story how it happened.”

  Raylan saw the Kid adjust his hat again as if he was taking a bow, the Kid acting like he was in a movie.