Sometime in the early sixties, at the height of his industry, Galligan managed to cobble together a six-outfit string; it was too small to compete with the big conglomerates but more than enough to keep himself on the map. In ’78, he made a bundle selling out to Amax, OBC, and Zeigler. He kept the King Coal and one or two of the smaller shops where he could mine coal and be left alone to run things his way without anyone paying him much mind. It was a hobby, I guess, or more likely it was just in his blood.
Those were good days for Galligan, but lately the pendulum of his happy fortune had swung the other way. Mounting operational costs and environmental laws, which guys like Roy hated more than they hated labor unions, were slowly bleeding him out of the business. The King Coal wasn’t the last small outfit in Little Egypt, but in the past twenty years or so its breed had become increasingly rare. Pretty soon they’d be extinct, and then the mining would be done by remote control, by faraway people who wouldn’t give two shits how they left the land, people who knew how to use the federal courts to their best advantage. Even with the sorts of restrictions most outfits had to work under, a federal suit could be tied up until all the complainants were in the cold, hard ground, and their problems passed on to a younger, less refractory generation, one that’d been taught to live with disappointment.
So he was something of a wounded animal, and if he really was involved in this business, I thought, I’d have to run a lot farther than the hills until I felt safe.
It was just past noon when I left Temple’s house. I’ll tell you, I was hoping never to see it again. Or her. I knew it wouldn’t be that easy, but that’s where my head was at. The morning’s events had shaken me to my socks. Actually, it had turned my socks back into raw wool and the raw wool back into a sheep, and the sheep had bitten me on the ass.
It wasn’t raining for a change, but now it was cold. A front had bullied its way in from the north, and a wintry change had overtaken the weather. I zipped up my jacket and changed to the heavier gloves I keep in the saddlebag just in case. Cold on a motorcycle is something you don’t want to mess with. Even moderately cool air will slice right through you, and in wintertime hypothermia sets in so fast you’ll still be wondering what the fuss is all about when they’re cutting off your fingers and putting them in a jar of formaldehyde. Still, I needed some time and space to think, so I rode east to Wolf Creek Road and then south around the edge of the swollen lake until I found old Hampton Cemetery.
It’s a quiet place, very small, and surrounded on all sides by red oaks and a few crooked silver maples. I got off the bike and walked through their shadows and fallen leaves until I found a familiar grave and sat down near it, not knowing what to think.
I don’t think I’d ever been so confused or out of sorts. I didn’t know where to turn or where to run or even whether running was an option. That was a lot of not knowing, I’ll grant you. At least one thing was sure, though—guys like me didn’t go up against people like Roy Galligan, and when we tried, we usually found ourselves buried in earthen dams or filling out a bag of dog food in some backwoods general store. It wasn’t a happy thought, but it was the one that stuck with me.
After a while, I said good-bye, apologized for not visiting enough, and got back on the bike and rode away. I was up the road a few miles when I pulled over again and took out my cell. I called Jeep Mabry first. That was a terrible call to have to make, but it was maybe more pleasant than the one I made next, to Peggy. Then I rode into Herrin and pulled in at Hungry’s on Main. I went inside and sat at the counter with some coffee. After a while, Peggy came in.
She sat next to me and ordered a coffee for herself. I asked for a refill. Neither of us spoke while we waited. After a long while the waitress came back carrying the dirty carafe, explaining that she’d had to put on a fresh pot. After she left, Peggy looked at me.
“Well?”
“Coffee sucks.”
“Now’s really not a time to be funny.”
“Sorry.”
She sighed. “So let’s have it.”
We had it.
When I was finished, she said, “Jesus fried eggs.”
“That’s one way to say it.”
“They killed Matt Luster.”
“Someone did.”
“Well, that’ll lead tonight’s news.”
I said, “I didn’t know you knew him.”
“Of course I know him. Know his reputation anyway,” she said. “Anyone who gives a damn about local environmental business knows that.”
“I honestly didn’t know you did,” I said. “Give a damn, I mean.”
“It’s something I try not to talk about around you, darling. I don’t want it to come between us. It’s your job, after all, and it was your father’s job, too.”
“Could we not mention him, please? Everyone wants to talk about the old man these days. It’s like I can’t get away from him.”
“Sorry. But, yeah, I do give a damn—a damn about the planet, Slim. A great big hollering damn. You saw what happened down in the Gulf a while back. Or what about Martin County?”
“Martin County? The sludge pen? I’d almost forgotten.”
Peggy looked regretfully at me and shook her head. “One of the worst environmental disasters in the history of this country, and everybody’s forgotten.”
I had to give her that one: it was a lulu, more than three hundred million gallons of coal sludge released into the Tug Fork and surrounding area when a Massey Energy impoundment pen failed. And this was no ordinary failure: there was an abandoned coal mine underneath the pen. Somehow they’d missed it during the land survey. Or maybe they hadn’t missed it; maybe they just didn’t think it would be a problem. It was a problem. One fine morning, the ground in the impoundment gave way, and the sludge emptied into the mine, and eventually flowed out the entries and into the world. As disasters go, it was like Rube Goldberg had started doing gags for hell. And, the thing is, three hundred million gallons was a bargain. The company’s Brushy Fork impoundment pond in West Virginia is built to hold between eight and nine billion. In a rogues’ gallery of reckless industrial actors, it’s hard to select a chief villain, but the ratfuckers who ran Massey might just have captured the prize. Even their corporate logo—a black capital letter M, aflame, like a basalt altar—betrayed a satanic worldview. They’d changed their name of late—after the public at large began finally to catch on to their dirty dealings—but the players were more or less the same and the institutionalized contempt for humankind and natural places remained intact.
She looked at me suddenly. “But let’s not stray too far off topic.”
“I wasn’t trying to.”
“I recall, I was reading you the riot act.”
“Just getting started, probably.”
“Keen as always,” she said. “Let’s get the obvious thing out of the way. You lied to me about what happened to you the other day. Your injuries.”
“I did, and I feel bad about it, too. I felt bad while I was doing it. But I didn’t want you to worry, and I didn’t want you to think I was crazy.”
“And now I’m doing both.”
“Well, it’s a fail then.”
“Pretty much,” she said. She sighed and thought a while. Then her head snapped up and her eyes widened.
“Oh my God. Anci.”
“Is safe,” I said. “Jeep’s keeping an eye on her.”
She cocked her head. “Jeep?”
“Yes.”
“Jeep Mabry?”
“Yes.”
“The psychopathic Jeep Mabry?”
“He is not,” I said. I shrugged. “Borderline, maybe . . .”
“And what do you mean, looking after her? You sent him into the school?”
She was aghast, so I said quickly, “No, no. Not inside. He’s, you know, outside, watching over everything.”
Well, that just made things worse. Peggy said, “Oh, dear God in merciful heaven. He’s outside, lurking in the bushes?”
“Not helping.”
“Right. Sorry.”
She put her face in her hands. “Tell me he’s not armed.”
I sat quietly for a spell. At last I said, “I won’t tell you.”
“This gets better and better. I don’t guess you geniuses gave any thought to what’ll happen if he gets caught out there? People are a little paranoid these days about men with guns lurking around schools.”
I shook my head. “He won’t get caught.” She was right, of course. Neither of us had thought of it.
Peggy looked at me for a long time. A small change was happening in her eyes, a fleck of dark light, like a flaw in the iris, and it was a change I didn’t like. I could almost hear her starting to think of me as another of those adult mistakes we’d been talking about a couple nights earlier. What I was going to do, I’d have to do as quickly as possible.
Peggy was impatient for a resolution, too. She said, “I’m waiting to hear your plan, Bubba. And, for your sake, I hope it’s a good one.”
“Maybe not good, but it might be the only way through this mess. Way I see it, if this Temple Beckett is right, and Roy Galligan really has dealt himself into the meth racket in some of these local mines, then none of us is safe until I convince him I’m out of his way and out of it for good. If he’s dealt himself in with Jump Down and his team, convincing them is going to be tough and dangerous. These are the kind of people who deal with the discovery of mouse droppings by burning down the house. Measured steps are not their thing.” I paused and drank some coffee. Its general awfulness seemed to fit the occasion. “On the other hand, I can’t go to Galligan just yet. There are too many unanswered questions, and Temple’s suspicions aren’t any kind of proof anyway. Accusing him of being a meth dealer without hard evidence is almost as dangerous as anything else. So basically I’m in the worst position of all. Everyone thinks I know something, when the truth is I don’t know anything. I need more. I need something to trade. What is it you schoolteachers say? Knowledge is power.”
“Now you’re just sucking up.”
“I thought it couldn’t hurt.”
She said, “You’re actually going to do it, aren’t you? You are. You’re out of your mind, you know that?”
“Maybe I am, but I don’t think I have any choice. There’s only one person who knows the truth about what’s happening here, assuming he’s still alive,” I said. “I’ve got to do what I was hired to do in the first place. I’ve got to find out what happened to Guy Beckett.”
PART TWO
RECLAMATION
SEVEN
The kitchen door banged open, and the snowbank moonlight came in, followed by men with guns. There were four of them, two big, two smaller. The big guys had shotguns. One of the little guys had a pistol, the other a hunting rifle. Even without the hardware, they looked like they meant business. I was eight years old. I’d had trouble sleeping in my bed of late, and had taken to stuffing myself between the pantry door and the radiator, where there was a warm little cubbyhole, when I couldn’t sleep. I happened to be there that night, and it was dark in the kitchen so no one noticed me. The men waited there a moment and someone whispered and someone else shushed and then my father appeared in his robe.
“You’re not here,” he told them. His anger was subdued, and I wondered whether the men were even able to hear it in his voice, but it jumped across the room and ran at me like a panther. I felt my knees draw tighter against my chest.
One of the big men moved closer to him, and close enough that I could see: it was my father’s work partner, Cheezie Bruzetti. His head was stuffed into a hat too small, and his plump face was red from the bitter cold outside. His mittened hands wrapped thickly around what looked like a .410 bore lever-action with the loop cock, but the barrel of the gun was broken and rested at a lazy angle over his fat right shoulder.
He didn’t respond directly to my father. He just said, “He says he’s not the one.”
“He says that?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, he would, wouldn’t he?”
“We kinda believe him, though.”
My father said, “You didn’t bring him here.”
There was a silence. One of the men coughed.
Finally, Cheezie said, “Outside.”
“Outside?”
“In the trunk.”
My father watched them a moment. He didn’t move and they didn’t move, but I could feel their fear swirling in the silver light, and then my father turned suddenly and went out of the room. One of the men farted nervously, and Cheezie snarled at him and said, “Christ, would you get yourself together?”
The man tried to get himself together, I guess. I don’t know. I still couldn’t see him very well. After a moment, my father came back, still in his robe, wearing rubber boots.
He said, “Okay.”
They went out. I don’t know how long they were gone or how long I sat there, and I guess I should have snuck back up to my room, but moving seemed impossible, and so I stayed with my thoughts buzzing in my head until the door opened again and my father and Cheezie came back in with snow clumped on their feet and melting on their heads.
Cheezie said, “See?”
My father shook his head. He replied, “No, I don’t see. Someone told them where we’d be and what we were doing, and it was him. You can be sure of it.”
“You’re some kind of detective now?”
My father ignored him. “It was him. Probably they promised him something. Job security. Or his pension. They like to hold that pension out there, see who bites. And he bit. The strike will last another six months because of him. People’s children will go hungry. Take him where we talked about and leave him there. Throw your guns in the quarry. It’s deep enough it won’t be frozen tonight. Make sure they all throw them. I know Sacks won’t want to.”
“It was his daddy’s gun.”
“I don’t care if it was his daddy himself. He throws it in or he goes in.”
Cheezie said, “I’ll make sure.”
“Don’t ever bring anyone to my home again. Not like that. My daughters are upstairs in their beds. Now get the hell out of here.”
Even after these hard words, they hugged each other briefly. This was war, but they were brothers and always would be. Cheezie turned and went out of the house again, leaving behind little silver pools of melt, and my father waited for him to go, then started back to bed. He paused in the doorway and sighed and, after a moment’s reflection, turned and looked directly at me in my cubbyhole, and I was frozen.
He said, “It’s a hard old world for some folks, boy. Don’t ever forget.”
He went out and I heard his footfalls on the stairs and that’s the last thing I remember.
The night Anci and I left Indian Vale, the first snow of the new season appeared. The moon showed its bright face over the edge of the cliff, but was quickly overtaken, and the sky soon turned silver and bright. The wind came up and yelped at the world, and it was so cold even the grass shivered with it. That wind had come from someplace else, I thought, some place where they weren’t having a spate of murders and missing photographers. I wanted to go there. Then again, maybe the wind came from the Missouri Bootheel. If that was the choice, I’d take the murders. You have to have standards.
We threw some things in our bags: clothes, shoes, books. Anci packed snacks and a few orange sodas. I packed Betsy. We loaded up the truck as quickly as possible and headed out. It wasn’t exactly a full-on retreat, but it felt like sneaking away. I thought again of my father and of how the man named Deaton came to our house and how my father had refused to budge, and I even thought of Temple Beckett and how she’d declined to run. I told myself I was doing it for Anci, and mostly I was, but I’ll admit, I was scared. I didn’t feel safe until we were on the road and the Vale was being swallowed up by the night behind us.
&nb
sp; Along the way, I explained what I could of it to Anci. Leaving her in the dark didn’t seem fair, but I wanted to worry her as little as possible, so I trimmed off the sharp edges, at least best I was able.
She sat quietly listening as the dark miles blurred by. She turned it over quietly for a time, then said, “So it’s got to do with your work?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“And you did this for me?”
“Well, a lot of it, yeah, but I also did it for me and even for Peggy, too.”
“Because we’re family,” she said, with a certainty and determination that made me proud.
“That’s right. And family has to stick together when the times get tough.”
She nodded. I could just feel her thinking about family, and I knew where her mind was going even before she spoke again. “You know, if you’re in trouble you could always . . .”
“No.”
“Well, you could if you wanted to.”
“Not in this lifetime, sweat pea. Besides, Peggy will help. And your Uncle Jeep and Aunt Opal. There’s no need to bring anyone else into it. He wouldn’t want to help anyway.”
“How long’s it been since you went to see him?”
“Since the last time he told me to stop coming.”
Anci shook her head. She looked at the spider shapes the cold was making on the window glass.
She said, “Some people just don’t want to be happy.” But I wasn’t sure anymore who she meant.
That was a tough night. We spent the next several hours fighting actual spiders at the Pin Oak Lodge on 13. You’d think the cold would have killed them, but the Pin Oak is a special place—terrible but inside our budget—and apparently the conditions there bred some kind of super bug. Neither of us slept soundly, and after a while I gave up trying. I lay there listening to the sound of my own thoughts as long as I could stand them, then got up quietly and dug around in Anci’s bag until I found one of her books. I climbed back into bed to follow the further adventures of the virgin vampire club. Except there were werewolves, too. Everything but a Karloff mummy, but maybe he showed up in the sequel. Anci and I had read a good piece of this one together a while ago. Back then I couldn’t stand the thing, but at one in the morning pretty much anything is entertaining, and I ended up finishing the story and worrying over how the sequel was going to turn out. Maybe Anci had already read it. I couldn’t remember.
Down Don't Bother Me (9780062362209) Page 9