Hardcastle (8 page)

“Didn’t know the state inspector ever got any closer to the mine than the commissary,” Regus said.

“Yeah,” Bert said and grinned, “but you can’t count on that sucker. He don’t like those low drifts, that’s a fact; but if he was to ride into the mountain, it would cost twice as much to buy him off. Hell, they’s so much water back in there, the sucker might drown.” He turned his back on them, looked at the mountain, and spoke without turning his head. “Got to get a couple of one-arm johnnies in yonder and pump a little out, maybe brattice about half the son of a bitch off,” he said and began to move away across the railroad tracks toward the tipple.

“Talks a little funny, don’t he?” Music said.

“Hmmm, don’t let him fool ye. He’s the second-hardest man around here. The first is comin yonder,” Regus said and pointed to two men coming across the plank bridge toward them, one wearing a black, broad-brimmed hat, and the other a straw skimmer such as a city drummer or a college boy might wear.

“Which one?” Music asked.

“The one a-wearin his gun straight down over his pecker,” Regus said. “That’s Grady Burnside. The one in the fancy hat, that’s Cawood, his nephew—ain’t nuthin but a mean, fool kid.” Regus gave a little snort of laughter. “He won’t last. Some miner, or one of them niggers down at Mink Slide, will likely kill his ass fore he ever sees twenty-one.”

The two of them came on across the plank bridge toward where Music and Regus were standing. They were pretty big men, half a head taller even than Regus.

“Ay, Regus,” the younger one shouted, “you gettin any gravel fer yer goose?”

Regus turned his head and spat, and when the two of them drew up, he said, “I’d like ye boys to meet Bill Music, the new mine guard.”

“Music,” Cawood said and laughed with great good cheer, “Music? What kind of a name is that?”

Music shrugged. He wasn’t even looking at Cawood, but at Grady, whose great, long face had two beardless, waxy scars, one on each cheek. “The one I was born with,” he said, and he and Grady exchanged a nod.

“Zat right,” Cawood said. “You gettin any frogjaw fer yerself? Nawh,” he said, “hangin around with Regus I don’t guess you would be, but I can put ye on to some. I don’t mind ye eatin my fuckin pussy, but don’t want ye fuckin my eatin pussy.”

At last Music was able to look from Grady to Cawood and nod to him as well.

“I guess I’d best show Bill on around the place, so he’ll know what to guard,” Regus said. “See you boys in the mornin.”

“Yes,” Grady said.

“We’ll hold this shit heap till you get here,” Cawood said.

After Music and Regus had drawn off a few paces, Regus said, “That Cawood’s a charmer, ain’t he? Jesus, hit’s a wonder to me that someone ain’t cored him like an apple before this. Grady, though”—Regus jerked his head to one side as though in awe—“Grady’s done already been killed once or twice and won’t stay dead. Sid Hatfield, for one, shot him to pieces nearly ten year ago.”

As the two of them went on toward the commissary Regus explained how Grady Burnside had once been a Baldwin-Felts detective, Baldwin-Felts being a kind of private police hired by the coal operators to shoot up or otherwise run off any unionizers they could find; to ferret out miners who were union members; get them fired and blackballed; and finally to see to it that the miners and their families were evicted from company housing, taken off company property and dumped somewhere beside the road with neither job, nor shelter, nor sometimes—if they happened to owe the company any sizeable bill at the commissary—even any personal belongings. “That was Grady’s kind of work,” Regus said. “He taken to it, like a bee to honey. But he run into a hard case in ole Sid Hatfield.”

“Any relation to that Hatfield and McCoy bunch?” Music asked.

“The very same,” Regus said. “Sid Hatfield was the grandson of ole Devil Anse Hatfield and was the high sheriff of Matewan, West Virginia, when Grady and him run snout to snout. Hatfield was always on the side of the miner around there, which made him an odd case and got him crosswise of the Baldwin-Felts,” Regus said. “Don’t know exactly how the Baldwin-Felts came by it or what the charges were, but thirteen Baldwin-Felts showed up in Matewan one day with a warrant for Hatfield’s arrest.” Regus turned his head and spat out the chewed lump of the cigar. “Hatfield and Mayor Cavell Testerman met the Felts men there at the depot down by the river and commenced to argue over the warrant. Al Felts himself was with em, and I guess they had their minds set on taking Hatfield one way or another, but when the shootin started and Hatfield yanked them two forty-fours of his’n, I expect maybe even Grady Burnside would have as lief been somewhere else. Testerman got shot down and killed and Al Felts too, and six other detectives, and three more a-lyin wounded, and three—Grady with em—jumped into the Tug River and swum back to Kentucky.”

Regus laughed. “The miners around here say if Grady hadn’t been yellin for his momma, that forty-four slug Hatfield put through his cheeks would have blowed his face off.”

“Hellkatoot,” Music said.

“Yeah,” Regus said, “I reckon so.” He ran his finger back and forth under his nose thoughtfully. “He must have been yellin somethin though, for if that forty-four had caught teeth, gum, or jawbone, I reckon it would have took his face off, sure nough.”

“Shitass,” Music said. “Hellkatoot.”

“Yeah,” Regus said, “I guess Grady was shot in the bacon too and in the foot, although the tale I hear is that he shot hisself in the foot, being so busy duckin and dodgin an all.”

“Well, did they get that Hatfield feller?” Music asked.

Regus shook his head and let out a little bark of laughter. “Not right then. There wasn’t nobody in shape to git him, I reckon. I heard that Sid Hatfield came out of that scrape without a mark on him. It’s a fact, though, they cored him about a year later. He was being brought to trial for the murder of the Felts men, and when he was a-walkin up to the courthouse fer trial with his wife on his arm, a Baldwin-Felts man shot and killed him there on the courthouse steps.” Regus shook his head. “That was in the Pikeville paper. His wife and friends had someway talked him out of wearin his pistols into the courtroom.”

The two of them mounted the steps to the commissary. “Some say that Grady was the one what shot him,” Regus said, “but hit’s others swear he showed up here at Hardcastle to commence bein a mine guard before his face even healed up.”

Music stopped on the gallery, a sudden empty feeling in his stomach. It was as if the machinery of his body simply balked without asking any sort of permission. Regus stopped too and raised his eyebrows in question. “You ever shoot anybody?” Music asked, the question unanticipated, automatic, embarrassing.

There were three miners lounging in split-bottom chairs at the other end of the gallery in front of the open window to a tiny post office. They were talking among themselves. Two filthy black and one relatively clean, all three with carbide lamps on their heads.

Regus stepped toward Music and said quietly, “Never did, but don’t let on.”

For all the humor in Regus’s eyes, Music didn’t feel much better as they entered the pungent, cool gloom of the commissary and passed a rack of men’s suits and another of women’s dresses, faded by the sun and mantled with fine black dust. The store was huge and seemed to contain everything imaginable. There were shoes, stockings, underwear, hats, and bonnets; there were picks, shovels, drill bits, carbide lanterns; there were kegs of powder, cans of carbide; there were tins and cans of food, bins of produce, sacks of flour and beans, of sugar and salt. Toward the far end there was a long counter with a paymaster’s window on the left and a cold-drink cooler and a glassed-in candy case on the right. It was a cavernous space, which, never mind that the stores of articles seemed as dusty and settled in as the furniture of an ancient, unused room, nevertheless filled Music’s nostrils with seductive odors: the raw, warm smell of leather, the similar but sharper odor of freshly ground coffee, the unaccountably sweet odor of clothing and yard goods. Behind the counter a clerk with a goiter on his neck the size of a baseball watched them approach.

“Cecil,” Regus said in greeting.

“Hydeedo,” Cecil said.

“This here’s Bill Music,” Regus said. “He’s hired on as a mine guard.”

“Hydeedo,” Cecil said and nodded to Music. “We fixin to have more mine guards than miners, ain’t we?” He went off into a peal of high, girlish laughter and then shook hands with himself and answered, “I reckon yer right,” and laughed again.

“That’s right,” Regus said in an absolutely serious voice, “Mr. Hardcastle’s thinkin about gettin shut of the miners altogether, windin this whole shebang down and settin us to guard it so nobody don’t run off with the slag heap. I reckon ye’ll be on the county directly.”

For a moment Cecil’s jaw dropped, but then he recovered and laughed, although the sound was without its original high-pitched joy. He shook hands with himself once again. “You like to guy a feller, don’t ye?” he said to Regus. “You got some tradin to do today?”

“Not me,” Regus said, “but Bill might fancy one thing or another.”

“A sack of cigarette tobacco,” Music said, “and a shirt.”

Cecil scooped up a bag of cigarette tobacco and a book of papers from beside the candy case and set them before him. “The shirts are yonder,” he said, nodding his head toward a dusty counter.

Music picked out a work shirt of heavy, strong material but was surprised at its price. A fancy dress shirt in Chicago cost no more than forty-seven cents, and the work shirt he had chosen was forty. “Christ, you’re kinda stiff on yer prices, ain’tcha?” he said and dropped the shirt on the counter.

“You betcha,” Regus said and sucked his teeth. “Nobody ain’t never been known to git him a bargain at the company store. That ain’t what it’s for, is it, Cecil?”

“Now don’t start,” said Cecil, “I’m a carryin ever soul in Elkin, near about, and these prices ain’t outta line considerin.”

“Sure,” Regus said. He stroked the end of his nose tentatively, squinting over Cecil’s shoulder. “You got a paper poke?” he asked.

“Sure,” Cecil said and drew one from beneath the counter and shook it open with a single snap of his wrist. “What’ll ye have?”

“Fetch me down one of them kegs of powder,” Regus said.

“What fer?” Cecil said and laughed. “You ain’t goin back in no drift and blow you a coal face, aire ye?”

“Hand her down,” Regus said, and Cecil pulled his head back, frowned, and then reached down a twenty-pound keg of powder.

Regus pulled the bung and poured a double handful into the paper bag.

“What ye doin?” Cecil said. “That there’s a four-dollar keg. Some dumb miner’ll try to wind my clock over that.”

“Charge him three-ninety-nine,” Regus said.

“I kain’t do hit!” Cecil said. “That’s a four-dollar, twenty-pound keg.”

Regus ignored him. “How’s this compare with what you use to shoot in yer daddy’s hog rifle?” he asked Music.

“Looks about the same,” Music said; “little coarser.”

Regus replaced the bung and rapped it tight with the heel of his hand. “Pass down another,” he said.

“Lookie here now,” Cecil said, but Regus silenced him with a raised finger.

“This here’s company business, not private,” Regus said; and grumbling and muttering to himself, Cecil passed down a second barrel of powder from which Regus withdrew roughly the same amount. “Now,” Regus said, “what does ole Bill owe ye, minus the powder fer which we ain’t a-payin?”

“Forty-two cent,” Cecil said, his chin drawn sulkily in toward the goiter on his neck.

“Well, then, mark him down,” Regus said.

“I kain’t do hit,” Cecil said, his voice growing high and shrill. “I ain’t got no pay slip on him.”

“Hit’ll get to ye by and by,” Regus said and folded down the top of the paper bag and slipped it in his jumper pocket. He nodded to Music to pick up the tobacco and shirt.

“I kain’t do hit!” Cecil said.

“Then draw yer pistol,” Regus said, winking at Music and already turning away, “but you better shoot Bill first, cause he ain’t like me; he’ll kill you quicker’n a snake.”

Music followed Regus down the dusty, pungent aisle of the commissary, the hair bristling on the back of his neck and a weak, giddy feeling in his stomach until he heard Cecil muttering behind them, “Ain’t nobody ever tells me nuthin.” Music’s knees felt weak. “Come in here and walk off with all kinds of tucker,” Cecil muttered; and then louder: “You better not be guyin me, Regus, or I’ll debit you forty-two cent!”

Outside on the gallery of the commissary, Regus nodded to the three miners still lounging by the post office window, but only one of them made anything like a nod in return; and as though regretting it or disowning it, he turned his head immediately and spat across the railing onto the crumbling pavement of the road.

After Regus had showed him around the powerhouse and tipple, pointed out a boundary of timber the company owned up on the mountain behind the strings of shacks, showed him property lines, and driven him down to Mink Slide, the two of them returned at last to Regus’s small homestead, where, from a trunk in Ella’s room, Regus withdrew an ancient .44 pistol wrapped in an oilskin. He placed it carefully on the floor and rummaged in the trunk until he found a cavalry holster and, finally, a small musette bag which turned out to contain a leather pouch of balls, a tin of corroded percussion caps, a flask of powder, a bullet mold, and a cleaning rod. The two of them carried it all into the kitchen and set it on the table, where Regus unwrapped the pistol and, with his eyebrows up and humor dancing in his eyes, said, “Well, hit sholy looks like a pistol; must be a foot and a half long. I reckon you’d get a man’s attention if ye pulled it on him.”

“Ugly old thang,” Ella Bone said. “Hit’s an abomination is what hit is.”

“Now, Momma,” Regus said, “a mine guard has got to provide his own arms. This’un is just somethin fer Bill to carry till he can git him a piece a little more up to date.”

“New er old they’re an abomination, and I’ll not listen more, ner hear about it,” she said, and she left the house and went out to the barn.