Raylan_ A Novel - Elmore Leonard [40]
Cars and pickups were parked along the front of the school—early arrivals—more cars on the other side of the road. Boyd headed for the lot next to the school, not many cars in there yet, and passed an open space directly in front of the building. Saw a colored guy in a chauffeur suit standing in the space like he was guarding it.
Casper Mott’s driver.
It was. It put Casper in the stretch parked in front of the space, by the walk that went up to the school. There were people with signs standing across the walk from one another. On one side, COAL KEEPS THE LIGHTS ON, and opposite them on the other side of the walk, was the same sign with words crossed out and one written in that said COAL KILLS.
Boyd saw the chauffeur in his rearview step out in the road and wave his arm for Boyd to come back, Boyd easing the brakes on and heard Ms. Conlan tell him to stop and he did. Told him to back up and Boyd said to Ms. Conlan, “We never gonna fit in that dinky space.” All right, she’d get out here, and opened her door saying to Raylan, “See you in school,” and walked back to the stretch, the chauffeur holding the door open now. Raylan watched her stand there talking, most likely to Casper, before she got in.
Boyd said, “That colored fella drivin, I believe was a fighter one time, from Lynch.”
“Reggie Banks,” Raylan said. “Promoters’d take him around to different coal camps. Pay a miner ten bucks to go two rounds. Reggie had style. Shuffle his feet like Muhammad Ali, fake you out of your jock and hit you with a right he called his stinger. Reggie’d get a hundred bucks to fight five guys in a row, two rounds each.”
Boyd said, “You know him, huh?”
“I fought him back when we were diggin coal.”
“He take your head off?”
“He came close. But we got to know each other.”
They parked in the school lot and walked around to the front of the building, Raylan nodding to miners he knew.
One of them holding a GOT ELECTRICITY? THANK A MINER sign said, “Raylan, I hear you’re on the company’s side this time.”
“Till tomorrow,” Raylan said.
Another coal lover in his sport shirt and M-T company hat said to Raylan, “I’ll meet you out here after, you want. Teach you respect for the company.”
“You don’t see me right away,” Raylan said, “practice falling down till I get here.”
The two sides were yelling things at each other now and Boyd said, “Come on,” and they walked toward Casper Mott’s limo, Boyd saying, “Aren’t you suppose to be keepin the peace?”
“I’m in this, but don’t have a say.”
Reggie Banks stood by the door waiting to open it, saw Raylan coming toward him and said, “Man, you still pickin fights?”
They touched fists, Raylan saying, “Reg, you still off the sauce?”
“Not in two years, nothin. Had me drivin fast till I went to AA and got calmed down.”
“What’re they doing in the car?”
“Waitin till they ready. Or the company lady’s given ’em their bonus, one.”
Raylan heard a tap on the window, from inside.
“Time to let ’em out,” Reggie said. “Man’s too wealthy to open the door hisself. Somebody told him he was a man of leisure, don’t have to do nothing he don’t want to. Dumb as mud he ain’t schemin with his money. I wonder, does he put on being simple as a child.”
Reggie opened the door and little Casper Mott came out grinning at Raylan.
“Boy, hey, you lookin good. Ms. Conlan