Binder - 02 Read Free

doing a favor for her father.”
    “These hippie chicks all look the same to me,” Cale said. I wondered if he was talking about the blue streak in her hair, the nose ring or just the fact that she was protesting. Staring at the photo, I had to admit she was as mysterious to me as she was to Cale, though I met a few like her in college after I left the Army. “Every one a’them thinks we’re tryin’ to kill the planet just ’cause we need to feed our kin. Some of the local kids are nicer, but those from up North all think we’re damn stupid hillbillies here jus’ ’cause we do a day’s work.”
    “People think the same thing about my hometown,” I observed. You wear the dirt under your fingernails forever.
    “A mine town is a place that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily,” Seth, the big guy, said somberly.
    “Are you quoting Flannery O’Connor?”
    “Paraphrasin’. We may be miners, but it don’t mean we ain’t readers,” Seth replied, his face dead serious. He held that expression for a moment before starting to chuckle. The sound rattled in his chest and rolled around his throat until it was real laughter that shook the faded green paint on the wooden panels of the room. Braden laughed more at Seth than the joke and after a moment, Cale joined in. So did I.
    We started talking for real then, trading stories of small town life. I found myself liking Cale in spite of how quick he’d been to pull a pair of brass knuckles on me. By the time we hit our fourth refill, I was starting to get hazy even though I’d been to the bathroom twice to stick a finger down my throat. It seemed like the right time to ask about the girl again.
    “Cale, why did things get out of hand with these kids? Isn’t it normal to have protestors at a big surface mine?”
    Cale had a warm bourbon glow and I could tell he wanted to help me. He waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. “It warn’t miners done that. I’m not sayin’ we loved those eco-nuts. They tied up things pretty good the last coupla’ months, that’s for sure. Ain’t been no layoffs, though, and as long as they got you clocked in, they got to pay you whether you can get to your rig or some dumbass teenager is all laid out on it. They may think we’re hillbillies, but nobody hates those kids ’cept management. And no-fuckin-body likes management.” They clinked glasses to that. “I’ll tell you the God’s honest truth: if we got a call from upstairs tellin’ us to tweak up those kids, we’d’a done it. But nobody got that call or I’d’aknowed about it.”
    “But you were ready to rough me up for asking about one of the protestors.”
    “A man comes inta’ my damn drinking club askin’ damn stupid questions, I’m gonna tweak him up. But I’m not gonna stomp on some soft college kid just ’cause she thinks we’re killin’ the damn planet. You look like you’d go a round or two jus’ for the fun, anyways.”
    I knew the truth when I heard it, but even if I hadn’t, I would have taken Cale at his word. He wasn’t showing the caution of a man wondering if the law was about to come down on him and his friends. I know something about company towns and I suspected that if a bunch of miners assaulted those kids, a man like Cale would have heard about it. But that left me with more questions than I had when I was sober.
    “Do you know where those kids are staying?”
    Cale looked stumped but Braden spoke up. “I heard they camped up in a holler ’tween here ’n’ the site. Which’n was that?” he asked himself. “Stone holler?” Seth nodded agreement. Or maybe he was just drunk.
    An hour later I walked carefully back to my motel, grateful that I had chosen one that I could reach by foot from the bar. I inhaled slowly to steady myself, dragging in the smell of burning wood fires. A damp wind was blowing in my face, threatening rain but delivering only a cold chill. It was that time of year when fall tips toward