Twilight Eyes (54 page)

His name was Horton Bluett. By his own description he was an old codger. He was a big, bony man whose angularity was apparent even when he was dressed in a heavy, thermal-quilted woodsman’s coat, which was how we first saw him. He seemed strong, and he was spry, and the only thing about his movements that betrayed his age was a slight rounding of his shoulders, as if they had been bent by a considerable weight of years. His broad face was weathered more by a life lived largely out-of-doors than by time itself: deeply seamed in places, with fine webs of lines around the eyes. He had a large and somewhat reddened nose, a strong chin, and a wide mouth that took easily to a smile. His dark eyes were watchful but not unfriendly, and as clear as those of a youth. He was wearing a red hunting cap with the ear flaps pulled down and the strap snapped under his chin, but bristling bunches of iron-gray hair had escaped confinement and stuck down over his forehead in a couple of places.

We were driving along Apple Lane when we saw him. The previous night’s high winds had drifted several inches of powdery snow across his driveway, and he was wielding a shovel without regard for the latest heart-attack statistics. His house was set closer to the road than ours, and his driveway was therefore shorter, but the task he had undertaken was nevertheless formidable.

It was our intention to gather information about the Lightning Coal Company not only from newspapers and other official sources but from locals who might provide more reliable and more interesting details than the goblin-controlled media. To a journalist, gossip and rumor may be anathema, but they can sometimes contain a bigger slice of the truth than the official story. Therefore we pulled into his driveway, stopped, got out of the car, and introduced ourselves as the new neighbors renting the Orkenwold place.

Initially he was cordial but not markedly outgoing, watchful and mildly suspicious, as country folk often are when encountering newcomers. Looking for a way to break the ice, I let my instincts dictate my actions, and I did what a man would do back in Oregon if he came upon a neighbor engaged in a difficult task: I offered to help. He politely declined my offer, but I insisted.

“Shucks,” I said, “if a man doesn’t have the strength to lend a hand with a shovel, how’s he going to find the energy to fly up to Heaven come the Judgment Day?”

That appealed to Horton Bluett, and he allowed as how he had a second shovel. I fetched it from his garage, and we worked our way steadily along the drive, with Rya spelling me for a couple of minutes once in a while, then spelling Mr. Bluett.

We talked weather, and we talked winter clothing. It was Horton Bluett’s opinion that old-fashioned fleece-lined coats were a hundred percent warmer than the space-age, quilted, insulated garments that had come on the market in the past decade, such as the coat he was wearing. If you don’t think we could spend better than ten minutes discussing the merits of fleece, then you neither understand the pace of country life nor comprehend the appeal that can be found in such mundane conversation.

During the first few minutes of our visit I noticed that Horton Bluett sniffed noisily and a lot, wiping at his largish nose with the back of his gloved hand. Though he didn’t blow it once, I figured he had a slight cold or that the bitter air had affected his sinuses. Then he stopped, and only much later did I discover there had been a secret purpose in all that sniffing and snuffling.

Soon the shoveling was finished. Rya and I said we would get out of his way, but he insisted we come inside for some hot coffee and homemade walnut cake.

His single-story house was smaller than the one we were renting, but it was in better repair, almost obsessively well maintained. Everywhere you looked you had the feeling that new paint or varnish or wax had been applied only an hour ago. Horton was cozily battened down for the winter, having installed snugly fitted storm windows and storm doors and having provided a huge supply of wood for the stone fireplace in the living room, which supplemented a coal-fired furnace.

We learned that he had been a widower for almost thirty years and had honed his domestic skills to a fine edge. He seemed especially proud of his cooking, and both his rich coffee and his marvelous cake—crisp plump halves of black walnuts thickly distributed through buttery batter and a semisweet chocolate frosting—indicated a mastery of solid, down-home, country-style cuisine.

He had retired from the rail yards nine years ago, he said. And although he had sorely missed Etta, his late wife, ever since she’d passed away in 1934, the hole she’d left in his life had seemed much larger after he retired in ’55, for then he had begun to spend much more time in this house they had built together way back before the First World War. He was seventy-four, but he could have passed for a well-seasoned fifty-four. The only things that pegged him as an aged retiree were his work-gnarled, leathery, slightly arthritic, somehow ancient hands . . . and that ineffable air of loneliness that always surrounded a man whose social life had been entirely related to the job that he no longer held.

Halfway through my piece of cake I said, as if out of idle curiosity, “I’m surprised to see there’s so much coal mining still going on in these hills.”

He said, “Oh, yessir, they go down deep and haul it out ’cause I guess there’s a powerful number of folks who just can’t afford to switch to oil.”

“I don’t know . . . I figured the coal deposits in this part of the state had been pretty much exhausted. Besides, a lot of coal mining these days is done in flatter terrain, especially out west, where they strip it out instead of digging tunnels. Cheaper to strip it.”

“They still tunnel here,” Horton said.

“Must be pretty well managed,” Rya said. “They must somehow keep their overhead low. I mean, we noticed how new the coal company trucks look.”

“Those Lightning Company trucks,” I said. “Peterbilts. Real spiffy and brand-new.”

“Yessir, that’s the
only
mine in these parts anymore, so I suppose they do well ’cause there ain’t no competition nearabouts.”

Talking about the coal company seemed to make him nervous. Or maybe I was just imagining his uneasiness, transferring my own anxiety to him.

I was about to press the subject further, but Horton called his dog—Growler was its name—over from the corner to give it a piece of the walnut cake, and the subject changed to the virtues of mongrels versus purebred canines. Growler was a mongrel, a medium-sized black dog with brown markings along his flanks and around both eyes, of complicated and unguessable heritage. He was called Growler because he was an unusually well behaved and silent dog, loath to bark; he expressed anger or wariness with a low, menacing growl, and pleasure with a much softer growl accompanied by a lot of tail wagging.

Growler had given Rya and me a close and extended inspection when we’d first entered, and at last he had deemed us acceptable. That was relatively ordinary doggie behavior. But what was extraordinary was the way Horton Bluett surreptitiously studied the dog as it studied us; he seemed to place considerable importance on Growler’s opinion, as if we would not be fully trusted and welcome until we had received the clown-faced mongrel’s approval.

Now Growler finished his piece of cake and, licking his chops, went to Rya for some petting, then came to me. He seemed to know that the conversation was about him and that in everyone’s opinion he was far superior to all those fancier breeds with their American Kennel Club papers.

Later an opportunity arose for me to turn the subject back to the Lightning Coal Company, and I commented on the oddness of the corporate name and logo.

“Odd?” Horton said, frowning. “Don’t seem odd to me. Both coal and lightning are forms of energy, you see. And coal’s black—sort of black lightning. Makes sense, don’t it?”

I had not thought of it in that way, and it did make sense. However, I knew the symbol—white sky, dark lightning—had a deeper significance than that, for I had seen it as the focal point of an altar. To the demonkind it was an object of reverence and a sign of profound importance, mystical and powerful, though, of course, I could not expect Horton to know that it was more than just a corporate logo.

Again I sensed that the subject of the Lightning Coal Company made him nervous. He quickly turned the conversation in an entirely new direction, as if to forestall further questions in that sensitive area. For a moment, as he raised his coffee to his lips, his hands shook, and the brew slopped over the edge of the cup. Maybe it was only a brief attack of palsy or another infirmity related to his age. Maybe that tremble meant nothing. Maybe.

Half an hour later, as Rya and I drove away from the Bluett house, with Horton and Growler watching us from the porch, she said, “He’s a nice man.”

“Yes.”

“A
good
man.”

“Yes.”

“But...”

“Yes?”

“He’s got secrets.”

“What sort of secrets?” I asked.

“I don’t know. But even when he appears to be just a straight-talking, hospitable country elder, he’s hiding something. And . . . well, I think he’s afraid of the Lightning Coal Company.”

Ghosts.

We were as ghosts, haunting the mountainside, striving to be as silent as spirits. Our ghostly raiments included insulated white ski pants, white ski jackets with hoods, and white gloves. We struggled through knee-deep snow across open hills as if making arduous passage out of the land of the dead, walked phantomlike along a narrow ravine that marked the course of a frozen stream, glided stealthily through the cold shadows of the forest. Willing ourselves to be incorporeal, we nevertheless left footprints in the snow and occasionally brushed against the evergreen branches, sending a brittle, bristly sound echoing through the endless corridors of trees.

We had parked the car along the county road and had gone nearly three miles overland before, by a roundabout route, we had come to the formidable fence that defined the perimeter of the Lightning Coal Company’s property. That afternoon we intended only to reconnoiter—study the main administration buildings, get an idea of the amount of traffic coming and going from the mine, and find a breach in the fence through which we could easily enter on the following day.

However, upon encountering the fence atop a wide ridge called Old Broadtop, I wondered if it could be breached at all, let alone easily. That eight-foot-high bulwark was constructed of ten-foot-long sections of sturdy chain link strung between iron posts that had been solidly sunk in concrete. The top was crowned with spirals of the nastiest barbed wire I had ever seen; although ice sheathed some of the cutting edges, anyone attempting to cross would be snared in a hundred places and, in tearing loose, would leave behind pieces of himself. Tree limbs had been sawn off, so none overhung the chain link. At this time of year you could not dig under the fence, either, for the ground was frozen rock-hard; and I suspected that, even in warmer months, digging would be hampered by some unseen barrier that extended into the ground for at least a few feet.

“This isn’t just a property-line fence,” Rya whispered. “This is a full-fledged defensive barrier, a damned
rampart
.”

“Yeah.” I spoke as softly as she had spoken. “If it encircles the thousands of acres the company owns, the fence must be at least several miles long. A thing like this . . . hell, it’d cost a fortune.”

“No point erecting it just to keep occasional trespassers off mining land.”

“No. They’ve got something else in there, something they’re determined to protect.”

We had approached the fence from the woods, but a clearing lay on the far side of it. In the snow blanketing that open, sloped field we saw many footprints paralleling the barrier.

Pointing to the tracks, I lowered my voice further and said, “Looks like they even run regular patrols along the perimeter. And I wouldn’t doubt the guards are armed. We’ll have to be careful, keep our eyes and ears open.”

We drew the cloaks of ghosthood around ourselves again and stole southward to haunt other parts of the forest, staying within sight of the fence but far enough back to avoid being seen by guards before we spotted them. We were heading for the southern quarter of Old Broadtop because from there we ought to be able to look down on the mining company’s headquarters. We had puzzled out the path we needed to take, using a detailed terrain map of the county that we had bought at a sporting-goods store that catered to weekend hikers and campers.

Earlier, on the county route, driving past the strangely secluded entrance to Lightning Coal, we had seen nothing of the offices. Hills and trees and distance hid the buildings. From the road nothing was visible except a gate and a little guardhouse, where all approaching vehicles were required to stop and submit to inspection before being permitted to proceed. The security seemed ridiculously stringent for a coal-mining operation, and I wondered what explanations they gave for so completely walling out the rest of the world.