6. The Mine
The fabric slides easily between her fingers and she concentrates on the needle and its furious blur of motion. She's always enjoyed sewing, being able to create something that is wholly and only hers, enjoyed the way that she can lose herself in it; the way it quietens the voices in her head. Her mama had taught her, years before she'd passed, and every time Ava sits at the machine she thinks of her.
She's too engrossed with her work to hear anything beyond the whirr of the engine and she only becomes aware of him when the door rattles.
'Twice in one day,' she says after a moment, looking at him over her shoulder. He'd been out earlier, for an hour maybe two - when he returned she hadn't asked where he'd been and he had not volunteered the information. Now again and she's curious, not least because he's holding what looks like Bowman's old lunch tin under one arm.
'I'm going to work.'
She blinks, digesting this. Her first thought is that his shoulder hasn't fully healed and her second that for a man with his history it's hard to get legal work in Harlan County. Hell, it's hard to get it when a man's been straight his whole life. It's afternoon, coming on for evening, and she hates the sudden finger of suspicion but just can't seem to help it. She turns in her chair. 'Where?'
'The mine.'
Of all the things she might have guessed at - and she isn't certain what they may have been - this would not have been one of them. 'The mine,' she repeats, doubt colouring her voice.
'Apparently they appreciate my facility with Emulex.'
She watches him closely and she sees it: the faint quirk around his lips, the flare in his eyes that dies all too soon. It's a joke, of a sort.
'Facility. Is that what you're calling it these days?'
It's there again, then gone. They look at each other.
The work patterns are familiar enough to her for her to know that he's working the night shift - familiar enough to know that there's still time in hand before it starts and it doesn't take that long to drive up to the shaft.
'You're heading out early, aren't you?'
He hesitates. 'You have had the generosity and the mercy to allow me into your home and I have no intention of breaking any of the conditions that you have laid down. But I need a drink.'
'Where are you going?'
Another hesitation; he doesn't look away from her. 'Audrey's.'
She purses her lips, her eyebrows rising. 'Well, you be careful, Boyd; you don't know where those girl have been.'
He smiles again, slightly. His eyes stay on her face and his voice is still soft and careful. 'Oh, Ava. I have no interest in those young ladies.'
He seems to pass through the door without opening it. She still sits for a while, listening to the silence that pours into the house, then turns back to hemming her skirt. The material is similar to a dress she had years ago, something else she had made herself. A pale buttery lemon scattered with tiny white dots. She had loved that dress. She had been wearing it the day the mine had collapsed.
The sirens had torn through the town, everyone knowing what had happened. Fire and smoke on the skyline. She had been in the diner and through the window, on the other side of the street, Boyd's beat old pick-up truck had pulled up and two figures had eased themselves out. Usually when they walked together she could tell them apart: Raylan's slow, easy, long strides; Boyd a compact controlled swagger. Then they were both stiff and awkward and coated in a layer of coal dust.
She had crossed the street to them, fully aware of how she looked in the fine cotton dress that her mama had helped her to make, that showed off her curves. Raylan was nineteen. She was sixteen. She was old enough.
He didn't notice her until-
'Hey, Ava.'
Boyd's disconcertingly direct stare that she always had to steel herself to meet.
'Boyd.' Then she smiled. 'Hey, Raylan.'
His head bowed, he raised his eyes to her, uncertain and shy. 'Hi, Ava.'
It was unpleasantly hot, a humid day; the air felt thin and grubby, like it had already passed through a hundred people before it got to them. A skin of high cloud muffled the sun but trapped its heat. She pulled the hair away from her neck.
'I heard what happened at the mine.' The left knee of Boyd's jeans was torn; Raylan's hair was black with dust. 'Did everyone make it out okay?'
'Yes...' Raylan looked at Boyd. 'Yes, everyone made it out.' He coughed, cleared his throat. 'Boyd-'
Boyd grinned suddenly, a true smile, his teeth startlingly white in the sooty mask of his face. 'I'll see you tomorrow, Raylan Givens.' He climbed back into his truck, started the engine and roared down the street.
She stood close to Raylan, watching the rise and fall of his chest but he didn't look at her; he stared after the truck, an intense serious look. He was often intense and serious but this was something else.
She had seen the echo of that look that night, all those years later, when Raylan had knelt beside Boyd's body. He'd pulled the cloths off the dining room table, pressed them against the gaping wound in Boyd's chest, staunching the blood, trying to save the life of the man he had just shot.
A life for a life.
And that's why Raylan had been sorry. And, finally, she understands.