Down Don't Bother Me (9780062362209) by Jason Miller Read Free Book Online

But behave.”
    I promised to behave. I thanked him and started to roar away. He started to push shut his window. I stopped and said, “Hey, one more thing. I grew up around here, but I’ve never been to this development before. You happen to remember what used to be here?”
    â€œSure. Once upon a time, this was the old Grendel Mine company town.”
    â€œI thought I knew it. That was a Roy Galligan mine, memory serves.”
    He nodded.
    â€œStill is, technically. The mine’s up the hill there apiece, across from that King Coal outfit. You can kinda make out what’s left of the tipple. It’s dead, but Galligan still owns the land lease.”
    â€œGalligan and Luster. I guess they own most of them around here these days.”
    â€œDon’t know,” he said. “Don’t know Luster. Heard his name, of course, but that’s the extent of it. Roy Galligan, though, him I know.”
    â€œI can tell from your tone you don’t like him,” I said.
    He chuckled. “He ain’t on my holiday shopping list, no. You might think you’ve met a sonofabitch in your time, butlet me tell you, you ain’t. That old man is so bad, they’ll have to come up with a new definition of the term just so ordinary bad men won’t get all full of false piety.”
    â€œThat’s pretty good,” I said.
    â€œThanks. You sit in this box all day, you have time to think about stuff like that and how to say it. Good old Roy,” he said, but he didn’t mean it. Nobody who said “Good old Roy” ever meant it.
    I thanked him again and waved and puttered through the gate, which opened for me on its mechanical arm. Even with his directions in mind, it took a bit of getting lost on the shiny loops of paved road before I found my bearings. Sure enough, this was the old Grendel Mine company town. Way back when, it’d been the largest and most modern of its kind in the area, basically a self-sufficient community. There’d been company housing and a company store and company script stamped with the name of the company president and streets named after the important coal men of the time. The town had a mayor—who reported directly to the mine owner—and its own police force. The only thing it didn’t have was a bill of rights for the residents. That’s what the union was for, and the rifles. Anyway, it was gone now. The streets were renamed things like Candy Cane Lane and Golf Club Way, and the old lake shanties and company shacks had been torn down and replaced with starter mansions. South was the Duck Neck, and the marina with white boats resting uneasily in their slips, and more of the preserve. Up the piney slopes to the southeast was another mine, the old Grendel colliery, closed now these twenty years or more.
    After a while, I managed to find Temple’s address. It was at the far end of the development, abutting a wall of shingleoaks and, closer to the lake, bald cypress and tupelo and piles of duckweed. The house was an imposing gray foursquare with a lot of big, rectangular windows and a triangular projection like a silver toque near the back of the house. A mahogany-hulled Chris-Craft runabout bobbed near the quay, and a little red sports car with an eggshell ragtop and beaming chrome side pipes crouched in the bricked driveway. There didn’t seem to be any airplanes or rocket ships around, but maybe they were in the back. I went up and knocked. After a moment, the door opened and a woman appeared.
    She didn’t look happy. That was the first thing that struck you. She was a small woman with white hair and wrinkled eyes, though she didn’t look old enough for either, and her mouth was clenched like a fist. She was dressed in jeans and a blouse with a light pattern, and there was a wooden disk on a twine cord around her neck. She put a hand on her hip and frowned and said, “You the man from the mine?”
    I told