Kentucky Justice

Sheriff Buckley methodically pulled himself to his full height from behind the desk and looked menacingly at the perspiring jockey-sized lawyer.

“You and every revenuer born want me to search the valley, the hills and the coal mines around Pikeville,” sounded Buckley. His voice echoed loudly in the small rectangular office of the 100-year-old rock building--headquarters and jail for Pike County and Pikeville.

His father, John Buckley, entered service as Pike County sheriff in 1870 in the same granite-gray building. The elder Buckley was known for “ketch’n his man on foot” if he had friend or family locally and “shoot’n him dead” if he didn’t. John Buckley had feet that were too large for standard boots and wore laced boot moccasins. He could outrun a horse in a sprint. As a child, John’s lengthy legs had explored and knew every old Indian trail in Pike County and beyond. It wasn’t that he was a good runner and poor shot – it was selective enforcement.

Buford Buckley’s understanding of a multiple-term sheriff’s career began at age five when his father refused to arrest a local Confederate veteran for moonshining and ran his surveyor-assessor accuser out of town. Yes, he understood selective enforcement of the law. He winced, however, every time he heard the John Buckley “running stories,” for Buford was consumed with self. He hated “this is little Buford, John’s Boy,” and quickly countered with a deeply frowning “just Buckley.”

“Go back to Lexington and tell the whore who sent you that Brimley is not missing. He’s too mean to succumb to violence. He most likely found another mistress, and your client will have to find another patsy to pay the rent,” stated Buckley, moving to the window in time to see Lisa and Jane Everly enter his mother’s restaurant across the street.

Lisa McCoy had worked as a waitress for Buckley’s ma for two years before she married Corry Everly. Lisa always looked as if a soft mist framed her angular face, her large eyes and moist lips. Her brown hair with auburn highlights appeared thicker and softer than anyone Buckley had seen. Business at the restaurant doubled with male population once Lisa was on duty. Lisa was Buckley’s third cousin. They both had a smidgeon of Cherokee in their ancestry – but, who among the early pioneers in this hilly part of Kentucky didn’t?

Lisa’s mother-in-law, Jane Everly, bore no such beauty; her German immigrant features were hard. The wrinkle lines on her face were like crevices in hillside outcroppings. Her hair was thin and always knotted at the neck, her bosom flat, her clothes, while clean, were always old, dull and baggy. Jane’s folks were pioneers to the area. She married a good enough man, but he was too trusting. A lumber company talked him into 50 cents an acre for 200 acres up the mountain with a river easement; then, a coal mining company paid him $1 an acre for another 200, leaving only 20 or so acres around the home. The companies each made a fortune.

The tract of land left from Jane’s inheritance had a great view of the river, but was too rocky for cultivation or livestock. The Everly newly-weds, Tom and Jane, lived on beans and corn barely fit for livestock for months and only one meal a day. That is until Tom Everly joined the coal mining crew. Jane, however, never had to make her home in the row of shanties the coal mining company provided. The twelve company shanties for worker families sparkled like a cheap necklace along the gorge on the outskirts of Pikeville.

Miner families filled the fist-sized and larger cracks between the shanty boards with tin can chinking which caught the evening sun. They also wallpapered the inside with old newspaper, but it was all too flimsy to keep wild critters, much less snakes and insects from sneaking into the space for a little dryness, warmth, cool or food. Mothers held non-walking babies all day while they worked and all night in fitful sleep for fear of snake or insect bites.

No, Jane had the family cabin, but her Tom was paid in company script – meaning she could only shop at the company store. The prices were indecent. The money never stretched. Jane watched her husband turn to bone and sinew. He shook at night with fever and coughed with every breath. After Tom’s death, Jane swore her boys would never go down into the coal mines.

Corry, Jane’s oldest son, age eight at the time of his father’s passing, made a decision also. He watched two neighbor women wash his father’s body, removing as much of the skin-deep embedded coal dust as possible. One of the ladies scrubbing at the black stains under his father’s finger nails told Corry when she saw his lips tremble, “Don’t cry until the body is completely prepared.” The two women dressed and placed the body on the kitchen table and covered it with white cloth. A few black ribbons lay across the cover. Clocks were stopped at the hour of death. The hall mirror was turned to the wall. Candles were lit and placed around the body. Clay pipes and tobacco lay on a smaller table in Irish tradition, where each male entering was expected to take at least a puff. The smoke was to keep evil spirits from finding the deceased until his Christian burial.

As was the custom, also, someone would sit in the same room until the body was taken for burial. Corry was numb watching the neighbor women sitters. He didn’t feel like crying now. Lisa, age nine, brought a bouquet of wildflowers for Corry’s mom. Lisa’s mother had written a Bible verse on a slip of paper placed in the bouquet. Corry and Lisa, children and school friends, sat silently together and listened to neighbors’ talk of the hard times Jane and Tom went through. Corry decided, as new head of the household, this would never be his lot.