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“You’ve got twenty-four hours to leave Miami,” Raylan says, “or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”
The Zip doesn’t, and Raylan does. He sits himself down at the table of danger and outdraws Bucks. Bang bang bang.
“It was justified,” he says to anyone who asks. “He pulled first.”
“I’m gonna reassign you,” his chief says. “Eastern Kentucky. Chief there says you taught at Glynco together.”
“No, no,” Raylan says, “I grew up in Kentucky - I don’t wanna go back.”
His chief shrugs. “Well then we have a problem because you don’t wanna go back to Kentucky, and you cannot, under any circumstances, stay here.”
Raylan gets on a plane and flies back to Kentucky.
“You’ve got twenty-four hours to leave Harlan County,” Boyd Crowder says, “or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”
“You make me pull, I’ll put you down,” Raylan says back.
Boyd does and Raylan shoots. He sits himself down at this table of danger, a conflict older than both boys, older than their daddies even. Raylan sits himself down and doesn’t expect all three of them to make it out alive. Boyd sits where a mere week ago his baby brother had been shot, mouth full of sweet potato, and bled out on Ava’s carpet. Boyd sits there and draws; Ava steps into the room, a load racked into her dead husband’s deer rifle; Raylan sets down his fried chicken and pulls. Bang!
Boyd lands on the bloodstain that’s all that remains of his brother. “You did it, huh?” he breathes. “You really did. He did it.”
Raylan kneels down next to him and looks into Boyd’s flushed face. “I’m sorry,” he says, “but you called it.”
Ava’s voice is soft behind him. “Why’d you say you’re sorry?”
“I thought I explained it to you,” Raylan says in his quiet voice. “Boyd and I dug coal together.”