I was trapped on a terrible stretch of highway for hours and listening to Old Gods of Appalachia and thinking about Justified, as one does, and thought Boyd would have enjoyed making a fantastical Appalachia podcast.
He writes Raylan letters from Tramble, and that's nothing new, Boyd's been writing letters to Raylan since he could make them, sending them in paper airplanes across the classroom, mailing them at the Harlan post office like Raylan was some foreign penpal and not the boy he saw every day, the one he was headed toward at the ballfield that afternoon. Raylan suspects that there are bushels of letters from Boyd tucked away in a neo-Nazi bunker somewhere, but Raylan won't ask and Boyd wouldn't tell.
So. Boyd writes letters. He mails them, soon as he knows where to mail them to. (It takes Raylan four years to make his way back to Kentucky and the penitentiary. It takes about six weeks past the sentencing for him to send a card, a picture of palm trees and nothing but Raylan's new address on the other side. Boyd takes the invitation for what it is, and Raylan gets six letters in the next ten days.)
Some of them are short. Some are longer, Boyd's diatribes on prison food and his thoughts on prison guards and the stranglehold of violence on American life. Sometimes he gets bored and writes in code, and Dan finds Raylan sitting at his desk creating ciphers one day and asks if Raylan's gone and joined the spooks. Sometimes Boyd prevaricates about the past, because Harlan was never that kind to the boys they were, and sometimes he pontificates about the future and two old men's place in the world.
Sometimes, he tells tales. That's what Raylan's mama always called it, leaned out the screen door and took a long drag off her cigarette and asked if Boyd was telling his tales again. Yes ma'am, Boyd replied, always polite to Mrs. Givens, told Raylan only a fool would cut ties with the woman who made the best fried chicken God and county had ever seen. Raylan's mama would snort, exhale a long stream of smoke at them, and let the screen door slam as she went back inside. Sometimes she'd open the kitchen window, busy with grown chores, and listen in.
All that's gone, of course, but Boyd's tales remain. Boyd meanders off into the too-still meadows of the woods, the coal-black dark under the hills, and turns up spirits whose names should never be told.
Raylan reads them to Willa. Willa is far more interested in slamming her toys into the ground, and Winona snorts and rolls her eyes and doesn't leave the room.
It's Richard who pays attention. Winona's new boyfriend, then fiance, then husband number three, who listens enraptured to every word. Richard—Richard, who ain't from Kentucky, who maybe married Winona for her accent and maybe married Winona to listen to Raylan read tall tales to a headstrong little girl—who suggests putting Boyd's letters out for other people to read.
Or, well, to hear. Raylan's a little unclear on the whole thing, but Richard insists that Raylan call Boyd, and they start talking about nonsense like introductions and music and then somehow Raylan's agreed to read Boyd's letters into a microphone when he's fairly sure he never said a word.
Richard suggests calling the show "Down a Dark Hole," and Raylan, who grew up hearing the mines turned into every euphemism anyone ever heard, snorts. "Maybe not," he replies, and hangs up the phone before Boyd can reminisce about the good old days and digging coal.
So they make a show. "I'm an auteur," Boyd declares, and Raylan snorts and lets the phone slam on the counter and considers taking up smoking just to blow smoke in Boyd's eyes. But Boyd's been a lot of things in almost fifty years, Raylan supposes, and an author ain't the worst.
Boyd tells tales, and Raylan repeats them loud enough for anyone with a window open to hear, two men getting older without a place in the world, and that's all right. Raylan's missed a lot of things, but he's always reached up and caught Boyd's letters with both hands.
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