The only customer was Randy Nichols, there certainly for the company more than for a drink. “File your story, Randy?” “I did. I’d no idea his wife was such a sentimentalist, McGovern.” Phil ordered a drink. “It takes a lot of sentiment to bury him out on the lone prairie,” Nichols drawled. “A bucket of it. Or a bucket of something else.” “You don’t like it?” “Oh, I’m touched. Deeply touched. And I know the whole town of Winston’s going to be touched the same way. Maybe they’ll make a crown of coal for their martyr. Look, McGovern. I’ve been around a long time. I know a good reporter when I see one, even when he’s called a journalist. That’s what Coffee was, a good reporter. No more, no less, in his work. What he was in his private life I don’t know. I’ve a notion he was a right guy. That’s beside the point. But when she sits up there like the world’s holy mother and says: ‘Dick always felt his most important work was in the coal mines,’ I got a dirty word for it.
