When These Mountains Burn

by David Joy

  Ray crossed the bar and the man he didn’t recognize peered over his shoulder and nodded.

  “You ever met this fellow sitting here?”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  “Now, this here’s Randall Montgomery from Mobile, Alabama. Ninth Infantry. Đồng Tâm, Vietnam.”

  Ray had no clue what in the hell Prelo was spouting off about, but that had long been par for the course. “Good to meet you.”

  The man polished off what was left of his drink and grumbled something other than words.

  “First time I met Randall I was squirrel hunting back up Pilot Knob. That’s where Randall lives is back up Pilot Knob off Big Ridge right down the road here.” Prelo pointed off behind him. “Now, I was coming down off of this knoll and I’d seen one or two, but I hadn’t gotten any shots and here this fellow sits on a rock with a stringer of squirrels running clean down his leg.”

  Prelo spun around on his bar stool so that he was facing Ray. He was only a little over five feet tall and looked like a child sitting there. He was still nimble and strong as most twenty-year-olds even though he had almost half a century on them. Years of alcohol had turned his stubby nose into a cherry tomato. A disheveled white beard ran a scruffy hedge along his jawline. There was a pancaked ball hat propped on top of his head like the flat cap of a mushroom. Prelo slapped his hands on his knees and continued his story.

  “When I get close to where this fellow’s sitting I can see it’s a nice mess of squirrels and I say to him, ‘Hey, mister, where’d you get them squirrels?’ Old Randall here, he looks at me and says, ‘I’m a-hunting ’em.’ Thing was, I get to looking and I don’t see a gun in sight. I say, ‘Hunting ’em? Why, mister, you ain’t even got a rifle.’ He tells me he don’t need a rifle, he says, ‘Why, son, I uglied them squirrels to death.’ About that time here comes a squirrel circling around a big pin oak, been cutting acorns, and that sucker comes out on the limb with his tail laid over his head and Randall here makes the god-awfullest face you’ve ever seen.”

  Prelo stopped the story and shriveled his face into a raisin. He didn’t have his teeth in so that his mouth looked like an empty eye socket. All of a sudden he clapped his hands real loud and the man working the bar jumped back like he’d tripped a land mine.

  “BAM!” Prelo yells. “Randall makes that face and that squirrel drops stone cold dead.” Prelo reached for his glass and took a long drink to wet his tongue. He cleared his throat and kept on.

  “Now, I’m here to tell you, Ray, in all my years of hunting I never seen nothing like it. Have you? He makes that face and that squirrel drops dead. I tell him, ‘Now, mister, that there’s a hell of a trick! I bet you’re the only man on earth can kill a squirrel like that. That really is something.’ Well, I want you to know old Randall here looks at me and he says, ‘Why no, my wife can do it too.’” Prelo paused and Ray knew the punch line was coming the way all good mountain jokes hinge on a sentence. “‘Only problem is she buggers the meat up so bad it ain’t fit to eat!’”

  Prelo whapped the back of his hand against Ray’s stomach and grabbed hold of the man at the bar’s wrist, shaking his arm violently. He was hooting and hollering like a maniac. Even with all that was running through Ray’s mind, he couldn’t help but chuckle.

  The man at the bar yanked his arm loose. “One of these days I’m going to cut you from ear to ear just so I won’t have to listen to you no more.”

  Prelo hopped off his stool and stood behind him. He massaged hard into the man’s shoulders and laughed. “You better get that knife of yours awfully sharp if you’re going to go cutting on a lizard like me.”

  The man shook his head and smiled. “I hope your asshole grows shut,” he said.

  Prelo walked across the room and fed quarters into a cigarette machine by the door. He grabbed the pack when it fell and leaned his back against the door. “Ugly ’em to death!” he cackled one last time and out of the bar he went.

  When they were outside, Prelo lit a cigarette and jumped onto the flatbed of his truck, letting his feet dangle and swing beneath him.

  “How the hell are we, Ray? It’s been a while.”

  “I’ve been better,” Ray said. He unzipped the chest pocket of his overalls and pulled out his cigars. There was no breeze and a cloud of smoke slowly grew around them while they caught up.

  “Now, what was it you wanted to see me about?”

  “Well,” Ray said. He kicked at the gravel with the toe of his boot. “I was wondering if you could still get your hands on some nitro.”

  “I don’t know whether to be insulted that you had to ask or tickled pink I get to blow something up.” Prelo reached into his pocket and pulled out a yellowed set of dentures. He fit the teeth into his mouth and smiled. “Of course I’ve got some powder laying around. Question is, how much are we going to need?”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  When Ray rode into Big Cove to scout the place, he realized cell service was spotty as hell and that put a damper on Prelo Pressley’s plan. Wiring in a prepaid cell phone for the trigger, a man could make a phone call from anywhere he wanted and set off an explosion big enough to bring down the Taj Mahal, but that required good service. Ray was worried when he called to tell Prelo the phone wasn’t an option, but Prelo laughed and said there was more than one way to tree a bear. Though it wouldn’t give them the same kind of distance, a simple two-way radio would work just fine.

  Studying the topo maps, Ray decided the safest bet was to come in off Bunches Branch using an old logging road. The way the trailers were situated at the front of the property made barging straight in a suicide mission. From the back side, they could hop the ridge on foot and slip down without ever having to touch the main road.

  That next morning after talking with Prelo, Ray parked at a Forest Service gate and walked it out to get a feel for the land. All over Cherokee, the smoke lay on the mountains and it burned Ray’s eyes and nose as he climbed. There was a laurel hell near the ridge, but he found a game trail to the north that led to a saddle where bear and deer had cut a tunnel through the thicket. At the opening, he thumbtacked a square of reflective tape to the trunk of a dead hemlock, knowing he could skyline the skeleton of that tree against the horizon, then shine the tape with a flashlight to verify his direction. They called it bright-eyeing a place, a trick hunters had used for years to find their way to the tree stand in the dark.

  On the other side of the ridgeline, they’d have to dogleg south to make up the difference, but the timber here was open hardwoods and gradual enough to traverse. Ray knew the lights from the singlewides would be enough to give him bearing on the way in, so he only bright-eyed the trees to mark his exit. For once the smoke was more a blessing than a curse, concealing him as he made his way to the target. After sitting above the house for nearly an hour committing every detail to memory, he pinned a square of reflective tape to a tree trunk every twenty yards. With a headlamp, a man could come up the side of that mountain in a dead run with a clear trail lit up like a runway before him.

  He walked the route once more before he left, timing himself from the hillside above the house. As dry as things were, the leaves crackled under his boot steps like potato chips, so he kept a slow pace to keep the noise down. He made it back to the Scout in just under thirty minutes. The way Ray figured, dragging that little wiry peckerwood by his ponytail over the mountain would add time, but he could have the old boy back at the truck in under an hour and that was plenty quick enough.

  This world was strange the way sometimes everything went to shit while other times the stars aligned like a man had been born with a horseshoe up his ass. Everything was going perfect—from finding that back entrance to stumbling onto that game trail to a hunter’s moon shining down the night Ray made the call. A northern wind kept the smoke from the Chimney Tops fire at bay and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky to dim the shining. It was like God Himself
was holding a flashlight for them as they made their way up and over the mountain.

  Ray was sitting at the base of a tulip poplar in camouflage coveralls like he might’ve been turkey hunting. He tugged his sleeve up his arm and hit the light on his digital wristwatch. Prelo was running a little late.

  Just as that thought crossed his mind, a flash of light brightened the valley. A ball of fire rose from the ground and mushroomed into the sky. Ray pushed up onto the balls of his feet, readying himself for when the time came to move. Things would happen fast from here. He could hear the doors banging open on the trailers, people screaming, but he kept his eyes on the front of the house. A second explosion echoed off the mountain. The sound startled him and he turned just long enough to see flames raining off through the trees as if dropped from a drip torch.

  Now there were voices just down the hill. Three figures rushed out of the house backlit so that from his vantage they appeared as little more than shadows. One of the figures ran back into the house and returned a few seconds later with what looked to be two rifles. He handed one of the rifles to the biggest brute of the three and those two took off up the road. Ray knew the man standing alone was the one he was after. Despite the chaos, things were going according to plan. Stir them up like a hill of fire ants and slip in amidst the confusion.

  Down in the bottom, the hardwoods transitioned onto a pine flat. There was only empty ground between them now, maybe thirty yards of uncut grass, his footsteps silent on the fallen needles. A dog was barking and growling somewhere off behind the house. A fixed-blade Ka-Bar was fastened to Ray’s belt and he unsheathed the knife just as he stepped out of the wood line. He gripped the leather-wound handle tight in his fist, crouching low in long strides until the distance was cut in half. Lunging forward, Ray yanked the man’s ponytail hard so that his neck angled up toward the moon. He had the edge pressed into the man’s throat, the man’s body pulled tight against him.

  “One goddamn word and I’ll pull this knife back and forth across your throat till I hit bone,” Ray grumbled through clenched teeth into the man’s ear. “You understand, son?”

  “You don’t know what you’re doing,” the man said. Same as the night when they’d stood eye to eye, there was no sign of fear.

  “You remember my voice?”

  “You’re that junkie’s father.”

  “That’s right,” Ray said. “And do you remember the promise I made?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, son, you’re about to find out.”

  Ray wrapped his arm around the man’s chest and walked him back into the shadow of the pines. The front door rapped against the wall of the house and Prelo Pressley hopped off the front porch with a satchel thrown over one shoulder. When Prelo reached them, he was out of breath and his words were broken.

  “This the one, Ray?”

  “This is him,” Ray said.

  “There’s a dog back there damn near bit my leg off.”

  “You two don’t have a clue what you’ve done.”

  Prelo smiled like he was having the time of his life. He pulled a 1911 cocked and locked from a leather holster on his side. “Get on your knees, you long-haired son of a bitch,” he groused, and as the man started to kneel, Prelo cracked him in the back of the skull with the base plate of the magazine, then thumbed away the safety.

  Soon as the man hit the ground, Ray pulled a length of heavy cordage from the back pocket of his coveralls. He forced the man’s hands to his back and tied his wrists together like he was hog-tying a calf. Prelo stood directly in front of the man and kept the pistol aimed between his eyes until Ray was finished.

  “I mean it.” The man shook his head and spit between Prelo’s boots. He looked up into the barrel and grinned like the devil he was. “The two of you don’t have a clue what you’ve gotten yourself into.”

  “I’d say we’ve heard about enough out of you,” Ray said. He already had the duct tape in his hands and he whipped a few quick circles around the man’s face to shut him up. Twisting his hand up in the neck of the man’s shirt, Ray hefted him to his feet as if he were curling a dumbbell. “Now walk,” he ordered, and the man stumbled ahead.

  At the top of the ridge, Ray could see the breadth of the destruction. The second blast had caught him off guard and now he figured the charge must have found a nearby gas tank, a can of paint thinner or something. There were multiple fires burning around the singlewides, flames licking at the hillside and likely to spread. People were running near the fire, their shadows cast large as monsters against the side of the mountain. There was no time to think of what would become of them.

  Prelo hit his headlamp and as he looked up the mountain dots of light reflected back from the trees ahead. They followed the trail Ray’d marked like broken sailors navigating the darkness by stars. As they passed through the laurel and crossed the ridge, the commotion on the other side of the mountain fell silent. There was only the sound of their footsteps now, and not much farther to go.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The tires sang as Prelo pushed the Scout fast through the curves. In the middle of a hairpin, he almost flipped when he swerved to miss some drunk on a moped. “You can slow down now,” Ray said, and Prelo feathered off the gas without so much as a word. He had the driver’s seat slid tight to the wheel so that his feet could reach the pedals. Ray was directly behind him.

  A narrow bench seat was squeezed between the rear wheel wells and Ray had the man pushed to the far side of the cab. The man’s body was leaned to the side because of the way his wrists were bound. The duct tape was taut around his face. His eyes were wide and white as they passed through the lights from the high school.

  When they came out of the cove Ray decided to see what all Prelo had found in the house. Dumping the satchel onto the seat, there had to be a good thirty grand in cash, maybe more. A package about the size and shape of a hardcover book was sealed tight in brown tape. Four heavy plastic ziplocks were filled with crystals that looked like rock candy. Ray didn’t have any idea what he was looking at other than that it looked just like the shit he’d seen in movies.

  He had Prelo’s pistol in his left hand rested on his knee and he pulled the fixed blade from the sheath on his belt. Scooting across the seat, he pushed the tip of the knife into the man’s cheek to turn his head, then slipped the blade into the gap between tape and skin behind the man’s ear. The edge was razor sharp and the duct tape sliced clean against it. He put the knife away and ripped the tape free. The man grunted, then licked his lips. His hair was pulled tight to the back of his head, his brow deeply furrowed in the passing light.

  “What’s your name?” Ray asked.

  “What’s it matter?” the man replied.

  Ray took him by his ponytail and slammed his face against the back of the passenger seat. With the man bent forward, Ray shoved his hand down the man’s back and fished his wallet out of his jeans. He flipped open the billfold and read the name from the license.

  “Walter Freeman,” Ray said.

  “Watty,” the man said. He seemed pissed off at the sound of his proper name. A dab of blood ran out of his nose and touched his lips. He turned his head to wipe his mouth on the shoulder of his T-shirt. His face was clean-shaven but scarred on the cheeks from acne, high cheekbones accentuated by shadow. “I go by Watty,” he said.

  “I’ve got something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”

  “So ask.”

  “I want to know how my son come to owe you ten thousand dollars.”

  “Come on, Mr. Mathis. You don’t need to waste our time with a question like that. You know good and well.”

  “He said he was driving a truck for you.”

  “He said what?”

  “He said you asked him to drive a truck down to Georgia and that he wound up getting chased by police and wrecking. That he lost
the truck and that’s what he owed.”

  “What sense would that make? You think I’d trust some junkie to do something for me? You never struck me as someone who could be that gullible. I mean I get that he’s your son, but you have to know better. Does parenthood really shade your perception so much that you would buy a story like that? And I’m asking honestly. Does it?”

  The last civil words that ever took place between Ray and his son were meaningless now. When Ricky’d added the dog to the story, that was the red flag. His son had a habit of working a dog into the lie because he knew his father’s weakness. That was Ricky’s tell and he’d played that final hand true to form. There was a sinking feeling in Ray’s chest. Deep down he’d known the story was bullshit, but that didn’t ease the hurt of certainty.

  “I want you to tell me exactly how he came to owe that much money.”

  “For God’s sake, he’s a junkie! Is that so hard to believe? He’s shooting whole grams. He has a fucking two-hundred-dollar-a-day habit.”

  “Either way, that’s a long line of credit.”

  “I didn’t give him any credit. He’d run up debts everywhere from here to Canton and is too fucking dumb to know we’re all working for the same people. Your son singlehandedly changed the way we operate. Shit like that won’t happen again, so who knows, maybe it was worth it. Sometimes you’ve got to step in shit to learn to watch where you’re walking.”

  “Do you remember what I told you that night?” Ray said.

  “I don’t know. I can’t honestly say I was paying much attention.”

  “Then I’ll remind you,” Ray said. “I told you that if you ever sold dope to that boy of mine again, I’d kill you myself. Does that ring any bells?”

  “Not really.”

  “I don’t guess it matters whether you remember or you don’t. That’s what I told you. And that’s why I’m here.”

  “So your son went off and got high again.” The man guffawed and shook his head. He stared at Ray with eyes dark and empty. “Here’s what you don’t seem to understand, old man. I’m not the one putting it in his hand and I’m certainly not the one shooting it in his arm. Only time anything petty as this lands in my lap is when somebody like your son runs up a bill he can’t pay and I have to collect what I’m owed. Other than that, I don’t touch the day-to-day. Your son is small potatoes. They’re all small potatoes. It’s too much of a headache dealing with junkies.”