They’d come on the force around the same time. Turner stayed on after Larry left, then ended up getting fired for fighting with some new cops who, in Larry’s humble opinion, are a bunch of horse’s asses.
“I bet that’s where Leon is,” she says.
“So what you’re saying,” Larry says, “is you don’t know where he’s at but you bet you do. Is it Jack’s spot?”
“Up on Nitro,” she says. “At the Lookout.”
“That’s that place,” Larry says. “Goddamn. I thought Wesley owned it by now.”
“Anyway,” she says, “Leon’s either there or somewhere else on the ridge.”
“East Ridge?” Larry says.
“Yeah. That backside.”
“You talking about Wesley the lawyer?” Jones says. “I know that guy. Man’s a ringleader. Hey girl, keep talking about the backside.”
“I wouldn’t go up there right now for nothing,” Jennifer says.
“I would.” Jones snaps his fingers.
“You need a tongue scrubbing,” Larry says.
“I told Leon to talk to Wesley,” Jones says, “when he was dealing with his court shit.”
Color leaves her face and she bends over the bar, touches her nose to the copper and straightens up. “I’m sick of thinking about it. Maybe it didn’t happen at all. It might not’ve happened. Play me a song, Jones.”
“There you go,” Jones says. He’s going to sing his new song, and that normally wouldn’t shake him. He can’t think why it does.
“I tell you, though,” she says, “remembering what he said he was going to do to Arnett…”
“It’s all right,” Jones says. “You’re all right. You deserve a song.”
“Just make it sad.”
“I’m sure he’s got that covered.” Larry’s staring at something only he can see, working the muscle in his jaw, not even in the room with them anymore.
Jones takes his guitar and weaves toward the stage. Leon. Crazy old Leon. “Larry, unplug the jukebox,” Jones says. “She’s lonesome. And Jones Young is in the building.”
—
Awake and asleep, he says, “Why were you ever up there with any of those dudes?”
“Same reason I’m with you.”
—
Daylight splinters into the room, across Jennifer’s sleeping face. The motel sheets are clean and starched. Jones sits up and the rush of blood pounds his head. He keeps an eye closed, looks over the side of the bed for his guitar. It’s right there. No case, but there. That’s good.
And he’s still alive. That’s good, too.
He gets up and steps into his jeans. His heart’s beating like it’s trying to get loose. He looks around for his hat. Must’ve left it at the Hickory. He’ll stop by for it before going to Natalie’s to grab the case. He sits on the chair in the corner, slips a menthol cigarette from the pack that’s sticking out of Jennifer’s pleather purse and blows smoke at the sealed window, catching a line of morning light.
How she looks right now makes Jones want to stay. But that isn’t going to happen. He gathers his stale socks and pulls them over his feet. Her body beneath the white sheet makes a snowy mountain range. She stirs, shifting the topography. Last night he woke up in her arms. It felt like dreaming. Her fingers on his skin. He takes the napkin from his back pocket and writes another line to what he hopes is a song. There’s the bottle next to the coffee pot, uncapped with a few inches left. He gets up, the cigarette in his mouth, takes the bottle in his right hand and the guitar in his left and manages the doorknob with two fingers.
Streams of dirty water sparkle across the blacktop. The bright day makes him squint. It’d look like he was grinning, if someone were watching right now.
Jones can still smell her in his mustache. The Econoline’s taking up two spaces at the far end of the lot. He doesn’t recall much about driving here last night, but the way it’s sitting there crooked tells him enough. He does remember she was on him the second he opened the door, pulling at him, begging, and he was worried that after all the whiskey he’d be a cooked noodle and she wouldn’t have any fun. But her mouth sobered him up pretty good. Her lips were bleeding a little and that made the kissing slick. Forgetting her will take some time, he knows that. And that whole Leon thing. What the hell? He can understand why Leon was willing to kill for her. Or at least talk about it. She has that kind of power. Jones doesn’t blame him for a minute.
Arnett remembers his mother planting tomatoes outside his open bedroom window, and Jack, his uncle-dad, coming back from the shed carrying the moldy leg of a deer, its hoof dragging behind him and making a broken line in the dust. The hounds had brought it out of the woods. His mother was wearing a straw sunhat. Arnett could see him coming up behind her. Still can.
Jack was, by blood, Arnett’s uncle. The last time they talked was maybe ten years ago, right before he ran off after shooting that cop, and Arnett wouldn’t be surprised if Jack was living like a fool bum somewhere, thinking he was still in trouble. Jack the Uncle. Stupid-ass uncle-dad.
Arnett’s real father died on a blast-mining job before they even had the explosives in place and is now just a soiled spot trapped in the tunnels of his son’s mind. He was cutting away coalbed when the mountain flexed. And that was it. Gone. Buried beneath the hills of Watts, Kentucky, where they were all living at the time.
Arnett never did any mining, no fucking thank you, he ain’t about all that. If you asked him who he’s closer in kin with, he’d have to say Jack.
After his father’s death, Jack married his mother and brought them to the outskirts of Bordon, where he bought some land with the money paid to compensate the loss of his brother, his new wife’s old husband, on top of the hill he’d climbed when he first arrived, which was in fact a mountain—what’s a few extra feet?—and nobody much stepped foot on it. He’d bought it for cheap from the coal company; they were damn happy to wash their hands of all potential lawsuits and calm the family down. Motivated by delusions of prosperity, he began building a house up there, a kind of fortressed inn he called the Lookout.
And that’s the issue with Wesley. He’s always going on about how I built this house for my love, I built it with my bare dick. No he didn’t. Arnett’s uncle-dad did. And then, when Jack split, Arnett tried selling some of his corn liquor and got busted. Go figure. He got arrested for public intoxication every single time he went into town. So he hired Wesley for all the court dates and ended up owing him twelve grand. He didn’t have five bucks on him, or anywhere else, so he gave that asshole the inn.
Wesley paid the back taxes and started fixing the place up for his wife, who turned out to be a bitch, and once they separated he began relying on substances provided him by clients who couldn’t otherwise pay his fees. He invited Arnett back to the Lookout in hopes of turning it into a play-palace—a buffet of whores and hooch, the bar loaded with every yellow beer available and barrels of bourbon left over from local distilleries that wanted in on the fun. Arnett dreamed of parties lasting for days, women tied up and drooling. He was supposed to make this happen. But look at him now. Writhing from what that little motherfucker drank him with.
He can still see Jack grabbing his mom that day and saying, “Do you not hear me?” He saw her sunhat fall off and ran outside to help her, but Jack was beating her with the deer leg. He remembers seeing that torn-open paper packet of seeds lying in the dirt, and Jack standing over her. It all makes him step outside his body now and see himself standing like that over Leon.
Maybe he can’t even help it.
The grass was still wet with dew when he snuck around the inn. He’d been self-medicating in the barn with splo for at least twenty-four hours—he was so fucked up it was hard to tell. But he did know it was still dark out when he crept onto the porch with a flashlight to see who the hell was in his house.
He prayed it was who he thought it was. Self-defense, motherfucker. And bingo. The kid was too scared to even try to shoot. Arnett lifted the rifle
from his arms and invited him outside. “I just wanna show you something,” he said.
Now there’s stains splattered all over his shirt from the business he just finished. It’s raining off and on. The pain in his stomach makes him lash his arms across his middle until he folds, almost like he’s laughing, and comes back up to say, “Might the problem with this predicament be irreversible? I think not. Then stand straight up, you cracker fuck.”
Water forms at the lower rims of his eyelids. Weak tear ducts, his mother used to say, so he always carries a handkerchief and never lets anybody see him wiping away the unintentional weeping. It’s the most embarrassing thing he could’ve imagined, tears coming from nowhere. They never meant sadness; he doesn’t believe he’s ever felt much of that. Like the time Jennifer, gone most of the day, came home from the mall all done up and asked if he’d missed her, and he said, I don’t know what that means. She was the only one to have ever seen the eye fluids, and she even gave him a reason for it. When you get scared, she said. When you get cold, when you get angry, when you get drunk. That’s when you cry. It’s not crying, he told her, and then knocked her down.
Better off without that bitch.
He pulls out the handkerchief and dabs at his face. The hickory-handled shovel lies at his feet. Fog’s rising out of the valleys and the clouds are low. The sun breaks through for a moment, a psychotic lamp without location. He looks out over the rutted lot, across the eastern foothills toward where corpselike cattle sometimes nibble. The porch boards crack and squeak when he goes back up to get a better view of things. He grabs the binoculars off the table and scans South Hill and other possible sight points on the access. A chickenhawk screams somewhere in the trees. Nobody saw nothing. He tosses the binoculars down into the grass and they land beside Leon, who’s lying facedown in the trampled mud. Wind flicking his hair.
He moves carefully down the stairs, bends over to grab the shovel and retches. Slugs of blood and bile spatter the ground. With the handkerchief he wipes his mouth and eyes and walks over to Leon. A dark puddle has leaked out of the boy’s head. “You feeling any better?” he says.
It’s amazing how much blood can be in a person’s head. It’s caking Leon’s hair. “Isn’t that something.” He whistles. “You broke, huncher.”
He walks over to the shed in the side yard for more medicine. The door opens soundlessly on its truck-tire hinges, then closes on its own behind him. In the dark dirt-floored room he grabs a fruit jar of cloudy splo from a lower shelf and screws off the lid. Strips and spots of daylight shoot through the walls of warped wood into the dankness crammed with old gasoline cans, files worn smooth, chainsaw lube spilled and never cleaned up, mouse shit and dead camel crickets. An ancient possum turd in the corner half stamped by a boot toe. You can see the berry seeds in it. He closes his eyes, inhales and then takes a mouthful. Air wheezes out through his nose while he holds in the fire just like his uncle taught him. Let it fill your face till your head explodes. Why you think they call it splo, son? Don’t swallow till you think you’re about to die. While he’s standing there with his eyes closed and his mouth full, he hears something. He swallows, glances around, kicks the door open and spots the intruder in the light that pours in. A little field mouse hiding in the corner, paws in prayer.
“Just you in here?” Arnett says. He sets the jar on the shelf, takes the handkerchief from his back pocket and wipes his eyes. “Your humility reeks,” he says, then takes a gulp like the stuff was just water, holds the jar away, coughing, finishes it and throws it at the mouse, the glass smashing against the two-by-four sill. The mouse disappears.
Broad pain warms Arnett’s gut. It’s better than the sharp stabbing that’s been there. Whatever that shit was Leon drank him with—best to stay drunk now until it fades.
Leon’s still lying where Arnett brained him. Better clean this shit up. Make it so it never happened. He takes a cigarette from his shirt pocket, lights it and listens to the tobacco burn. Nothing’s wrong, right? He looks south, down to the snaking East Ridge. An unmarked piece of stone down there: his mother.
Elephants, Wesley once told him, show more respect to their blood than that.
“You’ll join her when it gets dark,” he tells Leon, then drops the cigarette into the blood and it hisses. He picks up the shovel. “This ain’t out of respect. It’s just I got some work to do.”
But he can still sense something. It smells like somebody’s watching. He stands there long enough for his shadow to shift an inch across the mud. An engine whines somewhere down on 231. Wheat grass in the pasture below waves like water from a gust of wind. A minute later the trees up here start rustling.
It’s raining now, and he’s on the porch watching it wash away the strange patterns of his boot soles in the dirt. Leon’s facedown in a growing puddle. It lasts all afternoon and that’s fine by Arnett. Flood the whole fucking world.
He’s got another jar he found in the shed, or that just came out of nowhere. He’s drunk. That’s a good thing, too, because the clouds are starting to move. Better get going. So much to do.
Leon’s face looks false. Then it looks too real, like it’s breathing. But he can tell the life’s gone. It’s nothing. It’s just he’s never seen it not breathing, that’s all.
He goes through Leon’s pockets. No money, just a glass bottle. Opens it and sniffs. “Goddamn. That’s my shit. Where’d you get this?” But as soon as he asks he knows the answer. He knows who gave it to him. He takes the shovel’s blade, pries Leon’s mouth open and pours in the last few drops of the stuff. “How’s that taste?” he says.
He can still sense something. Is it what’s left of Leon leaving?
No, probably ain’t nothing.
Larry stands hiding behind an oak on the western slope of East Ridge, watching Arnett dig. The storm cooled things off and the late summer sun has set clouds afire at the edge of the sky. He’d parked below on the access and was just starting to walk around and check things out when he heard something above him. Then he saw Arnett coming down through the cedars. He ducked behind a tree and hasn’t dared move since.
The back of his jacket is soaked from the climb, and the wind chills him. He watches Arnett light a cigarette off the one he just finished, kick the shovel into the ground and bring up dark earth.
The dropping sun spreads like a fan from the earth’s edge. It lasts a minute and then it’s gone, heating another world.
Far below off to the southwest, the town of Ashland starts glowing down in the basin, small house lights flicker on like the eyes of wolf spiders across a mowed field. His home and the Hickory are safe there in the valley, and that’s where he should’ve stayed. He wants a cigarette but the wind would carry the smoke and give him away. All of a sudden, as if Arnett heard him thinking, he turns downhill and pulls the shovel from the ground.
Larry crouches into the roots and moves farther behind the trunk. Why the hell’d he ever come up here? He should’ve learned by now he’s no good at creeping.
Arnett looks right past him, around him and then announces to no one in particular, “Shovel’s a funny thing. Get the whole job done. Multipurpose.”
Hands in the wet leaves, Larry holds his balance. His knees hurt. He’s out of shape, overweight, not even close to ready for this line of work. Not anymore.
Arnett takes a drag from his cigarette, then kicks the shovel back into the ground. With the sun down, darkness rises from the dirt and leaves and everything beneath. Larry’s eyes adjust as Arnett labors over the trench, and after a while there’s a pile of roots and dirt and rocks beside it.
Larry’s phone is on silent in his pocket. There’s not much service up here and you’re lucky to even send a text. Sharon’s been calling him from their landline. He should’ve thought to take a picture while it was still light, but he doesn’t really know how to do that. He’s got Turner’s number on speed dial, though. After too many late-night brawls at the Hickory, Turner gave him his personal number and said to call
anytime, day or night, if he needed backup. Larry only calls when things get rough. He admires how fast Turner can clear a room, no gun required. Not to say the problems don’t escalate once Turner herds them out, but as long as the fighting’s outside the barroom, that’s all Larry wants. Anyway, the new cops would make this even worse. Ricky and all them—he doesn’t trust those guys.
Arnett’s almost up to his knees, cursing and digging, when Larry’s phone lights up through the fabric of his windbreaker. He unzips it a few inches and reaches in. Who else? Turner. But the connection will be lost if he opens the phone and answers. Wait to see if he leaves a voicemail. Which he doesn’t, goddamn it.
There’s no moon yet when Arnett’s silhouette, blacker than the night, bends down and rolls what looks like a body into the hole.
The phone lights up again, this time with a text from Turner: Sharon called said u wernt home where u?
Arnett’s shoveling the mound of dirt into the hole. Larry sinks behind the beech, risks the light of the phone, his hands shaking as he types with his thumbs. N E ridge off back access come quick.
Hold tite, Turner replies.
Larry can’t think straight. He’s trying to stay calm. Keep an eye on Arnett. But the body rolling into the hole, over and over, is all he sees now.
He checks his phone one last time. No service. Great. A fired cop and a tired bartender who used to be a cop. Perfect. Arnett isn’t carrying any weapons, as far as Larry can tell, except for the shovel, which is more than he’s got.
—
Arnett’s still sitting on a boulder near the mound when headlights finally come stretching through the trees. He drops to the ground and crawls behind the rock. When the car reaches the top it slows to a crawl. Larry watches, holding his breath. Just stop, right here, now.
The car goes past about twenty yards and then brakes. The door opens and the interior light shows Turner toddling out and standing there in the road, holding something in both hands. He’s too far away for Larry to see what it is.
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