Nitro Mountain

by Lee Clay Johnson

  “Then why’d you stop?”

  “Glory desert.”

  Arnett blinks.

  “I saw you were a musician.” He puts a piece of gum into his mouth.

  Arnett lifts the case up to the window and opens it, revealing a Smith & Wesson revolver with a barrel the length of an indecent man’s organ. “You ever been shot in the face before?”

  The car rips onto the road and tears off over the crest. Arnett goes back to hide and wait. He lets a couple trucks pass, then sees another sedan.

  A wife and husband up front, three blond baby boys in back. Behind the wheel, the man sips bottled water and tells his kids to make some room. They stare at Arnett like the stranger he is before sliding over against the door. He gets in and puts the case in his lap, and the boy sitting next to him touches it. “You don’t want that,” Arnett says.

  “And are you a musician?” the wife says, smiling through the puffed layer of skin covering her face.

  “These triplets?” Arnett says.

  “Sure are,” the man says. “You play music?”

  “Sure are,” Arnett says.

  The man pulls back onto the highway and Arnett watches the power lines rising and falling in rhythm. Kudzu creeps up from the woods down to the roadside and climbs the tall wooden electric poles. Eventually the lines fly away down another road. The closest boy puts a toy up on Arnett’s leg and he brushes it off. The boy starts crying and the mother tells him not to bother their guest, but the kid gets louder and howling red. Arnett doesn’t pick up the toy car. The mother reaches over the seat and puts it back in her son’s lap. “He’s your neighbor, Matthew,” she says. The boy starts calming down. “And how are you supposed to treat your neighbors?”

  “Like us,” he recites.

  When they reach Ashland, the husband points toward the old bait shop ahead. “How’s this?” he says.

  “Just a little farther up. To the Lakewood.”

  “Oh, let’s buy him a room,” the wife says to the man.

  The wife hands Arnett some money and he gets out of the car. It looks like she’s trying to remember a question. The trees and buildings are all brown from the mill. His hair blows upward in the wind like it’s about to fly off his scalp. Before shutting the door, he leans back inside, takes the boy’s little red car and says, “I ain’t your neighbor.”

  —

  At the Lakewood Arnett pays for eight hours in a hole with a peeling carpet and a small window that looks out on the U-Haul trucks across the street. The key ring they gave him has a rubber fish dangling from it. He puts the fiddle case down on the bed. The U-haul sign has a flashing arrow with lightbulbs underneath the lettering, We Help You Leave. He shuts the blinds, kicks his boots off and collapses on the bed next to the case.

  When he wakes up, the digital clock says he has three hours left.

  He flips TV channels to forget what he saw in his sleep. A woman trying to sell him jewelry. Somebody drowning. A preacher laying bodies out across a stage with the touch of his palm. Arnett sits up on the edge of the mattress, listening to the tele-sermon and looking at his palms. “If only.”

  He lies back down, feet still hanging off the end, the TV going on about how evil is real. When he wakes up again he hears a voice outside. It’s too good to have even been prayed for. “Yes, please,” he says.

  He gets up, sticks a finger into the blinds and there she stands in the glowing light of a Coke machine, checking the options and singing. Jennifer, you little fucking sweetheart. Should’ve known she’d be hiding out here. Just like him.

  When he opens the door, the damp thickness of evening air rolls into the room. No light besides the Coke machine and a flickering parking lamp at the other end of the lot. Behind her, he clears his throat and says, “Jenny Penny? You mind? I’m trying to sleep. Come here.”

  She doesn’t even try to run. Can’t.

  “I,” she breathes, like recovering from a punch in the gut.

  It looks like she might cry, something he’s never seen her do. “What’s wrong?”

  “I,” she says.

  “Yeah, you.” He takes her wrist and leads her into his room. She drags her feet, doesn’t resist, doesn’t say no. She never did.

  —

  He sits her down on the bed and tells her not to move or speak. He stays still and silent too, studying her face while some preacher on the TV says, “Did you know you could be just one minute from hell?” Arnett shakes his head as the voice continues. “I was one time a minute away from hell and did not realize it, my Lord, my mighty Christ, He took me in as the shepherd will the lamb, and He showed me it began in the darkest hour like it always does, that I’d been around family and friends my whole life and still found myself so alone, and you could be too, just one short minute from hell.”

  “Quit this,” she says.

  Instead Arnett improvises his own sermon, wiping tears from his eyes. “The day He come to me, it was the most mysterious thing. Almost out of nowhere. Like back from the grave. Jesus come from a place you never been. Never seen before. Someplace you don’t come back from. Not usually. That’s what makes him Him. Your Jesus, He come back from the dead. For you. He rose from that grave with a sword.”

  She bolts for the door, her head rushing with noise, but Arnett kicks in the back of her knee and she falls down. He sits on her and slaps his hand over her mouth and won’t let her scream.

  “Keep that shit in your throat,” he says. “You got no idea of the physical pain that goes along with coming back to life after dying.” A tear falls from his eye and lands on her face. She’s kicking and trying to get out from under him but he’s so heavy and eventually she gets tired and can hardly breathe. He takes her by the hand, pulls her up and turns the TV off. She sits back down on the worn carpet floor, her hair in her face. “Pretty like always,” he says, opening a fiddle case. “If you keep quiet I’ll play you the ‘Tennessee Waltz.’ ”

  “I don’t need you playing nothing for me,” she says. “I want you to let me out of this room before I scream and somebody gets in here.”

  “Like who?”

  “Leon knows where I am.”

  “Lie number ten thousand and fucking one.”

  “He’ll be here soon.”

  “I saw him last night. He really wasn’t looking so hot. Said he wouldn’t be able to make it.”

  “What’d you do to him?”

  “What he did to me. What you did to me.”

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

  “You’re a crazy fucking lying bitch, too.”

  “I will scream.”

  “It won’t be loud as this.” He reaches into the case and shows her what it carries. “I want us back together. We were made to be together. We can make it work, baby. We going to make it work.” He’s not really talking to her but to the gun, considering it with a country deference and running his fingers over the tarnished silver plate on the grip engraved with a J. “Don’t try leaving,” he says.

  She doesn’t say anything back.

  “Scream all you want,” he says. “Want to scream, go right ahead. It’s nothing these walls ain’t heard before. A good old loud fuck. Hey, that gives me an idea.”

  She covers her face and peeks through her fingers as he goes back to the fiddle case and takes out a little jar of cloudy corn whiskey. He looks through it right at her and drops it into her lap. “Drinky,” he says.

  She looks up, stares into him. “I ain’t drinking this shit.”

  He rams the nose of the pistol into the bed pillow. “We’re going to,” he says. “I’ll go first.” He puts the gun in his belt and snatches the jar from her lap. She cringes at the skirling sound of the lid being twisted off. He takes a drink, then hands it to her.

  Jennifer figures she might actually just get shot tonight. Here is the man she helped poison. He’s lost his mind. But doesn’t she deserve it? He has every right in the world. No, hell no. It’s not about what she des
erves. It’s about what he’ll actually do. She takes a sip.

  “That’s enough,” he says. “Give it here.”

  He takes most of what splo’s left in one swallow, then starts ranting about reasonable reasons they should work through their differences. One last swig and he’s stumbling, like somebody turned out the light. “Tell you what.” He leans to one side and pulls the pistol from his belt. “I ain’t gonna shoot you.”

  “Please don’t.”

  “If,” he says.

  “If?”

  “If you tell me who else you been hunching.”

  “I ain’t been.”

  Arnett shuts his eyes, tests the air with his nose.

  I’m about to get shot, she thinks. He can smell the lie.

  “You stink like cock,” he says. “And look at your face. Who touched you?”

  It tastes like her lips are bleeding again. Knowing she’s too far gone to take anything back, she doesn’t speak or move.

  “Hey,” he says. “Guess what. I got a present for you.”

  She keeps focused on the black hole at the end of the barrel while he reaches into his pocket with his free hand. He holds out a tiny red racing car in front of her face.

  “Where’d you get that?” She can’t help but laugh. “You steal it from a little kid or something?”

  When Jones rolls into Natalie’s duplex lot, he’s feeling brave. He noses the van into the space next to her Chrysler, then thinks better of it, pulls out, turns around and backs it in facing out.

  At the top of the stoop, he sees the front door’s wide open behind the screen and letting the heat of the day into the house. But this isn’t his life anymore. Without knocking he pulls the screen door and walks inside.

  The coffee table in front of the entertainment center is crowded with empties that spill over onto the carpet in puddles and shards. An open handle of something cheap lies sideways on the couch. Ashtrays overflowing. It smells like every song he’s ever sung.

  But there’s a new addition, right under the coffee table: a crusted pipe, ziplocked in with some rocks and the rest of the mix.

  The La-Z-Boy is reclined flat with a comforter over it and a man’s hairy foot poking out. Jones clears his throat at whoever it is. No response, so he pulls the blanket back to reveal a familiar face swollen from sleep and whatever else. Raw stubble around the open mouth and spreading up the cheekbones.

  “Eads,” he says, but Eads doesn’t move. Jones holds a finger under his nose like a mustache to check his breathing. “Wake up, you fuckrag.”

  When he’s turning away, the blanket gets thrown open and it’s Terri, lying right behind Eads, snuggled up cute as a critter. “Hey, bubby,” she says.

  “What the hell’s going on in here?” Jones says.

  Terri starts laughing. “Hey, we’re finished,” she says, gets up, fetches the bottle of Montezuma from the couch and crawls back under the blanket. “We’s just trying to stay cool is all,” she says. “Shoot, looks like it’s only enough for one.” She holds it up to the blue TV light and then takes a kiss from it. “Mmn-mmn, good morning, daddy.” She slides the rest of the way under the covers.

  “You seen Natalie?” Jones says.

  “We tried getting her in on this. But she won’t leave her room.”

  “I had nothing to do with it, Jones,” Eads says.

  “Bull,” Terri says. “It was your idea.”

  “Natalie,” Eads says. “Goddamn Natalie. Where she at? Where that bitch go? And why’s it so fucking hot in here?”

  “Y’all left the door open, geniuses.”

  “Nuh-uh,” Terri says. “Door’s broke. It just don’t close. Opening ain’t its problem.”

  “What in the hell’s wrong with y’all?”

  The question seems to focus Eads. “The shit they got coming off that mountain, baby, it’s like, it’s…” He starts pushing his eyeballs around with his pointer fingers. “There’s more than a human can handle. But one guy runs it all around, from here down to Kingsport. We became friends. Motherfucker’s a hero. I’ll give you his number, if you want. We’re friends. He calls me. And since me and you’s friends, I’ll give you his number. You can call him up. Now where’s Natalie?”

  “You crazy!” Terri slaps her hand over Eads’s mouth.

  “Must’ve been a fun night,” Jones says. “I’ll try her room.”

  At the end of the hallway he finds the door locked and hears the noise of a window unit rattling inside. He bangs on the door and tries the knob. “Natalie? It’s me, your evil ex-husband. I’m here for my guitar case.”

  He stands there with his ear to the door, nothing, then goes to the kitchen to find a drink and think about whether he shouldn’t just break into her room. He feels like kicking something down.

  He checks in the cupboard, but that’s where he used to keep it. Under her rules of operation it’s below the sink, where a bottle of bourbon is next to a can of Drano. While he’s pouring whiskey into a can of flat Coke he found, an icy hand touches the back of his neck. Natalie. Her eyes raccooned in mascara. Lipstick smeared. Hair tangled into a nest atop her little head.

  “Look,” Jones says, holding up both hands, “all I want—”

  “Your case is fine. Have a good time being gone?”

  She’s still toasted, Jones can smell it.

  Under the blanket, Eads whispers to Terri, “That’s Natalie. Get her under here.”

  “Don’t pay them no mind,” Natalie says to Jones. “They just been to the Big Rock Candy Mountain.”

  “If I’m interrupting something I can come back later.”

  She tightens her hair. “Come back in the kitchen.”

  “Just give me my case,” he says.

  “We miss you,” she says, holding her breasts and moving them up and down. Jones follows her. She opens the fridge and takes out a tin can emptied of tomatoes and now full of red wine. The top’s still hanging on where the can opener didn’t catch. “Come back to my room,” she says.

  “Look, I thought we settled this. I just need—”

  “I know what you fucking need. So come back and get it.”

  Jones pushes past her to the bedroom. His case better be in there.

  She stays right on his heels down the hall. Her closet door’s off its hinges and leaning against the window. No light ever gets in here. Jones sees the guitar case in the closet.

  Natalie slams the door shut behind them. “Here I am,” she says.

  He checks all five latches to make sure the case doesn’t fly open, then takes it up by the leather handle. It molds to his hand. But Natalie’s standing right behind him with the can of wine to her mouth. When she stops for a breath, Jones pushes her aside and opens the door.

  “Just like trash,” she says. “That’s how you’re throwing me away. Like trash.”

  He makes it down the hallway with her screaming on his heels, picks up the Coke can from the coffee table where he left it and throws it back. He turns and sees her standing in the dark. He feels the whiskey coming on. “Natalie,” he says. “Don’t make it worse.”

  She leans against the wall, unbuttons the top of her pants and yanks down her zipper. “I’m just trying to make it better.”

  Knowing he’s got a song to write helps him look at her and say, “No.”

  “What’s her name?” Natalie says.

  “This is stupid.”

  “Not as stupid as what I’m going to do if you don’t tell me.” She points at the blanket.

  “Have fun, then,” Jones says.

  She jumps at him, and before he can move she tosses the rest of her wine in his face.

  Eads starts laughing. “Come on over, y’all. Plenty of room.”

  Jones wipes the wine from his eyes.

  “Tell me what her name is,” she says.

  He shouldn’t say it. Everybody’s listening. Don’t do it.

  Arnett rears back to hit her with the pistol. She blocks her face, but nothing happens.


  “God, fuck it,” he says. “You know I only do this because I love you. Everything I do, it’s because I love you.”

  “If you did, we wouldn’t be here like this. You got me trapped in a motel room, and all you do is pretend you’re gonna hit me? Do it or don’t. Just quit pretending.”

  “There ain’t no going back.” He paces in front of her. “What’s done is done.”

  “It ain’t done,” she says. “Please.”

  “Say some more words and I’ll put a bullet through your tongue. Say fucking words! You hear me now?”

  “What am I supposed to do?” she says. “All you ever did was torture me.”

  “Bull fucking horse shit.”

  The gun’s still on her but he seems to be listening now. “Put it down,” she says.

  “You asked for every single thing I ever did to you.”

  “Look at us,” she says. “You with a gun. How’s this making things better?”

  “Last night,” he says. “Let’s start there and go backwards.”

  “I was right here.”

  “With who?”

  “None of your business,” she says. “Besides, nobody.”

  “Oh, it’s definitely my business.” Arnett steps at her with the pillow and she pushes herself up, her knees hurting from sitting folded and all her nerves going, like she’s about to shit herself. She grabs for the pillow, expecting a bullet, but he pulls it away. She lunges at him and a flashing explosion stops them both. The smell of burnt hair fills the room, a high-pitched ringing in her ears. Pieces from the wall behind her crumble onto the floor.

  “I told you hush,” he says.

  The shot glanced her shoulder, knocked her back a few feet. She puts her hand over the pain moving and growing like a burning web. “You shot me?” she says.

  “No I didn’t.”

  She keeps her hand over the pumping blood. “God,” she says. “My God.”

  “Always disagreeing with me. I give you a place to live, and all you give me is what?”

  “I gotta sit down.”

  “Do that.”

  She folds into the chair over in the corner and it feels like her feet aren’t there. This, she understands, is shock.