Nitro Mountain (13 page)

A
rnett 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.

L
arry 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.