Nitro Mountain (16 page)

“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
deserves. 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?”

W
hen 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?”