Nitro Mountain (6 page)

“You're the only dude in the world who this bothers,” I said. “How does that feel?”

We practiced from the afternoon until midnight, drinking beer and eating pizza, then we were loading equipment into the back of the Econoline, the last bench taken out for amps and instruments and drums and sleeping stuff. I was carrying a bag of pedals with the hand of my broken arm when a flash of pain lit me up and dropped me to my knees. Jones came running but I said I was fine, just tripped, didn't need any help getting up.

Our first show was in Lloyd at a country store that let us sleep upstairs in the attic afterward. Only if you don't drink, said the woman who booked the gig. Yes ma'am, we said, and hauled out a fifth the second we heard her close the downstairs door. It had been a long drive for a low-paying gig—just enough for gas, really—while Mac and the Deps got hotel rooms and backstage sandwiches they didn't even look at. We lay hungry and happy in that attic. One window at the end of the low-angled room showed the ink-colored night sky. We carried on with the kind of talk appreciated only by those creating it at the moment—women, somebody taking too long with the bottle, somebody else claiming to have lost it until we found it stashed in the foot of his sleeping bag and smacked him around a little, all of us laughing like boys beneath the raw-pine beams.

“What we need now is girls,” somebody mumbled as sleep settled down over us, the last words of the night, the single thought on all our minds, wondering what tomorrow's gig might bring.

The drive wasn't far, just a couple hours southwest over the Tennessee border. We got there to find Mac's group already backlined. Two roadies were standing on the unlit stage noodling around on guitars. The venue was an old theater with a bar in back, four young ladies wiping tap nozzles with washcloths, wrapping silverware in napkins and dancing around. Soundcheck was for them, and it was the best we'd played so far.

The soundman had a key ring the size of a jailer's, and because of this we knew we could trust him. “Go get y'all something to chew on and swallow,” he said once the levels were set. “First two drinks are free. And the blonde, if you drop shit on her side of the bar, any damn thing at all, money or glasses or whatever, she'll bend over and pick it up for you. Make sure you drop something.”

We bellied up and ordered burgers. When the blond girl handed out our drinks, Jones pushed a couple quarters over the edge of the bar and said, “Oops.” Then Jerry's whole wallet hit the floor. She put her fists on her hips and said, “You been talking with Henry.”

Everybody laughed except me. She noticed that and winked before going back into the kitchen, leaving the money and the wallet on the floor.

“That was at you, Leon,” Matt said. “You dog.”

“It's only because of his arm,” Jerry said.

The monitors gave a sharp clarity to the sound, and somewhere in the middle of the set I listened to what we were doing and thought, Not too bad for a bunch of losers.

After the set, I met the blond girl out on the side of the building. She kicked the wall randomly while we talked. Everybody else left for the Motel 6 but I stuck around with her, drinking top-shelf liquor. Vodka and gin infused with herbs. I'd never had anything like it. We went back to her house, and the sex was just two sloppy bodies being tossed against each other: a late-night mistake that sobered me up enough so that I couldn't sleep. The thickness of the girl's thigh as I slapped it, the smack echoing in my head, the sound of her dropping her boots on the wood floor next to the bed, the sheets smelling of perfume, beer, barroom chemicals and other dudes.

She was unconscious when I decided to go. The room was so quiet it hurt, a loud rushing static in my ears that wouldn't quit. I slipped into my boots and out the door. The ground felt too hard as I walked past strip malls through a cold drizzle. My head throbbed. I never wanted to see her again. I wouldn't.

I didn't have a cell phone, and it was early enough I expected everybody to be asleep when I got back. I figured I'd have to pound on the door and wake them all up. But that wasn't the case. Jones was crouched against the wall outside the room smoking a cigarette and blowing out big clouds in front of him. “Where the F.” He shook his head. “Have you been? I don't care what you been doing with what's-her-ass. Well, actually I do.”

“Come on,” I said. “It was like being in a washing machine.”

Normally he would've laughed. “People been calling for you. A lady named Barbara? Rachel's mom? Says she's gone.”

“Who? Her or Rachel?”

Jones scraped his Camel across the sandy cement and left it smoking at his feet. “Rachel,” he said. “The one that wasn't calling me on the phone.”

I was so hungover that I could hardly make sense of what he was saying. The sun shellacked everything and made Jones look like an old picture. It felt like a memory—me standing there looking at him, and him telling me, “She's gone, man. The girl you were sleeping with? She's missing.”

“Slept with,” I said. “One time.”

“Well, apparently there's a whole search party. Cops, the news, everybody. And it's not looking good.”

“I didn't kill her.”

“Didn't say you did.”

“I know what you're thinking.”

“That's not what I'm thinking. Nobody thinks you did it. If they did, believe me, you'd know. It's just—it sounds like some folks are saying you were the last one with her.”

“Who's saying that?”

“Barbara.”

“Who told her?”

Jones looked at me, put his hands on his knees and pushed himself up. “I got no fucking idea.”

The next few nights were the same thing in different places. I kept expecting to see a detective peeking around a corner, but it was just more shows, long van rides, the occasional after-party with drunken scene queens taking bids from dudes in bands. I got one in West Virginia and ended it by leaving her in a basement apartment on a bare mattress next to a leaking water heater. Everyone else was sleeping upstairs. I hid in the van.

I didn't know who had the keys but that was okay. I still loved Jennifer. I felt bad about hooking up with Rachel, and that's what made me drink and sleep around. I felt guilty for whatever happened to her and couldn't stand the idea of being questioned. I didn't want to think or talk about any of it. As long as it stayed buried, it wouldn't walk.

I was packed into a sleeping bag wearing all my clothes, on the floor between the two bench seats. The horn honked—someone locking and unlocking the doors from outside. When I opened an eye, the water bottle in front of my face was frozen solid. Something bad was happening inside my cast. The side door slid open and Jones said, “Ain't you freezing to death?” He had layers of sweaters beneath his denim jacket, and the bright winter sun cast a shadow from his cap's bill over his face. He said the girl had woken them up last night looking for me. Jerry went to bed with her just to shut her up. “Took one for the team,” Jones said. “I guess you've been out here?”

“I can't move,” I said. “I'm paralyzed.”

“That good, huh? Damn. Might go get me some.”

“It's all in my spine and shit,” I said.

He put his hand on my foot and told me to move it. I did. “You're all right,” he said. He helped me sit up, then touched above my cast and asked if I could feel it. That whole side of my body burned and his touch left the spot pulsing and smoldering. Sticking out the other end of the cast, my fingers looked like cooked sausages ready to split.

“Well,” he said, lighting a cigarette and blowing smoke into the van. “It's not paralysis. But it ain't good, either.”

He drove me to the closest emergency room, where the doctor said the break hadn't healed properly, that it was actually still broken and breaking even more. A line of fracture had traveled up the bone, zigzagging like a slow bolt of lightning. That's how he described it. “What have you been doing?” he said. “You've been letting it rest, yes?” His name was Dr. Franklin.

“I been playing bass,” I said.

“For a country band,” Jones said. “That shouldn't kill him.”

“Country music won't kill you,” the doctor said. “But I've known it to ruin folks' lives.”

Neither of us could tell if he was joking.

His diagnosis, though, was simple: I couldn't finish the tour. He said he was glad I was in so much pain. “Seems to be the only thing you're liable to listen to,” he said.

“But I got nothing back home,” I told him. “I prayed for this tour. It happened.” I didn't know why I was confessing my life to him, except that he was a man who didn't know me and it felt good pleading for another chance to a person with some power. “This wasn't the plan,” I said.

He wrote me a generous prescription for painkillers, and a drive-through drugstore filled them quick as an order of fries. I sold half the pills to Jerry and bought a Greyhound ticket back to Bordon. The tour had almost a month left and I knew I couldn't hold up. I told them to hang on to my bass, in case they found somebody else, but it was really because it hurt so bad to even put the strap over my shoulder.

“We'll hold on to it for ya,” Jones said.

Jerry flipped his cell phone closed. “We got a bassman coming right now,” he said.

And there I was, standing at the station with a duffel bag of clothes by my feet. Nobody looked back from the van. They just drove away leaking a cloud of exhaust.

My sister was at the Shell station eating an ice-cream cone when my bus arrived. “Oh, my goodness,” she said. “What all did you see? What was it like out there?”

“Sucked,” I said.

“What's it like to be back?”

“Sucks more,” I said.

When she took the 231 split, I asked where she was going. “I don't need any errands. Just rest.”

“Well,” she said. “Let's see,” she said. “Mom and Dad are—”

“Don't do this to me.”

“They're doing a lot better lately.”

“I can't. I'll go crazy.”

“Sure you can,” she said, holding back tears, her mouth all tight and warped. “I'm the one who can't. I'm doing this for
you
.” Then she started crying so hard that she had to pull over onto the shoulder, cars swooshing by. When I asked what was wrong she hit the steering wheel with both hands, screamed and sent a sharp pain through me that I imagined looked like the bolt Dr. Franklin had described. “Can't you take this serious for one minute?” she said. “You are losing your life. You're throwing it away. You could change, you know. Use this as a chance to become better. Ahh! I don't know.”

I knew what she meant. I'd tried my hardest the whole twelve-hour bus ride to figure out how this could make me strong. But the pain pills were stronger, and every time I thought of improving myself I ended up seeing Rachel. I wanted to tell Krystal about her, but I was worried about sounding guilty for something I didn't do. Plus everything I had done.

I didn't go to my final court date. I stayed in my shitty bed in my shitty old bedroom. The band would have been back by now, and I felt time funneling by so fast that I feared I was caught in some sucking drain. One day Mom came into my room carrying a warrant for my arrest.

“This came in the mail,” she said.

“I didn't do it.”

“You missed court,” she said. “I understand. Your arm's broken. You're scared.” Then she took me to the clinic where she worked, had a doctor look at my arm and write up a report about our emergency visit and date it for my missed court appearance.

He handed her the letter and she thanked and thanked him until he said, “You earned it.”

She looked at me to see if I'd caught that. “What?” she said. “It's a hard job.”

“I'm sure it is,” I said to the doctor.

A changed date. Other than more court fines, the note had worked. My mom expected me to be grateful for the favor, but I couldn't ignore the favors she'd already given to him.

The trees outside started turning green. It depressed me, the seasons changing while I stayed the same. Mom kept quiet and then came into my room one day asking why I wasn't working yet.

“Because I don't have a fucking job,” I told her.

She reached behind the dresser and pulled the plug on the TV. “Go cut the grass.”

I went out to the garage and gassed and primed the mower. Starting it with one hand was a son of a bitch, but I got it going and was pushing it crookedly through the yard when I ran over a nest of bunny rabbits. The cut length was set high and I don't think I hurt any of them. They were right there at my feet now, squirming in their little roofless burrow, eyes barely open. Imagine if the first thing you saw in this world was those enormous blades spinning above you and my dumb ass just standing there. I left the mower and went back inside.

“You already done?” Mom said. Her hair was big from brushing.

“There's life and shit all over the place out there,” I said.

“You ain't thought about nobody but yourself since day one.”

“I'm twenty-five fucking years old,” I said. “I've thought about a lot of people. Lots of different people. Animals even. Squirrels. Rabbits.”

Then she just dumped it on me. “And what about this missing girl? Where'd you put her?”

I left the room and let her stew with those words. She knew I was innocent. “Your son's going to kill himself!” I yelled, then slammed the door and started walking.

I was back living in the same rat-matted shithole, my one real girlfriend had blown me off, and as long as Rachel didn't show up, nobody wanted to be seen with me. I was guilty around town. I could just feel the suspicion.

I considered applying to the army and catching some air in a humvee over a sand dune while a dirty city burned behind me. But there was the arm thing.