Nitro Mountain (12 page)

“Y'all make up that fast?”

“We just had a misunderstanding is all. Ain't that right, Mr. Dickel?” His foot slips off the footrest and hits his Gibson leaning against the bar, knocking it to the floor. All the strings ringing out.

“Hell,” Larry says. “That's the one thing your daddy left you. If you ain't going to play it, put it up.”

“She's got the case.”

“Who?”

“Natalie. I just told you. I'll play it when everybody shows up.”

“Ain't nobody showing up tonight, Jones.”

“You'll see.” He picks up his guitar and sets it across his lap. He drains the drink, flips the guitar upright and hits a big A. It's almost in tune with the song that's playing, so he starts banging away and singing along, “Won't you come to my arms, sweet darling, and stay?”

“I know the answer to that question,” Larry says. He puts the bottle out of sight, pushes some numbers on the register and rings him up. “Five bucks.”

Jones wipes his chin, strums harder and finishes, “The hell you trying to pull?” He puts his guitar down, goes behind the bar, stumbles over the rubber floor mat, grabs the bottle from below the register and carries it back to his stool.

“Don't,” Larry says.

With the bottle uncapped in his hand, Jones blinks at him. “I just had an idea: Fuck no.”

“Five bucks. Or quit drinking now.”

“Look here,” Jones says. “I got a new song. Want to hear it?”

“No.”

“That's what it's called!”

“Listen,” Larry says, “I can't just have you drinking like this. And then acting like this.”

“
You
listen. I been drinking, okay?”

“
One
thing we can agree on.”

“So we're in agreement. Good. I been drinking because I ain't been playing.”

“Ain't been playing because you been drinking.”

“I ain't been playing because nobody's here. Which is why I been drinking. Which is your fault. So. Here's to me, because nobody's like me and nobody likes me.” He takes a long pull from the bottle.

The music stops, and Jones goes over to the jukebox.

“You better come back to my place,” Larry says.

“I ain't going nowhere,” Jones says, “and I ain't never coming back.” He sways to his seat.

Larry's holding the bottle. “Now I'm not kidding.”

“Well, why didn't you say so?” Jones blinks at him again.

“
Been
saying so.”

“Fine,” Jones says. “Let's clean things up and head back to your place.”

“Sounds good. You don't mind sleeping in the living room, do you? Sharon's been staying with me and we like to keep the upstairs to ourselves.”

“You love her yet?”

“Yeah. Told her, too.” He puts the bottle back down.

Jones can tell he's about to get a story out of this old soft-heart. He takes out the napkin again and flattens it in front of him.

“I'd like to marry her,” Larry says. “If she'll let me. Ain't asked her yet, though.”

Jones stops the pen on the paper and looks up at him. “Bullshit. Don't lie.”

“No shit. None at all.”

“So when you gonna ask? You got a band to play the wedding yet? I'll give you a bargain.”

“We'll talk tomorrow,” Larry says. “When you're sober.”

“Since when was I sober tomorrow?”

Somebody's banging on the front door and they both look over their shoulders. A lady's standing outside with her hands cupped around her face, nose pressed to the glass and long, wet hair draping down.

Larry opens the door. “Come in out the rain, sweetheart.”

“Y'all still serving?” She leaves a puddle where she stands.

“Hell yeah,” Jones says.

“Not that guy,” Larry says, and points at Jones. “But honey, if you need something.”

Her face is thin and flushed, and she has a black eye and a busted bottom lip. The rain runs the blood down her chin in a line of pink watercolor.

Jones recognizes her. Where from?

She takes the stool next to him without even a glance. “Give me a Bud Light.” She pulls a napkin and dabs her lip. Larry levers off the cap and puts it in front of her. Jones lifts his glass. “To the rain,” he says. He keeps his eyes on hers and gets hers on his. “To the wetness.”

“Shit,” Larry says.

“So are you playing or what?” she says to Jones. If she smiles, her lips will bleed again.

“I am.”

“I don't have nothing for a tip,” she says.

“Quit it. Don't even start. You got
great
tips.”

She looks at them and has a swig, downing half the bottle. “I'd love to hear some music.” She points at the stage. “Get up there and pick a little.”

Like that, from one pull, she's a different person, telling Jones what to do. And Jones is under her spell. Larry shakes his head.

“I'll play you something,” Jones says. “Is that why you came out? To hear me?”

“No,” she says. “Well, yeah, but not really.”

“Good enough.”

“My boyfriend, he did this to me last night.” She points at her face with the bottle. “I had to move out here to the Lakewood so he couldn't find me.”

“Let's get this straight,” Jones says. “Did you come to hear me or not?”

“I don't even know who you are.”

“Wish I could say the same for you.”

“Enough, Jones,” Larry says.

“Leon,” Jones says. “That's who you're talking about.”

“Wait, now,” she says. “How do you…Wait, you're Jones Young.”

“At your mercy.”

“This ain't all he did to me,” she says. “He did something real bad to my boyfriend too.”

“Thought you said Leon was your boyfriend,” Larry says.

“Well, he was.”

“Okay,” Jones says. “So what'd your boyfriend do to your boyfriend?” He lifts his eyebrows at Larry, who nods. Jones unscrews the bottle and offers it to her. She takes it.

“See, my other boyfriend, Leon, was like freaked out by—anyway. Me and Leon used to be together. We started—is this being embarrassing?—we started sleeping together again.”

“Together again,” Jones sings.

“While I was still living with the other one.” She looks around. “I shouldn't be telling y'all this.”

“Drink a little bit more,” Jones says.

“You'll feel better,” Larry says.

“Will you drink with me?” she says. “I'm scared of being alone right now.”

She scoots close to Jones and he can smell her perfume, a cheap flower scent cut with vanilla. Her knee touches his and makes his balls tighten. “I'll drink with you,” he says.

“So Leon starts getting these ideas? This crazy shit. That he wants to, like, kill Arnett.”

“Arnett was the other boyfriend?” Larry puts both hands on the bar and lowers his head.

“Normal breakup stuff,” Jones says. “Only natural.”

“He was serious,” Jennifer says. “I wasn't about to get mixed up in any of that. I don't want murder on my soul.”

Jones jots down a line on the napkin and puts it back in his pocket. “I remember what Leon was like on tour,” he says. “I could never tell what that guy was thinking. But come on, there's no chance in hell he was serious about that.”

“Hush up,” Larry says. “Let the girl talk.”

“Problem is,” Jennifer says, “I think he did it.”

“How do you know this?” Larry says.

“I just have this tingle. A very bad little tingle.”

“You're going on a tingle?” Larry says.

“Nothing wrong with that,” Jones says. “I've tingled before and I'm not afraid to tingle again.”

“I ain't shitting you,” Jennifer says. “He was always talking about doing it. And now I don't know where he is. He might still be up there.”

“Up where?” Larry says.

She tosses her hand over her head and points straight up. “Nitro.”

“Jack's place?” Larry says.

“Arnett's Jack's son,” Jennifer says. “Or was. Or somebody's.”

“I know that. Last time I saw him he was about eighteen, wearing shorts made of chicken-feed bags. Just
covered
in scabies. I went up there to check on a Child Protective Services call. To see what Jack was doing. That's how I got this.” He holds up his bad hand as if taking some warped oath.

“Now you done it,” Jones says to Jennifer. “Getting him started back on the old cop stuff. That's exactly what gets him every time. Who's doing what-where-when. Next he'll start into how bad us young folks are. Just listen. He's given me the whole speech before. Careful—you'll get it too.”

“Son of a bitch caught me with shot-spray out in the woods. ‘Sorry, didn't mean to,' he says, while I'm kneeling there bleeding in the fucking leaves. Then defends himself, suc
cess
fully, saying he was hunting. Season was open, I'll give him that. And I didn't have a warrant to be on his land, true, not yet. Court found him innocent. And he still ran. Don't know where he went. Nobody does. I been wondering lately what's happening on that mountain.”

“I think that's where Leon is,” she says. “Something real fucked's going down up there.”

“Turner,” Larry says. “He thinks as much, too.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Jones says. “Now we gotta bring Turner into this?”

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.