Lee Johnson - Nitro Mountain

“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.

That cast eventually came off but the bone was still fucked. The nurse that sawed the plaster apart told me to relax and wait to see how it healed. If I tried to push things, the bass might be off my shoulders forever.

—

That spring I did a lot of walking without ever knowing where I was going. I’d follow the train tracks for miles, stopping to inspect various dead critters. Once I found a turkey vulture trapped inside a deer’s ribcage, the bones picked clean and the spine arching over the bird with the ribs bending down around it. I couldn’t understand how it ever got itself into such a mess, but there it was, totally stuck. I tried to push the skeleton over, but a piece of bone had wedged between the rail and a tie. The vulture growled out a stream of puke and let off a gassy stink. I kicked and pulled until the skeleton broke free, and the vulture hobbled out, its wing broken and hanging loose at its side. “Go!” I said. “You’re free. Get!” But it just kind of stayed there, staring at me through the side of its head.

Other times I’d sit on the guardrail of the highway and watch the vehicles blow by. I’d hope for somebody to stop, but nobody ever did.

One day I decided I wasn’t coming home until I found a job. There weren’t that many places to look, and I needed something close enough to walk to. I didn’t get far before my shirt was plastered to my back. No breeze in this bowl of a town. The sky was the color of steam and I was careful not to stay out in it too long. The road I was walking down narrowed and cars went swerving and honking past me. I dropped into Foodville for the AC and hung out in the front near the smokes until this man asked if I needed help finding something.