Lee Johnson - Nitro Mountain

He watches the cops gather around Ricky, who’s speaking to everyone with his hands in the air everywhere.

“Y’all ain’t gonna find this bastard,” Turner says, then mouths words to match Ricky’s arm movements: “Just, uh, I don’t know, go, uh, go get him, go find him, he’s got to be somewhere up here, just go get him, hear me?” Ricky goes into the house, and the rest of the men load into patrol jeeps and drive back down the access in a tight line.

Whatever Turner has to do to find Arnett and put him away, it’ll happen. This could win him his badge back.

Ricky comes out onto the porch shaking his head, looking around. He gets into the last vehicle left, a tan Bronco with tall antennas, and skids out in a furious tail of gravel dust.

“Ooo-hoo, boys, somebody’s frustrated,” Turner says.

As the Bronco rolls down the access, he looks up at the widow’s walk. There’s movement up there. He raises his telescope.

Arnett, looking over the railing.

Son of a mother.

And what the hell’s he holding? Turner adjusts the focus. A fiddle case?

Arnett opens a trapdoor and disappears.

Turner waits.

Finally Arnett comes out the front door carrying nothing besides that same case. He starts walking down the access, then cuts off into the woods. Dangerous bastard. Just like his uncle-daddy.

Turner Rides Again, the headlines will say. Picture of Big T standing next to a new cruiser. He scratches the hives breaking out around his groin. Every time his job called for bravery, he got hives like this. At least they don’t attack his face. Haven’t yet, anyway. So long as they stay in the pants, he can pretend he’ll do his duty, no problem. The burn after the scratching feels good. He pisses his underwear just a pinch to hydrate the welts.

So. He’ll follow Sapple Lane back down to 231. Cruise that stretch for a while. That’s the direction Arnett seemed to be heading. Turner works through his trousers with a clawed hand and continues scanning over to East Ridge. Down in there lies Arnett’s mother. It’s where Jack used to stash his shine too. He’d bury it in his wife’s grave — the one spot nobody ever dared to go. But that ain’t the deal now. This is some bona fide bullshit.

Where would Arnett go now that his last refuge is gone? Easy: where he’s not supposed to go. Misty’s. He’ll go looking for Bob to ask for money, a place to hide, and that’s where Turner will grab him.

Arnett wipes cobwebs and dust off the window with his fingers, trying to make out who the hell’s parked over there on South Hill. He looks harder but still can’t tell. Can’t even be sure there is anybody. All he sees in that big pasture is a carlike splotch. It ain’t the cops. They already left.

He eats three cans of beans and gets ready for the hike. He can’t wait any longer, got to go somewhere. If anybody’s watching him, waiting for him, he’ll throw them off. He’ll walk out the front door like a normal man who just killed out of self-defense, start down the access a little ways and make them think he’s headed for 231. Then he’ll loop around through the gulch over to the other side of the mountain, jog down the western access to 15 and hitch a ride into Ashland. It’s a long walk, but that’s what’s got to happen. He’ll get a room at the Lakewood. They go by the hour there. Buy himself some time to decide what to do.

Burrs are clinging to his shirt and pants by the time he steps out onto 15 with the fiddle case in hand. On the other side of the road are cedar posts holding up miles of wire. In the tall grass beyond, bony heifers stand motionless with their heads bowed. Crazy that they know how to stay alive.

He goes back into the bushes on the westbound shoulder and through the leaves he can see every car coming down off the mountain. Heat dances in the distance. No cars at all.

The cows drift closer, heads lifted and mouths chewing sideways circles in stupid curiosity. His stomach twists in pain. A truck roars toward him but it’s some kind of business rig. Can’t do that.

Finally a sedan comes crawling through the heat waves like a mirage. He steps onto the shoulder holding his thumb out.

He pulls on the handle but it’s locked. When the electric window whines open a crack, he feels air-conditioning and smells chewing gum. “Where you going?” the man behind the wheel asks. “Do you smoke?”

“Just into Ashland,” Arnett says.

“Do you believe in aliens?”

Arnett ignores that. “Yeah,” he says. “I smoke.”

“I can’t take you, then. You’re the test subject of a long-term extraterrestrial experiment. That’s why they have you smoking. I’m at risk already. They’re probably tapping this conversation right now.”

“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.