Lee Johnson - Nitro Mountain

“Now.” Arnett puts the gun back in the fiddle case and locks it shut. “Let me go get you some water. I never shot a girl before.”

Instead, he takes a notepad from his pocket, picks up the phone and starts trying numbers, crashing the receiver back into the cradle every time nobody answers, until somebody finally does.

“Eads,” he says. “Arnett calling. Very serious question. You hear me? What? Wait.” He holds the receiver out from his face. “Shit-ass phone,” he says, and goes over to the keypad until he finds a button and hits it.

A man’s voice talks through the static of the speakerphone: “Questions are serious because they’re asking something.”

“Don’t fuck with me, Eads,” Arnett says.

“Don’t fuck with me, man! I paid your ass! These questions, they always ask people for, like, fucking answers.”

“You won’t have to pay me for nothing, Eads, if you’d just shut up for a second. Zero payments.”

“Zero? Without any numbers in front?”

“None.”

“Listening.”

“Where’s your car at? I need to borrow it. Can you bring it to me?”

“Is that really you, Arnett? Terri, it’s him on the phone. Yeah! Bring us more Robot, Arnett!”

“It’s me. Come on, man. Wake up. I need your car.”

“Me and Terri’s locked, baby.”

“Your car,” Arnett says. “Tell me where it’s at. I’ll bring you both some Robot, for free, if you just tell me where your fucking car’s at.”

“I have a car. Yes. Where you?”

“With Jennifer. Wake up and think. Tell me where your car is.”

“Jennifer. Woozy! Why didn’t you say so? I was at Natalie’s this morning, when this dude, Jones — you know him?”

“Fuck.” Jennifer tries to sit up but the walls are warped and the floor’s slanted and the chair she’s in keeps tumbling backwards.

“That sorry-ass country singer from Misty’s,” Arnett says. “Yeah.”

“He came by fighting with Natalie. You should’ve heard them. She was yelling and throwing shit at him and then he starts telling her how he slept with some girl, some slut named Jennifer. This very morning. I didn’t know if it was your Jennifer or not. But the name jumped out at Terri, and she told me I better tell you. Was it your Jennifer?”

“That’s a good question,” Arnett says, looking straight at her. “Sounds to me like some cut-rate hunch.”

She puts her hands on the arms of the chair and warm blood pumps from her shoulder. Focus, she tells herself. Keep it together until this is over. It’s almost over.

“Where’s the Robot?” Eads says. “Come on, let’s go. How the hell you gonna get it to us without a car?”

Arnett rips the phone cord from the wall.

Jennifer sees him go into the bathroom and then he comes out holding a plastic cup. He sets it on the table beside her. “Drink you some water,” he says, but she can barely understand. Everything’s moving so fast now and he’s talking about getting out of here before somebody comes knocking. “Where’s the keys to your truck?” he says, and begins going through her purse. “They in your room?” Arnett dumps the purse onto the bed. Gum wrappers, ChapStick, receipts, a multi-tool, a wallet. He stuffs bills from the wallet into his pocket. There’s her license. He’ll leave that so the ambulance can identify her. He unzips an inside pocket in the purse, reaches in and feels the keys.

“Don’t do me like this,” she says.

He tosses the keys in the air and snatches them. “Who’d you hook up with last night? Why’s your face all busted? You been hooking? Who with? Tell me that.”

She tries to stand but can’t. “That’s my business,” she says. “And besides, I been right here the whole time.”

“With Jones.”

“Who’s Jones?”

“Maybe you didn’t get his name before he left this morning,” Arnett says. “Jones — Natalie’s Jones?”

“I didn’t do shit.”

“Your friendly friend you fucking fucked this morning,” Arnett says. “He plays at Misty’s. Shitty-ass country. Don’t worry if your mind’s not working. That’s what losing blood does to you. I’ll find him for you.”

She picks up the cup of water, drinks and rests it between her legs. “I didn’t.”

“You did. And I’m taking your truck.”

She winces, grips her arm. “I’m sorry.”

“Too late for that.” He brings her more water.

The wallpaper in here is playing tricks in her eyes. It’s close and far away. Moving and still. Coming in and going out.

“Drink your water.”

“Arnett,” she says. “You go get somebody. I need help.”

He stands in the door looking back. A broken glow around his body. Bugs flying in around him. “I’m definitely going to go get somebody. Now drink your water.”

Turner busts into Durty Misty’s holding a xerox of his old badge in one hand and the loaded crossbow in the other, swinging it around and yelling for everybody to clear the fuck out, move-move-move, code red, code red, everybody out, we got a code red.

When he sees it’s Turner, a single scream leaves Old Bob’s mouth and then he’s out the door and in his car and gone.

The drunks remain calm, picking up their lighters and cigarettes. Not really many of them. They almost seem thankful somebody’s forcing them to leave.

It doesn’t take long to empty Misty’s out. Never did.

Turner came here to break up a fight once. Bob was the one that called him. The men had been brawling for half an hour, everybody watching and shouting with every swing. Grown men hitting each other in the face for that long. Some serious damage. Turner watched them going at it and wouldn’t let anybody leave the barroom until they finished. He held his gun on them, the spotlight in the cruiser’s dash shining on them through the window. He reminded the peckernecks that somebody better fall and not get up, or else.

Eventually one of them did, a guy named Kenny. Turner bought a beer for the winner, somebody from Ohio called Lewis the Linebacker. Turner drove Kenny home. He looked bad but was breathing fine and the wife took him in without a word. Just another Friday night.

But later when Lewis was drinking his victory beer he fell flat on his face on the table. His friends shook him, tried waking him up. But he wasn’t asleep. He was dead. He had died, and Kenny was just fine.

Now wasn’t that some shit. When the winner ain’t the winner. Turner sits at the empty bar alone. Arnett, man. You best show up.

There’s a bum camp in a run-down state park off 15 East. Jones used to come here to get ideas for songs. He’s here now just for the company of men who have it worse than he does. That and he needs a nap.

The sign on the front gate reads Closed for the Winter, over which someone has spray-painted Forever . He pulls around the gate, drives over the knocked-down chain-link fencing and parks in a derelict campsite in the shade of tall pines. There’s a warped picnic table and a grill cemented into the ground. He puts the windows halfway up for mosquitoes and shuts off the engine. The deep quiet of the forest, the endless rustling and bending and prickling of the pines — this is what being out among the stars would sound like. He opens the guitar case, cracks a can of Busch. The campsite where the guys stay is farther back toward the railroad tracks. El Rancho Relaxo, they call it. He’ll go find them in a little bit. He begins fingerpicking — and the rest of the words to the song he’s been thinking about nearly pour out of his mouth. He works on them for a while, switching verses around and trying to come up with a chorus that feels natural but unlocks the song with some surprise. He doesn’t want to sound clever. He hates clever songs. That’s not him. Never was. A guitar in his lap and a few brews left on the floor — hard to believe you could ever want anything more than a summer day alone in a van with a guitar. And no girls allowed.