Lee Johnson - Nitro Mountain

“Should I have blocked him?” Derek says, getting up to speed.

“Probably. I wouldn’t have, though. See if we can’t catch up and persuade him off the road.”

Anything’s better than jail. The hollow hallucinatory echoing through the tiled hallways and off the metal-and-concrete cells. The empty sound of doors opening and closing. And the people. Around when Jack ran away, Arnett went in on drunk charges and had this guy named Ray for a cellmate. Ray had one glass eye that made him look confused. Arnett was just twenty when he walked into that cell and saw Ray sitting on the top bunk with his hands inside his jumper.

I lost my eye in a fight, Ray said.

And though Arnett didn’t doubt him, he said, Who the fuck asked?

I like to fuck, Ray said.

The guard told Ray to get his hands out of there, then locked the door and went away.

The metal cot hanging from the wall beneath Ray’s roost gave Arnett a place to lie down. He woke from a sleep he hadn’t had in a long time with Ray shaking his shoulder.

I got a question, he whispered in the dark. You wanna be Mommy or Daddy?

Who the fuck are you? Arnett said.

Ray brought out a toothbrush of melted and sharpened plastic and sliced into Arnett’s cheek, releasing the warmth of fresh blood.

Arnett saw that Ray’s face had pores the size of needle holes. The glass eye was looking at the ceiling.

I ain’t got to answer a single one of your fucking questions, Arnett told him.

But you will.

When the man showed him the toothbrush again, Arnett sat up and pressed back against those cold painted cinderbricks and said, Okay, okay. The two men sat there like overgrown boys playing a bunk-bed game of house. On the flat foam mattress that softened nothing, Arnett’s hands were shaking. I’ll be Daddy, he said.

Ray leaned toward him, grinned and said, Come here and suck Mommy’s dick.

Arnett ain’t going back this time.

He tells himself it’s not them behind him until he can’t anymore. That fucking Bronco’s right up his ass. Then the brightest damn lights hit him from behind and the pull-over lights are strobing and spinning and he can’t see a goddamn thing for all the steam in front of him and the wall of brightness behind him. What are they trying to do, make this situation more dangerous? Better not think of anything right now besides finding Jennifer and making sure she’s all right. Make sure she drank her water. Got to keep going straight. Don’t slow down. They’ll stop you if you slow down, and then what are you? A cell rat again. Mommy’s daddy.

A full beer can under the gas pedal keeps getting in his way. Where’d that come from? Must’ve been thinking ahead somewhere back there. He lets his foot off, rolls the can toward him and takes it up. The car won’t go straight, or maybe it’s just him. He brakes for a banked turn ahead and sees faces up in the tree branches, Leon wearing a mask of himself, breath smoking through the mouth hole, Leon lying there on the ground with his arms out flat, Leon flying crookedly like some ungainly bat, Leon staring past everything and trying to understand the dent in his head.

Arnett wipes his eyes and sees his mother in the barn stall, held to the cedar posts by ratchet straps. Deer leg hanging out of her like it was her third leg. Jack buried her in the ridge and Arnett watched him from the woods. Goddamn it. Jack came up to him with the leg. Bend over, son a mine. More weeping than he’s used to these days but he can’t help it. When he brakes again and looks behind him and sees the Bronco right there, it’s hard to believe any of this.

The Bronco rams him and sends him skidding. He pounds his brakes and they hit him again. He lets go of the wheel, takes the crossbow from the passenger seat and holds it out his window. A shotgun blast shatters glass and sprays the back of his head with buckshot. He recovers from the reeling and steps on the gas, straddling the double yellow with the back of his neck burning. He can see the sky, full of holes, the violent stars, the guardrail, the moon a big puncture wound.

Upside down. The smell of earth and leaves. Peaceful.

He’s lying on the ceiling like a baby.

Everything’s everywhere.

Spots on his neck feel like flames when he touches them. Take care of them. Cover them.

People in the leaves above him now, cops coming down. He can’t stop laughing. He’s bleeding. He’s in a gully, the solid, skinned tree trunks holding the car like an enormous skeleton hand reaching up from a lower world and gripping. Then there’s a flashlight, voices. They’re calling for him, asking if he can hear them. Light finds his face. Shoot me, motherfuckers. End this shit. He closes his eyes against the bright beams and voices are yelling to him and he’s still laughing, and then a dark hole opens up that he can look through and see everything else surrounding it, no more shouts now, only laughter, and his fingertips just can’t keep any of this inside him anymore.

Jones is on the road with a full tank and a red Solo cup between his legs full of coffee from the hobo camp. Bulldozed hills on either side of the highway as he passes beneath I-81, the river of noise and metal.

Two hours out of Ashland and his cell phone just went dead. No idea where that damn cigarette-lighter plug-in charger’s at. Probably accidentally threw it away at the gas station while he was trying to clean things out in here.

Holding to the limit in the right lane, he leans over, pops open the glove box and takes out the state road map with phone numbers scrawled in the margins. He used to have all these memorized, before he got a cell. He glances every other second from the map to the road to the map. He hits a pothole and hot coffee spills into his crotch. He swerves as he tries to scoot back from the warmth that’s already soaking through his fly. At least it doesn’t burn. And when he looks back at the map, there’s what he was hoping for, the Hickory’s phone number. He needs to check on how Larry’s doing.

Signs for Bordon begin popping up and he stops at a gas station’s pay phone.

On the third ring, a lady answers and tells him Larry’s taking the next couple days off.

“Now, who’s this?”

“Tiff.”

“Hey, girl. It’s Jones. How you doing? Y’all got anybody playing tonight?”

“Yeah, the Jaguars.”

“Right on. Can I get an opening slot? I’ll take tips. A beer. A floor to crash on. Or nothing.”

“Jones,” she says. “Of course, there’s always a slot for you. That’s what slots are for.”

“Thanks for that, Tiff.”

“You show up at six and we can squeak you in.”

Bless Tiff, man. This isn’t the first time she’s hooked him up with a walk-in appointment. Problem now will be avoiding her after-hours special.

Now he’s got a couple hours to kill. The day’s been good so far. Since he left the camp it’s been nothing but the hum of road noise with the sun angled and strong, turning the mountains purple and orange. Behind him it looks like an evening thunderstorm. He tried the radio once and found only a classic-rock station doing an Eagles marathon. That one line, Don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy . How could the sound of wheels ever make anybody crazy? What’ll drive you crazy is the sound of wheels not rolling.

—

When he finally pulls into the Hickory’s lot, half his ass is asleep and cramped. He gets out and kicks the air. A lot more cars here than usual, even for the Jaguars. There’s Kit’s green Geo, and Chris’s blue work truck’s hidden in the far corner to avoid being spotted by enemies — wife, boss, kids. Thunder rumbles beyond the mountains to the east over in Bordon. He leaves his van right there in plain sight since he’s not hiding. The setting sun’s lighting up the thunderheads and everything’s got that sugared look to it.