Lee Johnson - Nitro Mountain

And just when I was back into the bass, cruising and thumping along through the songs, just when I thought my buzz was here and could never end, in floated Jennifer. She hovered there bobbing her head along to the beat — my bass beat, the beat I was beating — and it didn’t look like she’d seen me yet. My pain pulsed. Her hair was longer now and that was strange. It swung with her turning, bending, leaning. She was moving around like she was after something.

We were on our last song when Rachel showed up.

“Here’s a situation,” I said.

“What’s wrong?” Jerry said. His shoulders were raised to a ride cymbal swing. “You look sick.”

“My arm.”

“All right,” he said, “let’s end this, boys.”

Rachel came straight for the stage, doing some loopy dance with knees bent and her ass moving behind her like she was trying to fit into jeans tighter than the ones she was already wearing. Jennifer was watching her, then the Daffy Duck dude stepped over and talked into her ear. We tagged the end of the song and Jerry drove it right into the ground with a cymbal crash. He was a punk drummer and thought that gave him the right.

“Done,” he said. “Let’s go get drunk.”

Rachel had danced right up to the stage, Jennifer still watching her. I shaped up my face, giving a handsome tight-jawed listen to what she was saying. She asked if she could get me a drink. On her. I said no and kept my periphery open. “They give the bands free Natties,” I said.

“I said, can I get you a drink?”

I could see Jennifer over at the bar playing with Daffy, her hands everywhere. She talked in a loud, flat tone, and I knew she was faking it. She was calling for me.

Eventually Rachel said, “Just come to the bar with me and order for yourself.”

I stepped off the stage, tripped and fell into a table. Bottles smashed and crashed and spun on the floor around me. I landed so hard on my bad arm that fire shot against the tip of my tailbone, the kind of pain that makes you laugh at first. Before I could understand what I’d done to myself, Jennifer was standing over me. “What the hell you think you’re doing with my man?”

“Jennifer,” I said. “Rachel.”

“You know her name?” Jennifer said.

“And I know his,” Rachel said.

I got to my knees. “Wait now.”

“Sounds like you know more than that,” Jennifer said.

“So does he,” Rachel said.

“Calm down, y’all.” I was holding on to a chair, trying to get up. “My arm hurts.”

People were loud in the room and we couldn’t really hear one another. I was standing there hurting like a motherfucker.

“How’s about I go find out somebody’s name?” Jennifer spun around and clattered back to the bar. The stool next to Daffy was open and she took it and went right into some conversation that was supposed to make me jealous. Talking and laughing and drinking. They hadn’t earned any of it.

“And what was all that about?” Rachel said.

“Give me a cigarette.”

“Excuse me?”

A trio of old-timers watched her leave. I knew not to follow her. Don’t even look. These were guys who’d been sitting at the table I’d knocked into and were now mopping up the mess with napkins and wringing the hooch back into a glass. “He done it now,” one said, looking from me to the closing door. “That’s how they go,” another said. “Wait now,” the third one said, pointing at me. “You the feller knocked over them beers? I expect another one.”

“Me too,” I said, and ran to the door.

It was drizzling in the parking lot. Folks were huddled at a table, smoking under the big Bud Light umbrella. None of them was Rachel. I needed her for the battle Jennifer was mapping out inside, but her car was gone. I saw the dry gray patch where it had been, dark and wet all around it.

During the second set my arm sunk into some deep hurt. I couldn’t stay focused and it felt like my teeth were falling out. Jones’s songs were good enough to keep me together for a while, but eventually shit started failing quicker than I could help. My fingers tingled when I plucked the strings, and I watched those two, Jennifer and Daffy, with a distant kind of hate. On the dance floor they stumbled into a broken two-step that nobody would’ve been jealous of except for me. I was playing on autopilot, buoyed and bobbing over the changes and trying my best to ignore what I seemed to be helping make happen. As the song ended, he tipped her from their two-step into a dip and I saw his biceps.

Silver was in his whiskers and his grin showed a dirty glint of gold. I decided it was time to report him.

By the end of the night, though, I didn’t know where he’d gone to. Jennifer either. But I had an idea. I went out to Jones’s van, found his cell phone on the floor and dialed.

“Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?”

It was a good question. I didn’t know where to begin.

Eventually it became clear I didn’t have an emergency. Just a bad-business claim. I even told them about the drugs, but they said, “Right. Look, if the guy’s not there, what do you want us to do about it? We gotta catch him smoking it, selling it. What’s his name?”

“I don’t know. But you’ll find everything if you just get over here.”

“What does he look like? What was he wearing? Or driving? How will we know him?”

“He has tattoos. The one on his neck’s Daffy Duck.”

“Is this man’s name Arnett?”

“I told you, I don’t know his name.”

“An officer is coming.”

Jones packed up fast, saying he didn’t want cops asking how he planned on getting home, and since he was my only ride we rolled out before the law showed up.

—

It was a late winter day, clouds moving low and fast like they were being rewound. Mom let me use her car and I found a two-hour spot on the old square, right in front of the brick courthouse where I was to be tried. Statues of Confederate heroes stood behind a short pyramid of cannonballs. I guess it was appropriate to have them out here, an encouragement to people like me: It’s okay, we all lose eventually.

The district clerk’s office was closed when I went up, so I walked down the block past the library and into the coffee shop a few streets over. I’d never been in the place before and had no idea anything this welcoming existed in Bordon. Thinking I might have to break out into some spontaneous genius shit in the middle of an argument in order to save my ass, I ordered four espresso shots. “Quadruple whammy,” the teenage boy behind the register said. “No screwing around.” He nodded like we shared something private. “Welcome to the quad squad.”

I drank it walking back to my judgment day, and it got my heart racing and my stomach aching. A line a few folks long waited inside a hall. Before joining them, I rushed to the bathroom and let go of what the coffee had loosened. Considering the court fees I knew I’d be paying, I decided not to flush. As I left the stall, a man came in. He paused a moment, like someone had just insulted him, and said, “Ugh.”

He walked back out and I followed behind him. His suit was wrinkled in the back from sitting. Turned out he was Wesley, my lawyer. He showed me to a cheap pew, then went up and stood near the judge’s throne, opening his hands while he talked and closing them when he stopped. I’d hired him with the last of my little savings. In the corner, a projector screen showed a man in orange pleading not guilty to something he seemed very guilty of.

“That’s not what I’m asking,” the judge said to him. “I want to know if you’ll be representing yourself or not.”

“Ain’t guilty!” The man stood up and did a doggie-paddle dance in his handcuffs. Some guards took him away and the screen went blue, like the room had suddenly filled with cartoon water. The whole episode made me feel better about my situation.