“I’m sorry. But I do. You do too.”
“Shit,” Larry says. “Help yourself to more coffee and let’s just go into the living room. Bring them smokes.”
Larry lights the candles arranged on top of the cast-iron woodstove, and he and Jones sit down on the leather couch.
“I like those,” Jones says.
“That’s Sharon’s thing.”
Framed LPs of local bands that Larry’s booked and promoted are hung on the knotty pine walls like family photos. Jones recognizes some. Admires one or two.
Sharon comes floating halfway down the stairs in a pink tent-shaped nightgown. When she sees who else is here, she tells Larry, “Don’t stay up too late.”
“Be up soon.”
“Er or later,” she says.
She drifts back upstairs and Jones hears the bedroom door shut.
“So,” he says, “old dogs can learn new tricks.”
“I’m a lucky man.” Larry bows his head. “First love, music,” he says. “Second, that lady.”
A candle pops and a line of wax draws down its side. They put their feet up on the coffee table. Jones could never stand living in a nest like this. But it’s nice right now.
“You look worried,” Larry says. He’s sunk in the recliner section, a mug of coffee balanced on his belly.
“It’s nothing.”
“Jones. You couldn’t have stopped any of this.”
“That supposed to be good news?”
—
There was one time he and Leon were quiet together, a fall night after they had played at Misty’s. Jones was driving him back to his parents’ place when he noticed the moon. A full round ember. “Let’s stop and watch it,” he said.
“No matter to me,” Leon said.
Jones parked the van in the middle of the road on the Turkey Chunk bridge. They got out and sat on the railing.
The moon seemed to be sending out smoke. They sat there for a long time, Jones looking up, Leon looking down.
“You’re missing it all,” Jones said.
“It’s down there too,” Leon said. And when Jones looked down into the creek the light was pulsing off the water like mercury. A creek on fire in the moonlight. It felt dangerous to be sitting above it. And it was impossible to tell what Leon was thinking.
—
Larry goes into the kitchen and calls to Jones to go through the records and put something on. Larry’s got hundreds of LPs leaning in the same direction along a board mounted to the wall, bookended by old torpedo-shaped window weights made of solid lead. Jones takes down some records that Larry taught him with—the Stanleys, Bill Monroe, Blue Sky Boys, the Lilly Brothers, Flatt and Scruggs. He pulls black vinyl out of a Hylo Brown sleeve and studies its grooves.
“That’s a good one.” Larry points, sits down and dumps a few green buds into his palm from a plastic film container. “A little piece of the rain forest,” he says, then mixes it with some tobacco and rolls a spliff.
Jones puts on the record and they toke up, the sticky smoke curling into the air. Larry brings them more coffee, and Jones’s mind eases into a comfortable place he knows and likes.
After “Lost to a Stranger” Larry gets up and lifts the needle. “Doesn’t get better than that.”
“I know it,” Jones says. “I’d like to start doing that one myself.”
“But that’s the problem. It’s been done so many times, perfected to a point of imperfection. If you polish it any more you’ll wear a hole right through.” Larry’s stoned, on a roll. “All those songs? Antique furniture.”
The weed’s working on Jones too. “I hear you,” he says. “But that’s what I learned on. Hell, you taught me most of them.”
Larry holds up his left hand. “I didn’t teach you nothing. I just let you listen. You’re better now than I ever was.”
“Bull. I wouldn’t know the first thing if it wasn’t for those songs.”
“Then keep playing them. Just not onstage. They can’t carry you as far as you’re looking to go.”
“What makes you think you know how far I’m looking to go?”
“I’m not talking about you, Jones. I’m talking about your songs.”
“Well,” he says. “Maybe you’re smart.”
“Listen to this one.” Larry puts on a classic.
Jones nods along to Hank’s guitar chuck. He likes this song, but then there’s this line: It’s hard to know another’s lips will kiss you, and hold you close—. “Now see, listen, right there.” Jones points. “That line. There’s something wrong in it.”
“Sounds good to me,” Larry says, and right then Jones feels his gut drop: he’s gone past the only man who believes in him, who saw him through it all and still wants to. Listen to that verse. It’s good, but it’s a little off. Maybe Larry can’t help him with these bigger things anymore.
He waits for Larry to answer, then realizes he hasn’t even asked a question. “Well,” he says, taking a sip from the mug and holding it against his chest. “I think fire, when it’s hot enough, lets off a kind of release. Like there’s this lowness that opens.” He has no idea what he’s talking about.
“You need to get out of here for a little while, Jones. What’re you planning to do for money?”
“I don’t know. Haul trash. Sell blood.”
“Tell you what. I got a basement full of junk that I’ll pay you to make disappear. And then you need to get on the tour circuit.”
“Me and that van can work all kinds of trash magic.”
“Good, then,” Larry says. “We got a plan. Shit, I’m falling asleep here. I’ll see you in the morning.”
When Larry goes upstairs, Jones blows the candles out and lies on the couch, his mind racing over song ideas and all the different ways you can arrange a verse. He sees Nitro Mountain through the window. Barely visible, but there. A bump in the night with a little red light at the top. He’ll never get to sleep looking at that.
3
I was working the counter at Ball Breakers, making change for strangers. The weekly tournament happened twice a week and all the local sharks came out for it. And the wing specials. I was registering teams, assigning them tables and keeping track of who got beat and who went on. It was mostly boys. The winners were the worst, strutting over to ask if I saw this or that. “Could’ve won it with two simple draw shots but went for a kicker in the corner instead, and then a massé around the stripe—you catch that, sweet thing?”
I didn’t ever answer. They wanted me to smile. Wanted to get close. Asked what brought me here. Begged me for answers. I kept quiet, staying a riddle to them.
The bartender, Amanda—she believed in me. She said I could sleep on her couch until I found my own place. She was trying to help me out by putting up posters in her windowless bathroom, inspirational pictures paired with rock ’n’ roll quotes. A dolphin jumping out of the ocean: Break On Through to the Other Side! A kitten hanging from a tree branch: Don’t Let Me Down.
Maybe these things worked on normal people. I had no idea.
The couch I was sleeping on was huge and soft and so comfortable; on the wall across from it there was a flag-sized flatscreen. One night I tried turning it off and her Jack Russell straight up bit me. The TV stayed on the History Channel all night long because Amanda said Kernel liked watching war documentaries.
Amanda was the only person I liked talking to, and I still didn’t say much. I was used to being the kind of girl who couldn’t be by herself. Always had to have a guy there. Actually, I liked having at least two guys. One to run away from and one to run off with. But that seemed like a long time ago. I was a different person back then. I saw my new loneliness as a success. Or at least something to keep me out of trouble. But honestly, at night it was torture.
Sitting on the couch one morning, I pulled on my blue socks. My favorite pair that I promised to keep forever. I’d never told anybody about them, except for Leon. This was back in the early days before I got my truck and he wa
s still driving me around. I don’t know why I treated him like I did, other than him being sweet, which I guess is reason enough if you think about it. Let’s try not to. Anyway, I told him about the socks, about Good Steve and what that man did to me. I could see it cut him. And when I saw that, I kept going deeper. Not to hurt him, just to see what he would do. He was the only one I ever told. I didn’t mean to hurt him. I trusted him.
I sat there on the couch staring at the socks on my feet, thinking about everything I put everybody through. I decided to wear them to work that night for a tournament.
A guy my age came to the register I was working and asked if I saw him out there. “Lost bad,” he said. Old country music cried over the house system, a nice change from satellite radio, which was mostly rap and loud-ass rock. I opened my hands to him, showing I had nothing to offer.
But I liked his broad shoulders and clean-shaved face. Low hairline above a packed brow. He was even cuter walking away. I checked him out from behind, something I hadn’t done in a while. Looked good in those Carhartts. He turned around and I did too, before I could tell if he’d caught me. The blood in my cheeks meant I was still alive.
My last boyfriend almost killed me, after I tried to get him killed. I didn’t know at the time he’d already killed the guy I was with before him. And that first guy also tried to kill him. I know it sounds crazy. It was. I tried to forget about it. Pretend like nothing ever happened. Start over new. Those memories need forgetting. We were young. Still are. One of us will be young forever. I wasn’t saying his name out loud. Who would that help? There was no need for punishing myself anymore. I was not getting any younger. Nobody was getting any aliver. I kept my head down. You should’ve seen me. There I was, making change for strangers.
It got late, close to the final match, and people were rooting around the tables. The smell of cologne and carpet conditioner. The lights went down and the drinks went down and the music went up. Girls leaning in the corners, sipping frozen mixers and watching their guys whack balls. That was the first time I noticed how good it felt not to be drunk. When you’re sober, everything’s a sharp image contained in its own little world. And there I was, contained in mine.
I looked around for that guy but he was off with some girl. She was all right, but she was no me. I should’ve let it go but I couldn’t. I wanted to mess with him some. Just something small. The two of them were sitting at a table holding hands. I made more change and tallied up another team’s win.
Hands on my shoulders pulled me backward. I felt Arnett dragging me down, but the hands spun me around and I saw it wasn’t him. “We having fun yet?” Don was saying.
“Don’t ever do that again,” I said.
“So she does talk!”
The music was so loud that you could only yell. It smelled like he’d been drinking whatever he had the carpets cleaned with. “Listen,” he said. “The hand that feeds you? Don’t bite it. Okay, babe?”
He bit his finger, shook his head, tapped my cheek with the bit finger and walked away. He was an asshole but it did feel good to get handled.
The nights ended easy. All tabs settled. No disasters in the bathroom. The billiard area was always spotless: the sharks treated it like a church. It was a fifteen-minute walk back to the apartment. Kernel liked to curl up on my pillow and watch antique planes drop bombs on people. Amanda was usually asleep when I got back. I unfolded my blanket and Kernel burrowed between my legs, not letting me move the rest of the night.
—
I was a hard worker. A new person with a new life, quietly waiting for what I wasn’t real sure. I was just keeping out of trouble.
I filled out a piece of paper for a doctor once. It was about anxiety. The bullet had just grazed my shoulder, the spot it hit had been dealt with and sutured, and now they were dealing with my mind. The doctor read my paper and told me I had PTSD. I said, “Excuse me, but Vietnam was a long time ago and if I look that old to you then you can’t even guess what you look like to me.” I pop-sucked my middle finger and stuck it at him. “Suck a fuck,” I said.
That was my last day in the hospital—they couldn’t hold me any longer legally—and those were the first words I’d spoken in weeks. Even longer since I’d acted like that. It got me nervous about my old crazy coming back. Everybody calm the fuck down. That’s what Leon used to say. (Damn, there’s his name.) I thought that would make a great bumper sticker. I spent a few months calming the fuck down.
Being a good girl isn’t easy, but when you’re lying low so somebody can’t find you, it works.
You’d think I’d have missed him more than I did. But I didn’t miss anybody because they all reminded me of a life I was through with, and I didn’t know what else to be except thankful.
I still thought I was beautiful. Except under good lighting like in public bathrooms. I tried to keep it so you couldn’t really see how busted I was. What cigarettes and booze and men’s hands had done to my face. It wasn’t extreme, it was just like, Whoa, somebody wrinkled her up and tried to smooth her out again. Which you can’t do. Around the eyes and the mouth there’s no going back. You can’t ever unwrinkle the bag. It looked like I’d been smiling too much.
Under these pool hall lights, though, I looked good. We had the black lights going in the main room and in here the overheads were on a dimmer. At eight o’clock I got to set them the way I liked, which was low. This place used to be a Chinese restaurant. You could tell by the mural on the wall across from the counter where I stood at. It still had the characters and the dragons. Some of the images were 3-D and they moved when you moved. The eyes of some bald fat guy in robes—Buddha, I guess—watched over me wherever I went.
One of the pool tables sat under the hanging light fixture for a buffet table. You could imagine Chinese food scattered across the green felt. The cues were long chopsticks. Can you see it?
These were the things I thought about at work. One night before Don left, I asked if he might give me a job in the kitchen.
He looked at my tits and said, “Only if you give me one first.”
“I want to quit thinking so much,” I said.
“Nobody will notice if you just keep quiet.”
“Can you put me on dishes?”
“I could, but that wouldn’t be very comfortable, would it? How about a mattress?”
“I don’t get it,” I said, right as I realized what he was talking about. Now that I was sober, I forgot to take into account other people’s drunken minds and what they thought about. “How about a prep cook?” I said. “I’m good with knives.”
“If you sleep with me I’ll think about it before saying no.”
He ended up leaving without anybody noticing. He was on the verge of causing a situation, caught himself, and then disappeared. Like a pro.
The next day he looked like he’d recovered from the last night. I waved at him and he came to me.
“Apologies for the disproportionate amount of cheer,” he said. “It was just the merriment overflowing and you happened to be close. I’d like to keep you here.”
“I hope you do.”
Out the front windows behind him, just for a second, it looked like Arnett running past, slatted by the blinds.
“I will,” he said.
“And it’s fine,” I said, “your merriment overflowing and all.”
“No it’s not. I’m your professional boss. Are you still at Amanda’s?”
“Yeah, unfortunately. I mean, she’s great for helping me.”
“How do you deal with that dog? I saw that thing jump once from standing still to snatching a tennis ball off her shoulder.”
“Oh my God, right? I was eating a slice of pizza the other day? Dog came flying by and just snapped it out of my hand.”
“I’ve got this thing you might be interested in.”
—
Amanda wanted to talk with me before I moved out. About my life. About improving it. She said there were a few decisions I needed to make. Like
for example, I should never have any kids. Ever. I acted like she talked me into that one. I always thought of myself as being a mother someday, but given my “life patterns” she said it was probably a good thing if I made sure this didn’t happen.
I nodded while she talked.
—
It’s hard to describe the first glimpse of the room and the bed that would be my own. I was willing to do anything to make sure it didn’t go away.
“Blanket, sheet, pillow,” Don said. “No dog.”
It was half past ten in the morning when he showed me around this cute efficiency. He was going to collect rent after I started making enough money. Until then I could stay for free.
Almost for free, I saw, as he leaned in and put his lips on my forehead.
“Whatever,” I said.
—
I ended up sleeping with him, except there was no sleeping. Don was older and I guess he was out to prove something with me, set a record or something. I was lying on my back, taking it like a champ and staring out the window, when a rooster crowed. “I like a good cock,” I said, and I think that’s what made him finally come. He pulled his angry stiff thing out of me and told me to lift up my shirt, which I did, just a little, and it spat gray suds into my belly button.
“With half her clothes still on, ladies and gentlemen!” Don said.
He thought I kept my shirt on to tease him. He hadn’t seen my scars.
“You’re a beauty,” I said, because I wanted to have somebody, some body, to keep me company at night. But the night was long done with. I asked him to lie down next to me and he rolled on his side and brought his hand over my forehead like he was taking my temperature. I calmed the fuck down.
He got up and brought me a paper towel and apologized for being so small.
I wasn’t crying but for some reason I’d gotten teary. No, I was not crying. I wiped my eyes, then my belly, and said, “That was long!”
“I’m talking dick.” He blubbered his tongue between his lips. “I know it’s small.” He put his hands on his hips and let his belly sag. “But I make up for it in hours, right? I know this,” he said, “because that is what they say.”
Nitro Mountain Page 18
