The Mountain Read online

  “Holy shit!” Mark said.

  “Look at him go,” Eddie added, as Farley reached the combatants. He grabbed a handful of shirt to pull them apart and the screeching woman jumped on his back, riding him like a mud-wrestling female jockey as he staggered bent over in a semi-circle, one hand trying to shed her, the other still clutching his club. Her boyfriend turned and grabbed Farley, spun him and drew back a fist, Farley’s eyes growing wide as the fist came forward and Thel’s brother came out of nowhere to stop it, the two guys he’d been with earlier instantly by his side. One stepped between Jimmy and the fallen fighter, while the other peeled the redhead from Farley’s back.

  “I’ll be damned,” Mark said, as Farley slapped the club against his hand. He said something to the redhead’s mate and pointed his club at the door, and the two of them walked proudly through the bar, while Jimmy’s pals grabbed the other guy by his arms and pulled him up. His cheek was bruised and swollen, but did not appear to be bleeding, the cowboy hat sitting lopsided on his head as he started for the door and Farley stopped him by putting an arm around his shoulder. Whatever he said must have calmed him a bit, because when Farley let go, the guy gave his head a disgusted shake and headed for the bar.

  “Looks like little bro’s back on Farley’s good side,” Mark said.

  “All’s well that ends well, I guess,” Thel said, and then took a drink of beer and set her glass on the table. “What’s this king of the southern rockers stuff Goober here was talking about this afternoon?”

  “I got your goober—”

  “Yeah, I know,” Thel said, as Mark’s face reddened and Eddie huffed out a laugh. “So you’re a big-time guitar picker, huh?”

  “I play a little.”

  Actually, Eddie played a lot. He was the real deal and he knew it, but he’d never felt comfortable bragging—most of the chest-thumpers he’d run across hadn’t lived up to the swagger. And no matter how great he or anyone else thought he was, Eddie knew somewhere, someone was better.

  “I hear you’re really good.”

  “He’s good, all right,” Mark said. He picked up his glass and held it out, touched it against his friend’s and smiled. “Oughta be, as long as he’s been playing.”

  “I’d love to hear you,” Brenda said.

  “No shit,” said Thel.

  “Well…” Eddie said. “Maybe someday.”

  “Maybe tonight,” Mark said.

  “Yeah, right.” Eddie took another drink, and Mark said, “Jam with those dudes, dude.”

  “Like they’d want me to.”

  “They do.”

  “Sure.”

  “Why do you think we were talkin’ to them?” Thel said.

  “Oh yeah?” Eddie took another drink and set his glass on the table, and Mark emptied the pitcher into it.

  “I told you,” Mark said. “All I had to do was mention Free Bird and Jacksonville and my buddy with his ’55 Les Paul, and their eyes went all dreamy and shit.”

  The band finished up a Brooks and Dunn tune just as a young girl carrying a tray full of beers stopped in front of the stage, smiling as they converged on her. Moments later the tray was empty and the waitress was heading back through the crowd.

  Eddie raised his glass, and the singer announced, “Hey y’all. We got us a friend up from Jacksonville. He’s stopped by to do a couple’a tunes with us.”

  “Holy shit,” Eddie said, as the crowd began to look around.

  “Told ya!” Mark said.

  “Cool,” said Thel.

  Brenda’s eyes lit up as Mark said, “I’ll go get your guitar.”

  “You brought it?”

  “Hell yeah.”

  Of course he had, probably planned all of this as soon as he saw the amps and the drums and the empty microphone stands this afternoon. The girls were excited, both on the edge of their seats, just like Mark had known they would be.

  Of course he’d planned it.

  Mark jumped up and took off, across the bar and out the door. Moments later he was hauling Eddie’s guitar through the crowd.

  “I’m so excited!” Brenda gushed.

  “Me too,” Eddie said. And he was. He couldn’t wait to feel that guitar in his hands.

  “C’mon up here, Eddie!” the singer called out, as Mark reached the table.

  Eddie shrugged his shoulders, grinning as he stood up and took his guitar from Mark. “Here goes nothing,” he said, and then made his way across the dance floor and onto the stage.

  “Hey, man,” the singer said, as Eddie stood his case against the wall and snapped it open. Thumbs interlocked, they gave each other the universal handshake. “I’m Earl and this here’s my cousin, Danny. Plug into my amp and I’ll just sing for a while.”

  “Cool, brother,” Eddie said, and then strapped on his guitar. It was a ’55, tobacco-burst Les Paul. The round, plastic center of a key-ring depicting a rebel flag (a gift from a nineteen year old topless dancer) had been laminated into the top of the antique guitar, along with a marijuana leaf, which decorated the bottom.

  “Ho!” the bass player said, as he leaned into the group and nodded toward the dance floor. “Get the show on the road? What’dya think?”

  Earl plugged Eddie into the amp and Eddie strummed a chord—his E string was off kilter so he tightened it a bit, strummed again, twisted the amplifier’s volume knob and smiled.

  “Okay, dude,” Earl said. “We’ll do One Way Out and go right into Free Bird. Cool?”

  “Cool, brother,” Eddie said, and then fired off a lightning fast riff, fingers flying over the fretboard, bending strings and striking notes as a dive-bomber dropped from the sky and burst from the sound system, followed swiftly by an explosion of rapid-fire concussive wailing.

  The bass player’s eyes lit up and Earl’s jaw dropped. “Holy shit! he cried out as people started to rush forward, Eddie faced the amp, and feedback reminiscent of Ted Nugent’s glory days filled the dance hall. Then he muffled his strings and the staccato beginning of The Allman Brothers’ One Way Out issued forth from the speakers. The bass followed, the drummer drummed, Danny joined in with a sweet sounding slide guitar and the crowd began to dance. Earl growled, “Ain’t but, one way out, baby!”, and Eddie was in a groove, banging out rhythmic fills as the dancers jerked and swayed and the bass and drums thumped out a steady beat.

  When the time came, Eddie stepped forward with a bevy of sizzling guitar licks that brought most of the dancing to a halt. Even the pool players laid down their cues and moved toward the music. Then the song ended and the band segued into Free Bird, and no one was dancing at all. Tables emptied and pool tables stood vacant. One lone figure sat at the bar, holding a towel against his face as a crush of people surged forward—even Farley joined his patrons, lined up in rows in front of the stage.

  The song kicked into high gear and so did the crowd, whooping and hollering, jumping up and down as loud, frenetic wailing filled the room, all eyes on Eddie as he moved around the stage, a one-man guitar army taking on all comers, driving the southern rock anthem home with a rollicking no-holds-barred style most musicians would have killed for. Then he was back to the lightning-fast riffs, ending the song with a fuselage of screeching and screaming high-pitched notes, the crowd stomping and yelling and clapping their hands as the last thundering chorus faded slowly away.

  Chapter Eleven

  Traber liked them just fine, the breasts that were swaying back and forth in front of him while Laurie Miller, legs locked beneath his, rode him like it was the last fuck she would ever be allowed. The long black hair drifting across his face was soft as corn silk; the faint honeysuckle smell of her skin mixing with the down and dirty musky aroma of sex, intoxicating. Traber breathed in deep, savoring it a moment while he counted backwards, because he had rounded the bases several moments ago and he didn’t want to cross home plate yet. He wanted to relax and watch Laurie, the look on her face, the way her erect nipples jutted out like pencil erasers while her lips curled back in a s
atisfied snarl.

  The pressure mounted as she tightened around him. She moaned and he almost lost it. “Fuck me!” she growled and he looked away, at the open bedroom door, the curtains billowing in the window sill, the soft glow from a lamp spilling through the narrow, vertical slit of the nearly closed closet door.

  “What the—” Traber said when an eyeball appeared in the light and the door slammed open, and Rance Miller followed a pointed shotgun into the bedroom, a tear running down his cheek as his wife shouted, “Goddamnit!” Then a leering smile as her lustful mask turned to a look of stark terror, and all Traber could do was sit under her while his cock shriveled and slid loose from its moorings.

  “What are you doing here!” Laurie wailed as her husband stepped further into the room, sporting the unsettling look of a disinterested game show contestant who knew exactly what he would find behind door number three, and here it was, and it really was no surprise at all… was it?

  “Did you think you could make a fool of me?”

  “Rance…” Traber said, because it was the only thing the stunned policeman could think to say—not ‘easy, think about what you’re doing’, just… ‘Rance’.

  “In my own fucking house?”

  “Rance,” Laurie said, and the absurdity of it almost made Traber laugh: Laurie sitting naked, spread-eagle over Traber while she tried talking herself out of something she most definitely would not be talking her way out of. But she was obviously much too shocked to come up with anything either, because her husband’s name was the only word to cross her lips, as Rance swung the rifle forward, screaming, “IN MY GODDAMN HOUSE!”, bouncing the stock off Laurie’s forehead and sending her flying sideways off the bed, Traber following and snatching his Colt from the holster lying curled on the floor beside the clothes he’d shucked out of thirty minutes ago. In one swift motion he was up, his barking .45 tearing a hole through Rance’s throat, dropping the cuckold husband to his knees while the bullet struck the doorjamb behind him, blood splattering the wall and Laurie screaming as he fell gurgling to the floor.

  Traber followed his pointed gun around the end of the bed, stepping on the shotgun as he stared down at Rance, who lay sideways on the floor, eyes wide, his mouth gaping slowly open and shut. Then his jaw stayed open; his right foot twitched a couple of times, his eyes glazed over, and Traber knew he was gone.

  “Goddamnit, Laurie,” he said to the woman whimpering by the bed, the swelling of her forehead giving her the appearance of a female Frankenstein’s monster, rather than the hot looking dish he’d followed into the bedroom earlier in the evening. “How could you not have known he was in there?”

  “I… I… ”

  “Goddamit. C’mon and get up from there.”

  “What’re we going to do?” she said, as she stood and walked over to Traber’s side, and looked down at her husband, a trembling hand flying up to her mouth as she shuddered. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she started to break down. “My God, what’ve we done? What’re we going to do? What’re we going to do?”

  Traber looked at the corpse and back at Laurie. She was a great fuck, no doubt about it—why else would he have been spending so much time with her? But he’d damn near gotten his head blown off, and no piece of ass was worth this kind of grief. “Why don’t you start with getting us a couple of beers and let’s try to figure out what the hell just happened.”

  When Laurie left the room, Traber got into the khaki pants and cream-colored shirt that passed for what he called his uniform. It wasn’t much of one—Traber didn’t like wearing the formal attire. As far as he was concerned, the badge and his Colt was all the uniform he needed, and when the Colt was holstered and strapped to his leg, his shoes securely on his feet, he sat on the bed and sighed. This shouldn’t have happened, and he couldn’t believe it had. With all the shit going on around this hell-hole, he needed Rance Miller’s dead body like he needed an extra leg.

  How the fuck did he get in that closet without anybody… where’s his goddamn truck?

  Like any of that mattered now, with blood pooling around good old dead Rance, his vacant eyes staring across the room like he was searching for a way out of this mess. But it was Traber who had to figure a way of steering clear of the minefield that lay before him. Boy, oh boy, he could just hear it now if the state police ever got wind of this: ‘What were you doing there, in the bedroom?’ As if they wouldn’t know, and never mind them—them, he could handle. It was what Rance’s brothers would do if they ever found out that worried Tom Traber. And there was no doubting what would happen then: Traber, beat to hell and back, shot in the head if he was lucky, castrated and strung up in the deep woods and left to die if he wasn’t. Laurie was a great fuck, all right, but she wasn’t worth all this bullshit.

  Traber stood up and crossed the room, leaned over and pried the shotgun from Rance’s grasp. When Laurie walked naked into the room, he blew a fist-sized hole into her stomach and laid the gun on the bed. Then he walked outside to his patrol car and fished a .38 he’d taken off a trucker a couple of months back from the glove box, fired a shot into the dirt, and then returned to the bedroom. Wiping the gun clean with the bed sheet, he placed it in Laurie’s hand and curled her finger around the trigger. Her face was pale, her lips blue, all the blood in her body seeming to have seeped from the gory pit he’d ripped out of her once taut stomach. The sickening taste of copper clung to the back of his throat as he stood over the dead woman, but he maintained his composure and got his hands on the shotgun, wiped down the stock and returned it to Rance. Nobody but he would be investigating this, and even the Miller brothers, after seeing Rance and Laurie would have to figure they’d shot each other, Laurie getting off a lucky one as the shotgun blast tore her apart and her forehead slammed the hardwood floor. As for why it happened and why Rance’s truck was found wherever it would turn up, that would just have to be another mystery for the townsfolk to grind through their rumor mill.

  Traber stood for a moment, taking it all in: the blood and the smell of cordite still hanging in the air; the gaping hole in Rance’s throat and the one in his wife’s belly. He looked at Laurie one last time, at what was left of that once gorgeous body, and remembered all the wonderful times they’d had together. Then he walked out of the house, across the yard to his car. Once inside, he fired up the engine, but kept the headlights off, letting the moonlight guide him down the long and winding dirt driveway. He left Rance and Laurie’s isolated farmhouse at the ass end of the Holler, following the road until it curved to the right, smiling because the nearest house sat as dark as the woods behind it, no lights inside or out, and no one coming down the drive to investigate the gunshots could mean only one thing: no one had heard them.

  Chapter Twelve

  Headlights cut through the darkness; country music blared from the radio as the Camaro made its way up a narrow dirt road. It was a route Charlie knew well, and he negotiated the bumps and the ruts accordingly. Moonlight washed the treetops hovering above the trail. Night had brought a chill to the mountain, but not so much that Charlie had put the top up. Tina didn’t seem to mind. She just snuggled closer to him.

  A perfect end to a perfect day: kicking Horse-trader’s ass; tooling around in his dream car with his girl by his side, barbecue and beer and live music; a head full of pot and a snoot full of cocaine, and now here he was heading up to Rickert’s to cap it off with a little plowing of the fertile region that lay nestled between Tina’s legs.

  A perfect day.

  Light filtering through the twisting tree branches found Tina’s arm for a moment. Charlie smiled when she stroked a hand across his crotch, the hardness of him pushing against the fabric of his jeans. Tina traced a fingernail down its length and Charlie took a deep breath. He wanted to pull over and take her right there, but the car was too confining, and she probably wouldn’t have gone for it anyway.

  “I think he likes me.”

  “You know he does.”

  The road angled straight up.
Charlie cut the wheel to the right, taking a path well-traveled by many a young couple looking to be alone. He was hoping the place would be empty when they got there. It probably would be, this late at night.

  Down the path they went, until the trail emptied out into a clearing. Twin beams of light illuminated several tall pines that stood in front of a dilapidated two-story house at the mountain’s edge. The Camaro rolled to a stop next to an old scrub-oak near the broken down front porch. Kenny Chesney’s voice gave way to a chorus of crickets as Charlie cut the lights and killed the engine. He took Tina into his arms, and kissed her long and hard, Tina sighing as their tongues intertwined and their bodies found each other, her hand flattened against his back and dipped beneath the waistline of his pants. Her delicate fingers felt great against his bare flesh, her other hand, tight around his hard-on, even better. The hand moved up to his belt, and unfastened it.

  “Let’s go inside,” he told her.

  “I want you inside me.”

  Charlie smiled as he opened the door, and Tina slid back into the passenger seat. On his way to the trunk, he clicked his key fob and the lid popped open. Inside were a blanket and a rolled-up sleeping bag; a flashlight and a kerosene lamp sat in the corner beside it. The other door opened and shut as Charlie tucked the blanket and the sleeping bag under his arm. He grabbed the lamp and slammed the trunk-lid shut, and went to his girlfriend’s side. Tina took the lamp and Charlie looped an arm around her waist. The full moon looked enormous in the dark sky. Its light, casting the house in an eerie, dim glow, turned the two front windows overlooking the porch into two black, square eyes, the door-less entryway a gaping mouth. The dark, weathered wood fashioning the outer walls was dull and grey, all semblances of paint having been worn away years ago.