The Revelations of Preston Black (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 3) (21 page)

He grabbed the mic and ran at me,
stopping inches from my nose. He whispered into the mic, “What say you now?”

“I know what Jesus said.” I pulled
away from the snake. “Jesus said, ‘You know not what manner of spirit they are
of. The Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.’”

The drowsy rattler twisted in Hicks’s
hand, having spent all its energy defending itself. Still, when Hicks shoved it
at me my heart raced and sweat formed on my palms. Its yellow cat eyes
glimmered in the amber glow of the overhead bulbs.

“The faithful have nothing to fear,”
he said.

“A drowsy snake…” I should’ve bit my
tongue, but couldn’t. “It’s not even spring so for all I know it could’ve been
hibernating. Maybe it’s well-fed. Or a venomoid. My mom’s cousins had snakes
with venom glands removed by a vet.”

“Miss Katy, I’m going to pray for
you.” He licked his lips.

“Don’t waste—”

Hicks shoved the snake at me. Searing
pain, like hot needles ripped into my bicep. Like hornets. Like fire. Like
stepping on a nail in the old spring house.

But none came close to the pain of
having my muscle split by those fangs. My breath left me. I gasped for mercy,
for words, but couldn’t find any that would let me talk my way out of it. Hicks
pulsed the snake’s head with his index finger, driving the fangs deep into the
muscle. The rattlesnake twisted, a living thing, defending itself. I turned my
head to see, but Hicks pushed my face away with his other hand.

“Please…”

“You asking me? Or God?”

I bit my lip and tried to relax. I
tried to tell myself that bites weren’t always fatal. I tried to tell myself
that some people are allergic to venom, and those were the people that really
got hurt. In my head I tried to think of people I knew who survived snake
bites. I thought of guys from high school. Relatives. Surely Jamie’d talked
about it at dinner. When I thought I’d never see him or Chloey or my mom again
my chest ached. I felt like I couldn’t win.

There were words I could say, but
without ash or silver, they’d only be words. Without faith, they lacked the
power to be more than just noise. I didn’t want those old ways to be part of
who I was ever again. Every time I went down that path, a part of me died. But
I needed to do something, or there’d be nothing left for tomorrow.
Rule
number one…

I wanted to see Preston again, even if
it meant using the old ways.

I mumbled, “Crotalus horridus,
Agkistrodon contortrix, Crotalus adamanteus, Agkistrodon piscivorus, like water
to me. Like water to me.”

Without silver and ash, I didn’t know
if it would work. Those words had been passed down generation to generation.
The words didn’t make the bite any less painful.

“Crotalus horridus, Agkistrodon
contortrix, Crotalus adamanteus, Agkistrodon piscivorus, like water to me…”

Hicks pulled the snake off me. The
fangs ripped my skin, the spent snake withered in Hicks’s grasp. He passed it
off to a handler. Warm blood trickled down to my elbow.

“Crotalus horridus, Agkistrodon
contortrix, Crotalus adamanteus, Agkistrodon piscivorus, like water to me. Like
water to me.” I said so he could hear.

“Don’t worry, little lamb, I prayed
for you just now, like I pray for your salvation. I have faith enough for the
both of us.” He rested his palm on my forehead, trying to comfort me.

I pulled away from his touch as best I
could.

“It’s fine. I didn’t do it for your
thanks.” He waved Truly closer. “Lock her up. By this time tomorrow she’ll have
made a choice. Saved or stoned, Miss Katy.”

“Are you okay?” Truly held a clean
white cloth to my bites as one of the men from the crowd took the duct tape off
me. “I’m so sorry.”

I watched the blood spread through the
cotton and waited for Truly to lift her hand, trying to see whether or not I’d
been invenomated. She took care with me, helping me stand when I couldn’t stand
on my own. As she led me away from the glow of the tent, waves of relief
brought tears to my eyes. I had to follow rule number one no matter what. Truly
stopped and turned, and placed her hand on my shoulder. Two men from the
congregation trailed a few yards behind.

“Faith saved you tonight,” Truly said
as we walked.

And I didn’t have the will to
disagree.

“When you tried to make me out as a
doubter today? I didn’t appreciate that. But faith is the only reason you’re
here right now.”

I nodded.

In that moment I thought about my
rules, thought about what I needed to do to get out of here. So I sniffled a
big sniffle, laid my head on her shoulder and forced a shudder.

Truly froze.

I forced more tears and let myself
collapse.

When Truly completed the embrace, I
forced all the color out of my voice and said, “Please don’t let him hurt me
anymore.”

She pushed the hair out of my face and
wiped away a tear with her thumb. When she released me I sniffled, dried my
eyes, and let her lead me back to the old freezer. While she fumbled with the
latch I waited patiently.

Before she shut the door, I said,
“Thank you for being so kind.”

Without a reply she shut the door
behind me. I heard the latch click but did not hear her footsteps go back off
into the dark. So I waited.

Truly said, “I’ll be back in a few
minutes with pillows and a blanket, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, knowing she couldn’t
see the little smile I let slip. “That is very charitable of you.”

In
my dream, Preston and I wandered through Cordoba. Or Barcelona. The dream
lacked the specificity of a memory, which, I supposed, was kind of the point.
But it felt hot, and the air felt dry, and I didn’t hear the Castilian accent
I’d grown so tired of hearing in Barcelona. As soon as I figured out we were in
Cordoba, I felt a cool breeze from the Guadalquivir and saw the Roman Bridge,
which reminded me a little of the Charles Bridge in Prague. Preston wore a
white Oxford and khaki shorts and I wore clothes like a Spaniard. A soft violet
dress, and strappy sandals and a necklace like I’d seen the women in Barcelona
wearing. My hair looked darker, and my high school Spanish sounded perfect.
Preston understood me, but continued to speak English.

That was how I remembered where we
were. I’d regretted not getting one of the long necklaces I’d seen the women in
Barcelona wearing, and Preston told me not to worry, because we’d see something
and it would be more meaningful because we weren’t looking for it. The one I’d
been wanting had a long strand of thick string, like sisal or hemp, embellished
with a clunky stone ornament. Almost like a fairy stone my mom had when I was
little. But I couldn’t recall seeing the fairy stone in years. When my dad was
at his worst—coming home from work, drunk, and pulling her out of bed to
fight—she clutched that little fairy stone like nothing in the world could ever
harm her. And I supposed she was right. Because as much as he beat on her and
ran her down, he never managed to once leave a mark on her.

A tap on the door woke me up. The
noise pulled me from sleep and I fought to keep the dream fresh in my mind.
Even as the door opened my mind raced to see the dream through to its end,
replaying the few things I could remember over and over so as to not lose them
too.

“Katy,” a woman whispered. Lights from
the kitchen window above let me see her outline in the doorway.

Breakfast?
So I knew it
had to be seven in the morning, at least.

But I didn’t answer her, because I
knew speaking meant I’d fully awoken, and the contents of the dream would be
lost to me forever.

“Sorry,” she said. “I have to get the
blanket and pillows before Elijah finds out.”

Early morning birds called from deep
in the forest. Their songs trickled through the vegetation, calling flies and
gnats to join them for breakfast. “Okay,” I said, already shivering from the cold.

I sat up and pushed the blanket toward
her with my feet.

“I’m sorry.”

No, you’re not
.

“I brought something for your arm
too.” She clicked on a little flashlight and showed me a tube of Neosporin. “I
don’t want it to get infected. Does it still hurt?”

I didn’t want to speak to her.

“I can’t leave it for you. It can get
infected.”

I took a deep breath and let the final
fragments of my dream slip away. I pulled my jacket down off my shoulder and
let her see the small, purple puncture wounds.

She dabbed the ointment on the bite,
and said, “He prayed for you, you know. That’s why you aren’t hurt. He wanted
to show you the power of God’s word.”

Anger flooded into my head, but I knew
I couldn’t lose control and risk cutting the time I had left to fight in half.
It killed me to do it, but I redirected that anger and let it boil. I let my
head ache with it and thought of my demise, and never seeing Preston or Mom or
Chloey again. I let the tears come and put my head into my hands. Through
sniffles I said, “Why does he hate me?”

Truly retreated a bit, like for a
fleeting moment she could see the trap.

“Please don’t leave me. Stay with me a
little longer.”

Truly clicked the flashlight off and
slipped it into her coat pocket. She got down on her knees and put her hand
onto my forearm.

The second she dropped her guard I
pounced. It would’ve been easy enough to have run through the door. But to what
end? Hounds chasing me right to the electric fence.

No, I let my muscles soften and fell
into her. I let the tears fall, and perhaps even encouraged them by letting my
mind run wild with the worst of all possible scenarios. Preston’s face upon
hearing word that my body had been found. Pap and Gram and Jamie crying over
another casket, and for them, the realization that the Lewises had been the
least of our problems if, in fact, we were cursed.

Tears streamed down my cheeks. Each, I
believed, was more potent than hot bird shot from the end of a shotgun if Truly
had any humanity at all left in her.

She put her arm around me and pulled
my head to her chest. The thought of the tattoos on the palms of her hands made
my skin crawl. A physical manifestation of everything that was wrong with what
they believed. But I forced myself to stay in character.

Without a word, she stood, leaving me
by myself on the floor. I sniffled and folded my arms.

“Just do what he says, Katy. Even if
you don’t mean it, do what he says.”

She shut the door, and flipped the
latch shut.

And I smiled.

The
morning wore on like a long, long stretch of highway when I found myself unable
to fall back to sleep. Without Preston, or a book or an InStyle magazine, or my
phone, the morning felt like a week. As soon as the first streaks of golden
sunlight fell through the little window I backed myself right up to the door.
The amount of real warmth was negligible, but as a placebo, it worked
perfectly. I closed my eyes and saw the wide blue sky running hot with
sunlight. I closed my eyes and saw golden light streaming from the tall green
trees. And that, at least, brought back a little bit of this morning’s dream.

I passed the time by singing. At first
I sang Preston’s songs. That his words could find me here, in this sad place,
brought me hope. With his words on my lips I knew I wasn’t alone. I would never
pray again, not like these people prayed, not ever. But the little lines of
verse Preston had pulled out of the sky served the same purpose, for me at
least. His words comforted me. His words gave thanks and praise to something
greater than the both of us, whether it be love or music or family. If prayers
were constructions of man, then Preston’s words, or John Lennon’s, or Emmylou
Harris’s, should be no different. If I chose to praise God without the help of
a pastor or a pew, and continued to live as the kindest possible person I could
be, then it should make no difference to Hicks or his people.

I didn’t come down here telling them
how to pray or live.

They took me. With the intense desire
to change how I lived my life.

And that’s why,
I reminded
myself,
I
will feel nothing when Preston comes for me, and brings all this down right on
their heads.

I went right back to singing.

When the door latch clicked I stood,
ready for a late lunch. Ready to see Truly, even if I had to pretend like
nothing happened this morning. So I stood, and turned. I put on my shoes and
buttoned my coat and ran my fingers through my hair. I had to pee and looked
forward to a chance to stretch my legs and see the trees and the sky and
pretend, if only for a minute, I was back in West Virginia feeling the chill
from the last of the melting snow. Hearing the rush of the Blackwater as it
passed behind Hellbender Burritos in Davis. I needed to see the green, if only
to be reminded that this world was not all grey in its thousands of different
shades. I needed it because even though it had only been a day and a half, I’d
started to lose hope.