The Revelations of Preston Black (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 3) (29 page)

A second line had formed behind the
musicians. Folks carrying umbrellas decorated with ribbons and flowers and the
name of the deceased spelled out in beads and sequins even though I couldn’t
read it for the way they were being spun and flipped. The second line consisted
of large, dark men in black suits stoically carrying straw hats balanced on
their right hands. Women in red and gold dresses wearing white gloves slithered
between the men, dancing with their knees high. Some hiked their dresses up to
their hips as they bent low and shook their chests. Some wore feathers in their
hair. Some had their faces covered with white grease paint. Every three or four
beats everybody in the group synched up so their elbows cocked at precisely the
same moment. And after the moment passed, they reverted to chaos.

Jamie and Ben stood at the far window
with Rachael and Chloey. Katy pulled me away from my vantage to join them.
Pauly backed toward the bar and waited with Andre and Calvin.

A horse-drawn hearse came next. White
horses huffed steam into the chilly night. The large, black wheels that bore
the dark, lacquered carriage wound around slowly. Lilies fell from the top,
littering the street with little splashes of white here and there, like a stray
blizzard had passed through. A large oval window reflected the red and blue
neon from Simoneaux’s signs. When it passed, I saw the interior had been filled
with white lilies. The coach’s drivers each wore a black sash with white
lettering. On each of the drivers’ sashes, the name could be read easily.

“Pauly.”

Katy put her hand over her mouth.

Pauly, thankfully, didn’t see. He
didn’t have to.

“That’s it, I hope.” I let the blind
fall, but not close completely.

The silence that accompanied the
procession’s passing seemed to confirm it. But I knew better than to believe my
ears. Katy drifted back over to the stage and sat down. “Preston,” she said.
“Get away from the window.”

Rachael sat with her. Ben tucked his
pistol back into his belt. Jamie sat down and fanned himself with a napkin.

I held up my hand. A pair of
headlights made a left onto the street from the far end of the block. As much
as I didn’t want to say it, I owed it to them to say it, so that they knew what
I knew. “Here she comes.”

Her little silver car drifted to a
stop in the middle of the street. She slammed the door when she got out, and
took a second to brush the wrinkles out of the front of her grey dress. An
amber amulet that matched her eyes hung from a thin silver chain around her
neck.

When she rounded the front of the car
the room got hot and I found it hard to get a breath. She stepped onto the
sidewalk and a boom like an explosion from the destruction of a skyscraper
rattled the windows. We all turned as a spray of glass from Simoneaux’s bottle
trees peppered the front of his building. Shards flew at the window, forcing
tiny spider webs of cracks to form. Fragments stuck to the wooden railings that
lead down to the sidewalk. The slivers of glass looked like sapphires in the
orange glow of the street lights.

She lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply,
and blew the smoke out as she sang. “Pauly, pretty Pauly, do you think I’m a
fool?”

It sounded like her take on the
traditional song, with the lyrics changed to suit her current needs. I think
she used the song as a way to take a jab at me.

“Pauly, pretty Pauly, do you think I’m
a fool? You make me a promise, then I have to chase after you.”

I couldn’t look at him. Even if it was
only to tell him I’d make this right, no matter what the cost. He wouldn’t buy
it anyway. Not after all this.

She pulled a pint of something golden
out of a brown paper bag. Like Irish whiskey, except for the way it reflected
the streetlight. It glowed, as if illuminated from something inside, like
molten gold. “My mind was to love you, ’til the end of my days. My mind was to
love you, ’til the end of my days, but you’ve broken my heart so I’m changing
my ways.”

She heaved the bottle to the ground
where it exploded into a feast of golden light that burned through the blinds
and walls. The blast turned night into an amber sunrise falling onto a sandy
beach. It reminded me of all those filmstrips of the Trinity test site. The
light penetrated even with my eyes closed and my arms across my face. The light
filled my head, kept me from telling myself everything would be okay.

Thunder accompanied the light. Loud
booms that rattled the windows and walls. Never-ending booms that shook the
floor. Bottles fell off the shelves and shattered. Simoneaux’s cymbals crashed
and crashed and crashed until they finally fell over. Tables toppled. Wood
splintered as the walls wobbled. Panes of glass popped out of already cracked
windows. I found Katy and pushed her to the ground and fell on top of her to
protect her from falling ceiling vents and light fixtures.

Windows burst out of their frames as
the angles in the walls and floor changed. The roof rose and fell with a
tremendous crash three times. Each time the space between the wall and the
ceiling grew. Two feet. Then three. Before it fell the last time I saw
low-hanging stars over the river.

When it all came to an abrupt halt
nobody said anything. The juke joint had lost all its right angles. The only
light came from the back of the house—emergency lighting from the storeroom.
Outside, the streetlights slowly came back to life as night returned. I looked
out of the window. The car was gone.

My ears rang like after wearing
headphones with the volume at ten, and my hearing came back slowly. Katy’s lips
moved, but I could not hear, so I shushed her.

I heard Ben first. He asked if
everybody was okay, but seemed to be mostly concerned with Simoneaux. Everybody
regrouped at the bar.

“Preston,” Jamie said. “What’d you do
to get Old Scratch so riled up this time? She wants to hurt you bad, so she’s
going to make darn sure she hurts everybody around you worse.”

I couldn’t answer. But I didn’t have
to. Simoneaux spoke up.

“That ain’t the devil. Evil, sure, but
not the devil.”

Jamie said, “How do you know that?”

Simoneaux said, “All the powder and
spells this afternoon… devil would’ve walked right through that, that’s how I
know. We got lucky tonight.”

“And tomorrow night?” Katy asked.

“I’d imagine tomorrow night ain’t
going to be the same as this one.”

CHAPTER Eight

Walk
the line, get a spine.

I know
I’m wearing mine.

Yeah,
I’ll toe the line.

Step
up, punk, step the fuck up and get cut up.

Knife
fight, life flight.

’
Bout time
the boy gets it right.

“Drinking
Class Hero” Music and Lyrics by Preston Black

The
clean-up sapped us of what Dani couldn’t.

Fear and tension wormed its way into
my head during her visit to the bar last night. But stacking tables and chairs,
sweeping up busted bottles, boarding up the broken windows, and restacking cans
on Simoneaux’s storeroom shelves sucked the life and hope from us. Nobody spoke
to each other. Maybe everybody felt like coming through all that unscathed was
a win, and knew there was no need to analyze a win.

After we finished most of the
clean-up, Andre put up Rachael and Jamie at his place. Chloey joined Katy and
me on the floor in the back room. Katy snuggled up in the middle, like a cat,
and spent a lot of time talking to Chloey before they fell asleep—long after I
was ready to sleep. But I liked hearing the tone of Katy’s voice when she
talked to her little sister. The inflection changed, like everything Chloey
said became instantly more interesting than anything I’d ever said. Guess they
talked like girls talk, but it made me feel like Katy couldn’t get everything
she needed from me.

But Chloey, in her own little way, did
a lot to help me understand Katy. The overprotective little sister act showed
me how Chloey and Rachael perceived Katy as some sort of fragile little China
doll, somebody who lived her life on the verge of cracking, which wasn’t at all
what I saw in Katy. Chloey had told me stories of how Katy, being the oldest,
would have to run into Muttley’s or the VFW to find her old man if he ran off
on another drunken binge. And Katy always had to be the one to run across the
fields to get Jamie or Levon when her old man beat on her mom. Katy never
talked much about these things with me. She didn’t have to.

They slept, tangled in blankets like
they’d both spent the longest part of the night still fighting something. But
they fell asleep long before I did even though the wind howled and dogs barked
all night long. And I smiled as I watched over them. After all the noise Dani’d
created, it made me very happy to see them both at peace. They deserved it.

Just before the sun came up I drifted
out to the bar. A cool breeze blew in through the gaps in Simoneaux’s busted
windows. I walked over to take a peek at the street. The leaves that blew
around in lazy circles were the only sign that things had been so crazy here
last night. Dim lights above the bar shone down on Simoneaux’s incomplete rows
of glass bottles. Being unable to figure out if I’d stayed up too late or had
gotten up too early made it difficult to figure out what I should be drinking.
Besides, I knew I wasn’t alone. So I spoke up. “Want anything?”

“Brandy Alexander? Unless that’s going
to put you out.” He wore a floppy tan driving cap and a suit that matched. I
think he wore something like that on
The Dick Cavett Show
with Yoko.

“What’s in that? Besides brandy?”

“Crème de cacao. But I’m starting to
feel as if it’s going to be a bother.”

“There’s no—”

“Make it a Scotch and Coke then. I’ll
pretend I’m twenty-two.” He waved his long finger when he said it.

I mixed it with one part Scotch and
one part Coke. I figured it didn’t matter, since he was either a figment of my
imagination or a ghost.

He said, “You’ve had a bit of an
evening.”

“Yeah, man.” I poured myself a little
Baileys. “Stuff got out of control. Thank God nobody got hurt.”

“Do you suppose God really had
anything to do with it?” He looked deeply into his drink and swirled it around
the bottom of his glass.

“No, man. It’s just something to say.”

“Well, you’ve got to talk to someone,
I suppose. I know an auntie isn’t the same as a mum. Band mates aren’t
brothers.”

“No, and I got along fine without all
the above—”

“But a pap, on the other hand. Every
boy needs a pap like he needs a dog or a guitar. That’s why I’m here, isn’t
it?” He said it like one word—‘Innit.’ “You know your Uncle Jamie would gladly
be sitting up with you right now, sharing a drink. Or Mick. It’s not the same
and we both know that, but you have plenty of people hanging around you who’d
love it if you came to them with a problem like this.”

“I hope you aren’t saying ‘goodbye?’
That’s what this is starting to sound like.”

He stood, and wouldn’t sit back down.
“I suppose I am. What else can I say? You know the crossroads bollocks is all a
metaphor, right? Time has come to change your fate instead of letting it push
you around the block.”

“So, grow up and stop making music and
get a real job?”

“Is that what I said? Don’t be a
bastard.” He laughed and shook his head. “No good can come from growing up. Growing
up is our punishment for following the rules, but loads of adults get paid to
make music.”

I met him at the end of the bar.

He said, “Take care of business. These
people really like you. And they like what you do for their Katy. But she’s
going to need more. She puts on a good front, but it wears her down. She may
want kiddies. She may want consistency. She may not. Either way, she wants to
know that you’re capable of keeping a lid on when the brew gets too hot. She
wants to be taken care of sometimes, Preston. She doesn’t want to be the queen.
She wants to be the princess. She wants a prince.”

I couldn’t say anything because I
agreed with him. But I wanted to touch him. I wanted a handshake or a hug to
let me know everything was okay.

He added, “Before I go, you should
know that I think you’ve done the best you could so far. You’ve built
something, and people like you. That kind of thing didn’t come because you had
a pap. That all came from who you are, and who you love. Don’t forget that.”

I wanted some kind of physical
contact, but he backed away at a steady pace. “Be careful, brother. The world
ain’t going to look out for you.”

And when he waved goodbye and bounded
down the steps I just stood in the doorway and waved back.

Everybody
stumbled into the afternoon at their own pace. Tension forced a noticeable
quiet into the air, but it freed me to pick up my guitar as a way to kill the
rest of the day. It gave me time to think, time to go through chords and scales
and exercises as a bit of noisy meditation.

Simoneaux was the first to join me on
stage. I didn’t know whether it was for my sake or for his own, but I turned to
face him all the same. I sat on the edge of my amp and tweaked the volume to
match the volume of his kit. I played weird little chord progressions to match
his weird little beats. Diatonics and whole note scales and Arabic scales. I
tried unusual chords in new ways. Keeping up with him almost felt like some
kind of game. Like, as soon as I pulled something new out of my hat he threw
something else at me. He kept nodding for me to stop, but whenever I backed out
he’d pull me back in, jumping in and out of syncopation, back and forth between
twos and threes.

After a while he waved his hand across
his throat for the last time. I shook out my hands and stood up. I asked if he
wanted a drink.

“Nah, Pres. We need to talk.” Wiping
sweat off his brow with his forearm, he said, “It’s all about the ritual with
the types we’re dealing with out there. They been doing things a certain way
for thousands of years. It ain’t up to you to decide when to come in and do
something different. You skip a step and the whole deal’s off. Kaput. They keep
you on the hook for your end of things while they walk off into the night like
they was looking for a lost dog. They rely on the way things are said—wording
means everything to them. You have to understand this, Preston. The
step-by-step is important. Just like putting together a little rhythm, like we
did now.”

“I don’t suppose I’m going to put
myself into a position where I’m going to have to worry about that.”

“You don’t know. Ain’t none of us
knows what’s going to happen. Too easy for a guy like you to lose everything.
That’s how come you ain’t lost everything already.”

“Because I didn’t follow the proper steps?”

“Maybe. This one’s like a tick. You
don’t pull at it with tweezers because you might not get the head out. You
hear?”

“I do. Thanks for looking out for me.”

Jamie drifted out to investigate. I
waved him over.

Simoneaux said, “That’s all we’re
doing, man. Looking out for you. Remember the ritual. Sign of the Cross, ‘body
of Christ’ and all that. Same thing—ritual and step-by-step. This is a
different side of it.”

I said, “You know the procedure, don’t
you? How to make a deal that sticks?”

Jamie brought a chair onto the riser
with him.

Simoneaux said, “I know how to bake a
cake and you ain’t eating cake now, are you?”

Nodding, I said, “I got you.”

“So, what do you think she is? You
spent a lot of time with her.” Jamie looked over his shoulder to make sure
nobody else heard. “Is she a maligned spirit or what?”

“Jesus, Jamie.” I closed my eyes, but
wanted to roll them. “If she’s not The Devil or a devil then I don’t know what
she is.”

“Do you remember any strange smells,
or sensations from the time you spent with her? Noises or voices in a different
language?”

“Like
na
zdravi
?
Yeah, I heard her speaking other languages. Honestly, even after everything
that happened out there and back in Morgantown, I’m still inclined to say she’s
a woman. I know that ain’t an answer you want to hear.”

“Preston, I spent a lot of time
working on this,” Jamie said, his tone making me think he was trying to find a
way to put it mildly. “See, there’s a Kabbalist mystic belief that all words
contain secret syllables. When uttered in the right sequence, they have magical
properties. Maybe some songs even work that way—like the one, four, five chord
progression? Makes sense, right? So if you could learn her real name, we could
figure out what she is and gain a little leverage over her. Does that make
sense?”

Ben and Pauly ate at the bar, alone
together. Katy and Chloey and Rachael ate by candlelight at a table in the far
corner. Andre and Calvin and the rest decided to take the day off. I couldn’t
blame them.

“It does, but I already told you what
I think. And what if she isn’t The Devil?”

Simoneaux said, “If she ain’t, we’re
lucky, son. But if all this goes on like a rain that don’t stop, it may not
matter.”

“I understand.” I stood as my belly
rumbled. “Jamie, part of me is afraid you’ll only ever see me as a flaky guitar
player, the kind of guy who’ll wear the same T-shirt for days in a row if there
ain’t somebody around to tell him to change it. But I want everybody to be able
to go back home okay with the idea that they didn’t have to worry about Katy
anymore. You all are going to see that I’m capable of being a wall when the
time comes.”

I put my hand on his shoulder. “I’m
going to wipe away the memory of me stealing the guitar from Mick even though I
already worked everything out with him. I want you to respect me the way you
respect Ben and Henry. I’m going to leave it at that and eat now.”

“Now, Preston, that ain’t fair…”

I turned and drifted toward the
kitchen before he could change my mind or fill me up with patronizing sentiments.
On the stove Simoneaux had a pot of cold grits congealing next to a pan of
red-eye gravy. In the oven a tray of corn bread warmed. I grabbed it with an
oven mitt.

Through the service window I heard
Katy and Chloey laugh at something, and smiled as I buttered the sweet, dry
cornbread. It smelled like August county fairs. The butter had softened from
sitting next to the stove. The knife pushed it deep into the pores, where it
turned into liquid that soaked all the way down through to the plate. I put a
big spoonful of grits next to the cornbread, then covered them with the
red-eye. After thinking about it for a second, I dipped the ladle back into the
gravy and dumped it onto the cornbread too.

But one bite was all I got. One taste
of the salty butter-soaked cornbread, before I heard the clamor of chairs in
the front room.

“Preston,” Katy yelled as I ran out of
the kitchen.

Jamie and Simoneaux were peering
through a gap in the boards of the window closest to the stage. Rachael and
Pauly shared the other.

Ben had gotten the baseball bat from
behind the bar. He handed it to me and said, “Nobody gets through,” as he ran
back to the storeroom. I knew he went back for his guns.

The thunder of motorcycles drowned out
the rumble of all the pickup trucks and vans. Without walking all the way over
to the front door or window, I knew. I put my arm around Katy. She called the
police.