The Revelations of Preston Black (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 3) (31 page)

“They’re leaving,” I said, choking a
little on the blood in my throat.

“God damn it, Preston!” he said,
furiously. “Do something!”

Boggs gasped for breath, his struggle
weakening.

“I can’t kill them all,” Ben said. A
loud crack of thunder split the sky right above us.

“You don’t have to kill them, man,” I
pleaded.

“There’s a difference between
vigilance and a vigilante. It’s time to come home, son. Killing these guys
won’t bring Kenny and X back.” Jamie handed me the revolver and took a knee at
Ben’s side.

“They’re just going to keep coming
back. Preston, I told you to get eyes on those fucking Hajjis, and what did you
do? They fucking flanked us.”

“Son,” Jamie said, grabbing Ben’s
wrist. “Let justice work. He’ll serve time for what he’s done.”

“Ben, we need you, man. Chloey needs
you. Andre is on his way. You don’t have to kill Boggs. Being locked up for
manslaughter ain’t worth it. If you go to jail, Chloey and Katy and your mom
and dad lose too.”

Boggs faded like the light after a
hard day. Like the music at the end of a show.

“Hey,” I said. “Tomorrow is something
different, okay? Tomorrow is breakfast and a bed. Tomorrow is your dad and your
cousins and your Aunt Rachael and me and Pauly. Tomorrow is redemption, man.
Tomorrow is a clean slate, okay?”

He didn’t seem to agree with me. Boggs
stopped moving.

I held my breath.

Ben handed his pistol up to his dad.
Nodding, he released Boggs. “Okay. We’ll get him inside and tie him up.”

I pushed Boggs off Ben and held him,
even though he offered no struggle.

Pauly came to the back door. “Andre’s
coming but he can’t get through. We got to get these fuckers out of here.”

“All right,” I said, letting the rain
wash the blood off my face. “I’ll take care of it.”

Brushing the dirt from his back, Ben
said, “How we going to clear all those people out of the front if you ain’t
going to let me shoot any?”

“Just get ready to carry Chloey up to
the street.”

“Seriously, Preston. Tell me. This is
going to happen tomorrow and the next night, you know. They ain’t going to stop
coming for us.”

“I know how to make it stop.” I handed
him back his gun. “It’s time to negotiate, I guess.”

I knew the more I thought about it,
the harder it’d get to actually do it. “I’m on it.”

“Pres,” Jamie said. “Why don’t you
hold up a second?” But I ran up the steps. When I passed the storeroom they had
Chloey in a chair ready to be moved. I gave Katy a weak smile and blew her a
little kiss.

“Preston,” she said. “Preston, wait…”

But I couldn’t hear her. Not now.

I grabbed a handful of napkins from
the service window and held it against my nose for a moment. When I saw that
didn’t do a thing to stop the bleeding I used my sleeve.

From below the bar I took a pint glass
and filled it with water. I swished it around my mouth to get the taste of
blood out then spit in the sink. I drank more as I walked toward the chanting.

When I got to the window, I heard
distant trumpets blaring from the hilltops. Not like the clamor from last
night’s funeral procession. It sounded disjointed and abrasive. Noise for the
sake of noise.

“What the fuck is this, man?” Pauly
said. “If it’s me they want you should just let me go out there.”

“Pauly, that’s enough. I told you I’d
take care of this, and I’m going to take care of this. Don’t know why everybody
has such a hard fucking time believing that.” I stood with Simoneaux and
watched through the window. Men and women bitten and bloodied by days of
handling serpents looked up to the sky, praying.

“Do you believe me, Pauly? That I’m
going to take care of this?”

He didn’t say anything.

“Stringing together a year’s worth of
success ain’t enough to clear last year’s slate?”

“It ain’t that, man. You had help—”

“So this last year was all because of
Katy?”

“That’s not what I’m saying. But
you’ve definitely changed since you met her.”

“Well, I took care of Danicka
Prochazka back then and I can do it again.”

“Pres, if you’d have taken care of her
she wouldn’t be here now.”

The rain hitting the old corrugated
metal roof grew louder as the storm intensified, banging like the crack of a
rimshot each time. Just like a hickory drumstick against steel. Rain dripped
into buckets and coffee cans. I walked over to the door and flipped the latch.
Dani’s silver Mercedes pulled to a stop amidst all the pickup trucks and
motorcycles. The people turned and prayed to her.

A wave of hail bounced off the hoods
of the vehicles. A stiff wind blew leaves and paper through the empty streets,
past empty houses with dark windows. Homes that once meant something to people.
Probably just needles and used condoms in there now.

“Y’all lock that door and come on back
in,” Simoneaux said.

But I couldn’t. Not while the sky
deepened, like there were thousands of miles between the fog that hung over the
roofs and the yellow light pouring in from the cloud tops. A heavy light that
pushed all the blue away while it sank. Like wringing water out of a towel. On
the wind I tasted anise and mint.

The hail intensified, forcing the
people on the street to cover their heads with their coats and jackets. A
little kid pushed himself against his mother’s hip. She covered his head with
one of her arms while still shielding herself with the other. When the
hailstones got larger, some of the people cried out in pain. All the while, the
yellow faded, leaving a trace of green.

Hail hit the roof so hard now I had to
cover my ears. Trees were stripped of their remaining leaves. The ice rolled
spring back into winter. Pounded the grass into the mud. All this as a milky
jade grew in the sky above. An unearthly shade, one definitely not found in a
Crayola box of sixty-four. A strange heat penetrated the blasts of frigid air
from the cold front.

Out on the street it looked worse.

Hundreds of birds took shelter beneath
the juke joint’s eaves. Those that didn’t fell out of the trees, dead before
they hit the ground. In the dark far off, dogs howled painful cries. Begging to
be let off chains. Men and women fell to their knees and crawled under the
pickup trucks and into their vans. The water that ran into the storm drain
looked like blood in the strange mixture of light from the streetlights and
sky. As far as I could tell, no green remained anywhere on earth’s surface.
It’d all been pulled into the dividing sky. Like the clouds had been split by a
streak of clarity. My eyes were drawn up to it. A never-ending thunderclap
rattled what remained of the windows. The noise grew like a squadron of jet
fighters with freight train engines coming from somewhere beyond the mountains.
Beyond the sea. Beyond the heavens themselves.

In the clearing above, a pinpoint of
light grew in the darkness where space should’ve been. Without stars to remind
me of my location, the glow looked more like it was rising from a hole than
falling into one. Ascending out of an abyss. And earlier, if I thought I
should’ve been scared, it was because I didn’t truly know fear until I saw that
drop of light double in size every few seconds. Like I’d fallen into it.

“Pauly, come see this.” I waved my
hand without checking over my shoulder to see if he was even looking at me.
“Pauly?”

Simoneaux joined Pauly behind the bar
and said, “They call that star
Wormwood
. A third of
all the waters became poison when it fell. Thousands of people died from that
bitter water.”

“You thought you could take care of
this?” Pauly said, “I had a hard time believing that dude from
The
Goonies
could
carry Frodo up that volcano. But this…”

“I know.” My phone buzzed to life in
my pocket. “It’s time to go.”

I walked into the rain. Mint and the
tingle of alcohol washed over me. My lips burned with a long-forgotten taste. I
turned and saw Katy come through the swinging door from the kitchen. She looked
at me for a long time. And when she cried, Pauly held her.

I held up the pint glass to the dim
street light and saw my water turn milky. Each droplet left a trail of
cloudiness. I tilted my head back and watched the star continue to fall.

“From the emptiness where heaven used
to sit.”

I drank.

And when I’d emptied the glass I let
it fill again. Rain mixed with wormwood, mint, and star anise. My phone buzzed
in my pocket. I wiped water and alcohol and tears out of my eyes. I licked the
saltiness and the burn of the absinthe off my lips. Tasted a lot like those
nights in Dani’s apartment.

I scrolled through my texts. Hundreds
of them. From Kurt Cobain. From Berry Oakley. John Bonham. Jim Morrison.

From Willie Dixon.

MCA sent one that said, pulled down by the weight of your own karma, Pres. You can’t be in the light
when you react with anger. That’s how you end up in hell.>

I flipped through a hundred more from
Layne Staley and Ronnie Van Zant and Andrew Wood.

From Brian Jones. Elmore James. From
Cliff Burton. George Harrison.

Duane Allman sent me a text that said,

Strummer’s said, mate.>

I downed another glass, this one much
stronger than the first. I held my eyes shut, and in that instant, experienced
every doubt I’d ever known.

I’m insane, and I imagined all
this.

I dropped the pint glass into the
grass.

I died on the bridge that night
after the show, and this is purgatory.

I looked up at the falling star one
last time. It had taken up almost all of my field of view. The dim light fell
into my eyes like dust and I tried to blink it away.

I looked at Dani—Danicka—out in the
street in her little silver car. A ride I once believed would take me to the
end of my dying days, embraced in a passionate love that didn’t know work or
hunger. When I saw her sitting out there, my heart ached for the way I’d hurt
her. The way I lied to her. My stomach knotted, my face burned with the regret
of not seeing things through with her.

With Dani
.

For all I knew, she was the woman I
was supposed to die with.

My phone beeped again. I expected a
hundred more texts.

But it was a call. Before I even held
it up to my ear John pleaded with me. “Brother, go back in and lock the door.”

“How do I know you aren’t a trick of
my mind? Making me weak, when I need to be strong to end this like I said I’d
end it?”

“I’ll prove I’m not a figment.” John
said, “Ask me anything. Things you know from the books. Ask me about ‘Tomorrow
Never Knows’ and the rope. Or about the day Geoff Emerick quit because of
‘Revolution’ and that bloody amplifier.”

“But these things that you are telling
me are things that are already in my head. So if I ask a question, it’s one I
already know the answer to.”

“Preston, please go back inside and
see Katy and Pauly. Nothing is real, and you know that. I’d like to think I
taught you something. Let them help you come down from this.”

“I hear what you’re saying,” I walked
toward the street. “But the only thing that’s different about tonight is the
clarity I feel. You know, I ended it all once before.”

“That’s the illusion! Somebody is
pulling your strings.” Rage filled his voice. “None of this would be happening
otherwise.”

“That’s what I keep hearing. But I
have to try this, I have to show Katy and her people that I can be the hero.
That I’m not a fuck-up juvie. If this is my defining moment or if I’m about to go
down I have to go down singing, right?”

I’d meant to say “swinging.”

“I have to have my chest out and my
jaw stiff. Isn’t that how you got as far as you did? And you’re about the
closest I have to a role model. So that’s what I’m going to do. It’ll be okay.
I promise.”

I hung up and walked toward the car.

Back in the bar, the phone rang. I
turned. Katy stood in the door, wiping tears away. Her face blanked. I couldn’t
see a hint of anger or sadness in those eyes. Her lips, for once, had nothing
to say.

“I love you, Katy.”

She turned, and went back inside.
Before shutting the door completely she stopped.

I said, “This is all going to end
tonight.”

Nodding, she said, “I love you, too,”
and clicked the lock.

I shoved my phone into my front
pocket.

The passenger side door to Dani’s car
popped open. As I got in, little frogs emerged from the storm drains and
crawled up over the curb to the naked trees that lined the streets. Their
glossy bodies caught the light, reflecting it like a cat’s eye reflected the
moon.