"C'mon, Preston. Maybe we should grab a coffee. We'll go to a meeting tonight. I'll introduce you to some guys. There's even a guy from Fairmont who plays drums. We talked about getting together and playing dances and stuff."
"What kind of dances?"
"You know, AA dances and stuff."
"Do you think somebody like me is meant to get married and get old? You made a joke about seeing my dad at a meeting—but it's not funny to me. I don't know who my parents are. I don't have cousins and that's why it's not funny to me."
Pauly didn't reply.
"Do you think I'm going to wake up and punch a clock and come home to kids and a pot roast on the table? For you maybe, because you know how it feels to be tucked in to bed by real flesh and blood. I've lived on this earth for twenty-seven years and I've never felt that."
I stepped away from the table. "So don't preach to me... Like I give a god damn about one day at a time. I am one day at a time—not knowing where I'm going to eat or sleep..."
I couldn't think of the words fast enough. "I want a whole year, not just twenty-four hours. I want my twenty-seven years back. The only time I ever felt like I belonged was when me and you and Stu were setting up or driving to a gig. I know it's not your fault Stu went and reupped, but you could've given me some warning before you jumped ship."
"I didn't jump ship, Pres... I'm trying to stay sober. I want to piece something together. I want to get married and have kids. I want to be happy. You had to know the band was done."
"You weren't happy when we were playing four or five nights a week?"
He didn't say anything.
I said, "I felt happy. And don't try to tell me that it wasn't genuine. I know how I felt." I leaned on the table, it seemed like the only thing I could do with my hands to keep me from pointing or pushing or punching. "You talk about this self-improvement, but you're the one who's leaving a trail of destruction in your wake. Like you can't do this without stepping on toes and breaking dishes. I scheduled gigs around your meetings, got us places that weren't bars. I tried. Man, I tried and tried and tried to find a way for this to work. Believe it, or don't." I went into my room and put the liquor into the bag.
I yelled out to Pauly, "Maybe your sponsor can find you another roommate. I hope the next one is as patient and forgiving as I have been because I always had your back. I lied to cops for you and kept you from getting your ass kicked a hundred times. I'll be gone until Saturday or Sunday. But I'm not moving out."
I zipped up my hoodie and pulled my wool cap down over my ears. Tucked into the edges of the dresser mirror were all the ticket stubs from the shows we went to, pictures of me and Pauly and Stu at shows, and with girls after shows. A few guitar picks.
I picked up my alarm clock and slammed it into the mirror. The glass splintered and shards tinkled onto the dresser. I went into the hall, pulling my bedroom door shut behind me.
"Preston..." Pauly said. "Hey man, you're bleeding." He pointed to his cheek. I touched my face where he'd pointed. Bright red blood, a lot of blood, came off on my finger. I took a roll of toilet paper we'd been using as Kleenex from the counter and held it against my cheek.
By the time I got to Mick's I'd gotten myself straightened out. In other words, I got the bleeding stopped. In the end it didn't matter. Mick talked with a customer, a real buyer in a suit and tie looking over his Jazzmaster. I wanted to tell him he should keep it, but he'd just tell me to hush up. Jamie was ready to go anyway. When I joined him in the back I apologized for being late. He said I wasn't late, he got in early—he ended up skipping the library—and put my guitar back in its case. He looked at the cut on my cheek, which still stung, but he didn't say anything. I showed him what I had in the bag and asked if it'd be all right. He said it would be more than all right, but well-appreciated.
Mick wiped his cheek, like he was showing me I had pizza sauce on it or something. I said I'd tell him about it Monday. His brow dropped in the middle and his lips, which had been almost smiling, pulled back into a very serious expression.
"I'll be all right," I said. I couldn't blame him for not believing me.
Jamie didn't care about the cut or Pauly or my mother or Pauly's mother. He cared about music and storytelling and hearing good stories. In the car we talked about the relationship between punk and old time. The way The Ramones were like a group of fiddling families from southern West Virginia. He wanted to know what I listened to, what new bands sounded good, what CDs he should pick up next time he came into town.
He told me all about Robert Johnson, about how he left Robinsonville for two years and returned a virtuoso of playing and songwriting. Jamie said Johnson probably practiced hoodoo and referenced it all the time in his songs. In "Hellhound on my Trail" Johnson sang about sprinkling 'hot foot powder' around a door to keep people away. He mentioned 'mojo bags' and 'nation sacks' in several songs. Jamie reminded me that Johnson supposedly went down to the crossroads, which I already knew.
Right before we pulled into Jamie's driveway things got a little awkward. His tone changed. Grew somber. He put the car in park and let the engine run.
I reached for the door and he stopped me.
He said, "Remember our discussion at Mick's, about the rattlesnake beads in your guitar?"
The change in his inflection made me slow to respond. "I remember."
"The reason they do that down here has very little to do with sound, even though some people think the tradition may have begun that way. Anyway, I just wanted to tell you the whole story..."
"Which is?" I asked.
"Which is, the reason that people put the beads in their fiddles is to keep the devil away." He turned the Subaru off.
Not sure how to reply, I said, "Is, uh, that something I have to worry about?"
"I don't know," he said, his voice not quite as reassuring as it had just been. Then, like he changed his mind, or thought better of it, he added, "I don't believe it is."
CHAPTER NINE
Waking up warm, in a real bed, in a house where tension and anger—as far as I knew—didn't exist made me wonder if I even needed the rest of the song. If Jamie invited me to hang out all weekend and play music I could wake up on Monday a happy boy.
But Jamie really wanted to beat the blizzard—he had the Subaru warming up, and I'd already taken my stuff out. Ready for a real adventure, he handed me sleeping bags and pillows. I gave him a look that he must not have expected, because he could only say, "You'll be thanking me later."
Isabelle came onto the porch, crossing her arms and pulling her sweater tightly around her shoulders. Jamie hugged her, kissed her on both cheeks, and said, "We'll be back Saturday by dinner. As soon as the roads are clear."
"Be careful. If the roads are bad take your time. You boys look out for each other," she replied, waving like we were about to his the Oregon Trail. She stood there while we backed out of the driveway. The gray sky finally let loose some real snow. Like up until now, it'd just been teasing.
Jamie headed south, along roads I'd never seen, through valleys I never could've imagined. The mountaintops looked like different realms, like the trees and animals that lived up there had to be very different than the ones I knew about. In the low areas the dead, gray trees looked like the ones back home. But higher up the trees looked jagged, like a row of teeth in a wolf's jaw. For as cold as it felt in the Subaru, I knew up there it was colder far beyond what I could imagine.
The highway twisted like shoelaces through a pair of Chuck Taylors. We went over ridges, along rivers with rapids and waterfalls like Deckers Creek on the way up to Masontown. After an hour or so we crossed a ridge that had been cleared of all its trees. Jamie had been telling me about these big salamanders called hellbenders, when the road disappeared around a curve that sloped down as far and as steep as I could see. Jamie slowed the Subaru, dropped into first, and kept chattering as if this was an everyday thing for him.
I gripped the door handle and sank down in my seat. Snow blew agai
nst the windshield, up from the valley below. Visibility dropped down to a few hundred yards, but I could still see enough to know that nothing stood between me and a big drop except for a few inches of rusty guardrail.
Jamie went right on talking, about how he left Davis after returning from Vietnam, vowing to not stop until he hit the Pacific. He said his plans hit a snag in Morgantown when he got picked up for vagrancy. Mick saw the ordeal and offered Jamie a job to keep him out of the slammer. Jamie didn't know much about music except for the stuff his family played, which he didn't like. Mick hired him because he felt a veteran shouldn't be treated like a criminal.
Jamie told me all kinds of stories, and the trip went really fast once he finally got into a groove. Like how he used to make money playing contras in college but they stopped asking him back when they heard him throwing in bits of Sly and the Family Stone and Billy Preston into his instrumental breaks. He got busted when somebody's kid recognized part of Sweet's "Fox on the Run" and started dancing out of formation.
I couldn't get a word in. But I didn't have to. Just hanging out with Jamie made the trip all worth it. I knew I'd let my mind get away from me, and maybe I should've known better, but I kept thinking maybe my dad, if he was really out there, would be a lot like Jamie.
"This is laurel country, all right." Jamie paid more attention to the steering wheel than he had earlier.
"You want me to drive?" I asked. The look on his face made me a little uncomfortable.
"No, I'm afraid to stop." He pointed at the vehicle we were following, an old mail truck driven by Jesse's nephew. We met him at the post office in Circleville, which looked suspiciously like a gas station to my untrained eyes. Jesse's nephew, also conveniently named Jesse, was working, but seemed to view our early arrival as a reason to close shop. A little guy with Little Guy syndrome, Jesse took great pleasure in ripping off his tie and putting a camouflage jacket over his government-issue sweater vest. He had teeth like gravel.
Jamie did a really good job dodging ruts and grinnies for twenty minutes. We crossed a river Jamie called the Potomac, but I couldn't tell if he was messing with me or not. I was pretty certain the Potomac went through Washington D.C.. Just up another hill Postal Jesse whipped his Chevy Bronco onto the berm. He backed up, grinding gears so bad we heard it with our windows up and a CD playing. Jesse stopped right next to us and rolled down his window. I rolled my window down.
"That there's the road up, but you're going to want to park here. Aim yourself downhill, that way, depending on how much snow we get, you ain't got to worry about backing around." He took a big swig from a gallon jug of sweet tea. "Get a ways up, that way if the county plow does come through you ain't buried."
"Take this up to him." He reached through the window, holding out a fistful of letters and junk mail—fliers and a few days' worth of newspapers. "This is so they know I's the one who sent you."
With that, he split.
Jamie looked at me, "This ain't nothing. I've been out a lot further in the boonies than this."
"How far is it?" I strained to see up the road, but it disappeared around a bend after about fifty yards.
"I don't know. I've never been here."
"I thought you said..."
"I know Jesse Currence from his trips to Elkins and Charleston." Jamie put the Subaru into reverse and backed onto the dirt road. His wheels spun in the rocky mud. He tried once more, put it into park. "We walk from here."
I believed he was quoting Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
The biggest obstacle to getting out of the car involved jumping across the mud while avoiding jagger bushes on the other side. At first I tried to keep my phone handy, but couldn't get a signal. I powered it off and dropped it into my bag. I humped my back pack, a sleeping bag and a pillow under each arm, my guitar case in my right hand and a pair of mic booms in my left. Jamie laughed and said, "Don't waste any time up there. You're going to have to make another trip."
But he was joking, and by the time we set off up the road he carried only slightly less weight than me. He shoved as much as he could into his own pack and slung the old army-issue canvas shoulder bag around his neck. He balanced himself out with a fiddle case in each hand and a mic stand under his arm.
We walked uphill for a good five or ten minutes. I tried to hide the fact that I huffed and puffed and congratulated myself for passing on the cigarettes. The snow briefly turned into a drizzle that soaked us and most of the stuff we were carrying. I waited for Jamie, holding up the sleeping bags apologetically. He shrugged and said, "We can hang them out to dry." He managed a smile. "I hope."
The road leveled off, then dropped into a little stream valley. Old fields sat inside an anorexic barbed wire fence, corn stubble poked through the old snow, maybe waiting for a fresh dusting from the dead sky. The driveway curved past a garage housing an old International tractor, a plow and bunch of other stuff. Across the road sat a barn, a dirty cow stood in ass-deep mud next to a fresh bale of hay. The gap-toothed wood making up the barn's siding and roof implied shelter from the elements, and not much more. A big crater in the shingles had a bright blue tarp peeling away from it. The lane ended at a white, two-story farmhouse with dark windows. An empty dog house sat a few paces away from the front door. The chain ended at an empty stainless steel water bowl.
"There's even an outhouse," I said.
"Did you pack toilet paper?" Jamie said, to get back at me. "If not, it's going to be a long weekend."
A split second from telling him 'no', I remembered the incident with my cheek and the mirror yesterday. When I held open my coat pocket for him to see the roll, he shook his head and chuckled. "City kid."
The cow wallowed in the mud, and Jamie spotted a man in an old windbreaker on unsteady legs breaking up another bale of hay. As we crossed over the creek another cow, this one half the size and twice as pathetic, ambled over. The old man yelled, "C'mon, Jake," and a third came out from beneath the barn. The old man steadied himself on a fencepost and caught his breath.
We stepped out of the gravel lane and up to the barbed-wire fence, but the old man still hadn't seen us. Jamie coughed a little cough, then said loudly, "I heard there's a pretty decent fiddle player lives here."
The old man turned around, grinning broadly. His eyes looked toward us, but not quite at us. He wore an old trucker hat that had been handed out by a guy running for commissioner of Pocahontas County. Somebody had crossed out the silk-screened candidate's name with a magic marker. "You fellows here to play some music, I suppose?"
We shook hands over the fence as Jamie introduced us. I struggled not to drop my load into the snow and mud. Jesse's skin felt dry and thin like onion skin. "Go ahead down to the porch and I'll show you boys around."
The old house sat in the hillside like eyes in a head. We passed over a small wooden bridge that crossed a rushing stream. The old planks flexed noticeably as we walked over. Clear water danced around mossy rocks, and as pretty as it looked, I hurried right across because I didn't trust this old guy's handiwork. All around us birds sang. I thought it meant winter would end soon.
Jamie set the mic stand and his recording gear down on a low bench next to a big stack of firewood and shook out his hands. Water dripped off of the roof along half-hearted icicles. Jamie took the sleeping bags from beneath my arms. Jesse trailed not so far behind, walking along the gravel lane with a fairly noticeable limb. When he made it to the porch he ushered us inside. The small, dark kitchen had a big coal stove that rested in the corner furthest from the door. A red glow came through cracks where the griddles didn't seat properly. A steady tinkle of water came from the spigot. Above the window over the sink hung a small SATOR square like I'd seen last week. There weren't any pictures on the plaster walls. The only other thing of note in the big room was some shelves with a candy dish and a cookie jar on it.
Stairs to the second floor began right next to the front door. A narrow doorway beyond the stairs opened up into a storeroom—wal
ls of shelves stacked high and deep with jars of veggies. A few bags of sugar and flour. Cornmeal. Another SATOR square above a small window. Another door, this one closed, went beneath the stairs. Jesse helped us hang our sleeping bags and pillows over chairs by the stove to dry. He and Jamie went back onto the porch. I waited by the fire to get warm.
The ceiling above me creaked, and I jumped. Slow footsteps shuffled across the floor above my head. I ran to the porch, letting the screen door slam behind me.
Jamie waited for an explanation.
I pointed back at the second floor windows and shook my head as I caught up.
We followed Jesse through some thick laurel, back over the stream to the outhouse. The bridge to the shitter was a pair of railroad ties half-buried in the earth. This bridge looked a lot sturdier than the other bridge, but much narrower. An old, waist high stump at the one end was the only thing to hold onto. I figured when I fell into the stream and drowned Jamie'd have to tell Mick and Katy I was last seen running through the snow trying to 'hold it'.
Keeping my voice low, I said to Jamie, "Is this a good time to ask about the song?"
"No, or we'll be out of here faster than a pair of striped-ass jaybirds." Jamie waved me off like he was fair catching a punt. "Be delicate and tactful and don't rush it."
"Okay," I said, and stepped back in line.
Jesse showed us a chicken coop and plenty of scrawny white chickens. He showed us his bird feeder, which had been attacked by a bear earlier in the winter. Claw marks girdled the post and the feeder itself hung askew. It reminded me of a girl I once knew who drank way too much Boone's.
Looking back at the house made me glad to be away from it. Dark, empty second-floor windows suggested empty rooms. And the rooms were dark enough that somebody could be sitting up there, watching, and I'd never know it.
The Devil and Preston Black (Murder Ballads and Whiskey) Page 17