The Devil and Preston Black (Murder Ballads and Whiskey)

by Jason Jack Miller

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  My notebook lay open on the floor. I'd ripped all the old songs out. There were only blank pages left. My fingers hadn't touched guitar strings in days. "Yeah, Mike. I'm pumped, too. I have all kinds of new stuff I've been working on." I lied.

  Mikey said, "Come by early. We'll be there all day. Our A and R guy is taking us out for drinks after, but I want you to meet him before the show. I've been telling him all about you so he's coming in early for your set."

  I barely caught that last part. I half-paid attention, and half-wondered what the hell I'd even play tomorrow night.

  Mikey said, "Sound check at five?"

  On Thursdays Mick usually rolled out by five. I told him, "Make it 5:15?"

  "Sure thing. Dude, this is going to be big. You stoked?" Mike's voice crackled like it was streaming out of an old Vox AC30.

  "I will be. I've been a busy man." Writing songs. Plotting to steal a guitar. Trying to win back my true love. "I'm happy for you guys. No matter what happens I want you to know I'm proud of you. You deserve your success."

  Mikey said, "We're going to do a bunch of spring break things in Florida and Arizona. Hopefully we generate enough buzz to get an invite to a festival. Maybe the small stage at Bonnaroo or Coachella. That might sound ambitious..."

  "No, man. Don't settle for small potatoes." Like I did.

  "I appreciate it. I don't know if I ever told you this, but the lessons and hanging out at Mick's got me through some tough times. Maybe you don't remember those hours like I do, but my lessons were sometimes the only good hours out of the entire week." His voice got mellow and sweet like a Butter Rum Lifesaver. "And I know you paid for all those lessons. Maybe this is just a way to return the favor with interest."

  "I would've done it all for nothing..." I put my notebook down and gave him my full attention.

  "I know, man. It's all good. I just wanted to tell you." I thought he was going to sign off, but he said, "You know, sometimes I wished you were my dad. Or my dad was more like you instead of a rampaging drunken asshole."

  His bluntness made me nervous. "Man, don't say that. I would've been a horrible father."

  "That's not true," he said. "You always told me those Sub Pop bands didn't sit around waiting for somebody to deliver them. You said they went out and did it themselves. You always said '...tonight in cities all across America the next big thing is meeting in a garage for the first time.' Well, I listened to you."

  I didn't remember saying any of that. "You worked hard for what you got." I almost hung up, then said, "Mikey, I'm running a little late. Having some guitar issues."

  Mick's key hung on my key ring. My Tele sat in Mick's office.

  "It's cool. Whenever. See you when you get there."

  Sun streamed through my window, covered my bed. I'd been out for a little over twelve hours. For a long time I sat there with my empty notebook open. I'd scrapped every lyric I'd ever written down. Stuff from all the way back to junior year in high school. And to make sure I didn't dig them out of the trash I ripped the pages into tiny bits. Two new Dixon Ticonderogas that I sharpened with a steak knife sat between me and the empty notebook. "Just like the first day of school."

  I needed to write something, if only to get the momentum going. So I wrote out the lyrics to "The Sad Ballad of Preston Black" as neat as I could in printed caps. I made minor tweaks where one word sounded better than another, or where the old-timey dialect got in the way of what the song said. Or what I wanted it to say. When I finished I reread it, like I'd read a poem. I tried not to sing it. I decided that the song could still be tweaked. It had to be. It was my song.

  So I went to the next new page and started writing down snippets of lyrics I'd been kicking around in my head for the last few days. Little phrases that had a cool cadence or imagery.

  The first one I wrote came to me when Jamie and me were recording. He said I should call the one song "Trilobites," but it didn't actually have the word in it. So I wrote the words thinking about trilobites keeps me up all night. Then right below it I wrote, I wonder if I'm ever going to see the sun again. I didn't know if that was a song yet, but it was something. There were about thirty other snippets like that, so I gave each one its own line. When I finished I had about two and a half pages worth of stuff.

  I went out to pee. The clock on the stove still flashed twelve from the last time the power was out. If I'd have had my window closed I wouldn't have known if it was noon or midnight. I had to get a move on. I had more to write, but figured I could work on that later. I rolled my notebook up and tucked it into my coat pocket. On the dresser I saw the necklace Katy's grandmother had given me. I put it around my neck. The coin Katy's mom gave me was still in my pocket. The last item I packed was the bundle of Stu's letters from boot camp. Once those had been put away the room sat completely empty. Like the day I moved in.

  I didn't leave any lights on when I left. Somehow I didn't think I'd ever be back.

  As soon as I hit the sidewalk I knew tonight would be different.

  I got down to the shop and saw Mick's Caddie sitting out back. But the longer I stood out there, watching from a half a block away, the less I thought I'd be able to go through with it. I kept telling myself I'd be able to get the guitar back in his office before he noticed it was gone. I promised myself, making that the only way I even considered it.

  When Mick finally came out the back door I pressed myself against the bricks of the kung fu studio next to the downtown PRT stop. He propped the back door open and went back inside.

  Fifteen minutes later my phone rang. It was Mike. He said, "Where you at, man?" with a laugh, trying to make a joke out of it.

  I took a deep breath and slouched against the wall. "I told you I'd be a little late. Give me a half hour."

  He took a long pause. "I'm supposed to meet my girlfriend at six, though. So—"

  I interjected, "Is the back door open? Can I come in through the back?"

  "Man, I don't know. I'll check."

  "Thanks. Catch you in a few."

  A few minutes later Mick came out again, pointing out the gash on his back quarter panel to a pair of state cops. He raged and ranted and seethed. I pressed myself into the shadow like I was Snake Eyes hiding from Destro. Mick circled the caddy like a turkey buzzard around a dead fawn. I pulled myself away from the wall and made my way back up to High.

  My phone rang. It was Mick. I wanted to shove it right back into my pocket and pretend I didn't hear it. But I couldn't. I owed him.

  "God damn you, Preston!"

  I closed my eyes, bracing myself like I was at the dentist or about to get punched.

  "You know who I just talked to? Do you have any idea what've I've been dealing with for the last twenty minutes? I'm being accused of a hit-and-run." He spit some nasty words into the phone. Things that would've hurt me if they hadn't been true, and if I didn't already know they were true. It was the hellfire way he said them that let me know there was no going back. That I'd burned a bridge.

  When he finished ranting he asked what I planned to do about it.

  I told him I was taking care of it right now.

  He said, "You're broke. You don't have a goddamned thing in this world and I don't have any idea how you're going to be able to scrape two thousand dollars together. Goodbye, Preston. You're not welcome here anymore."

  Another dead father. Maybe I was nobody's son.

  The air felt heavy for the first time this year. For once it didn't dry out my nose and throat like it had been doing all winter long. In the moisture I smelled snow melting up in the Currence's fields, I smelled a touch of iron from Deckers Creek. I thought, and I knew this sounded stupid, but I thought I could smell flowers in the ground on the verge of bursting through the soil. I thought I could smell t-shirts and jeans instead of coats and scarves. Even the sunset seemed like more than a sunset. A halo of clouds padded the hills beyond the river.

  On the long slog up the hill to Dani's apartment
I thought of what I'd say to her. In a perfect world she'd just write out a check. But wishing for a perfect world doesn't make the world perfect. When I saw her car in the garage my fists clenched. The heavy exterior door was unlocked, so I pushed it open and went in. Sunlight flooded the rich lobby and settled into the thick plush carpet like dust. I stomped up the steps so she'd know I was coming.

  "Like the little robin returning in the spring," she said when she opened the door without waiting for me to knock. "Do you want a drink, or are you here for some other reason?"

  "I'm here for your part of the damages to Mick's car and the car you hit." I blew past her on my to the kitchen.

  She disregarded me and walked toward her work at the table. "It wasn't my fault. You should tell Mick to get an attorney. Or maybe you need the attorney?"

  "I'm telling you!" I picked a bottle of absinthe off of the counter and smashed it into the sink. "You did two thousand bucks worth of damage. I'm not leaving without a check."

  "Or what?"

  "What do you mean, 'or what?'"

  She slid to face me. "You sounded like you were about to make a threat. I'd like to hear it. Or will you break another bottle?"

  I chuffed and looked at the floor.

  She faked a pout. "Aw, it's okay, I still like you. But you can go now. I have so many things to do. Unless you came for something else?" She stood up and pushed the chair toward the wall. I backed against the counter. She draped her arms around me, put her left leg over my right and slid down a few inches. "You are here because your little blue bird isn't chirping?"

  I pushed her off. She fell against the table and tried catching herself. But she kept falling, pulling the table onto her. An avalanche of papers slid across the floor. Her laptop hit the refrigerator. The screen went blank, then blue.

  She screamed a string of curses at me, spitting Czech with the fury of Tom Morello and the blunt ugliness of Lemmy. Hair fell across her dark eyes. "Look at this! You did this." She used a chair to help herself up, then swung it at me. I caught it by the leg and twisted it out of her hands. She spun and picked her laptop up from the floor. She pounded the spacebar with the butt of her hand. Her blue screen didn't respond. She yanked it from the wall, the cord broke away from the socket with a snap. She lifted it over her head and heaved it.

  I stepped aside and it smashed through some of the pictures on her bookshelves. Glass tinkled to the floor. She launched an mp3 player. I batted it casually and it fell onto the couch. "Throw it all. I'm not leaving without the money."

  She fired a bottle of Irish whiskey. I batted it down with the chair. She yelled, "You... You fucking mouse. You're an ignorant fucking mouse. A mouse." Spit flew from her lips. She wiped her mouth with her arm, smearing lipstick across her cheek.

  "Two thousand dollars."

  She clenched her fists and screamed. "You don't tell me," she said and heaved a bottle of wine. It hit her bedroom door. Red wine ran down the white paint. "Nobody tells me."

  "Dani." I tried to remain calm. "I'm not leaving without the money."

  She drew a breath like she was about to launch another round, but I cut her off. "Write the check or I'll call immigration and tell them you're here on an expired student visa. And that everything you do is illegal. I bet your 'clients' and the rest of the guys you fuck over don't want the FBI calling. I know I wouldn't. I'm uneducated, but I know if I call the FBI it wouldn't look good for you."

  She paused for composure, nodding slightly. "Preston, I'm not sure you'd know where to begin or perhaps you'd have called by now. I'll see you tomorrow. You go on at seven? You want me to wear something sexy?"

  Dani pushed the hair out of her eyes and kicked aside the forms and documents burying her purse. She cradled her purse in her arms and slammed her wallet on the counter. With violent, angry movements she pulled out crisp hundreds and counted out twenty. "This is how much a good whore should cost any way," she said, shoving the cash at me. "Do you know what I think? I think in less than forty-eight hours you'll be back."

  "Bet you I won't." I went straight for the door. Before I put my hand on the knob, I said, "You were at the record store that day, too. This whole time I thought it was the record, but it was you. You kept making all these little suggestions and filling my head with all of your crazy bullshit."

  "I'll wear something nice tomorrow, so you can tell everybody I'm the girl you're fucking. Or maybe I'll bring somebody with me, I don't know yet." She followed me for a few steps. "It will be a surprise."

  I slammed the door on my way out. As I went down the steps I heard a few loud bangs from the apartment. A chair, furniture, more bottles maybe. I didn't know and I didn't care.

  I called Katy as soon as I got outside. Streetlights hummed to life. If there had been birds singing and bugs buzzing I would've sworn it was April. She didn't pick up.

  "Katy," I said after the tone, "Ask Jamie to tell you what's going on. He'll tell you about the song and how it's—"

  I didn't know how I could say it without it sounding like a paranoid delusion. Every verse read either like my personal history or prophecy, like that record had sat in Isaac's for years just waiting for me. Maybe Dani put it there, I didn't know. But it was my song. I started to sing it into the phone. When my time ran out I called right back, singing where I'd left off. After I sang the last verse I called her one more time. I said, "Please, ask Jamie. He'll tell you. I'm not trying to shirk responsibility for what I've done. Katy, I believe the bad things are happening for a reason."

  Preston Black writes his own sad song. "Or something's making it happen," I said just before hanging up.

  I left Dani's, heading toward Dorsey Avenue and the old Mountaineer Mall. Putting miles between myself and town filtered out some of the crap clogging my brain. Songs came to me like coal barges up the river. I heard them coming from way down around the bend. If I kept walking they'd catch up to me eventually.

  I walked down to Hite, past the tech school and all the ball fields. Me and Pauly smoked a joint in the woods behind the t-ball field on the day I met my first girlfriend, Mallory. It was August, the week before school started. Mallory was Stu's cousin, and he didn't like her talking to me. The first week of school he came up to me in the cafeteria to check me out. We ended up in a pushing contest that got us two days in the box together. By then Pauly had found out Stu played drums from a kid we were trying to start a band with. When the bell rang at the end of our first day in ISS I asked Stu if he wanted to start a band. So for most of the second day me and Stu passed lyrics back and forth.

  I wondered what kind of song we'd write today. He never said much about his time over there or what he saw, but I knew he had nightmares and woke up crying a lot. One time I asked him if his first tour sucked so bad why he would even consider going back. He said he didn't fit any place else. If he was here today I'd tell him I'd carry his gun so he didn't have to worry about it anymore.

  I flipped to a clean page in my notebook and wrote. It took more walking to figure out I had a song, but the rest came a little easier. I sat on the guardrail across from the Bluegrass Estates trailer park and wrote. Greenbag Road was a poorly-lit curvy place. The cars zipping by could give a shit I was putting my heart onto a scrap of paper. I wrote about wanting to know what Stu knew, and being afraid of what the knowledge would do to me. Maybe it wasn't a song, but it would be. I waited for traffic to clear and crossed the street.

  When I got up to the trailer, Stevie Croe was getting into his car. Stu's old neighborhood looked pretty much the same as when I was sixteen. Maybe a little bleaker. The same big wheels and rusty bikes sat out in the same yards. The same dogs barked at the same ghosts. Stevie turned when he heard my feet crunching through the gravel in the driveway. He waved, but didn't get out of the car.

  "Hey, Pres." He reached for my hand when I got up to the window.

  I shook his hand and took a step back. Guilt wouldn't let me make eye contact. "Steve... I'm sorry, man. I'm so sorry."

&
nbsp; "I know, Pres."

  "I was away when it happened."

  "That's what Pauly said." Steve kind of just sat there. I handed Stevie all the letters Stu had written from boot camp. "I just wanted your family to know. I love him. I'm going to miss him."

  The wind picked up. The sky looked really, really blue. The moon looked like a shiny new nickel. Stevie looked at the letters and started flipping through one by one. Like, maybe he didn't get many letters from Stu. I said good night and started back down the driveway. Stevie asked if I wanted a ride into town.

  "I'm good." I took a deep breath. "Stu aways looked out for you. Don't know if you knew that. One time Stu saw Danny Forsythe talking to Kelly while you were on the field. Stu made him get down on his knees in back of the concession stand right before halftime. The whole band saw it."

  Stevie laughed. "Using a hammer to kill ants. You should come up over spring break and we can talk. My mom wants to see you."

  "Maybe. I did some things and I'm not sure what the consequences will be. But if I make it through all this I'll be up." I waved, and headed back out to the road. Stevie started his car. He pressed the gas, put it into reverse and crept out of his driveway. When he passed me he rolled his window down. I leaned into the car and said, "I don't think there was much more to Stu than what we all saw. He was real and that's what's great about him. You could spend five minutes with him and know his life story."

  Stevie nodded. I stepped back and he drove away.

  On the way out I walked past Stacy Kent's house, where I met Jeff, my guitar teacher for the first time. I made a right onto 857 North. Thoughts bum rushed my brain, then my head emptied just as fast. After twenty minutes I passed Byrd Elementary where I went to kindergarten and first grade.

  Just below the Mileground I crossed 119 and made my way toward campus. When I got down by the Mountainlair I thought maybe I should catch the PRT at Beechurst and just take it up to Ruby. But the miles seemed as important as the words. The air felt good in my lungs even though I knew residue from my last cigarette was still down there somewhere. Maybe the moon made me feel like I had some reason to keep going. If it could create tides surely it could uplift me just a little. Maybe it was the city and her bright lights whispering 'it's okay' over and over that kept me from hanging my head.