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

by Miller, Jason Jack

  The Revelations of Preston Black

  By Jason Jack Miller

  The MURDER BALLADS AND WHISKEY SERIES

  THE DEVIL AND PRESTON BLACK

  HELLBENDER

  THE REVELATIONS OF PRESTON BLACK

  The Revelations of Preston Black copyright © 2013 by Jason Jack Miller

  Published by Raw Dog Screaming Press

  Bowie, MD

  First Edition

  Cover: Brad Vetter, www.BradVetterDesigns.com

  Book Design: Jennifer Barnes

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-1-935738-48-0

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013940314

  www.RawDogScreaming.com

  This book is for my mom, Sandra.

  HOLDING HANDS WITH THE DEVIL

  Kill Every Sparrow, Friday, March 15, 7:30, The Orpheum Theater, Bardstown Road,

  Louisville.

  If you skipped Foster the People’s show to sneak into the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival’s ‘That Tent’ back in June, you know that Kill Every Sparrow is a raw new talent that combines musical intricacy with atom bomb fury. And you understand that their foray into the iTunes Top 100 this summer was no fluke, making some wonder if the whispered stories they’ve heard about West Virginia’s Katy Stefanic and Preston Black are true.

  Kill Every Sparrow arrives in Louisville hot off a series of summer festival appearances and a string of sold-out East Coast club shows. But most fans know their story really starts with the EP LIVE AT THE STINK released by Blacksnake Recordings back in May. That night saw a bar band guitarist musically reborn as one half of this indie/revivalist/punk duet during a show some eyewitnesses described as “surreal.” The concert’s pivotal moment appears on the EP’s final track, the eponymous “The Sad Ballad of Preston Black,” when the singer challenges the devil with the line, “If I don’t have a soul to steal then we sure as hell don’t have a deal.”

  It’s a line he hasn’t sung since.

  From the moment she walks across that stage, you know Katy Stefanic is the kind of girl you could fall in love with. Though romantically involved, but not married, the pair play off each other like they have been attached at the hip for twenty years, instantaneously responding to frequent and impulsive key and tempo changes. Call me jaded, but watching Stefanic and Black work the aural space over the crowd mesmerizes me in a way only more seasoned acts have been able to do nowadays. Except for the random, “Marry me, Katy,” (or “Preston, call me,”) the crowd remained stone silent during ballads and soft instrumentals. Even more curious was the way the audience responded to the mix of old time throw-down melodies and punk-fast tempos with fists in the air and good old-fashioned foot stomping. And when the lights came up for the first encore the frenzied crowd responded like Joe Strummer himself had decided to join them for a song or two.

  I had a chance to talk to Stefanic and Black after their show in D.C. last Saturday and asked them about their relationship and how it affected their musical development. Preston sat contentedly, letting his beloved do most of the talking.

  With a wide smile, she folded her hands over her knee and explained, “Sharing music with somebody is a lot like sharing a bed. After a while you start to know when something’s building, when things are going to sour, when the temperature’s going to change with a look.”

  Preston added, “It’s like yinz and y’all. Same language, just different ways of saying things. What the audience hears is where we meet in the middle.”

  When I ask Preston to talk about ‘the song’ he gets quiet. After a thoughtful moment, he says, “You ever hear that story about Zeppelin and the sharks? That supposedly didn’t happen either. I think that night at The Stink served as a way—my way, at least—of being resurrected into music. Basically a way for me to make the statement, ‘This is what we’re going to do and this is how we’re going to do it.’ It’s like that. Did I go down to the crossroads and make a deal with the devil?” He looks at Katy, then adds, “Did Robert Johnson?”

  I remind Preston that a reporter from the Virginia Tech Collegiate Times quotes him as saying he, “…spent too much time down at the crossroads…” and, “…the devil tried to get to him by hurting his brother and killing his drummer, Stu…” in an interview from last October.

  At that point Katy takes over. “Preston said a lot of things while swept up in that early hype. Some of us aren’t used to having everything we say recorded for posterity.”

  When I mention that some of his fans have bought into the whole ‘…freed himself from the devil’s clutches’ mythos Preston regains his composure. He laughs and says, “The audience hears what it hears.”

  Tickets for Friday’s show are available online or by calling The Orpheum Theater’s

  box office.

  BODY OF MISSING NORTH CAROLINA HIKER FOUND IN TENNESSEE RIVER

  Huntsville Times, Sunday, March 17

  The search for a missing Asheville, North Carolina hiker ended tragically Saturday along the Tennessee River just north of Guntersville, Alabama.

  Family members told the Marshall County Sheriff’s Office that they had not heard from their daughter, Savannah Trucks, since she called from a Rite Aid in East Ellijay, Georgia, before beginning an Appalachian Trail through-hike from Springer Mountain in mid-February. Her mother, Shirley Trucks, said that Savannah had been harassed by a man and a woman in a white van while she waited for her ride to the trailhead. Authorities began searching for Savannah on March 13 after she missed a pre-arranged meeting with her family in Fontana Lake, North Carolina, to resupply.

  A pair of Albertville fishermen notified authorities after spotting the victim in an arm of Guntersville Lake near Buck’s Pocket State Park Saturday morning, where EMS personnel recovered her body. The Sheriff’s Office spokesman said that an autopsy from the Marshall County Coroner’s Office wouldn’t be ready for a few days, but he believed that drowning did not cause her death, noting the presence of extensive bruising on her forearms and wrists, which are consistent with a more violent crime.

  “This is going to be a very, very horrendous act. I am convinced of that after having observed the body. A young lady’s death is always a terrible thing, but a young lady who dies under extreme violence is the absolute worst,” he told reporters.

  “She’s a very outgoing and a kind individual,” Bill Trucks said from North Carolina before his daughter was found. “She’s got a heart of gold.”

  THE FIRST REVELATION OF PRESTON BLACK

  CHAPTER ONE

  Raindrops and fireflies, autumn lightning splashed across the sky,

  While down here it’s still July.

  City’s dark except for the cars, and high above I see the same stars

  That we wished on twenty years ago.

  The alarm clock is set, and even though it isn’t tomorrow yet.

  I see something I don’t want to forget,

  And stay up all night watching you.

  “Anniversary Song” Music and Lyrics by Katy Stefanic and Preston Black

  Nobody wants to fight. You’re stupid if you do. Or an asshole.

  When you pull yourself up out of the dirt the last thing you want to do is talk about it. You want to go home, clean yourself up and have a drink or five. The drinking isn’t to loosen your lips. It’s to knock you out, so you can go to bed without thinking about it.

  If you’re good, or smart, you can let weeks and months go by without ever discussing it. The people around you will always know you got your ass handed to you, and if the
y love you they don’t ever bring it up. Eventually, it stings a little less each time you drive by the place where the ass-kicking happened. The blood stains come out of your shirt. Then a year goes by, and you’re the only one who still remembers it. Which is fine. Ain’t a thing wrong with it.

  Then you’re rolling out of a new town, feeling about as sad as rolling into a new town makes you happy. You come over a bridge or through a tunnel and catch that first glimpse of a new skyline or the first few notes of the local alt rock or college radio station and feel like all the TV dinners and frat house basements were worth it. You know a new city means possibilities, new food and new accents. Tamales in Austin and real Carolina barbeque in Lexington. You bump into some of the coolest people you’ll ever meet in Boulder, Colorado, and laugh, because you’d never even heard of the place before July. Having a worldview shaped by one small town in north-central West Virginia makes seeing places like Charlotte and Tempe feel about as exciting as seeing Liverpool itself. You hadn’t taken a single picture since that photography class back in high school and you just took that class because you heard you could get high in the dark room. But since last summer you’ve taken at least ten thousand because you don’t want to forget a single second of this.

  And coming into Louisville felt no different. All morning we talked about fried pickles and burgoo and ribs, and how good food could make you feel safe and warm, almost like being in your own bed. Getting to share it with your two best friends—the woman that I loved and my brother—made me wonder what I’d done to deserve it all. The only thing I could think about as we loaded our gear and got ready to roll out was all the stuff I wanted to see and do next time we came back.

  And how that asshole reporter from that shitty little alternative newspaper crapped all over everything bringing that fucking devil thing back up.

  Katy leaned over the steering wheel. “We got problems.”

  The protestors swarmed past the club’s security guys to block the alley. The assorted men, women, and children looked like the kind of people who spent a lot of time oppressing pleasure. The type of people who’d protest a soldier’s funeral because somewhere down the line a burning bush told them to. Mostly women wearing skirts down to their ankles and long hair piled high on top of their heads. Women with faces that never even wore smiles, let alone lipstick.

  They shook their brightly colored hand-painted signs at us.

  DEATH PENALTY FOR WITCHES.

  NOT BLESSED JUST CURSED.

  DEAL WITH THE DEVIL? BURN IN HELL.

  Before Katy could react I reached over and locked her door. “Get ready to drive.”

  But she fixated on a sign that said GOD HATES WITCHES for a long moment. Her lips parted, like she’d try to reason with each and every one of them single-handedly given the chance. “Run them over, you mean?”

  “Jesus, no, Katy. You want to end up in a Kentucky state pen?” Pauly climbed out of the van’s sliding side door and stomped his cigarette into the concrete. He leaned against the passenger-side door and said, “Drive real slow and don’t stop until you hit the street.”

  Four bikers wearing leather and club colors spread themselves across the alley, trying to make themselves look bigger in the van’s headlights. Katy flicked the high beams, forcing their tall shadows onto the brick buildings on the other side of Bardstown Road. The chains they wore shined in the halogen lamps, sparkling like disco balls.

  “Shit, Katy,” I said. “Look.”

  Tattooed across the bikers’ jawlines and shaved heads were vertical rows of small squiggles. They looked like words, disjointed verses in black ink. Warnings, curses, poetry… I couldn’t make them out from this distance. The biker with his arms exposed had the same markings there too—all the way down to his wrist. Like somebody had drawn all over him with a black Sharpie.

  I said, “You think I should call the police?”

  “You can give it a shot,” Pauly said, “Just don’t leave me, okay?”

  I said, “Where you going?”

  “Roll your window up.” He slammed the side door shut and disappeared into the darkness.

  Katy drove her palm into the steering wheel. The horn echoed off both sides of the narrow alley.

  I didn’t even ask if they’d seen the needle tracks covering the women’s hands. Tiny black and blue marks pocked the skin from their elbows to their wrists. Like my dad had on his arms. “Fucking hypocrite junkies,” I said.

  As the van drifted ahead the protestors screamed louder and shook their signs harder. Katy checked the door locks again to make sure.

  Women and children shouted, “God hates witches. You hate God.” They locked arms, forming a wall between us and the road. The chilly Kentucky air let their frosty breath hang over their heads for a moment before being eaten up by the streetlights.

  “Preston…who are these people?” She rolled down her window like she wanted to have some kind of dialog with them. The brakes squealed as she brought the van to a halt.

  I rolled down my window a few inches and yelled, “I don’t know what kind of issues you all are dealing with—”

  One of the bikers stepped out of formation and strode toward me like a cop at a traffic stop. He stood a head taller than me and wore a sleeveless denim vest over a black T-shirt. He ran his hand along his scalp. I half expected the black ink on his head to smudge. The other bikers followed a few steps behind him. They stopped right in front of the van and pounded the hood.

  I jammed my hand under the seat and grabbed the only thing I could find. A long plastic window scraper with a brush along one side. I shook it at the biker and said, “What the fuck do you need?”

  “Just a word, my friend,” he said as he hooked a thumb into his belt. His other hand went to his back pocket. “Step on out of the van so we can talk.”

  “Well, send an email and get the hell out of the way.”

  “Hell is what I’m talking about.” His Southern accent didn’t sound like anything I’d heard in Kentucky. Sounded more like the kids in Austin. He took a small metal rod from his back pocket. “Jesus died for your sins, you know? Least you could do is cut the blasphemy.”

  “Last time I checked, I can believe whatever I want. You got something you want to say to me? That’s your problem, not mine. Now why don’t you move along?” Fear made my voice waver.

  “Step out of the van.” With a snap of his wrist the metal rod became a long metal bar. “Tell you what. Let’s talk about the Lord for a spell and I’ll spare your fingers.”

  “What are you doing, Katy? Just go,” I yelled, waving her ahead. “I’m calling the cops because you got no right, man. No right at all.”

  Katy let the van drift forward as she laid on the horn. A chorus of shouts rang through the protestors. A woman screamed, “We got young ones here!”

  I dug for my phone without ever once taking my eyes off him. But instead of making eye contact, I stared at the scrawl all over his bare skin, over his scalp and neck and cheeks and jaw.

  Off to the left side of the van one of the women screamed so loud I thought she’d been run over. The biker spun to face the street, swinging the retractable baton out in front of him. The mob jerked out of their trance in unison and retreated to Bardstown Road as two, then three, then four of the women shielded their faces with their arms and signs. My first reaction was to push Katy to the floor, but I caught movement in the side view mirror and turned around.

  Pauly emerged from the darkness behind the van grinning like a jack-o’-lantern, working a stream of cold water from a hose like a fireman putting out a house fire. Back and forth again and again, mercilessly dousing their faces and clothes. Pauly’s very own Bible-thumper wet T-shirt contest.

  “Come get some, bitches.” Pauly laughed and held the hose between his legs like he was pissing on them. I hadn’t seen him laugh so much since we left Philly. “This one’s for Pipeline.”

  “Go, Katy. Take your foot off the brake and go.” I leaned over and hit the ho
rn.

  Some of the protestors shielded themselves with their signs, wet poster board crumpled in their hands. The rest dispersed, their unified chants broke down into a loud murmur of personalized curses. The biker with the baton beat on the hood in an attempt to regain his ground, but Katy nosed the van ahead like an old pro. The rest banged on the side and tried rocking it, but we were already out on the street.

  Pauly came around the back of the van and walked beside the sliding door, still dousing the protestors.

  “He’s going to get us killed,” Katy said. “Get him in here.”

  “Katy, watch the road. How’s it going to look if you take out a little kid?”

  “Preston!”

  I turned as the biker swung his baton. It hit the door with a loud crack that left a heavy dent. He’d meant to break my arm or jaw. Definitely not a love tap.

  “You self-righteous prick.” Pauly hit him in the face with a blast from his hose. “I’m a fucking kill you!”

  I said, “C’mon, Pauly. Get in,” as I reached back to open the door behind me. I felt bad for squashing his fun. Like I was the one who had to tell him he’d gotten too old for trick-or-treat or whatever.

  “This might be a good fucking gig after all,” Pauly climbed onto the bench seat and slid the door shut, smiling like he’d just won free Subway for a year. He turned to the crowd and flipped them off with both hands. He waggled his fingers back and forth and said, “Fuck off.”

  Once Katy got out of the alley she hit the gas. Two of the bikers followed on foot, banging the trailer with their batons.

  I turned to watch them fall behind us. The women and kids huddled together, shivering in the chill. One man stood calmly apart from the crowd. A young guy with a full beard and close-cropped blond hair. He wore a fine grey jacket and vest with jeans and a white button-down. He maintained eye contact with me until we got to the end of the block. I’d seen him before, in Morgantown, from a distance. Like a ghost, or a face in the crowd. It wasn’t only the way he looked. The way he dressed and carried himself struck a chord of familiarity with me. He knew me, too.