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

by Miller, Jason Jack

  I turned the guitar’s volume down and flipped the switch to the neck pickup. Tearing through the rhythm like I singlehandedly bore responsibility for every heartbeat in the room. Like, the instant I stopped, every one of us would keel over and die. “One more time,” I said.

  Katy built her music brick-by-brick as I maintained that steady driving rhythm. One brick for the assholes after the show last night, and another for the same assholes standing out in front of the club today. One brick for the unkind words they said, another for their signs. A brick for their beliefs and their lies. A brick for all the fans who turned around and went home after seeing their sidewalk sideshow.

  And in one giant swoop my little Katy kicked the wall right over. The crowd ate it up, swaying and dancing with their eyes closed and fists in the air.

  I leaned right into the mic and sang my own version of “Whipping Post” as Katy mirrored my rhythm with the throaty drone of her fiddle. Some of the older fans sang the original lyrics. The one who didn’t know the song watched and danced. For the last line in the verse I thought about the protestors out front and sang, “And there’s the devil, right in there with them, she’s just wearing a new disguise.”

  Katy smiled. This was fucking fun. I pulled my glass Coricidin bottle out of my back pocket and slid it over my ring finger, coaxing my Tele to squeal and scream an accent to Katy’s rhythm throughout the next few lines. I couldn’t play slide to save my life and supported the melody instead of trying to sound anything at all like what Duane Allman played. My noise sounded more like the slide on Lennon’s “Number 9 Dream”—little droning glissandos to maintain the illusion of structure. I smiled and bobbed as I sang the rest of the verse, building a head of steam with each note I played. Jacking up the volume and intensity.

  At the chorus, I stood on my toes and screamed the line, but didn’t finish with my throat. I jammed my Tele’s volume all the way back up and broke out a high note that came from way past my frets, almost past the neck pickup. The crowd kept singing so I ripped into the pentatonics thinking about Duane’s last ride through those shady, winding Georgia hills. Past live oaks dripping with Spanish moss with warm wind in his hair like he knew he’d never see a tomorrow. I let the notes pile up in the amp, held them there for a second like holding a hit from a joint before releasing them into the room in giant bursts that shook dust from the rafters.

  When I opened my eyes to take the next verse I looked for the smiles and nods of approval from the audience. Especially from the older guys, the ones who’d been to enough shows to know we were earning our cash money tonight. The ones who’d seen The Stones or Clapton in the seventies or Van Halen in the eighties. I wanted to make eye contact and let them know that I appreciated their approval. That I needed to make them happy, not the kids. But they weren’t looking at me. None of them. Instead they all watched something in the back of the room.

  In my earpiece Pauly kept saying, “We got trouble. We got trouble.”

  The bright lights of the lobby poured over the heads of the people in the last few rows. The house lights came up, and Katy stopped playing. As much as I didn’t want to, I stopped too. Pauly got off his chair and ran down the aisle to the edge of the stage. I yanked my IEM out of my ear, reached out a hand, and pulled him onto the stage with us.

  Pauly reacted to the sight of the four Circuit Riders pushing through the audience by grabbing the wooden stool I’d set my water bottles and capo on. He leveled that stool out in front of him like some kind of blue-collar lion tamer. It took another minute for my eyes to adjust to the light, but as soon as I saw all that black leather and ink pressing toward us I pulled the cord from my Tele and set it into its stand. Then I pushed Katy behind me and grabbed my mic stand. When the first Circuit Rider got to the stage I could see the words on his face and shaved head. As soon as he put his hand on the laminated wood floor I stomped his fingers with the heel of my boot.

  He pulled his hand away like he’d touched a hot stove. He didn’t make a sound as he shook his fingers out. Pauly swung the stool at him.

  In the time it took to blink, Zebadiah Boggs jumped onto the stage and charged right at me. I lifted the mic stand and jabbed it at him, catching him right in the face with its weighted base. Blood spurted from his nose and he reeled into the crowd, knocking some fans onto their asses. The rest spread, giving him a wide berth.

  Boggs struggled to his feet, shouting, “I want them both!”

  His companion lunged for the stage again, but Pauly kept him back with the wooden stool. His face grew red and he kept shouting, “You fucking pussy. You ain’t nothing.”

  A low whine of feedback built in my amp, and when I backed over to it to shut it off I pulled Katy right along with me. In the aisle a pair of cops squared off against one of the intruders. Being outnumbered at least two-to-one didn’t stop the biker from reaching for his retractable baton. He was short and built like a fifty-gallon barrel. Had to be A.G. Ashby, Boggs’s right-hand man. Both cops drew their weapons.

  The fourth biker came from the cover of the crowd and got one of the cops in a headlock. Seeing the change in momentum, Boggs broke for the stage again. More police officers came in from the lobby, but I knew they wouldn’t get down here in time to do anything. I pulled Katy toward the green room.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Pauly get Boggs’s crony in the neck and shoulder with his wooden stool. Pauly smiled and whooped as the guy hit the hardwood floor. “Stay down, you son of a bitch.”

  The man didn’t even twitch. I swear to God I thought Pauly killed him.

  Boggs watched his guy go down and switched direction. He bore down on Pauly like the poor kid had slept with his mama or something. Blood dripped down Boggs’s face and onto his chest. Both of his eyes had purpled a bit from where I’d hit him. I said, “Katy, stay right here,” and went back onto the stage.

  Pauly hit Boggs once in the jaw with the stool and retreated a few steps, and Boggs moved forward totally unfazed. Boggs took a swing and Pauly ducked, then ran at him with his head down, pushing Boggs right to me. I grabbed Katy’s mic stand and pulled it tight around Boggs’s neck.

  He fell backward, landing on me, knocking the wind out of me. Pauly kicked him a few times. Boggs was wiry, the muscles in his arms felt like steel cables. He twisted and bucked but I knew if I let go of the mic stand, or even thought of it, I’d wake up in a hospital.

  Katy yelled my name and I looked for her to try to tell her I felt fine, but couldn’t angle my head back far enough. By then a few guys from the audience had joined us on stage and were doing their best to help Pauly and me out. They pulled Boggs off me and held him to the ground.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I got to my knees and tried to get my head straight. Pauly helped me to my feet. But my hands shook and my knees wobbled, so I stood there for a second, using the mic stand for support. As soon as I got my breath I lifted it, held it right over the shiny part of Boggs’s skull. Right over Romans 1:18, “They are full of every type of evil, greed and wickedness, full of jealousy, murder, discord, deceit and malice…”

  I could barely keep my grip. The rage made me see spots. “Who are you to disrupt our little gig, man? We didn’t do a thing to you.”

  “Sir,” a voice behind me said. “Please put the weapon down.”

  I didn’t respond, because I didn’t consider the mic stand to be a weapon. A police officer stepped in front of me and twisted it right out of my hands. “Please step away.”

  Pauly put his arm around me and led me away from Boggs. I turned to find Katy and held her. She shook her head. I gave her a little kiss. The fans that had jumped onstage to help me and Pauly lingered around us protectively.

  I whispered, “This is going to blow up all over YouTube and Twitter.”

  More cops came through the front of the house and from the fire exits. They swept through the room, down the aisles, full of purpose. Beams from their flashlights went row-by-row looking for stragglers, but from what I
had seen, Boggs’s guys weren’t the type to hide. Having said that, it startled me just a bit when a pair of police officers came in through the stage door from the alley behind the club.

  One of them said, “Who does the rental van belong to?”

  Me and Katy and Pauly all raised our hands.

  “Well, one of you is going to have to step outside with me.”

  It took a while to get everything sorted out. Most of the remaining audience lurked near the stage while the police took statements. Some sat in the first few rows, yawning, sleeping until they had to talk to the authorities. In the process Katy and me learned how stalking was a Class A Misdemeanor in Tennessee, unless the act occurred within seven years of a prior conviction, in which case it was a Class E Felony. The officer said that it might even turn out to be aggravated stalking, and warned us that anybody charged with stalking or aggravated stalking would be eligible to post bail and be released until the trial.

  None of that made Katy very happy, even though the officer countered by saying any threat against an occupied building could ultimately be considered terrorism, but she didn’t hear anything after he’d said ‘released until the trial.’

  While all this went down, Pauly tried to get a representative from the rental agency to come out and help deal with the damage to the van and trailer. During the ruckus somebody slashed the tires and smashed the windows and the agency wanted to wait until morning to sort it out. Pauly argued tenaciously and finally arranged for a rental car so me and Katy could head down to Alabama while he sorted out the stuff with the van before joining us in a day or two. A few fans helped us load as much as we could into the rental. Amps, instrument cases, and mic stands so we could record, suitcases, and some of the merch. I appreciated everything Pauly had done to help so far and didn’t want to stick him with having to load everything back into the trailer by himself.

  The transition left us with a quiet moment. I pulled Katy into a dark hallway backstage. The night had taken its toll on her. When I held her she slumped into me, like she could barely muster the energy to remain standing.

  “Hey,” I said, pulling her head to my shoulder, where I soaked in the scent of her Chanel Mademoiselle. “You’re a star, right? I’m not talking about what you do on stage. I’m talking about what you do for me. You are the Sun. You give me the energy I need to live.”

  “When does a star rest?” I couldn’t see her face in the dark. I could only feel her warm breath on my cheek. “It doesn’t, Pres. It either fades out or explodes. There’s no in-between.”

  “Well, if this isn’t fun for you we’ll make it fun. Or give it up.”

  “Do I get to choose?”

  “We get to try.” I pulled her back toward the dimly lit stage.

  The police had left. The thirty or forty people still hanging around drifted toward the lobby or rested across rows of seats. Trying to make the best of a bad situation, I called them back down and told them to get comfortable, figuring we could thank them with a song or two. Most plopped down along the edge of the stage with their feet dangling down, so Katy and I placed ourselves on a pair of stools and faced the stage.

  We kicked-off with a cover we hadn’t touched since last spring—“(Nice Dream).” Hearing Katy singing Radiohead reminded me of being in Morgantown with her, and how those days ended up being some of the most important in my whole life. We followed up with “(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding” and “In My Life.”

  We joked with the audience and told a few stories. I had Pauly tell them about how Stu hazed Delt pledges despite the fact he wasn’t even a student, let alone a frat brother. I talked a little bit about my trip down to the Currence’s farm with Jamie and then going down to Elkins with Katy and Jamie later that summer and they wanted to know all about Jamie. Katy gave me a little look like I’d opened up too much so I said Jamie was a real good friend and left it at that.

  And I could see what Katy had meant, because then somebody asked about the devil and the song and if we’d play it. I remembered what the little old lady said about “The Sad Ballad of Preston Black” the morning I met Jamie. “That song hain’t of no account and you can honor my hospitality by not asking no more about it.”

  Ignoring the request, we played them our version of Arcade Fire’s “Suburban War” and finished the night with an abbreviated version of our set list. Harmonizing with Katy on an a cappella “If I Fell” as an encore became my personal highlight. We always practiced it in the car—Katy doing the Paul part and me doing the John part—but never sang it in public. The song had become our little secret, our way of telling each other that everything would be fine. And after tonight, we all needed a little assurance.

  Nobody wanted to leave. After so much chaos we all felt safe in our little nest. But we’d played right up to the curfew and couldn’t afford a fine. So we signed posters and took a few pictures as a way of thanking everybody and saying our goodbyes. One of the tapers recorded the whole thing, from beginning to end, and mentioned the possibility of making the recording available commercially. He asked if I wanted him to sit on it for a while and I told him to put it out there.

  Saying goodbye to Pauly hurt the most. The last few weeks really changed things between us. Like, I felt like I really had a brother again. And over the last few days our relationship had been reinvented altogether. He’d become the friend I’d always wanted him to be. We dropped him off at his hotel, helped him with his bags, and left Nashville on a bit of a high. Like we’d squeaked by with a win after all was said and done.

  But on the drive to Muscle Shoals a sense of defeat finally settled in. The first blow came when I saw a billboard that said IMAGINE NO RELIGION? SO DID HE.

  “Look at that,” I said, thinking it meant everything would be okay.

  “That’s Stalin,” Katy replied. The tone of her voice confused me. She should’ve been more excited. “The man on the billboard is Joseph Stalin.”

  The name rang a bell, but I only knew that he was a historical figure.

  “Depending on who’s counting, he killed somewhere between five and fifty-five million people. It’s not what you think, Preston.” She shook her head. “I always wanted to believe. Now I’m tired of trying.”

  “I’m sorry.” I cracked my window and let fresh air in. “I thought our trip to Alabama would be a little more like Smokey and the Bandit. So far it’s been more like Children of the Corn.”

  With a deep breath, she forced a change of demeanor. She cheered herself right up and went to work on cheering me up too. “And after the Atlanta show when we’re on our way home you won’t be able to stop talking about it.” She grabbed my hand and placed it on her lap.

  I didn’t want her to sleep and kept talking as a way to keep her awake, but eventually she stopped responding. The interstate felt lonely enough, so far from lights and anybody I knew. She happened to be my only friend at the moment.

  When I saw a billboard that said WHOREMONGERS AND ALL LIARS SHALL HAVE THEIR PART IN THE LAKE OF FIRE. REVELATION: 2:18 I knew we’d never beat these people. Not when they had God on their side.

  I could handle the billboards and the protestors. They were real because other people had seen them too. Reality never kept me up at night.

  But everything changed at a little gas station just over the Alabama line. My head had grown heavier and I needed Mountain Dew so I didn’t run us into a ditch before we got to the hotel. I filled the tank. The bright fluorescent lights only called attention to the fact that nobody else was around. Jerry Reed’s “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot” trickled out of the tinny speakers above the gas pumps. Moths and gnats circled endlessly and Katy never once stirred, so I locked up the car and walked through the lonely parking lot.

  I started peeing at the same time Little Feat’s “Oh, Atlanta” ended. I washed my face, went out to stare at the beef jerky and Zapp’s potato chips before deciding I didn’t need the heartburn and bought my Mountain Dew. While paying, I watche
d Katy. And on the way back to the car I heard something that stopped me dead in my tracks. I really, really had to listen to make sure I heard what I thought I heard.

  My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.

  Young Johnny Cash.

  My hands shook. “Katy!”

  Not Rick Rubin’s version of Johnny Cash.

  I heard Sam Phillips’s Johnny Cash.

  “Katy!” I yelled. I needed her to hear it too.

  I spun, trying to get a fix on a speaker.

  Luther Perkins’s Tele picked out a twangy run while Johnny sang, “…got them hellhounds on his trail. Preston Black got them hellhounds on his trail…”

  “Katy!” I threw my pop at the car. It hit the window with a thud and bounced onto the concrete. She didn’t move.

  As I stepped on the trashcan next to the closest pump, I heard, “If you want to shake them hounds off your tail, the first stop’s the crossroads, the second stop’s hell. Preston Black got them hellhounds on his trail.”

  I went to the car and banged the hood. “Hey, get up.”

  I pulled my keys out, opened the driver’s side door and gave Katy a shake. “You have to hear this. Get up.”

  When I heard Johnny’s voice again I yelled one last time. “Katy!”

  “What?” She stretched, but didn’t open her eyes.

  “Listen.” I climbed onto the hood, balancing myself on my tiptoes to get my ears closer to the speakers, yet somehow I still couldn’t hear. I stepped over the windshield and onto the roof.

  “Preston! Get down.”

  “Quiet.”

  I craned my ear as high as I could in time to catch Johnny sing the last verse. “Preston Black, you got to be born again. Preston Black you got to be born again. Let the water wash your sins away, before you let the devil have his say, Preston Black, it’s time to be born again.”

  The passenger side door opened. Katy stood and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She looked up at me, squinted at the bright lights, and said, “What is wrong with you, boy?”