“You know Pauly will be my brother as long as you love me.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “But you know he’s going to fall in love and get married too, right?”
Emotion made me say things I didn’t want to say. Things I’d been afraid to say. Clichéd things. “Katy, I’m never going to let anything happen to you. You know that, right?”
“I appreciate that, Preston. I really do. But stuff happens and I know you’ll do everything you can.”
“No. No way.” I got a little mad now. “I’m never going to let anything happen to you. I promise.”
We stayed at Cloudland Canyon for as long as we were able to without making the long drive back to Muscle Shoals feel like some sort of overnight epic. After the last two days we didn’t need any drama, and this little side trip suited us perfectly. We walked through the blooming dogwoods and talked about everything but music and I realized I had no idea how badly she needed a day off. As much as I hated to admit it, I needed time off too.
The mountains reminded Katy of West Virginia, except the dogwoods were blooming way too early and there were pines instead of hemlocks and the smell seemed a little off. “Earthier,” she said. “This is rockier than Blackwater Canyon. And there’s only a stream at the bottom instead of a river.”
I smiled knowing I’d accidentally given her the one thing she needed the most. Her homesickness manifested itself as nonstop chatter about her mom and Chloey. Counting down the days until we could sleep in our own bed made us feel like little kids counting down the days until Christmas.
We stood at an overlook for a real long time watching clouds move in from the west and not saying anything. Lightning struck the rolling Alabama hills, and I worried a little about driving back through the rain. Fog rolled up from the stream on the valley floor as the temperature cooled. She shivered, so I took off my coat and wrapped her in it.
She laughed when I tied the ends of the sleeves together like a strait jacket. I kissed her neck then set her up on the railing while she struggled and laughed. She wrapped her legs around me and leaned back over the drop, saying, “Save me, Preston! My hero.”
And I got a little embarrassed because I thought she might have been giving me a hard time about what I’d said in the car this morning, about not ever letting anything happen to her. But when I told her to be quiet she said, “You know how to shut me up.”
I kissed her and she closed her eyes. She slid off the rail. I caught her and lowered her gently to the deck while she kissed me back. Her hand drifted up to my cheek and lingered there. I’ll never forget the way she looked at me when she finally let me go. Like she tried to look past my skin and hair. Like she was testing me with her eyes, trying to figure out what I hid behind my smile. Like my name was a lie, and that I had to tell her the truth before we could go on.
The way she looked at me, a little scared and vulnerable filled me with words I’d never said before. Made me dizzy. And before I knew it my face got warm and I lowered my knee to the cold ground. I’d never planned this moment and worried a little about not having any kind of ring to give her, but I knew that whatever I said would be the right thing. I grabbed her hand and rested my cheek on her palm. “Katy Stefanic,” I said. But before I could say anything else she pulled her hand away and walked toward the car.
Still on my knees, I leaned against the rail and watched the mist rise from the canyon. Lightning split the distance, and I couldn’t hear the thunder.
When I stood, I saw her headed toward the bathroom and wondered how I could’ve fucked that up. It took a lot to convince myself that she hadn’t rejected me. At least it didn’t feel like a rejection. I knew the timing just could’ve been better, and figuring that out on my own without being reactionary or angry made me a little stronger. Meant I’d grown up. I knew she loved me.
The minute I got back to the car the rain fell in buckets. I drove toward the bathroom and got as close to the door as I could so she could stay dry. But she took her good old time coming back out. I remained patient, because in the past being hotheaded never worked out well for me. I turned on the radio—“I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” by Hank Williams. I turned the station and got Skynyrd. “Simple Man.”
After hearing Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn’s “Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man” and Alabama’s “Feels So Right” she appeared in the doorway. She paused, looking a bit relieved that she didn’t have to sprint across the parking lot. When she finally scooted her way over to the car I reached over and opened the door for her. She sat down but didn’t shut the door and I panicked, like she’d try to escape or something. Only after she started talking did I realize she just wanted the interior light on so I could see her face.
“Yes,” she said. “Definitely yes a thousand times. But I don’t want this to be the moment. Not on the road when we’re both worn out and not thinking straight, okay? Take your time and we’ll make it count. But you know it’s ‘yes’ or you wouldn’t have ever asked.” She rested her head on my shoulder and her hand on my thigh.
For the longest time we sat there without moving. Right in front of the bathrooms with the Door Ajar chime dinging into the night. When she finally sat up, she looked at me and said, “Preston, I love you.”
“I know.” I smiled. “I love you, Katy.”
“How much?” she said as she pulled the door shut and clicked her seatbelt.
I circled out of the parking lot.
It took her finally saying, “I’m waiting,” for me to realize she wasn’t being rhetorical.
I laughed and said the first thing that popped into my mind. “More than words.”
“No, Preston. Before we go to bed tonight I want something better than ‘more than words.’” She changed the station. “I want the words.”
So we left the park to return to the small hotel room, our home for the next week. The last room before the last room in Atlanta. The last bed before the last bed before heading back to the sleepy Morgantown apartment we shared. And I drove knowing her words meant something.
Just outside Huntsville, between Curley and Woodley, we stopped for dinner at a large truck diner. Just past the International Harvester hats and books on tape and windshield wash fluid we found a place making catfish sandwiches on white bread, with sides of greens and black-eyed peas and dirty rice. They had brisket on the menu and I had to assume it was for real because I could smell the hickory smoke coming from the back. I would’ve been happy with cornbread and a few sides, but ended up with country fried steak and white gravy with biscuits and green beans with ham hock and sweet potato casserole. More food than I could ever want or need.
Katy smiled as she ate her sweet potato casserole. Eating made her happy, and I totally understood it. Comfort. That feeling that your mom is going to pop around a corner any second now with juice and cookies.
“I owe you a dessert,” I said, wanting to prolong the good feelings. I could’ve spent all night here, with her.
“Yeah. I think it’s time for pecan pie. We’ve been in the South long enough, right? Long enough to build up immunity. Pecan pie and butter pecan ice cream. I wonder if that’s even a thing? If not it should be.” She stood up. “I have to pee. Order it so it’s waiting for me when I get back.”
With that, she sauntered over to the bathroom. Leaving wood-paneled romance for the bright lights of hand driers and liquid soap.
I ordered her pie and played with the silver barrette she’d left on the table. Out of curiosity, I picked up her phone and saw that we hadn’t texted each other since October. Meaning that since last fall, we’d spent almost every waking minute together.
While I waited I thought of the words she’d challenged me to come up with earlier. I tried to think poetically and lyrically. Romantically at first, then more straightforward. In metaphor and scientifically. I approached it as John Lennon would, with a bit of clever wit, then as Paul, all gooey and straightforward. I thought about it in terms of Southern symbolism—warm nights and magnolias a
nd peanuts. I thought about it as a Mountaineer, imagining my love for her in terms of wide mountains and deep, dark forests.
“I love you more than…”
It didn’t matter that I seemed lost before I’d met her, or that my heart only beat half as strong, or my days were all nights until she came into my life.
“I love you like…”
And the funny thing was it didn’t matter. And I knew exactly what I’d say as soon as she sat back down and dug into her pecan pie with butter pecan ice cream. I knew that I loved her like only I could. Like only Preston Black could. A love greater than my love for The Beatles or The Clash. Greater than my love for Pink Floyd’s Dogs or Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. I loved her more than my Tele. More than music, which she knew was like air and blood to me. That my life was just quarter notes and tempos without sound until I met her.
Her ice cream melted as I waited, excited that I finally had something to tell her. I laid her fork and napkin on the paper placemat next to her phone and purse. The texture of the ice cream scoop softened as it melted, ridges turned into soft curves that caught the light and dribbled over the sharp edges of the pie and onto the plate where it pooled.
While I watched, the puddle deepened one drop at a time. Bits of pecan emerged from the ice cream on top of the pie as it melted. Eventually it overflowed, and a tiny drip fell onto the table without making a sound.
I knew she wasn’t coming back.
I interrupted our waitress as she counted out her tips and asked her if she’d seen the girl who’d been sitting with me. When she explained that she hadn’t, I asked if she could go into the bathroom and look. She hesitated and I knew that the seconds mattered. And I dialed 911 before I even heard the bathroom door open back up.
“Brown hair just past her shoulders, blue eyes. Fair skin. Wearing a white short sleeve shirt with a pattern of little navy blue birds and tiny buttons. I mean blue with white birds. I always had a hard time getting the buttons with my clumsy fingers. Um, a few silver bracelets on her left wrist, and a silver band on her right ring finger. And jeans and brown heels. Like, light brown. Brown like a baseball glove. And she had on a little fake brown leather jacket with a green army-looking jacket over top of it because she was cold.”
The dispatcher asked me to clarify.
“My jacket, because of the cold air. And I had toothpicks in the right pocket and a receipt from a Waffle House in Warren, Kentucky.”
The dispatcher asked about medical conditions.
“None. Like, sometimes her blood sugar gets low when she’s hungry and gets a little irritable, but nothing serious.”
And even when I hung up I kept describing her. I wanted to call back and tell them all the things I’d thought of since I’d gotten off the phone.
I’d been in the parking lot and in the women’s restroom and all through the trucks in the lot. Talked to the drivers and attendants and they were all helpful but nobody saw her. I called the cops back and told them I talked to everybody here and they said they were still sending somebody out and I told them to start looking for motorcycles. When the highway patrol showed up I told them everything I told the lady on the phone. I went on and on about the Circuit Riders and Boggs and the attack in the venue. I told them all about Elijah Clay Hicks and how he came to The Met the night I talked to Mikey Kovachick about the show at The Stink, and how Hicks went by ‘Clay’ back then. I sent them pictures of Katy from my phone and let them look through her purse and I told them about the canyon and the rain and the hotel back in Muscle Shoals. When they left they told me I needed to get back to my hotel and sleep and to call Missing Persons in the morning, but I called as soon as the police left and told them everything I told the cops and the 911 dispatcher. But I didn’t leave. Not when a chance remained that she could be here.
Then I called Pauly and he told me I had to call Katy’s mom. But I couldn’t. So I called Jamie to see what he’d say but he didn’t answer.
So I called Katy’s cousin, Ben. He was in Florida and said he’d be here in the morning. He’d call Rachel, he said.
“No, man. I have to do it.”
And when I called her I cried and kept waiting for her to be angry. I told her I did everything I could, and she thanked me. I told her Ben left Florida to help as soon as I called.
Then I posted it to Twitter and Facebook. Ten minutes later I posted it again and begged for RTs and shares.
When I’d finally run out of options, I could only sit there. The waitress brought me coffee until she went home, then another waitress kept bringing me coffee until me and the waitress and the other employees were the only ones left. The new waitress’s shift had begun after it all went down and she wasn’t as sympathetic to my situation.
And the new waitress finally stopped bringing me coffee in the small hours of the night. Between two and four. Around the time I saw Barry Oakley paying for a fill-up and Ronnie Van Zant and Steve Gaines buying six packs. At three June Carter went into the ladies room and I didn’t see her come out either. When old Sylvester Weaver himself sat down at the counter and ordered a few scoops of orange pineapple ice cream to go with his coffee I knew it was time to leave the diner and walk the lot. All the trucks were sleeping. I went back into the truck stop side and wandered through the aisles of maps and Advil. The bright lights were the only things keeping me from breaking down and losing it altogether. Somewhere amongst the pork rinds and sunflower seeds I finally said, “She’s gone.”
I returned to the diner and laid myself down in the booth, but did not sleep. Not with the sound of steel guitars and two-part harmony dripping down from the overhead speakers. I tried pulling my shirt over my face and lying with my head on the table. It felt empty, like a sky with no stars. I didn’t know whether I felt sad, or some new thing I’d never experienced before.
The wooden booth creaked and I knew I wasn’t alone. I jerked myself into a sitting position. Duane Allman sat across from me, sipping iced tea. He shook the sugar dispenser, but the humidity made the sugar clump. When he smiled his sideburns rose like they’d just seen a snake. He said, “What’re you going to do to shake them hounds?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, what did Johnny tell you to do?”
It took a while to catch on, but I knew who he meant even if I didn’t want to say it out loud. “He said to go to the crossroads.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Duane smiled. “You’re going to need some kind of help finding her, baybrah,” before standing and disappearing into the glare of the grocery lights, with his iced tea still in hand.
CHAPTER FOUR
At the end of the hall is the room where you used to live,
And now the door’s wide open.
The voices coming out make no sense to my ears,
I think they just might be echoes.
“Landlord” Music and Lyrics by Preston Black and Katy Stefanic
The knocking went on forever. I heard it first in my dream. I remembered being a little surprised when the noise continued long after I opened my eyes. Too bad I couldn’t keep them open.
“Let me in, man.”
When I tried to get up I rolled onto a large wet spot where the rest of my Woodford Reserve had spilled onto the bed. That I drank Woodford and not Jim Beam somehow made my binge classier, even if the smell made me sick. “Yeah,” I said, my voice little more than a rumble in my throat, “…like it’s the fucking smell making me sick.”
Splinters of dull pain rippled through my skull when I moved. I could only sit on the edge of the bed. I knew if I wanted Pauly to stop knocking I had to make it all the way to the door. “Coming,” I said, but I knew he couldn’t hear.
I slid into a standing position and shuffled over as the wall fell toward me. As soon as I turned the handle Pauly stepped in and ripped the drapes aside and filled the little water glasses with apple juice he picked up at a gas station. “Drink them,” he said, then went into the bathroom and ran the hot water.
I
shook my head and tried to say something to explain what’d happened last night. But the words got caught in my throat like wet leaves in a storm drain.
“No, Preston. Get your ass moving and clean yourself off. C’mon, man. Get your shit together.” He grabbed my wrist and pulled me up from the edge of the bed. “Take your clothes off.”
“I’ll take my clothes off, but I ain’t dancing for you.”
I started to unbutton my shirt and he shoved the apple juice at me and said, “You need to hydrate, man. Preston, I’m not fucking around here. Get your shit together.”
“I know, Pauly. I know.” My head swam in the pool of bourbon that continued to slosh even after I’d stopped. I tripped on my pant leg and stumbled into Pauly. “I’m going to get her back, man. Watch me. I’ll cut my way through the fucking South if I have to. Just sitting along the interstate with a gun shooting every motorcycle I see.”
“You have got to sober the fuck up. I have shit to tell you and I can’t tell you when you’re like this. So drink the fucking juice, get in the fucking shower and get that fucking stink off you. You got all kinds of missed calls and I’m going to take care of those while you get your shit together.”
“Tell me first. What you heard.”
He shook his head.
“Fucking tell me.”
“Drink this and I’ll tell you.” He handed me a glass. “It ain’t the Circuit Riders.”
Pauly sat down in the chair at the little desk.
I took off my shirt and dropped it onto the floor and he went on.
“Heard over the radio the Circuit Riders escaped custody this morning. So they didn’t do it. Boggs spent yesterday in jail.” He poured himself some juice and sipped while he talked. “They suspect the guy Katy mentioned—Elijah Clay Hicks. He has this cult over where Alabama and Georgia meet Tennessee. Like she said, this guy had been preaching since he was two or three. There’s videos of him on YouTube shouting into the microphone, faith healing and all that. He’s the leader of the group. All the protestors at the shows were with him.”
The Revelations of Preston Black (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 3) Page 6