“You think he did it?”
“That’s who the cops are looking at according to the chatter I heard over the radio. But if the cops get a warrant and show up they’re never going to find anything. I guess this group’s property holdings are pretty extensive. They’re like gypsies. They have all these camps and stuff. Old farms. People let them live on their property. Going to take a miracle to find her. Hicks got word out that you’re a false prophet because you claim to have freed yourself from the devil’s grasp. They see the people who show up at your shows as your flock.”
“What about Katy?”
“They never said anything about her. But they stone adulterers. What do you think they’re going to do to a supposed witch? The guy I got most of this from has a sister in-law who had a third cousin disappear with these people a few years back. His wife is always checking message boards for her whereabouts. That’s how he knew so much. He recognized your name as soon as I said it.”
“Do you know where he lives? Like, if he’s close could that be a place to start looking?”
“He’s from South Carolina. Sorry, bro.”
I let my pants fall to the floor and kicked them onto my shirt. “This is what I meant by hellhounds, Pauly. This bad luck that’s never going to leave me be. Just like my fucking shadow—following me around forever.”
“You need to shake this stupid devil supernatural bullshit. I’m tired of you using all this as a source of your woes.”
I finished my last glass of apple juice. “You have to admit, shit is fucked-up despite all the good stuff’s been happening. Like every dollar I earn costs me a pint of blood. You can say what you want, but my life wasn’t like this before Dani and the record. Don’t tell me it was, like that shit the other night about being heckled by fans. You know that for as bad as things got they never got this bad. Black cats and broken mirrors bad.”
I talked as I looked for more juice to drink. “Katy’s gone like I drug her into all this blackness with me. Like she’s paying a price now too. We would’ve been better off winning the lottery because it’s all luck anyway. It’d be some other band on that stage if it wasn’t us. I’m stupid to think hard work had anything to do with it. Stupid to think I’d change as a person just because more people knew my name. Stupid to think all the things that made me a shitty person before would go away once I got a record out there.”
“Get all this out of your system now. A little purge every now and then is good for the soul. When you get out of the shower your head’s going to hurt, but it had better be in a healthier place. We got work to do.”
I stepped into the bathroom and shut the door. Steam filled the space and coated the mirror and window. It filled my lungs and throat, which had grown a little scratchy from all the booze. When I started to sweat I could smell the bourbon coming out of my pores. The hot water turned my skin pink. I folded my arms against the cold tile and rested my head on them.
Johnny Cash said I had to let the water wash my sins away, but so far it’d only made me wet. But I continued to let it run over me and down the drain for a long time. Pulling me out of the alcoholic haze that got me through the rest of last night. I kept telling myself that Katy wasn’t gone. That I’d find her. I said it so many times that it ran through my mind like a chord long after it had been struck.
I wanted to punch the wall but didn’t need a broken wrist.
I wanted to hang my head and continue feeling bad for myself, but Pauly was right. We had work to do. I shut the water off, stepped onto the cold tile.
Pauly was talking to somebody, so I crept out of the bathroom cautiously.
“You remember to wash both your faces?” Katy’s cousin, Ben Collins, put his hand on my neck and pulled me toward him until our foreheads touched. His hair was still Army short but he’d been letting his beard grow. “We’ll get her, Pres. Pauly’s been on the phone since I got here. And I’m already making calls. Got a buddy in the Bureau. We’re all over this shit.”
“Sorry for not being out here to meet you and introduce you guys.” Seeing Ben made me really happy. He’d shed a lot of the anger he usually carried with him, which meant the PTSD meds from the VA were working. His change in demeanor would’ve made Katy really happy.
“You mean my brother from another mother? It’s all good. Right now you don’t know whether to shit or go blind. At least Pauly wasn’t naked as a jay bird when I met him.”
I wrapped a towel around my waist and stepped into the room. The air conditioning gave me an immediate chill. As I got dry clothes out of my suitcase I noticed all Katy’s things sitting there exactly as they were when we left for breakfast yesterday morning.
“Over here, Pres,” Pauly said, snapping me out of the moment. “We’ve been on the phone with Missing Persons and we put that shit all over Facebook and Twitter.
Ellie at the label is going to contact the media down here and over in Atlanta, and back in Pittsburgh, D.C. and Charleston. Ben’s going to meet with his guy from the FBI and see if ATF can get involved and I’m going to talk to lawyers and see if we can start the process of getting some kind of warrant for those religious fucks and their little freak show so we can move as soon as we find them. Got three numbers already, one of these suits had dealings with the church before. Civil lawsuit for a lady who’d escaped. Said they’d brainwashed her and everything.”
So I asked again, “What can I do?”
“You’re a little too sorry to work right now. Rest up.” Ben had been trying to plug his laptop in, but couldn’t get his arm behind the desk. His face grew redder. In a fit of anger he jerked the desk away from the wall, spilling deodorant and phone chargers and cups and Katy’s makeup all over the place. He tried to regain his composure as his computer booted. “Just keep your head. Let us do what we can. If we can’t get anywhere today legally we’re going to find this place and go up ourselves tomorrow.”
When I woke up Pauly and Ben were gone. Pauly’d taken the keys to my rental and I searched all over for the key to the van. But they didn’t even leave me a room key. I picked up my phone and called Pauly. As it rang I saw the note he left. Meeting with lawyer in Huntsville. Back by 5. The call went to voicemail anyway.
I shook with rage and kept telling myself to stop with the pointless anger. No need to go through all that again. The time for being mad had passed. I needed to act. Sitting around waiting for the phone to ring wasn’t going to get Katy back. I needed to know that even after we covered the entire planet there was always going to be one more place left for me to look, one more plan of action to take.
Maybe he had good intentions, leaving me here like this. But he’d made a mistake by not including me. I had to be involved, doing something instead of sitting on my hands. My skill set was limited, and I could only think of one thing I could do that they couldn’t.
When Katy disappeared, the hellhounds became as real as radio. I tried to remember what Johnny Cash told me that night at the gas station. I closed my eyes but the words weren’t coming. I fought to push all the other songs and emotions away. I had to stop thinking about Katy. After a long moment it came to me.
First stop’s the crossroads, the second stop’s hell. I got dressed, even if I didn’t know where to start looking.
“Have to see what Robert Johnson saw.”
Zeppelin and the Stones had left me some pretty good clues. They didn’t exactly mark the spot with a big red X, but they got me close. I was headed to Mississippi. Rosedale or Clarksdale. Somewhere near Highway 49. I pulled my boots on and put on my jacket and dropped my phone in one pocket and dropped Katy’s into the other. Right before I left I wrote a note for Pauly on the back of the note he left me. Mississippi. Back tomorrow.
In the hotel lobby I found Clarksdale on a map easy enough. But there were a hundred possible crossroads along Highway 49. I wanted to ask the girl at the desk if she knew anything about this, but she was studying psychology out of a book that contained more highlighted pink squiggles than
words. I asked if I could take the map and she said, “Yup.”
In the shelter of the carport I studied it. Looking for clues. A warm breeze made it difficult to hold the map still.
Another Zeppelin tune? “No.”
Johnny Cash? Allmans? Beatles? “No.”
Then I saw it on the map right outside Clarksdale.
“Highway 61.” Running into Highway 49, plain as day. “Dylan.”
Shoving the map into my pocket, I ran across the parking lot and slowly picked my way across the four-lane divided highway. I hopped a Jersey barrier while dodging cars, then ran through a Krystal parking lot and down an embankment, over old shopping buggies, rusted trash cans and broken bottles to a set of railroad tracks. A muddy wind blew from the west, bringing dense, moist air with it, like a breath from the Mississippi itself. I turned toward the setting sun and oncoming rain and started walking. Gravel cobbles and creosote-soaked rail ties made the going slow. Then an eastbound train rounded the bend and I stepped off to the side to wait while its whistle reminded me I wasn’t supposed to be here. I ignored it, pulled my collar up, and kept going.
Ten minutes later another eastbound train came and I wondered if I’d been following the wrong set of tracks and took a moment to get my head together. All around me, the city gave way to an old industrial park. The rotting steel buildings reminded me of home, which I took as a positive sign. With the red dog and coal ash crunching beneath my feet and my eyes closed, it felt just like walking along the tracks after school, hoping somebody would save me before I actually had to set foot in the front door. Jeff for a guitar lesson. Therese for a quick walk around the baseball fields, which meant making out and a hand job usually. Stu with a J and an idea for a new song.
The old steel skeletons rattled in the wind, loose metal banged against unseen support railings, bird cries echoed through their wasted frames. And as soon as I got used to seeing them, they were gone, devoured by suburban neighborhoods and middle schools. Not exactly the kind of place to begin an adventure. Even the pre-fab plastic churches lacked the magical feelings the big brick churches back home radiated.
Another eastbound train cleared me off the tracks, activating a new wave of doubt. I started accepting the idea that I’d based this whole plan on the assumption that I wasn’t kidding myself. That I had been operating under the influence of total sanity for the last few days. As far as I could tell, nobody ever considered me totally sane after everything that happened last year. The sky grew darker and I started to think maybe I wasn’t even fit to be with a woman like her.
I knew my mood would make it easier for me to make dangerous decisions. I wasn’t John Lennon or Joe Strummer. I was Preston-fucking-Black and sometimes I thought dumb thoughts. There were a hundred million people out there who could tell you that I could’ve done a lot better than ask Robert Johnson for help getting my girl back.
I wasn’t one of them.
With the city a few miles behind me the houses all started to look the same. Like the same cookie cutter had been used row after row. The rails split from two to four, to eight lines and behind me the steady chug of a locomotive grew. I stepped over the tracks, trying to anticipate which ones this train would take. Red lights mounted on a scaffold high above cast a hellish glow onto me. Puffs of steam from air brakes always came from the wrong direction and I reminded myself that the hotel only sat a few miles away. I kept telling myself that I was wrong, and that I just made the wrong decision because I wasn’t quite ready to lead yet. Being a follower was my best bet. And if I just called Ben I could sleep back at the hotel and let them work on getting Katy back. I’d crossed through the gates of misunderstanding a long time ago—before the Currence farm, before kicking the shit out of my old man in front of the Evansdale Towers, before the record.
And nobody believed any of that either.
As I kicked a hunk of limestone along the tracks, a westbound train, the first of the night, came into the rail yard. It slowed and rested on the tracks ahead, breathing heavily like a napping bulldog. Guys with flashlights inspected the undercarriage, and as soon as they passed I knew I could board one of the empties. The smell reminded me of the county fair and the grease they used for the rides. The double Ferris wheel spinning through the night, glowing like a fortress made of stars. When you’re little, that’s the pinnacle. Your mom watches you on the carousel but you’re watching the double Ferris wheel. Then you have a strip of tickets to share with your brother and you’re talking him out of the bumper cars and into the Round-Up. Then you get a girlfriend and you’re on the double Ferris wheel trying to spit on people or harass the flunkies pulling the levers. You start going to the fair to score weed or girls. To drink in the parking lot. Then it’s your band on the small stage playing Stone Temple Pilots wondering how you get back onto the carousel.
And that’s why I hopped on the fucking train. Not because I thought Ben or Pauly were right. But because I knew I was. For once, I knew my plan was the plan. She was my girl, the only girl I ever truly loved and I’d bleed all over Alabama and Mississippi to get her back.
The engine released a sharp whistle blast and drifted forward. The cars inched ahead until each one caught the next car’s connection with a bang. Bang after bang until the last one, faintly banging at the end of the line. I knew we’d be moving.
The sky turned green with the eastbound storm. Lightning flashed at the extreme edge of flat cotton fields. The sky never looked blue or black—it was always green with scattered bits of slate floating down like broken butterfly wings. The color of an old bruise. When lightning flashed, black clouds jumped out of the sky and returned just as fast. Thunder followed, rattling the cars, shaking the very rails themselves. The sky didn’t look like the kind of sky that forgave.
It looked like the kind of sky that pushed rivers into basements. The kind of sky that carried away cars and mothers coming home from work. The kind of sky that gave newscasters something to talk about the next day when they rolled through your neighborhood in their news vans, talking about how this used to be the school and that was the church. My ears popped as the pressure dropped. All across the flat countryside dogs barked at the sky. The cars bucked and jumped along the tracks.
I didn’t see any lights from houses or cars or grocery stores or hotels. Just the light from the sky, the green light that let me see a thousand miles before fading back into the clouds. And I couldn’t compose songs or apologies or even think of what I’d say if I ever saw Katy again because the lightning stole my words from my throat. I knew this was one of those times to sit and watch and stay out of the way.
When the rain came it didn’t come from the sky. It came from across the fields in horizontal bands that got me wet from the bottom up. I shivered in the green light and decided I’d made a mistake. That I wanted off the train and I’d call Pauly to come pick me up as soon as I figured out the name of the town I ended up in. That I’d gotten in over my head again. That all my words about being sad and mopey were just words that I couldn’t control as much as I controlled breathing or my heartbeat.
And I supposed that was why I was doing this. Knowing she was gone left me with few options. I had to go to Mississippi. I knew Johnny Cash wouldn’t steer me wrong.
Under flashes of white and green light the landscape opened up into vast muddy cotton fields waiting to be planted. Shotgun shacks shook in the violent wind. The flooded lowlands reflected the white and green lightshow like an old black and white TV shut off before going to bed. That was how I knew I was in Mississippi, a landscape described by Led Zeppelin and Johnny Cash and Elvis. Like, my bones knew even if my head didn’t. I couldn’t think of a better place, or better night, to seek the help from another plane. The way I felt on that train, alone, like no part of me touched any other living thing was a feeling I carried until I met Katy—the one voice out of thousands that connected with me. And when I responded, she acknowledged.
Last summer, while her shoulder healed after that shit
with the Lewises, she led me into the mountains above her pap’s house with a blanket and a packed lunch.
We took our time strolling through ferns that smelled like peaches and fields where butterflies were too fat and lazy to even fly away when we passed by. Clumps of trees broke up the wide meadows. The wind blew warm air from the valleys on the other side. I spent a lot of time worrying we’d get lost, but never said anything because I trusted Katy. Tree trunks got thicker and farther apart. The little plants that grew between them slowly disappeared into deep beds of pine needles and dry leaves. The limbs were so dense I thought we’d need a flashlight to get back. And just when I felt like I needed to say something the sunlight streamed in on golden ribbons, and we were standing on a ledge of white rocks looking over hundreds of square miles.
When the sun set I said we needed to get home before it got dark and she said we weren’t going back. That the show hadn’t started. And when the first stars appeared I got scared. Venus cut through the darkness. I kept hearing animal noises from the trees behind us. But her reassuring demeanor calmed me. And I knew I could never be scared or lonely with her. I knew she’d do everything in her power to get me through.
Tonight I was scared. I had to get myself through to get her back.
The train slowed and I got off the first time I saw streetlights. I sloshed across the muddy fields toward a truck stop. My Docs were covered in heavy clay but the rain fell so hard it barely mattered. I took shelter beneath the awning that covered the gas pumps and let the water drip off me. An old man filled up his tank and I asked if Lula was nearby. He took off his Mississippi State Bulldogs cap, and in a slow voice, said it took about an hour to get there. I asked if he had plans to head out that way and he shook his head.
And I asked every person that came through. An hour wasted on truck drivers and young married couples trying to wrangle their kids into car seats. I finally went inside and asked the attendant if he knew anybody who could help me. But he said he could help customers only, so I bought some boiled peanuts and he said he didn’t know anybody heading out that way.
The Revelations of Preston Black (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 3) Page 7