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

by Miller, Jason Jack

  Now angry, I went back outside. He didn’t realize that Katy could die and that I didn’t have time to fuck around.

  An old maroon Ford Taurus driven by a pair of teenage boys pulled in next. The driver had on a Master of Puppets T-shirt. The other had on a red flannel and an Atlanta Braves cap. Pantera blasted out of their car speakers. I went over and said, “You guys think you can give me a lift?”

  The one in the Braves cap spit a brown stream of snuff spit into a Mountain Dew bottle and said, “No, man. Give yourself a lift.”

  Before his partner could get a word in, I said, “I’ll fill up your tank and buy you booze.”

  They didn’t even have to discuss it.

  And that was how I made my way from that gas station in Oxford to the intersection of Highway 49 and Highway 61 near the Barbee Cemetery, just outside Lula.

  Ray and Vance were more than content to wait in the car once they found out what I meant to get into. Besides, they had booze now. They backed onto a gravel road that ended a few yards into a fallow field and shut out their headlights. To make sure they didn’t split I took the keys and told them to start drinking. Didn’t make me much of a role model, but they weren’t exactly brain surgeon candidates and I figured they knew their way around a case of Coors Light. Way I saw it I was keeping an eye on them. Keeping them out of trouble. Or my version of trouble. The air had warmed since the rain stopped so I left my jacket in the car. As soon as I shut the car door and started walking, Ray yelled, “Stay away from the burial mound.”

  I could almost hear the blues floating across these old fields. Sounded like pain and dying and suffering to me. But I didn’t know what to do at this point. I had no ritual, no routine and no idea of what was supposed to happen, so I waited in the center of the crossroads. The only light came from the traffic signals where Highway 61 met Highway 49, but there were no cars and trucks coming and going this time of night. The signals changed from green to yellow to red despite the lack of traffic, throwing faint shadows through the fields. Painting me in red and green, over and over again. In a way, each red light felt like a sunset, each green like another thunderstorm, and each yellow like a new day to suffer through, because I felt that way without Katy at my side. Every time the light changed it felt like another twenty-four hours had passed since I’d let her down. Since nothing seemed to be happening, I walked north a ways, shuffling my feet, venturing farther into the darkness. Off in the fields the ground moved. I could hear it. A shhh, like a finger to lips. I continued to pace as the light went from green to yellow to red.

  Fingers of mist rose from the flooded fields and warm asphalt. Something halfway between steam and fog. The Barbee Cemetery sat on a small rise, one of the only ones around for as far as I could see, which made it feel kind of unnatural. Like a burial mound. Like the one Ray said to stay away from. Tall tombstones stuck out like broken teeth and one old tree grew behind a wrought iron sign. A small dead tree waited a little farther up the hill. Faded Confederate flags popped out of the ground here and there and all around orbs of faint yellow light rose from the swamp. Not fireflies—this light shone much duller, more like the impression of light than anything else. The orbs hung in the air like day-old balloons. I’d never seen foxfire before.

  I heard music and turned to look for the car and the crossroads. Both waited nearly a half-mile back. Too far to be the source of the guitar I heard. Peepers called from new puddles. Far away lightning arched across the green sky, turning black clouds white then a lingering gray. It reflected off the vast pools that formed in the low fields. Like the lights that flash in your head when you get punched. There was never any thunder anymore, making the storm seem real far away. But it felt close. Close enough to keep me away from trees and that wrought iron. Close enough that I could smell ozone.

  The peepers peeped so loud I couldn’t focus on much else. I turned to make sure I had the traffic signal in my sight. “Green means go.”

  My feet sank into the wet turf as I walked. It didn’t feel like earth beneath the roots because it took a long time springing back after I lifted my foot. Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement. A warm breeze tried to blow the weeds at the edge of the mud, but the heavy wind contained more water than air. Toads crawled through the long grass to escape the flood. I went to the top of the hill to escape them.

  Blue and green bottles of all shapes and sizes had been jammed over the limbs of the small dead tree at all kinds of angles. Whiskey bottles and beer bottles and pill bottles reflected the distant traffic lights like sad little galaxies. The yellow lights rising from the swamp circled individual bottles for a second, like water around a drain, before rising into the night.

  Out in the forest I heard a twang, a scratchy whine, an untuned guitar spitting out talkin’ blues. I followed the sounds over an old wrought iron fence, jagged like broken glass, along a raised ridge to an old barn. Like the road that had been built to always sit above the flood. In the night’s half-light I saw part of the barn’s roof had collapsed. At the far end of a scrubby field a row of white columns held up nothing. Behind them sat the remnants of an old mansion. Dead kudzu covered everything.

  A voice in the dark said, “Surprise, surprise.”

  My knees buckled and I tripped backward. I heard movement. Steps working their way toward me.

  “Another guitar player looking for Robert Johnson’s ghost.”

  My heart sped up like when I tasted Jack Daniels for the first time. I steadied myself on the fence.

  “If that ain’t the most unoriginal thing I ever seen.”

  A man walked out of the trees carrying an old Gibson arch-top by its neck. He wore a faded denim jacket and a Houston Astros ball cap. One with the old logo, like the one Nolan Ryan wore back in the day. He smelled like cologne from a five-and dime. I had to say something to convince myself I wasn’t terrified, but could only come up with, “You him?”

  “You him?” he said, mocking me. He had a long and narrow face, not like any pic of Robert Johnson I ever saw. “You must not know shit. Don’t even matter which him you’re referring to. Ask another stupid-ass question and see what kind of fool answer you get.”

  “Sorry, man. Just thought…” I tried to shrink back into the darkness. Tried to disappear completely.

  “There’s your problem—you just thought. I know why you’re here, though. You got woes, right? Yeah, I’m sure times is real hard for y’all. God bless you, son. I didn’t know.”

  “Man…” His tone left me a little too stunned to reply. I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand. “I hoped we could talk.”

  “We all got them hard times right? Some of us even got it so bad we step on down to the crossroads to see if Old Scratch is really going to show up and make everything better for a little song and dance. I know all about it. That’s why I’m here.” He shook his head and licked his lower lip as he stared into the fields. I almost thought he’d finished, but he said, “He stole that story from me, you know. Look it up. Robert Johnson don’t know shit about no crossroads hoodoo. Far as I know, Robert Johnson wouldn’t know that li’l ole funny boy from a bullfrog.”

  “Well, how could I know?” I crossed my arms and took a step back. “I’m real sorry.”

  “All everybody ever talks about is Robert Johnson.” He stabbed the air with his finger when he talked. “But I’m the only one you see hanging ’round here tonight. Yes sir, Tommy Johnson’s here for all eternity because Tommy Johnson did the dirt. Meanwhile old Robert Johnson gets to walk away with all them stories about him.”

  “Well, Robert died at twenty-seven, right?” I said, trying to throw a little optimism on the subject. “Poisoned, or something?”

  “Don’t matter. Everlasting life wasn’t part of the deal, no sir. Not for this son of man anyhow. But then again, that li’l ole funny boy ain’t one to play fair.”

  “I said I was sorry, man.” This felt like one of those moments when I had an opportunity to be proactive as long as I stayed sm
art about it and kept control of the conversation’s tone. For the most part trying to change fate hadn’t worked out well for me so far. Pauly ended up with a limp and Stu ended up in a grave because I figured nobody’d notice me trying to manipulate the future. But I knew of no cosmic law written anywhere saying I couldn’t try again. After all, I survived. Adopting a more forceful voice, I said, “I’m not here because my car won’t start. My girl disappeared last night. Some fucking Bible-thumpers nabbed her at a truck stop and I know I don’t have a lot of time to get her back. Like, I know these first few days are crucial.”

  My attitude pulled him out of his faraway gaze.

  “Ooh. So you do got it bad, then? How you know she didn’t up and leave you?” he said without sarcasm. He set his guitar on his knee and started to pick. “Coming home at midnight and your girl’s home at one. Yeah, you creepin’ in at midnight, and you’re girl’s home at one. You getting ready for some loving, and your girl, she just got done.”

  “Look—”

  He cut me off, practically spitting out the words he said, “You want to know about chains? Then you got to be chained. You got to feel that cold steel cut into your wrists and you got to know how hope looks when it’s nothing but a tiny little light in the very pit of your ever-loving soul. You want to sing about hounds? Then you got to know how it feels when them hounds are breathing down your neck, and how a hound’d rather die than beg off a trail. Ain’t a man on earth can call them dogs off.”

  I turned and clenched a fist. Didn’t know what else to do with my anger.

  Resting his guitar on his toe, he said, “You going to sing about loss? You got to lose something.”

  “Lose something?” I exploded. “I lost everything.”

  He maintained his demeanor, which frustrated me even more. “No. You ain’t never had nothing. No mama. No family. Big difference between losing and never had. If you ain’t never had to pick a sack of cotton then you ain’t ever going to know how many pounds it takes to keep food in your baby brother’s belly. You may have been to hell and back, but you ain’t been to hell and done stayed put there. Trust me, you sit down there long enough, hurting and thinking on all those woes, thinking about the deal you made with that li’l ole funny boy, then you come back knowing all about them blues.”

  I tried to find the whites of his eyes, but he kept them shut. I wanted to see if he was taking a piss at my expense or if he meant it. “How the fuck do you know what I got going on with me?”

  “I don’t know shit. But this son of a man knows the blues. It’s like a spell on you and your heart hurts and your head spins like a whirlybird falling from a tree.” He put his hand on my shoulder. A peace offering. “I know if you don’t do something about it, you going to fall down a path you never come back up from.”

  “So what am I supposed to do? Give up?”

  “They say the good Lord sent sunshine and the devil, well, he sent the rain. But that ain’t always the case. Back in them olden days, relations between gods and folks like me and you was simple.” He pulled me close and started talking real low, like he didn’t want anybody else to hear. “But the church wants to control how you talk to the gods. Folks forget that we didn’t need a priest for rituals. The church wanted us to forget that we had the ways and means to communicate with them all by ourselves. Some of my people though, they still doing things the old way. Same as some of your people. Using methods that involve a little less church and a lot more getting your hands dirty. My momma had an altar in the kitchen right next to the old potbelly stove. She put on her hat and went to church every Sunday from the day they baptized her to the day she died. But she didn’t need church to talk to God. She talked whenever she’d make johnny cakes or cook up a pot of beans. Sometime He even talk back.”

  He took his hand from my shoulder and stepped back. “You need help from the other side, all you got to do is ask.”

  While he talked I found that little light of hope that had been buried down deep in my soul. Like finding Katy had just been a matter of asking the right questions, and I itched to get looking. “I appreciate your time.”

  By now I only half-listened. My mind ran about a half-hour ahead of the rest of me. Had me in the car on my way back to Alabama.

  “Son,” he said, taking my wrist in his dry hand. His skin felt smooth and warm. “You stopped listening right when I’m about to get to telling you what you need to hear.”

  I forced my attention back to him. At this point everything distracted me.

  “You talk to them gods yourself. You didn’t have to ride all the way out here to learn that. Understand this, next time you come out here, part of you ain’t coming back. And that’s why I’m here. You got to know that playing with this kind of fire burns you every time. Talking to Old Scratch in a bar or in bed’s a lot different than talking out here. You come out here to do business—real business—and you got to understand that, son. You stand out there on them crossroads like you was tonight and that li’l ole funny boy’s going to take something you can’t live without. Then you know a whole new kind of blues and it ain’t them talkin’ blues or them travellin’ riverside blues. Them are the blues you don’t come back from. You’re going to feel them chains and you’re going to feel them dogs breathing on your neck.”

  “Like those hellhounds I got on my trail now?”

  “Ain’t no hellhounds. It’s a gimmick, son. That’s it. The li’l ole funny boy don’t work like that. Everybody’s got to die a little sometime.” He sat against the fence, propped the guitar on his knee and strummed. “The lucky ones die all at once. Don’t forget that. Some of us die more than once. Some of us die a little every day. What’s left over is who we really are. You’re going to have to die a little to get her back, you know that, right? But you have to die before you can be born again anyway. We can’t all be butterflies, you know. Picking and choosing our time.”

  “Can I ask you something?” I shook his hand and held it, trying to feel for a pulse. That his skin felt warmer than my own confused me. “Please don’t be offended.”

  “Just get on with it.”

  “Well, are you real?” I took a deep breath. “I mean you’re not dead, like John Lennon and Joe Strummer when they talk to me.”

  He laughed. “Ain’t no real or dead. There’s alive or dead, then there’s real or imagined. You knew somebody exactly like me though, a woman neither dead nor imagined. I can smell that fallen angel all over you.”

  “I understand.” I knew exactly who he meant.

  “Look it. You got something bigger than a soul. You got potential and you got love. Keep your soul and give it what it really wants.” He said, “And make sure you write it all down—everything you hear and see, especially any visions you may have. That’s what a prophet does.”

  “Thank you.” I backed toward the cemetery trying to remember as much of what he said as I possibly could. “I mean it.”

  “You got a lot of miles between you and your girl. You better get moving along now. Don’t you come back without that git box.”

  Behind him I could see the sky getting lighter to the east. A greyness where there had been a violet blackness earlier. Like the wide South was flat enough to let a little early light creep in from the Atlantic.

  He said, “Don’t you stop ’til you get back in that car, then get the hell out of here. Don’t linger out there on the crossroads none either.”

  Nodding, I turned and left. A chorus of peepers and the lonely sound of a single untuned guitar played me out. In the slight farther off, birds shook sleep out of their feathers with soft songs. Waking up songs. Like being born again after a long night alone.

  In the distance the traffic signal flashed red to green to yellow over and over again. Counting out an excruciatingly slow 4/4 tempo to help me pick my way through the tombstones.

  The blue and green bottles on the branches of the old graveyard tree shivered as the waxy morning light grew. Trembling, as if an earthquake shook the w
hole thing.

  I stopped to look.

  They reflected the tiniest bit of dawn, making it seem like each contained a small sphere of distilled morning. I tapped one of the bottles. A faint globe of light bounced against the glass like a fly against a dirty window.

  In the grass all around me toads hopped over each other, an exodus of amphibians pushing their way down the hill. I stepped carefully, picking my way to the road, not wanting to step on any. Faded Confederate flags drooped in fog.

  The concrete strip that lead back to the crossroads didn’t reflect any light at all. Like it’d been covered with velvet since I last came through. The toads crawled and half-hopped toward the road with great urgency.

  “Holy shit.” I pulled my foot back like I’d almost stepped in lava.

  The surface crawled with a carpet of tiny red spiders, each about the size of a dime. They swirled and moved like snowflakes blown by the wind, oblivious to the feasting toads. I stopped, and tried to look for another way back to the car without cutting through the swamp. Better the scary you can see than the one you can’t, I thought.

  As soon as my toe touched the asphalt a loud crack blasted through the air. A wave of successive echoes split the morning as a multitude of crows took to the sky. They squawked and chirped and flew tightening circles above me. I took another step forward, the birds landing on the road one-by-one to feast on the spiders. Hundreds settling in a black, hopping, bobbing mass.

  More toads poured out of the tall grass bordering the swamp and fell upon the road like garbage from a toppled trash-can. They flung themselves onto any vacant bit of roadway. Now annoyed, the crows pecked and jabbed the amphibians with their beaks, but the toads ignored them. They croaked and gorged themselves, their skin reddening as I watched. The smell, something like swamp mud mixed with chicken shit, made me gag.