Amen.
The okra tasted a little like a home I’d never known, but I couldn’t enjoy it. So I stuck with the cornbread. Letting the butter melt down before plopping it into my mouth became a kind of meditation. I didn’t have to listen to the wall clock or the ticks of the cooling oven while I waited for butter to melt. Pauly kept my sweet tea topped off.
Ben came to the back door with a man I didn’t know. Andre’s dad, I figured. Ben’s jeans and work boots were muddy. He didn’t come all the way into the kitchen. I stood as the door swung shut behind them. Ben said, “As soon as you’re ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“Best not to talk about it if you ask me. You don’t want to know what you’re in for.” He turned and went back outside.
I stood as Andre’s old man came over to shake my hand. Andre and Pauly stood, too.
“Good morning, Reverend Betters,” Pauly said.
He shook my hand. “George Betters. Nice to meet you.”
“Preston Black. Thanks for—”
“Don’t thank me yet.” Without sitting, he heaped a mound of peas onto a slab of cornbread and began to eat. Turning to Pauly, he said, “I love you like a son, but I ain’t comfortable with all this,” and waved his fork over the table like he disapproved of lunch rather than the circumstances of our visit.
Pauly said, “I know, George. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t pay him no mind. He’s still bitter about Alabama passing on Sylvester Croom. Tomorrow it’ll be something else,” Andre said. “No need for the reprimand, Pop. You know Pauly’s taken good care of me and letting him use my yard for whatever he wants is the least I can do.”
“Dhima, this is delicious. Thank you kindly. My boy’s lucky to have you.” George cleaned his plate with a few big bites and served himself seconds. “Son, I mean no disrespect. But you’ve got to know what I seen in my time to make me believe what I do. Staring at topographical maps for twelve hours a day didn’t get me out of Khe Sanh—getting saved did. I never preached to you, but I have a right to testify.”
“Yes, sir, you do,” Andre cut him off. “I know what you’re going to say next. You’re going to quote the New Testament—John—something about charity, right? Maybe, ‘…if a man closes his heart to a brother in need, then God’s love can’t abide in him?’ But we don’t need them to believe. Just need to be there for them.”
Figuring it was my time to speak up, I jumped in. “I spent enough time with Katy’s people up in them mountains to know the kind of things that can happen when faith is strong enough. It can change the weather, pull fire from a wound.” I stood and wiped my hands on my pants. “So, let’s see how this goes down. Hate to say it, but I’m a little curious myself.”
“C’mon, sit down now. Banana pudding is cooling.” Nadhima stood when I did.
But the back-and-forth irritated me. Figured talk wouldn’t get Katy back. I didn’t even hold the door open when I left the house. Ben sat in the grass, wiping his face on his shirt. When he saw me, trailed by Pauly and the rest, he stood, jammed the shovel into the fresh earth and tucked his shirt into his waistband. He said, “Pauly, you were supposed to blindfold him.”
I said, “Well, that ain’t happening.”
The hole rested in a grove of twisted trees shrouded in kudzu down the slope from the back door. The leaves were just little green nubs but were dense enough to make it feel nice and secure. A pair of headstones sat tangled in ivy at the edge of a greenbrier thicket, an old door rested against a chain-link fence. I could smell the river, and when I stood on tip-toe I could see it through the trees.
“What’s the hole for, Benjamin?” I asked.
“Ain’t for sticking your dick in, that’s for sure. Said you weren’t going to like it, but Rachael says this is how we find Katy. That should be enough for you. You have to trust me.” He tucked his dog tags into his T-shirt.
“I’d feel a little better about it if Rachael was here herself.”
“No time for that. Cops ain’t doing anything. News ain’t reporting it. She’s gone, bro. Rachael wants her back. I want her back and I know you want her back. This is how we do it before there’s no longer a Katy left to save.” Ben pointed at my feet. “Start by taking off your shoes and emptying your pockets.”
I handed Pauly my phone, Katy’s phone, and my wallet.
“George, let’s start that water.”
The old man nodded and went back up to the house.
Andre had his hands in his pocket and kept shaking his head. “This ain’t right.”
Ben said, “Your shirt and jacket.”
I hung my jacket on the old fence next to Ben’s tan, grey and green camo-patterned field jacket. As I lifted my T-shirt over my head, water spurted out of the end of a green garden hose. Without a word, Nadhima put her palm on my forehead, then pulled me forward so she could drape several strands of colorful beads around my neck. Strands of black and green and yellow and red sparkled in the dull grey light. Ben held his phone and dialed. Sabra set a small first aid kit on a lawn chair. She opened it and took out a CPR pocket mask. She stuck a valve into it and wiped it with alcohol.
Just then I realized why she had the stethoscope. “What the fuck is this?”
Nadhima spread an old blanket out in the grass next to the hole.
Ben handed me his ringing phone.
Pauly and Andre took the old door from the fence and stood it up next to the grave. I stood at eye level with the small square window. The broken glass had all been cleared away. “Hello?”
“Hey, Sweetie.” I heard Rachael’s voice and got choked up. “This is going to happen pretty fast, so you have to listen really well. We’re on our way down now. Be there tonight or first thing tomorrow, okay?”
No ‘how you holding up’ or anything. My hand shook. Fuck me.
“Remember that you are in control. You have to end it. Ben and Pauly can’t help you and it’s important to remember that you end it.” She spoke a calm and forceful tone. “Find Jane and talk to her then get out. Understand?”
Down by the river I heard the scream of a thousand birds taking to the air. “I think.”
“No, Preston. Listen to me. You have to make certain you get out of there. Remember that Katy is waiting for you. I know you can do this.” She sniffled. “You have to find my little girl, okay?”
I took a deep breath. “I promise.”
“Don’t lose track of time because…” She sniffed and talked to somebody in the background. “Jamie wants to talk to you.”
Pauly put his arm around me while I listened to Jamie. In the background I heard Chloey’s voice.
“There’s a reason you’re going and not Ben or Rachael. You know that, right? Ain’t many folks out there to walk away from what you walked away from last winter. This is going to hurt but I know you can be strong. Mom and Pap are home thinking about you.”
“No pressure.” My dry mouth released a couple of low clicks. Blackbirds circled above the little grove.
“I’ve been talking to Nadhima and know you’re in good hands. But you have to have faith. We all love you, Preston. You familiar with the Tibetan Book of the Dead?”
“No.”
“Okay, well, ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ then. Think about John’s words. You need to remember that this is not dying. Got it? You got to get yourself out of there as soon as you talk to her, understand?”
“I do.” I didn’t.
“Now let me talk to Ben.”
I handed Ben the phone.
Pauly looked at me, but didn’t say anything.
“I know, man.”
“What the fuck is this, bro?” His eyes studied my eyes, my mouth.
Nadhima pulled a small sack made of red flannel from her purse. “Black cat bone and Angelica root,” she said, dangling the bag in front of my eyes. She shoved it into my front pocket.
Ben watched, still talking with Jamie.
Nadhima handed me a small silver barrette. “This
belonged to your beloved?”
I recognized it. “Yeah.”
She kissed it, then shoved it into my other pocket. “Get on down there now.”
Ben set the phone on the lawn chair next to the CPR mask and my wallet and phone. I watched Sabra write Jane’s name on an old tombstone with chalk. She turned, Nadhima nodded. Sabra crossed out Jane’s name and wrote mine just above.
Pauly said, “You end it. Remember what they told you, all right?”
I looked at Pauly, then to Ben and Sabra. Not a single one of them looked too happy about what was going down. George had his back turned and his arms crossed.
“George, you should know by now I can pull mojo out of the air like plucking peaches from a tree.” Nadhima slipped off her shoes and hiked her dress up to her thighs. “This here isn’t my first black baptism. But you can pray if you’d like.”
The cold water rose easily past my knees. Bits of leaves and grass circled endless in the red clay-stained water. Small clumps fell from the side of the grave and circled before sinking. Blackbirds flocked to the bare branches over my head, blocking out much of the grey light.
“Don’t think, man. Just do it.” Ben held the old wooden door, and I could see that it was a little narrower than the hole. “You have to go on your own.”
Pauly stood on the other side of the hole and held onto the old wooden door. Through the small opening I watched grey clouds move past tiny patches of blue sky. My hands were shaking. “I’m scared. I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Katy needs you, bro.” Ben forced me into the hole by gently guiding the door. “Rachael wants you to bring her little girl back.”
I got on my knees but fought to keep that little patch of sky above me. Blackbirds crowded my view. Water flowed over the lip of the grave. “What if—”
Nadhima stood in the water circling me, chanting something. When she at last came face-to-face with me, she made three crosses on my forehead with her thumb then climbed out of the hole.
“No doubt,” Pauly said. “You got this. Don’t let that doubt in your head.”
“Don’t think,” Ben said.
I leaned back. My jeans felt really cold and for a second I tried to think if I had any clean clothes left after this, but they pushed the door right onto me and I sought a reprieve from the sky directly above. The clouds had covered it all. I looked for Pauly. His eyes were red. I looked for Ben. He forced a confident nod.
The cold snapped me out of the moment and my legs jerked out to the side to keep myself from sinking lower and I tried to grab the sides of the grave. The mud and clay gave way in my hands. I grabbed the door. Splinters of paint and old wood dug into the soft skin beneath my fingernails. The pain lasted only for a second before the cold took over.
My lungs burned. I fought to push my face through the small opening. The tiny window that let friends in and kept strangers out. I kicked at the clay walls and tried to force my lips into the sky above but the patch of light seemed very far away. My lungs burned. Pain worse than the pain in your legs after gym class. I remembered what Rachael said about ending it. By forcing my arm through the window I tried to end it with everything I had in me. A pair of hands grabbed my wrist and pushed it right back down.
My toes hurt from trying to kick at the door. My chest felt tired from holding my breath, like I had a black mass locked away in my ribs. A tumor pushing the air out. Not pain. A feeling like an ending. A feeling like my line stopped right there. A feeling that my forever, which had been a certainty since I met Katy, had been taken from me. And I remembered all I had to do was breathe. That the pain in my lungs faded meant I was dying. My brain wrestled with what it felt and what it knew, but only the fading pain was real.
Johnny Cash said the water’d wash my sins away, but so far it had only made me wet.
So I let it. Because it seemed easier. I wanted the pain to end.
Turn off my mind.
Water filled my mouth and throat and I knew I’d made a mistake because Katy’s face was the only thing I could see and I jammed my hand back through the opening. But my hand blocked the light and I knew, man, I knew I didn’t want to be in the dark. Not now. I never wanted to be in the dark again. Mud colored the water, making my little patch of sky a red smear. I’d never been so far from the light in my whole life. But she waited somewhere else, in the hands of people who wanted to hurt her.
I can’t help her if I’m dead.
My light wasn’t the moon or Venus. She was a little star. Anonymous. And I’d never been away from her for so long since the day we played that first show together. Those few songs that changed my life forever.
Relax.
My faint little light.
Fading little light.
No stars in this dark sky.
Her face had been lost to me. Those big blue eyes, which I’d woken up to every morning. And I couldn’t remember them.
Everything is dark.
At the end we are only alone.
Float downstream.
In a river of black static, falling away from myself.
Noise like songs, my songs, my brain trying to hold on to life. He knew he was dying.
A river of memory.
It is not dying.
Every moment of my entire existence, in my head and accessible at this very moment. Knowing everything I’d ever know. Every taste. Every scent. I saw my mother’s face in the half-light of the winter of my birth. I saw my father on the day he left.
Every fistfight.
Every kiss.
I saw everybody that’d gone before me.
I felt no more pain. No more seconds flying past my head like shooting stars.
No light except for the light he remembered in his head.
Even when talking to himself, the words seemed far away. Talking to himself to keep a foot on the ground. Talking to himself, in his head, because he didn’t know what else to do. And he knew he could stop the words whenever he wanted to.
Just stop the words. Let them trail off.
He’d never known darkness like this. He’d never really known alone, until this.
But he wasn’t alone.
He heard the others shuffling out ahead of him.
A rushing noise built in my ears, like wind over a mountain. A voice boomed with heavy echo from both sides of my head. The words weren’t English. Small lights off to the side steered me away from the darkness. I just knew to follow the ones in front of me.
It is believing.
The voice got louder and my instinct told me to back away from it, but doing so would’ve meant leaving them. They weren’t my friends, but their presence meant I wasn’t alone. They drifted toward a little light that grew on the very edge of a stiff horizon. Like a fog in a forest. Like sunrise in a city. They moved faster and the voice came back. Fading in, I heard it say
…it is not dying.
I heard my voice.
But the noise all around me sounded totally different. Like the static from a TV station after sign-off. Flashes of white and black light. A faint hiss and specks of color—but not color—each existing for only a moment.
I turned to see where it came from.
Metallic warbles emerged from the noise. “Yes, sir… Let’s hear it for Rose Maddux.”
It came from all over.
I spun, still looking for the man who said it.
“That’s the kind of singing they like down in Houston. Sings like her motor’s still running, don’t she?”
Whistles and hoots came from the crowd. The light got brighter, and came from all directions. I held my hand over my eyes. Sweat formed on my temples. Straight lines and movement emerged from the dark blur. Noise and words attacked me from all sides. So many I couldn’t make sense out of them.
On the edge of the stage, the announcer wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, and said, “Got a big show for you yet, so don’t you go running off.”
Electricity streaked through my arms and legs
as Johnny walked past. He stood a little shorter than I anticipated, wearing that white jacket with the black piping. Behind me a little Fender Pro breathed steam into the old civic center. A wall of heat and hum that knocked people back into their seats. I pulled on my necktie to loosen it, and for the first time all night I could breathe.
I fixated on a large illuminated clock behind the stage right curtain. A white face with black block numbers. Seemed like the only thing that truly made sense to me.
Then Johnny nodded, giving me the signal to go.
The second I set my pick to that string the crowd stood. That Fender Esquire sounded like an angry dog barking at a freight train. Girls in pale pastel dresses with hair twisted and sprayed into beehives watched Johnny swagger up to the mic. Guys in suits and skinny ties—now that they were being ignored by their girls—watched my fingers work through the first few notes as the announcer rushed to finish his introduction. He said, “America’s greatest folk music star—Johnny Cash!”
The kids sat back down, and before that old square could even get his ass off the stage Johnny hovered over the mic banging out the chords to “Big River.” I looked over at Marshall plucking that big old upright bass’s strings. He just smiled away as he counted out that old ‘one, two, one, two…’ with his hair pushed straight back from his forehead by a gob of grease. Marshall Grant was a good old boy, all right. He smiled and bounced to the beat, kicking his leg out and slapping those strings like he was swatting a bee.
With my eyes closed it felt like a train rolling down a mountain without brakes. A warm calmness enveloped me. A feeling that crept beneath my clothes, like only my skin was drunk. That feeling told my mind to stop fighting. I’m home.
My mind couldn’t keep up with my fingers. Only the clock mattered. The second hand ran backward like an egg timer. 7:59 PM.
Row after row of kids bobbed their heads. Some of the girls wore little white gloves. Some had handbags to match their sleeveless dresses. It felt hot. And I was nervous. My mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton.
The Revelations of Preston Black (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 3) Page 10