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

by Miller, Jason Jack

  And my head ached like nicotine withdrawl on top of a hangover. The notes sounded right in my ears, but they didn’t sound like the notes I picked. It felt like in a dream when a door opens into the wrong room. On the edge of the crowd I saw a girl I thought I knew from school. I could’ve sworn I saw Abby Fincher. She died in a car crash my senior year, and I wondered how she got all the way down here in Texas.

  I rushed the beat. Probably because any time we’d ever played this Stu jacked the pace up. I watched Marshall for the tempo and picked out my rhythm and flashed my cheesy grin for that Texas crowd. When I tried to stretch out my solo Johnny turned and gave me a look.

  Marshall clicked to get my attention.

  “Huh?” I said, upset that he’d pulled me out of the moment. I muted the strings with my palm.

  He pointed at Johnny.

  And I only knew the song ended when they applauded. Embarrassed, I stared at my shoes as he thanked the Houston crowd for being so dang polite. His way of saying they needed to make a little more noise.

  In a way I felt like I should have gone over and talked to him before he got into the next tune, but just thinking about it scared me. My feet wouldn’t move. Keeping my head in “Big River” had taken all my energy.

  Marshall leaned over to me and said, “You see her yet?”

  “Who?” I said.

  “Don’t play coy, Preston.” Marshall chewed his gum so hard it made my jaw hurt to look at him.

  “Before we play our next number I’m going to tell you who we brought with us.” Johnny turned and gave Marshall a scolding look for his chit-chat. When he returned to the mic, he said, “We call these boys the Tennessee Two. He’s from West Virginia and he’s from Mississippi.”

  While the crowd laughed, Johnny turned and gave me a wink. My body glowed, like I’d been touched by the hand of Jesus Christ himself. My tongue got real dry and the butterflies came back big time.

  Johnny said, “We ain’t had the heart to tell Preston, but he’s been dead for a year.”

  I knew Johnny meant Luther Perkins, not me. I knew this because I had this concert on my laptop. I listened to it all the time. Luther’s been dead a year. Not me.

  It didn’t matter though. Maybe seeing June off to the side of the stage helped me relax. Helped me realize I belonged here. I knew Johnny’d get the joke right next time.

  Johnny stepped off stage to get a glass of water.

  I looked for the clock. 7:25 PM. I didn’t want to think of what happened when it counted all the way down, and said to myself, Maybe this wasn’t heaven after all.

  Maybe hell would be losing these feelings again, over and over, for an eternity. Knowing that I was always, truly alone. Like my lifetime spent practicing disappointment would finally pay off. I could almost see Katy if I focused my thoughts.

  A metallic hum broke my concentration and I lost the image. Anger blew up in my throat like water boiling over from a pot. The intense rage convinced me I was still alive.

  I needed to sort this out and decided to talk to Johnny. He’d disappeared into the heavy curtain, and I dove in right after him. Thick waves of velvet engulfed me, buried me in darkness. I spun and called for him. “Johnny.”

  I paused to listen, but only heard murmurs from the audience. “John!”

  Somebody in the audience screamed. A girl. Then I heard another cry.

  “John.”

  Then I heard a thousand more.

  The screams expanded and I tumbled forward in the dark, almost like I’d been shoved. Over my shoulder somebody laughed. Shadows moved on the floor by my feet. I pushed toward them.

  A multitude of small lights like exploding stars appeared as I emerged. Noise grew like a jet that never passed. It only ever got closer and closer. Like I was being reborn into a whole other universe. Lights flashed behind us. Above us. My eyes followed the flashes around a complete circle. High above, a great silver dome reflected it all back down. A large box hung from the ceiling. A scoreboard. Without any warning at all, I heard John Lennon say, “One, two…” and the rest disappeared into the static of screams.

  The game clock on the scoreboard counted down.

  5:59.

  In my head I knew we were standing in the very spot where Sidney Crosby slapped the wrist shot that should have let the Pens clinch the series with Ottawa. Instead the game went into three overtimes. Stu wanted to drive to Pittsburgh that night and drink on South Side.

  I banged out the “Twist and Shout” chords and turned to watched John Lennon at the mic, squinting, shoulders hunched forward in attack mode. He was blind as a bat without those glasses on. Even though I needed to talk to him, I took my place at the other mic, harmonizing with Paul on the backup parts.

  The music fell over me like sunlight, and I laughed. I hit every note, every vocal cue with a smile. When I looked into the darkness and waved a torrent of screams bounced back at me. I heard my voice pouring out of the PA, not George Harrison’s. The notes were my notes. The words were my words.

  We wore the grey suits with the skinny black collars. John’s tie hung loose and he wore his black fisherman’s cap. His voice cut right through the screams, backed by a wave of guitar noise that pushed across the stage like an offensive line. But the crowd didn’t let up. Thousands of tiny vocal chords screamed for the slightest look or nod from one of us. I couldn’t even hear drums. The only way I could tell where we were in the song was to watch John’s hands. I backed up to his Vox amp and let his music infiltrate me directly. Soaking in every note. Every wavelength. The volume felt like life itself. The noise—that’s all it was to some people—that noise sounded like heaven to me.

  The music became a meditation. It let my mind clear for a moment. Made me wonder what I was even doing here in the Pittsburgh Civic Arena. A building that they ripped apart and demolished back in 2010. In the dim house lights I saw the Foodland ads on the boards near the goal at the far end. And the WDVE ad. The Thrift Drug ad. In the dark corners I saw The National Record Mart ad on the boards in front of the bench. The arena looked just like it did in the videos from the 1991 Stanley Cup Finals. I watched that clip of Lemieux taking Phil Bourque’s pass and threading between those Minnesota defenders a thousand times, at least. When I realized I didn’t know why I was here, my heart raced.

  In the audience I looked for faces I knew. The only way to see them as people instead of as a flock was to look at their eyes. In the very front row I saw a slight girl with fair skin and dark hair wearing a little black dress. Her hair was pulled back with a silver barrette that flashed like a mirror reflecting sunlight. I smiled, but she didn’t. I waved to get her attention, but she watched John. I recognized those eyes, and crept toward her, getting as close to the edge of the stage as I dared, but she wouldn’t look up.

  “Thank you, thank you,” Paul said. His voice never seemed to come from one specific place. Instead it came from all around, like no matter where I turned he stood behind me. After a long moment, he added, “Ooh. It’s a bit loud, isn’t it?”

  John turned his back, and went into his little cripple act. He goofed like that to get a rise out of Brian Epstein, our manager. I tried not to let Brian see me laughing and seized the opportunity to move closer to John—close enough to smell the amber and wood in his British Sterling.

  Nobody in the sea of bodies looked like a stranger to me. It felt like playing to a roomful of old acquaintances. A pair of kids from school who got killed senior year. Drowned in the Cheat River after a night of drinking and jumping off Jenkinsburg Bridge. I saw an eighteen-year-old version of Pauly’s grandma in a little knit dress. My own mother stood close to the front. Her blond hair was pulled back by a white headband and she wore a tiny black sweater with short sleeves. She looked so proud and clapped enthusiastically. So I stood taller for her. As soon as I could, I grabbed John and said, “There’s my mom.”

  “Yer mum?” John mocked me.

  “My mom.” In order to relate to him I said, “She died w
hen I was a kid, you know. Just like your mom. Except I was a baby. Somebody else raised me. Just like your Aunt Mimi raised you. My aunt was really Pauly’s mom. No relation.”

  But instead of giving me the nod and the pat on the back I expected, he said, “Your mum’s dead? What’s she doing here then?”

  I couldn’t really know what he’d meant for certain and couldn’t find the words to reply. I spent a long time thinking of the right thing to say.

  “Better yet,” he said, interrupting my concentration. “What’re you doing here?”

  “I’m not sure.” I put my hand over the mic and raised my voice, “It feels like this is exactly where I’m supposed to be.”

  “I don’t know, my friend.” He took off his cap and wiped the sweat off his brow with his sleeve. Without thinking he looked at Brian, who waved a handkerchief at him. “Seems like the kind of thing you’d know before leaving home without knowing, isn’t it?”

  Seeing my mom and knowing that I’d made her proud left me feeling like all the nights sleeping in another family’s house were worth it. The notes that I’d played for her came directly from heaven. I knew the set didn’t last long and knew that I wanted to etch every moment of it into my memory forever. I stared at her so I would know which parts of me were from her. Her smile, which I’d never seen in a photograph, looked like my smile. I didn’t want to leave.

  John grabbed my arm. His appearance changed—he looked like he did on Double Fantasy. Much older, calmer. He wore a leather jacket, jeans, and white sneakers. “You have to find a way out. Pull the plug, brother. I’d show you the door, but I can’t.”

  But I wanted to talk to my mom. Just hear her voice one time so I’d know what she sounded like forever. I wanted to see her up close and put my hand into her hand. And I knew not to look up because I didn’t want to see the clock. And I didn’t want to see so many forgotten faces, fragments of my past there in front of me like reminders of what waited for all of us at the end.

  I closed my eyes because I didn’t want to lose my mom all over again. The thought of losing Katy, or Pauly, or Mick, or Jamie filled me with emptiness and sorrow. And closing my eyes didn’t change any of that.

  In the dark hallways of my mind I saw a cemetery waiting for all the world’s dead to be buried. I read the names on the graves and knew that time, no matter what name it took, delivered us all to the same end.

  I saw my own grave—the grave where Sabra wrote my name before I lowered myself into the water—plain as day.

  Then I saw the small cemetery behind Katy’s pap’s house. The only name I recognized was her cousin, Jane’s. But the images existed only in my head. They were lies.

  I opened my eyes to face the truth.

  The room smelled a little like sweat, a little like weed. Speakers stacked from floor-to-ceiling made a wall of sound and a fuzzy vibration that made the hair on my arms stand up. I followed Joe Strummer to the stage. I’d follow him to the end of the planet if he’d ask me to.

  Armed with the white Les Paul, I spread my legs and waited for the lights to come up. The Les Paul weighed much more than the Esquire and the Gretsch. I waited for the drums to start. Waited for my turn to bring destruction—to split skulls with a power chord and a little sweat. I knew as long I kept the pick pinched between my fingers, nothing could hurt me.

  I could see Joe Strummer slumped against the dim light from the lobby. The audience whistled and shouted. They knew we were up here.

  In the back of the room, in the glow of the mixing board, I saw a small clock. A reminder that this all ended somehow. An orange light let me see the minutes count down so fast they may as well have been seconds. Pauly’s mom had the same clock in her room. I remembered because we weren’t allowed to be up until seven on Christmas morning and Pauly and me would watch that clock for hours. It wasn’t digital. Little metal numbers flipped over. One per minute.

  4:36.

  Joe Strummer didn’t start us off with a count. He just banged his Tele like he was beating on a drunk in a parking lot after the pubs closed. The lights bloomed in an explosion of wattage that knocked me back a step. I had no choice but to pick up everything Joe dropped. Hammering away at those two chords. London wasn’t calling. Joe was. I did all this for him.

  4:30.

  He bounced and jerked his fist. Twitching in perpetual agitation. He spit and held the mic like he’d choke every last breath out of it. He lunged at the audience. Screamed at them while the drums pulled me into the air, bouncing me higher and higher. I knew this was heaven. And I knew all I had to do was keep playing this guitar forever. I knew I stopped breathing when they ran that hose and drowned me in that fucking grave in that fucking backyard in fucking Alabama. And I looked for my mom, but she left. And I looked for John, but as far as I knew he’d left me too. For a second I thought this show was from The Clash’s stand at Bonds Casino based on what Joe wore. Which made this 1981.

  John Lennon should’ve been dead and buried by now.

  But there he stood, arms crossed, looking pissed-off. Right at the end of the second row near the fire exit. Just beyond a big stack of speaker cabinets.

  He shook his head, disapprovingly.

  I ignored him and sidled up to Joe Strummer, but he never once looked back at me. I wanted him to know how much his songs meant to me. How he’d saved me. So I played my leads, letting electric fuzz fill my head like a lifetime of lies and Strummer never once turned around and acknowledged me. And I knew it wasn’t because he was a bad guy, or self-centered. I knew he had his own dragons to slay. He believed he could change the world. I never once made that mistake. I tried to get close to him the way I got close to John but he was in his zone. Philosophizing for the kids out there. The ones who paid to be here.

  But he’d forgotten that I paid to be here, too. That I was one of those kids, and just because I was on this stage instead of in front of it didn’t mean that I wasn’t worth his time.

  3:42.

  So I played to get his attention, pounding those strings with fury. I stood next to him and hammered that Les Paul as loud and hard as I could. But he never noticed. And I knew it wasn’t because he was cold or unkind. His agenda didn’t include me.

  I had my own agenda.

  So I looked for friends in the audience. I saw Mike Davis. A kid who went to school with me. Smashed his Toyota into a stone wall one night a few years back. Never should’ve happened. His funeral made me think about my own death for the first time. His kids were there. Two little boys who didn’t have a clue. And I found Sylvester Knox in the audience. Hit by a car walking across a highway the year I started working at Mick’s. Never should’ve happened. Not at their ages.

  Stu stood in the center of a group of guys, bouncing to the beat. He jumped, fists in the air. I knew why he was here. I knew I was supposed to keep him from going back into the Army, but I couldn’t change his mind. Stu was my drummer, not Topper Headon, or Ringo Starr. He was my heartbeat. My backbone. My lifeline. For the biggest part of my life, time didn’t matter unless Stu counted the seconds off. I was supposed to be with him down there. Not up here.

  Stu was my friend. Not Joe Strummer.

  I rested the guitar on the stage, sat down on the edge, then stepped into the crowd. They didn’t part like they were supposed to. Like they did in movies. They fixated as Strummer preached—a punk prophet for kids without degrees.

  I locked eyes with Stu, my other brother. We lived for music, man. Lived for those quarter notes and half notes. Lived for lyrics that may or may not have meant shit to anyone else. It seemed unfair that I still had choices and he didn’t, all because he gave his life for something greater.

  “But we’re both here now though, aren’t we?” he said, responding to my thought. I nodded.

  “We both had choices to make, didn’t we?”

  I said, “Music should’ve let us live forever. I’m sorry that serving a purpose higher than the one I served put you into an early grave.”

 
; My hands started to sweat. Joe caught his breath at the mic, and gave a little speech about his politics. And they listened. They hung on everything he said and I felt like a fool. I said, “Like I’d ever save a fucking life with a guitar.”

  “Who’s to say my higher good is better than your higher good? Who says serving a government is better than serving the kids who love what you’re playing? Where the fuck is it written down? What about the kids at your shows? The kids who want to be you? Do they deserve another set? What about Katy”

  I nodded. I didn’t know what to say because I’d never thought of it that way.

  Stu wouldn’t look away and it made me real uncomfortable. Here I was, dreaming my own dreams instead of the dreams they taught me in school. Instead of the dreams the TV wanted me to dream. Instead of the shit FM radio dreams. And I just wanted to figure out how I could get Katy back. Dreams were only shadows in a world without her.

  Stu had his arm around a girl. A young girl, with a sweet face and blue eyes. Just like my Katy. She didn’t move to the music. She didn’t mouth the words.

  “Jane,” I said.

  Stu said, “Remember what you came for. And remember that you have to put on the brakes.” Then he turned and got lost in the crowd.

  I didn’t know what to say to her, so I waited for her to act.

  She looked so much like Katy and her cousin, Henry. Pale blue eyes, surrounded by black eyeliner, and dark hair streaked with red, shaved on both sides. In her hair, she wore Katy’s silver barrette. She watched Joe Strummer even as I stood right in front of her. Her skin was pale beyond fair. It glowed in the lights from the stage, letting me see her red lips and slight shoulders. Her arms were crossed. She had on a real short skirt and fishnet stockings and high black Doc Martens. She wore a denim jacket with the sleeves hacked off. Pinned to the jacket were all sorts of patches. And she’d taken a Sharpie and written verse all over. Lyrics and lines from poems.

  Written over her heart, I saw the first song I’d ever written for Katy.