And nobody said anything because none of us knew quite what to say.
Ben said, “Look here—The devil will put your soul in hell, burn it forever.”
“Well…” I said. “Better the devil you know.”
Ben laughed even though he couldn’t ever have known why I found this so ironic.
Pauly said, “In a hundred years I could never come up with something like this in my head.”
“Look!” Ben said, totally cutting Pauly off. He pointed to a small square sign propped against a pair of whitewashed cinder blocks that read All FOR SALE! Five million CASH or best offer!
“What the fuck?”
“‘What the fuck’ is right.” He slowed down as we approached a big gate made out of chain-link fence and barbed wire. Hand-painted signs—one on each gate—said, DON’T BRING THE DEVIL IN THIS HOUSE and LEAVE THE DEVIL OUTSIDE.
Without warning he sped up. The crosses disappeared behind us. Trees crowded the road, casting us once again in shadow. After a few minutes we were back in unspoiled woodlands. Ben spotted a small turnoff littered with beer cans and rubbers.
“Listen,” Ben said as he turned the key. Without the engine noise we could hear birds in the trees and wind washing through the leaves. He rolled his window down. “I’m going to turkey peek around and find a way in.”
“Why’d you drag us out here if you’re just going to go in yourself?”
“Calm down and listen. I’m going to get the lay of the land. The three of us are going to be too slow. C’mon back here.” He got out of the Jeep and stretched.
“Yeah.” I got out, stretched and followed him around back.
Ben had the hatch up and his Army duffle sitting on the bumper. “I know this ain’t easy for you, but you got to trust me. This is going to go one of two ways. Either how we planned it, or to shit. I’m trying to make sure this don’t go to shit. Here…”
He lifted a tarp and showed me a big pile of heavy chains. “When I need you in there you to have to pull that gate off. Keep it in the granny gear and get it clean off its hinges the second I say ‘go.’ I’m going to call every fifteen or twenty minutes with updates. I’ll let you all know how the road looks and what to expect once we get in. I’m not excluding you, man. And I know you love her and I know she loves you. This is the best way to get her back.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “We can’t all be bogged down together in there if things get bad.”
“I know.” I rubbed my forehead. “You’re totally right. I’m a guitar player. Just had visions of my face being the first one she saw, I guess.”
“Yeah,” he said, like I should prepare myself for some sort of big speech or something. But that was it. All he said.
Stripping the cellophane off a new pack of Newport Lights, Pauly said, “So just wait for you to call? That’s it?”
“Well, that’s the dynamic truth,” Ben said. “I’ll keep you updated. Let you know what’s going on. And the second I see that she’s okay I’ll call and let you know. I promise. Grab me one of those Klonopins out of the glove box, please.”
I sat in the driver’s seat and found the bottle, then tapped one of the little blue pills into my hand. While I waited he jammed his pistol into a shoulder holster. He slid his compound bow and a quiver of arrows out from beneath the tarp. He put his phone into his front pocket, tucked a Bowie knife into his belt, and shut the hatch.
“Every fifteen minutes, right?” I said and dropped his Klonopin into his upturned palm.
“Or twenty.” He popped the pill into his mouth then squeezed my shoulder a few times. “Don’t get too agitated if I ain’t checking in like I’m taking your baby girl out on a first date. Okay?”
“Yeah, I get it.”
He put a pair of ammunition clips into his front pocket, a Leatherman multi-tool into his back, then bent over to tighten his bootlaces. “You’ll be sharing a bed tonight. Maybe even eating a little barbeque or whatever the hell the neighbor’s got cooking.”
Ben banged on the hood with his fist and gave Pauly a wave. When Pauly nodded back, Ben blew him a little kiss. “Marsalama, boys.”
He looked both ways, crossed the road, then disappeared over a small knuckle into the forest. I stood by the door and stretched. Pauly opened his door, spit into the sandy earth, and lit a cigarette.
“What do you think, bro?” I asked.
“It’s all good. That’s what I think. Have faith.” Pauly stood up and walked out to the road. “Look at what you’ve been doing for the last seven months—getting paid to make music. I’ll admit, shit like this with Katy ain’t typical, and it’s probably a result of your music that we’re even out here right now. Like, maybe being in the spotlight put a target on your back?”
He took a long drag on his cigarette and held it. “But don’t go thinking the universe is out to get you. There are guys we went to school with digging coal right now. Collecting disability because their backs are shot. This ain’t the universe out to get you. This is people. Maybe it ain’t even personal, I don’t know. But they don’t represent Christians everywhere. They don’t represent the South and they sure as hell don’t represent what I believe.”
“I’ll let you in on a little secret. What if I said it was personal?” I scratched the stubble on my chin. “I know Hicks too. Saw him in Morgantown twice. The first time was the night Mikey asked me to play the show at The Stink on Valentine’s Day. He was at The Met with her. The second time was at The Stink. She brought him with her.”
“Her?” Pauly just watched me from the road.
“Yep.” I took my phone out of my pocket, made sure to turn the ringer on, and set it on the dashboard.
Pauly turned his back while he finished his cigarette. He widened his stance like he was on a surfboard, and stuck his hands into his back pockets. Every so often a small cloud of white smoke rose over his head. He calmly crushed his first cigarette out and lit another.
The phone rang. Pauly turned as soon as he heard it.
“Hello?” I answered. I put it on speaker so Pauly could hear. He leaned into the Jeep’s open window.
“Told you I’d call, right? Real quick,” Ben said, “The whole place is surrounded by electric fence—barbed wire and chain-link. Had to crawl up a stream bed to get under it. Lots of buildings—like an old church camp. Two rows of little white cabins facing a big building. Showers and shitters I’m guessing. Then there’s a huge tent like a mess tent in the middle of a field. A bunch of guys packing it up now. Lots of pickup trucks. Long buildings with shit painted on the sides just like those crosses out front. Wooden shutters over all the windows. No motorcycles. Don’t see any guns yet either. So far so good.”
“Yeah.”
“Check this out—they got this altar at the end of a field. A low mound with three big—tall—crosses on it. Like, crucifixion crosses or some shit. These are some sick bastards. Lots of natural cover, though, natural gas wells all over. Somebody’s getting rich off this little patch of ground. The road is rutted out real bad. Your best bet is going to be to stay high in the right side and plow through the weeds. The road ends right at the field. They got pickup trucks and a bunch of vans out front. I’m going to try to slash tires.”
“You saying we should head on down?” Adrenaline pumped through my arms and legs. I got real jumpy all of a sudden.
“No, you hold tight for a while.”
“So, no sign of Katy?”
“Not yet. I’ll call back in a few.”
I hung up and set the phone back on the dash. I looked over at Pauly and shook my head. He turned to get back into the Jeep, but his eyes spotted something down the lane. “Shit,” he said, and stood up real straight.
My phone vibrated again. I had a text.
From John Lennon.
“No shit,” I said.
A dingy white police cruiser with black doors and bald tires crept through the little patches of sunlight like a snake toward a birdhouse. An outli
ne of the old department’s emblem remained on the door. Black stick-on letters like the ones you put on mailboxes spelled out New Zion Tabernacle on the front quarter panel. The cruiser’s light bar flashed at almost the exact moment the voice came through the PA. “Step out of the car. Place your hands on the hood.”
Pauly looked at me, his eyes opened wide with disbelief. “Have to be shitting me.”
I stepped out, jumpier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. The air suddenly got hot. I reached for my ID.
The PA hissed to life, “Hands where we can see them. Real slow.”
I spread my legs, leaned over the hood, and whispered, “They ain’t even real cops, are they?”
They parked the car so that it blocked the Jeep’s path to the road. The driver strolled around the front of his car with a shotgun cradled in his arms. He wore a black hoodie and an old Alabama hat with the elephant logo on it. Greasy hair covered his ears and his wrists were scarred with the same type of contusions that the protestors at the shows in Louisville and Nashville had. My heart kicked into high gear.
The second one stood directly behind me “This property’s private, you know.”
“We didn’t, officer,” Pauly said, forcing a very polite tone. “Didn’t see any signs.”
“Signs don’t make a property private,” the guy in the ’Bama hat said as he cuffed Pauly. He stood about the same height as me but looked about seventy-five pounds heavier. He breathed through his mouth and smelled like fried food.
“That’s not what I was implying,” Pauly said, still playing along. His voice cracked with a nervous edge.
“Which one of you belongs to the shake and bake?” The one behind me threw a plastic grocery bag onto the ground in front of the Jeep. A two-liter soda bottle wrapped with duct tape and plastic tubing rolled out. “This is what y’all are out here looking for, right?”
“Officer,” Pauly said, “I’m a recovering alcoholic. Been sober for a year. Meth isn’t something I’d ever fool with.”
“Right away you knew what it was though,” the man behind me said as he cuffed me. “Ain’t it, Herlin?”
The adrenaline made me more defiant than I had any right to be. “You going to read us our rights, or what?”
“Shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for you,” the one behind me said. “You gave up your rights when you set foot out here.”
After collecting our wallets, our phones, the keys to the Jeep, the man who cuffed me pushed me into the back of the cruiser next to a box of little green Gideon Bibles. He wore work boots and a camouflage jacket and he smelled like asshole. I knew better than to resist.
As soon as Pauly joined me in the back seat, I directed his attention to the crucifix hanging from the rearview mirror. “Look.”
“Whatever,” Pauly said. “They got the guns.”
They searched Ben’s Jeep while we sat there. They had the hatch up and rooted under the seats and floor mats. Herlin called somebody on his handheld radio.
“You see their wrists?” I said. “All bruised up. Thought it was from shooting up, like my dad. But it looks different. The marks are all in pairs.”
“Just be quiet, man. Running your mouth ain’t going to get us out of here.”
“Yeah, well sitting and waiting feels the same as letting Katy die.” I said, “Maybe we should head for the trees and find Ben?”
“Giving them an excuse to shoot us in the back? And blowing Ben’s cover? Preston, just shut the fuck up.”
“You boys are a long way from West Virginia, ain’t you?” Herlin yelled over from the Jeep. “You going to tell me what you all are doing out here?”
I said, “Looking for ginseng.”
“Ginseng.” Herlin’s partner laughed as he slammed the hatch shut. “Boy, you must be as stupid as you are dumb.”
“How much time you think they’re going to give you for cooking meth?” He waved his shotgun at me when he said it. “You know, Raney?”
“My sister’s beau down in Magnolia Springs got life in prison for running a little operation out of his bedroom closet,” Raney said as he sat down in the cruiser. “So life, I guess.”
Herlin rested the shotgun on the floor next to his feet after he sat down, did a four-point turn and headed back down the road toward the gate of the church camp. A few crimped wires stuck out of the dash where the radio should’ve been. A pair of handhelds jammed between the seats and the center console took its place.
I said, “This is flat out bullshit and you both fucking know it.”
Raney said, “You got the right to remain silent, and if you ain’t going to exercise that right I’m going to silence you. Hear me? Boy, I’ll slap you so hard you both’ll feel it.”
“You know a lawyer’s going to walk right through this shit.”
“Where is he, son?” Raney twisted around in his seat. “You ain’t going to find a lawyer in this corner of Alabama going to come against us. Ain’t nothing can come against the truth, and the word of God is the only truth you need to worry about. There ain’t going to be a trial and there ain’t going to be no jury. Only God can judge.”
We drove past the rows and rows of white crosses and washing machines and burnt out cars on our way back toward the main road. Even when I closed my eyes I saw the white crosses in my head. But about a half-mile before we would’ve hit the main highway, Herlin turned into the trees at a right-of-way where a bunch of power lines crossed. The old gravel road snaked beneath the towers for a quarter mile before curving back into the wood. We bounced along that worn-out stretch of road for five slow minutes. The sky opened up as we crossed beneath another power line right-of way. At the clearing I could see the river in the distance, and on the other side, an old power plant spitting white smoke into the sky.
We slowed to a stop, and Raney got out and unlocked a large gate. As we passed through he closed it. We continued down the road for another half mile, where it ended at an old gas well. Right next to it sat a cinderblock shed with a flat corrugated tin roof. I could barely make out Dixie Drilling on a rusty tin sign bolted to the steel door. Just
above the sign was a small opening covered with a metal grate.
All I could think about was how people’d been telling me it was time to be a man, time to grow-up. Making a move right here and now was the only way to make good. “No way,” I said.
Both back doors flew open at about the same time and me and Pauly were yanked from the car by our wrists. I got onto my knees while Herlin unlocked the shed’s door.
Pauly went in first. He turned, and Herlin uncuffed him. Pauly rubbed his wrists and moved to the back wall.
As soon as Herlin unlocked my right hand I spun and lunged at him. I wrapped my arms around him and pushed him to the ground. I knew my attack wouldn’t last very long. But I had to make it look worse than it really was. I hit him in the gut once. A weak punch.
Almost immediately, Raney grabbed a fistful of my hair and pulled me off Herlin. My hand ripped his hoodie pocket as I tried to hang on. Raney backhanded me and threw me into the ground.
When I got myself out of the dirt, I turned and looked for Raney. As soon as I found him I raised my fists.
“Pres…” Pauly said. “They’re going to put a hurting on you.”
Herlin got me from behind. He grabbed my throat and shoved me into the concrete block wall so hard I saw a bright light.
And getting off the ground didn’t come so easy this time. I sniffed blood back into my nose as I caught my breath.
“Pres. Stop it.” He helped me up and said, “Better the devil you know, right?”
As I got my feet beneath me, I replied, “That’s what I said.”
“We had enough of you.” Herlin straightened his hat. “How about a bullet through the brain pan?”
“I’m done.” I wiped blood off my face and stepped inside.
Herlin slammed the door shut and locked it. I coughed as I caught my breath. Raney got into the car first. Herlin
watched for a minute before finally getting in himself.
As soon as they disappeared around a crook in the road I showed Pauly my phone. “Got it from Herlin’s pocket.”
“They’re going to be back for it.” Pauly said, “Who you going to call that’s going to be able to do a damn thing?”
I scrolled through my numbers as Pauly watched. He figured I was about to do something stupid. He didn’t know what I knew.
“You’ll be lucky to get service out here—” He stopped himself when he heard the car coming back.
I found a number I hadn’t called in a long time. And the phone rang, and rang, and rang. She didn’t pick up, which I half-expected. But it didn’t matter. The call was made.
Raney jumped out before the car even came to a full stop. Herlin parked it, got out, and leveled the shotgun at me.
I pushed the phone through the metal wire and lied. “No service.”
“Well, no shit. Y’all going to order pizza? No thirty minutes or less out here, tell you that right now.” Raney took the phone.
“There’s a Chinese take-out up in Tennessee.” Raney held the phone to his ear. “Ching-chong, ching-chong.”
“You’re all alone. Once you see them bright stars looking down on you tonight, and tomorrow night and the next, you’re going to realize that,” Herlin said. “Dumb shit Yank.”
Raney nodded at Herlin, then sat down in the car. Herlin raised the gun at me.
I fell away from the door as he pulled the trigger. The crack of gunpowder and the immediate snap of a thousand metal pellets hitting steel filled my head. Even as Pauly told me I was okay and patted my cheek, my brain swam in a soup of reverberating sound.
Slowly the hiss of trauma left. Herlin laughed. Pauly sat me up and pushed me onto my knees. I stood in the little opening to catch my breath.
“It’s coming down, man,” I said. In the distance the sound of faintly calling birds and crickets rang in my ears. The cries of peepers drifted up from the water below. “It’s going to hit you like a bag of fucking hammers.”
The Revelations of Preston Black (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 3) Page 13