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

by Miller, Jason Jack

  The fact that he’d called me that made me burn with anger. Jamie called me that at bluegrass festivals, but it was a family nickname. Even Preston never called me that.

  Truly rested her hand on his knee as he took a seat across from me. Annoyed, he waved her away, and waited until she retreated.

  Truly flatly said, “Amen,” and turned a cold shoulder as she stepped toward a window.

  “Any day a soul finds its way to the Lord is a beautiful day, ain’t it?” He smiled a made-for-TV smile. “Did y’all get something good to eat? Want something else?”

  “No, thank you,” I said. “I wasn’t very hungry.”

  “Sorry about all that,” Hicks said it like he was a manager at a Hampton Inn listening to a noise complaint. “You know, Sister Odelia told me all about you and your kin before she defiled my daddy’s church up in Alpena. I suppose what you and your folks did up there in them hills can be taken as a sacrifice or retribution, if y’all believe in that sort of thing. I suppose I owe you a small debt of gratitude, and that’s why I’m going to help you find the Lord. It ain’t going to be so hard as you might think to turn your back on your evil, witching, ways.”

  My blood boiled at the reminder of what happened with the Lewises up in West Virginia last summer. Add in the indignity of Hicks’s assumption that we somehow instigated and it took everything I had in me to stay seated on that long wooden bench. “I took a bullet last summer, just so you know.”

  Hicks smirked, and I pulled my shirt down over my left clavicle to show him.

  “Whoa, girl. Keep your clothes on. We ain’t there yet.” Hicks smiled and waved his hands like he was refusing old sushi. “They tell me I have a way with the ladies, but I ain’t never had somebody move this fast.”

  Don’t provoke.

  Don’t provoke.

  Don’t provoke.

  I took a deep breath. “I would like to use a bathroom and get cleaned up,” and even though it almost killed me to say it, I added, “…please.”

  “Sure thing. Truly, would you like to show Miss Katy the facilities.”

  Truly turned and looked at me for a long second. “She won’t run.”

  Hicks’s smile grew. I could even see it in his wide pupils, which explored me for a sign it was true. Truly must’ve seen it in his eyes too.

  Hicks said, “You do not know how happy that makes me. We’ll wait right here for you then. I see you got your shoe back?”

  I stood. “Thank you.”

  “You are most welcome.” He watched me stand and turn. Being able to turn away from his gaze made me happy.

  I noticed the deadbolt as soon as I shut the bathroom door. The temptation to twist the knob washed over me like the eighth deadly sin, but I knew better. They’d hear the click. I remembered my rules, and turned to the mirror and scolded myself for my seemingly endless inability to humble myself. “Stupid,” I whispered. “Stupid. Stupid.”

  I pounded my thigh with my fist at each syllable. I looked at myself in the mirror and saw the fear in my eyes. Until now, I’d only suspected it. Seeing was believing.

  “Keep him on your side,” I whispered.

  They’re coming. I pushed my hair out of my face and leaned toward the mirror, almost nodding at my decision to redouble my focus. “Preston will find you.”

  I ran the hot water to wash, but couldn’t take my mind off the window. Beneath it sat a patch of grass and a clear shot to the wide open wilderness of wherever we were. Women in long skirts with hair piled atop their heads shuffled past. I wasn’t worried about them at all and wondered if I should’ve been. I stayed close to the stainless countertop, as if physicality alone would keep temptation out of my head. Rule number one…

  “Rule number one.” I let the hot water wash temptation away.

  When I opened the door Hicks and Truly waited outside. Hicks gave Truly a look, and even though I couldn’t be certain, I could’ve sworn he shrugged, as if he’d just lost a bet. With an insincere laugh, he said, “You remember to wash your hands?”

  “Shy bladder,” I said.

  He gestured for me to head to the door. As I walked on, he said, “The best explanation for God’s gift of tongues to the early Church lies in the necessity of teaching newly converted Christians to pray with their heart rather than their mouths. That’s all Truly’s trying to impress upon you, she meant no malice by it.”

  “Aside from the maliciousness of kidnapping me?”

  Hicks ignored me.

  In keeping with my rules, I almost apologized, but Hicks went on.

  “The Church knows a deeper way to educate the heart—you cultivate the inner man.” He smiled, as if anticipating seeing me express a change of heart. “Or woman. Dead churches have forgotten how to pray in the spirit without losing control of the spirit. I want to teach you how.”

  Hicks led me back outside, his hand lingering right above my hip, brushing my back every now and then. I didn’t turn my head or react to his touch. Truly, who had been walking right alongside us, fell a few steps behind. We moved between the rows of white cabins toward the field where they’d brought me in last night. Some of the shacks had drapes, tulips and daffodils sprouting from the grey earth, or other, tiny touches of domesticity. Potted flowers. Wreathes on the door. But what didn’t differ from cabin to cabin was the scrawl of black letters, Bible verses and other warnings. Old Testament, fire and brimstone-type stuff.

  Below the one cabin’s window I read A tithe of everything, whether grain from the earth or fruit from the orchard, belongs to the LORD; it is holy to the LORD! The same phrase had been written several times on other parts of the house.

  Above the door of another was The life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given the blood to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life. I tried not to get caught looking.

  People moved toward the clearing from all over. Some emerged from the various buildings, some from the trees themselves. The mass of bodies pushed toward a giant tent in the center of the field, like an Army field hospital from M.A.S.H., except the sides were tied open to the late afternoon. I didn’t remember seeing it last night. At the near end of the tent, surrounded by rows and rows of hay bales sat a crude brush arbor like the lay pastors of old built in fields before a proper church could be constructed. Pine boughs formed a rudimentary roof over four pairs of vertical ten-foot posts.

  The remainder of the meadow served as a parking lot for RVs and pop-up campers, vans and trucks and station wagons and SUVs. A hundred vehicles, at least, surrounded the glowing tent like drones around a queen bee. Hound dogs had been tied to pickup truck tailgates with sagging ropes. I heard motorcycles, but did not see them. From beneath the tent people already squealed and applauded to the sounds of a fuzzy, high voice coming through a cheap PA. Sounded like an auctioneer at the county fair. Except that it was a child speaking.

  The air smelled like spring. Wet, with the slightest whiff of organic matter, like chlorophyll rushing into young leaves and flowers. But when we got closer to the men and women with kids, drug store perfume and body odor washed away the only good thing I’d found refuge in. Hicks pushed through the throng, past an old natural gas well, around people who wanted to shake his hand or get something, even if just a nod, of acknowledgement from him. Old men carrying instrument cases or fine wooden boxes with brass corners and hinges smiled as we passed. Most of the older women wore their hair in high, tight buns. They covered their arms and wore skirts or dresses down to their ankles. The young girls dressed more or less the same, except their skirts were denim as often as not. Sometimes the only way to tell the young ones from the old ones was by the shoes they wore. Some of the younger girls wore tennis shoes.

  The people were working folks, and if they’d have been wearing WVU ball caps instead of Crimson Tide hats, I could’ve easily been back home. None of them looked like the kind of people who’d endorse an abduction. Hicks didn’t stop for any of th
em. With his hand on my back, he continued to push, holding me close, like he meant to protect me. Off to the far right I saw the bikers from the show in Nashville pushing toward us, and I wondered if Hicks meant to avoid them. He jerked me into forceful changes of direction, like he was suddenly angry. My heart raced with his new mood. A moment ago I felt confident I’d see tomorrow. But the way he shoved me into folks, through couples and children, made me believe different. The way he clenched his jaw told me he’d grown angry.

  “Hicks!”

  I turned to see who shouted. The biker from Nashville pushed through parishioners.

  Hicks made for the tent, and sat me on a metal folding chair next to a drum riser. Two other men helped him wrap my hands and ankles with duct tape. The biker with the tattoos on his face pushed into the tent. “Hicks, I told you I wanted her.”

  “Boggs,” Hicks said, retreating a bit. “How about we sort this out tomorrow, okay? Maybe this is something we don’t want to discuss here.”

  “Discuss what?” I said.

  But they ignored me. I looked for acknowledgement from the people seated in the first row of chairs. They looked confused, nervous. I shouted, “Hicks abducted me from a truck stop in Alabama last night! Call the police, please—"

  A few turned when I called out. The rest remained fixated on the blue-eyed child preacher shouting nonsense from the brush arbor pulpit. The few rows of bare bulbs strung from the tent made it difficult to see faces beyond the first rows.

  Hicks and Boggs moved in at the same time. Hicks clapped his hand over my mouth as one of his guys peeled off another strip of duct tape. “You asked for this,” he said, taping my mouth shut.

  I kicked my feet, which had already been bound to the chair. The chair rocked forward a bit. Hicks jumped back in surprise, but steadied himself with a hand on my knee.

  “Boggs.” Hicks stood, and ran a finger down my cheek. “Let’s try to do the Lord’s work tonight. How about it? If it don’t work out like we’d hoped, you can have her tomorrow.”

  Boggs turned and left without answering.

  “You see? God has blessed you with a choice.” Hicks lowered himself and whispered into my ear, “God reserves the right to withhold judgment. I’m here to lead you to the font, to let you be born again in his holy waters. Some of the girls survived it. Like Truly over there. God decided she was fit to live and be born again. So we pulled her out of the water and for a long time she didn’t even move. But then that Holy Spirit came down into her and she coughed that water out and now she’s here to tell her story. Maybe you’ll float and tell your story, Miss Katy. You want me to take this off your mouth?”

  I nodded.

  He pulled it slowly away from my lips, and said, “Maybe you’ll sink. You’re going to have to decide first though. Whether you even want to be saved or not.”

  He gestured to the group that gathered within earshot. “Ain’t that right?”

  They provided him with an immediate “Amen.”

  “So what, Hicks. You save me. Then what? I’m another trophy? Like Truly? You pull her off the street and pump her up with ‘Jesus loves you’ and now she’s saved?”

  “You want the tape again?” He stood and smiled. “I’m trying to be reasonable, here.”

  “The dirtier the better. Right, Hicks? Truly’s a junkie. You think I’m a witch. You probably got an adulterer and a prostitute hanging around too.”

  Hicks clenched his teeth and smiled. “Look at this kid, will you?”

  “You are a monster—”

  “Shut your mouth.” Hicks grabbed my jaw, forcing me to watch the child preacher. “Or I’ll let Boggs shut it. Your choice.”

  The little boy stomped across the pulpit, wiping his face with a towel like hemust’ve seen Hicks do a thousand times. The boy stopped, loosened his tie and slapped his hand on the big black Bible that sat on the miniature podium somebody must’ve made special for him. “Hallelujah.”

  Hicks stood at my shoulder.

  The boy flipped through the Bible like he was looking for a particular passage. People in the congregation murmured. Somebody in the back shouted a loud, clear, “Hallelujah.”

  The kid wiped his face again—a child actor, not a preacher—and I looked at Hicks. He stood there, arms folded, smiling and nodding his head.

  The kid said, “I’m going to preach about…” He sighed and paused dramatically. The noise from the congregation grew.

  “Tonight, I’m preaching about…” His young voice couldn’t articulate each consonant. It sounded like baby talk.

  “Praise Jesus!” A woman shouted from the back. Hicks clapped his hands, a gesture that inspired more of the same from the group. The kid smiled, letting the roar build, which had the effect of generating more anticipation. More buzz. The kid said, “Tonight I’m preaching about the one true God!”

  Screams of praise erupted from the tent. If it’d been any louder, we all would’ve spilled into the grass like feathers from a burst pillow.

  “The red hot revival!” He shouted and jumped a little. He landed with his fist on the Bible and said, “Made whole by the power of God.”

  And the crowd bought it. Grown men and women with their hands in the air and eyes closed.

  “Be made whole by the Holy Spirit!” He jumped in the air two, three, four times. “The Holy Spirit is coming down into this church tonight to make us whole.”

  Gibberish. Catchphrases. Not a single word of substance. I could only shake my head.

  Hicks got real close to me. Close enough to smell the fake apple in his cologne. “You going to be saved tonight, girl,” he said, letting his finger slide down my breastbone. “Or you’re going to wish you were. You only get one shot to deny Christ. The second time, we’re going to try you as a witch.”

  He drifted over to the child preacher, clapping and pumping his fist. He grabbed the guitar player’s mic out of its stand and said, “Thank you, Grayden! And praise Jesus.”

  Truly took Hicks’s place as my personal attendant. She watched him stoically drop to his knees and hug the kid. I couldn’t tell if she looked more angry or hurt. At this point, I didn’t know if I could tell the difference. Somebody in the crowd spoke in tongues.

  Grayden’s mom waited at the far side of the tent. She stood next to a tall man with dark eyes and hair. The man may have been Grayden’s daddy, but he sure as hell wasn’t his father. Only one man in the room had hair blond enough and eyes blue enough. And he was about to speak.

  The drone of electric guitars hammered out dissonant chords over the drummer’s straight 4/4 time, drowning out chattering voices. Hicks closed his eyes to the beat. He waved a hand, and the playing got a lot quieter. Just a whispered taptap of the drum and palm-muted chords. Hicks held the mic to his lips. “How ’bout a little intercession?”

  The crowd noise grew. Somebody right near me in the front row spoke in tongues. “Eehee keykee mongobah chur chongo un too peek tickakaan…”

  “They say I’ve got God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit itself in my bones from the time I was born,” Hicks whispered into the mic. “I ain’t educated, but I’m a smart man and I got the degree that keeps the light on for these people. They come to me with questions science and government can’t answer, and the response flows through me, like a river. You’ll see tonight. Because you are but a dark stain on the face of this earth. But by the time you’re done here, by God, you’ll either be saved or dead.”

  He was talking to me.

  “My spirit talks to their spirits, and together we have a conversation with God through the Holy Spirit. He tells me it’s coming, and that I need to get the people ready.” The sizzle of the ride cymbal went into my ears like a Holstein to clover. My head pounded, but all I could do was angle it away from the drum kit. It gave me a little relief, but I still felt a migraine coming on.

  At once the drums stopped. A wave of hushes flew through the congregation. Women stood on tiptoes, fanning themselves with paper fans as they strained to
find Hicks’s baby blue eyes. I felt hot breath on my neck and tried to jerk forward. The drummer put his hand on my shoulder and said, “You need to get your eyes on Jesus. Everything Elijah says is scriptural. It’s God’s word—not the words of them unholy spirits filling your head. Search your heart and make sure you got your house in order, because He’s coming soon and you best prepare yourself for the day of his glorious return.”

  He placed his hand on my head. I could smell Skoal on his fingertips. “I’ll pray for you.”

  Truly watched.

  Hicks paused with the mic at his lips and toweled himself off. Just like Grayden did. He smiled, a blond Elvis, shaking souls instead of hips. He quietly spoke into the mic, “How y’all doing?”

  A chorus of responses, and an early “Amen” here and there came back from the congregation. New rounds of voices exploded in tongues. “…deev ell a potom cert ho vzal prayeehan.”

  “Little hot out here tonight. Sorry about that.” Hicks walked to the far end of the tent, spun on his heels and returned to the center. He clasped the mic between his fingers and dropped his head like he was in deep thought. After a moment, he put the mic back to his mouth, and said, “Bet you it’s a little hotter in hell right now.”

  A roar built in the crowd as people jumped to their feet. Behind me, the drummer counted off a real quick four count and banged out that same elementary beat he’d been pounding out since we’d arrived. The guitarist and bass player riffed on a simple I-IV-V chord pattern as the people of the congregation hooted and kicked. Folding chairs were passed to the edge of the tent, handed from person to person, letting more of those on the outside squeeze themselves in. The steady clang of tambourines came from all around me.

  Hicks shouted into the mic, “The congregation of God is a living breathing temple and each person in that temple is a stone! This is a spiritual temple where the people worship God in spirit and in truth. It is not a church building—a dead church where sinners follow pedophile priests. In this church… In this spiritual temple, every believer is a priest. God now dwells in and among his people.” He toweled himself again and turned his back to the congregation.