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

by Miller, Jason Jack

  But Pauly could not look away from Danicka.

  The water got warmer as she moved closer. My chill had been replaced by warm comfort.

  A crash of branches and limbs grew from the trees along the shore. Small yellow beams from a pair of flashlights cut through the distance in a way the people in the water couldn’t. Boggs yelled, “I’ll come at you where you sleep, girl.”

  “Pauly!” I yelled.

  Their flashlights skimmed the surface, looking for us. The beams stopped when they found us, and Boggs squeezed off three quick shots. Once Boggs realized he hadn’t drawn any blood, he resumed his pursuit.

  “Saint Paul told us not to act out of self-centered motivation or vain arrogance. He said to humbly put the concerns of others before your own.” The serpents Danicka held in her hands danced spiral shadows in the white glare of the cold headlights. As the rest of the church closed the distance between us, I could see that they, too, carried serpents. But instead of the writing masses Danicka held, the people bore vipers with fangs buried deep into the flesh of their wrists and forearms.

  I heard a sharp hiss and turned in time to see Ben nocking an arrow into his old bow. A tinkle of glass accompanied the darkening of a pickup truck’s headlight, unbalancing the long shadows cast by our pursuers.

  “Shoot the rest!” I said, without quite meaning too.

  “Katy,” Ben said. “I got this. Head to the boat.”

  Preston pulled me and Pauly past Ben, deeper into the darkness. From the shoreline Boggs thrashed through the trees.

  Ben let loose another arrow, but missed. He ran to catch up to us. The sloshing made it difficult to hear anything else. He held his light up, shining it ahead of us.

  Something moved past my calf and I screamed. “Sorry,” I said as I spun, looking for movement in the water around me. And I saw it in the dusky half-light. Slender fins slicing the pearlescent surface. Backwater fish frantically swimming away from Danicka and the warming water. A flurry of frogs and turtles and snakes threw themselves onto the shoreline. Muskrats and other rodents fumbled through the darkness, scurrying to get onto land.

  “Andre!” Ben yelled, waving the light over his head.

  Shots rang out from Boggs’s position on the right bank. Stray rounds ripped through fresh green leaves. Random, inaccurate, splashes formed in the water near us.

  Once again Pauly stopped. Preston ran back to grab his arm and pull him ahead.

  “Preston!” Ben and I yelled at the same time.

  Pauly twisted free of Preston’s grip and stepped backward, away from us.

  “Ben, help me,” Preston said. His voice quivered with fear.

  Ben handed me his bow as his rushed back to get Pauly. Ahead, I could see a johnboat drifting through the channel. The beam from a dim flashlight washed over me. I waved my arms.

  “Paul, finding you is an absolute inevitability.” Danicka moved faster now, leaving the church behind. “It’s time to embrace the suffering. Suffering is the root of hope, and you, Paul Pallini, are going to need all the hope you can muster.”

  Ben pulled his pistol from the shoulder holster and fired round after round into the people from the church. Every time one dropped into the water more light streamed across the pond from the trucks parked on shore. Ben emptied the clip and ejected it into the water. He pulled another from a pocket and slapped it into his weapon. “Pauly, we ain’t leaving you, no matter what this bitch says.”

  A flow of vocalization came from the remaining members of the church. Fifty tongues, maybe more, flapping to the stream of consciousness in their heads. But these sounds were unlike the nonsensical tongues I heard last night.

  Ben fired at the lights in the trees. I covered my ears as the rapid-fire shots turned into one long ringing sound in my head.

  “Pauly,” I yelled.

  But he’d begun retreating from Preston and Ben. I wanted to run ahead with them to bring Pauly back, but a voice from behind me instructed me to, “Get into the boat.”

  The tongues that our pursuers spoke came in unison. Every man, woman, and child said the exact same thing at the exact same time. “A potom cert ho vzal…” over and over.

  I yelled, “Ben, shoot her!”

  “Who the fuck you think I’m shooting at?”

  “Just get on the boat,” Pauly said, walking toward Danicka.

  “You boys get over here now,” the other man on the boat called out. “Come on now, girl. You’re first.”

  Hands tugged Ben’s bow out of my hands. The water felt like lukewarm tea.

  “Katy, get in!” Preston said, handing me our phones.

  “Not without you.”

  Ben said, “We’re coming, but somebody has to be first.”

  With the boat sitting out there in the water like that, Boggs now had a bigger target. The shots came closer. One punched through the thin aluminum hull as they pulled me in.

  The man with his hand on the outboard motor’s tiller turned the boat away from Preston and Ben.

  “Go and get them!” I yelled.

  The old man at the bow said, “So they can kill us all?”

  “Are you okay with them only killing one of us? Because that’s what’s going to happen if we don’t go up there and get them.”

  But he wouldn’t turn the boat.

  “Ben! Shoot into the trees. We’re coming to pick you up.”

  The old man got low in the bow. “She’s right. I’ll lay down some cover.” He handed me the flashlight. “Navigate.”

  From beneath a bench he pulled out an oilcloth sack. He quickly unzipped it and removed an old, well-cared for, sawed-off double barrel. “Most of the time we pull in catfish or the occasional carp. Every now and then you get a redneck cracker at the end of your line. They listen better when you got one of these in your hands.”

  He threw two shells in and fired immediately. Bits of leaves drifted down to the water.

  Boggs yelled, “Kill those lights,” and continued to fire random shots in our direction.

  The old man flicked the spent shells into the water and reloaded. The boat sped

  toward Preston and Pauly. The old man fired again, but I noticed he couldn’t take his

  eyes off Danicka.

  “Watch where you’re shooting there, George,” Ben said. “Don’t pay her no mind, okay?”

  The old man reloaded.

  “Ben, right here.” I reached out for him as we drifted past. He handed me his bag.

  “Don’t be afraid to use this,” Ben said as handed me his pistol. “Preston, grab his arm.”

  Pauly tried to twist away from Preston’s grasp. He lunged forward, but Ben caught him by the wrist.

  “Let me go! Motherfucker let me go! I want to deal with this.”

  George said, “Get in the boat, son. Nadhima’ll help y’all take care of this. Let us get you home now.”

  “Fucking stop it!” Pauly yelled. Spit came from his mouth when he said it. His eyes looked crazy. Didn’t look anything at all like Pauly.

  George fired two more rounds into the trees. The only shots returned came from the beach were the trucks were.

  Danicka said, “For everything there is a season. Paul, this is yours.”

  Instead of reloading George leaned over to help pull Pauly into the boat.

  As Pauly struggled, Ben grabbed his pistol and unloaded the rest of the clip into Danicka, now only a few yards away. I’d seen him shoot crows with a BB gun from a hundred yards out and I know he never missed. He tossed the pistol to me and went underwater. When he came back up he had Pauly by the knees, pushing him right into the boat. He coughed as he yelled, “Hold him down.”

  Ben followed him in. As he turned to grab Preston, he shouted, “Go, Andre! Go!”

  Pauly kicked and squirmed from the floor between the benches. He cussed and bit. George said, “It’s over now, son. Y’all need to calm yourself.”

  Preston took his hand and said, “We can do this, man. I promisepromisepromise I wi
ll take care of this. Please believe me, brother.”

  “I am not your fucking brother. And don’t you ever make that mistake again.” He sat up and pushed Preston away. “I’m a dead man walking. You should’ve let me end it because you ain’t the ones suffering. I’m the one who ain’t going to be able to sleep and I’m the one who’s going to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder. So fuck you for saving me and fuck you for thinking I give a shit about waking up tomorrow morning.”

  Weighted down with all these people, the boat moved slowly through the twisted backwater channels that crawled toward the main flow of water. The breeze made me shiver, and Preston sat close to keep me warm. Nobody said anything once we were in the clear. This most certainly didn’t feel like a win.

  Andre steered cautiously through the backwater to keep from hitting stumps. Ben and George took turns at the bow, shouted out directions. But as we got closer to the river the wind picked up, and bright lights from a power plant, like the one upriver from Morgantown, comforted me after two days of darkness. I basked in the distantly warm glow as we passed. The sound of the outboard drowned out the noise from the peepers calling out from the shoreline. I would’ve preferred that sound to the sound of nobody speaking to each other.

  After we passed the power plant the sky grew darker. Spring constellations, like Gemini and Leo hung low in the sky. Venus dipped beneath the tree tops shortly after we reached our top speed. I saw one shooting star and one satellite.

  Then, as we approached a bridge I saw headlights, cars travelling to and from dark destinations in the low hills beyond the riverbanks. They reminded me that people lived here without wishing harm to others. They only wanted to work and cash their checks and go to sleep in a house where the roof didn’t leak. I tried to let these thoughts be the ones I’d take to bed with me when I finally closed my eyes in a warm room.

  And they would’ve been good thoughts.

  But the motorcycles that sparked to life as we passed, with their four headlights shining down on us, stole that from me. When I closed my eyes, knowing that this was far from over, those were the only lights I saw.

  THE SECOND REVELATION OF PRESTON BLACK

  CHAPTER Seven

  You don’t know shit about hard times,

  With your hand-me-down Volvo and prep school rhymes.

  You can’t go back to nickels when you’ve been living on dimes.

  No, you don’t know shit about hard times.

  “Hard Times” Music and Lyrics by Preston Black

  John Lennon said, “Are you bloody mad?”

  The phone only had a chance to ring once. I knew the calls and texts were going to start when Dani showed up. Just didn’t expect them to start at sunrise.

  “Have you learned nothing? Even stoned out of me head I’ve never mucked it up like this. I blame meself for thinking you’d grow up. But you’re thicker now than you were a year ago. Like you got a head full of pudding.” Lennon spoke with more of a fatherly tone than I remembered. Didn’t sound at all like the John I knew.

  And because I didn’t want Katy to wake up, I didn’t say a thing to defend myself.

  “Look, man. You’re halfy-halfy in a pickle now, aren’t you? Stop with the whinging. The world isn’t analog anymore. Why do you insist on acting like it is?”

  I bit my tongue while I made my way to the front door, past the kitchen and pool table and bar. Simoneaux raised his hand in a good morning salute. I snaked between the tables and chairs, past the drum kit that slept on a small riser next to an oversized PA system. I noticed a dim neon cross hanging above the drum kit, and I realized at that very moment that this juke joint transformed into Andre’s church come Sunday morning. Light rain tapped the corrugated tin roof and the blue and green glass on Simoneaux’s front yard bottle tree. When I opened the door to step onto the porch, the breeze that greeted me felt like the first air I ever breathed. Since the door would lock if I let it shut behind me, I kept a foot inside on that old hardwood. As soon as I figured I had my privacy I said, “Look, man. How could I know what to do? I asked Ben and he asked Katy’s mum and she told me what to do. I didn’t invent all this.”

  The door opened and Simoneaux looked at me. I held my hand over the phone to ask him to give me a minute.

  “Can’t protect you out here.” He grabbed my shirt and pulled me back through the door, waggling his finger with his other hand. “Best stay inside, son.”

  Through the earpiece, John Lennon said, “Look, if you’re planning on tiptoeing through life with your head up your bum I don’t have a whole lot left to say to you anyway.”

  “Don’t be like that, please.” But he’d hung up already. “Fuck.”

  “Watch your mouth, all right? I don’t mind the language when I’m pouring, but I ain’t going to tolerate it at seven in the morning.” Simoneaux walked across the swamp ash dance floor and back into the kitchen. “Come on now, give me a hand.”

  I looked at my phone thinking maybe I didn’t blow it with John. But I knew his temper. When he finished, he finished. I scrolled through the rest of the texts I got last night. Strummer. Two texts from Lennon. One from Cliff Burton and one from Jerry Garcia. There were three from a number I didn’t recognize. I opened the first of them and saw, but Simoneaux’s impatience kept me from reading the rest.

  A bunch of black-and-white photos hung on the wall that led back to the kitchen and office. Simoneaux at varying ages with all kinds of musicians. Old black guys with Gibson Les Pauls and ES-355s. The only man I recognized besides Simoneaux was Son House. The rest looked almost as important though. I meant to ask him about them, but as soon as I came through the swinging kitchen door he handed me a pint glass and pointed to a mound of white dough he’d rolled out on the countertop. He said, “Biscuits.”

  The proper technique eluded me, so he clasped my hand in his and slammed the rim of the glass into the dough, showing me how to make perfect little moons. “Don’t skimp on the butter.”

  He watched as I twisted the glass and pulled out a perfect little baby biscuit. He smiled as I slathered melted butter all over before setting it on the baking sheet. He turned, and after a weird silence I figured I’d ask him about the Son House picture. But as soon as I opened my mouth he cut me off. “Going to tell you a bit about this Hoodoo now, so you can wrap your head around it. You keep on listening while you cut those.”

  I nodded, even though he’d turned his back.

  “About sixty—fifty years ago I ended up in the old ‘colored’ jail down in Thibodaux. Manager of Rouse’s says he saw me putting cigarettes into my pocket, ’cept when the police showed up my pockets was empty. Maybe it happened sixty years ago. Anyway, my mama’s sitting outside the jail and this Hoodoo stumbles up the street. He looks at her and says, ‘Your boy’s about to become a scapegoat for every unsolved crime in Lafourche Parish, you know that?’ Course she knows. Why the hell else she be sitting out there?”

  Simoneaux wiped his hands on an old rag and brought another pint glass over to the dough. He started cutting biscuits right along with me as he went on. “Says to my mama he’d get me out for fifty dollars. Fifty may as well be a thousand, right? But she goes into town and pawns a silver cross her daddy hid away for hard times. She figured times weren’t going to get no harder than this. She gave that old Hoodoo the money and next thing I know this mojo bag come right through the window of my cell. He hollered at me, telling me to tie that coin ’round my ankle and chew on those hawthorn leaves and ginger root like a rat in the cane. He told me to spit that juice all along the cell door and in the corners, and I chewed until my jaw wouldn’t move no more and hid that sack down round my nuts so them guards couldn’t find it come pat-down. When trial came I went to face charges on ten or eleven different offences. I prayed to Saint Valérie and Saint Vitalis that morning to be safe. Let me tell you, that jury was full of some of the reddest necks you ever saw. Real Sons of the Confederacy types
. They had me convicted as soon as they seen me walk in. But you know what?”

  He stopped.

  “I’m listening.”

  “A spirit appeared in that courtroom as soon as them proceedings started. A murder victim. Said one of the jurors beat him to death in the cane then burned the fields. Lead the sheriff right to the remains.”

  I nodded.

  “Don’t play no games with me, son.”

  “I’m not. I totally believe you. I know what it feels like.”

  “It appeared in the Daily Comet if you think I’m shitting you. You want to hear the best part?”

  “What’s that?”

  “It happened April 28—Saint Valérie’s feast day.” He grabbed a bottle of rye whiskey from a shelf above the sink, flipped his pint glass over and poured a generous four fingers into it. “Who got that Hoodoo now?”

  “You do?”

  “That’s right I do. That’s why you’re here. The way some folks see it, you fucked up by going down to that particular intersection. But I know men who’d done a lot worse for love. Ain’t a thing wrong with that. You listen to me and I’ll keep you and your girl safe.” Simoneaux pulled a yellow legal pad out of a drawer and started scribbling.

  “What about my brother?”

  He wrote for a few minutes while I waited for an acknowledgement. Finally, he looked up at me and said, “Well, a lot of that depends on him.”

  He put the list on the counter and left. I read it—1. wash dishes 2. marinate pork tenderloin 3. start a pot of red beans cooking. He’d scribbled out a recipe below. Not a single item on his list had anything to do with keeping me or Katy or Pauly safe. But I didn’t mind. Being told what to do was a hell of a lot easier than making mistakes on your own.

  Katy came in as I finished the dishes and asked what I needed help with. I told her exactly what Simoneaux told me. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she wore jeans and a little grey Uniontown Red Raiders T-shirt she found in my closet the day I moved out of my apartment. The girl who’d left it was a featured twirler the year WVU won the Orange Bowl, but Katy never asked where it came from.