When she tied an apron around her waist, I saw that the bite marks on her arm had purpled a bit, but looked like they were healing.
She soaked the beans in a stock pot, then started the sausage and ham hocks in another big pot. I watched her chop onions and a bell pepper. “Katy?”
“Preston?” she replied, without ever looking up from the cutting board.
Instead of asking what I wanted to ask, I said, “How you feeling?”
“Good.” She slid part of the onion into her hand and dropped it into the pot. “And scared. But mostly good.”
“About all this…” I said, not really sure how I wanted to follow up. “You know, I never wanted to be alone. I saw Pauly and my mom pray and I prayed too, not because I believed, but because I wanted to believe and be part of something. Part of me had to know there was more out there than only what I saw with my own eyes, and part of me had to know I’d see my mother again. But praying did make my life better. It didn’t calm me or make me feel closer to God—it forced me to rely on Pauly and my friends because it left me feeling so empty. I still hope there’s something out there, but these people—the ones that took you—I hope they ain’t right about what it is.”
I slid my hands around her waist and kissed her neck and cheek. At first all her muscles tensed up. As soon as I felt that, I pulled away, but she grabbed my hand and pulled it around her waist. I said, “This never should’ve happened.”
I could feel her smile. So I spun her toward me and kissed her. She set the knife on the counter behind her and put her hands around my neck. I could smell the onion on her fingertips, but didn’t care. She said, “This summer we’ll run away. We’ll go to Outer Banks and get a house and write songs all night long. I’ll get that wine you like and we’ll eat hush puppies and crab cakes and gain twenty pounds. We’ll get nice and brown in the sun and sleep in. And everybody will say all our new songs are weak because we didn’t suffer enough and we’ll just laugh. Right?”
“Sounds like a plan.” I went in for another kiss.
She turned her head, giving me her cheek instead of her lips. “Doesn’t it? You say it like you don’t really mean it.”
“No, I mean it. And I’m ready. I want to focus on what we got in front of us, okay? Like getting you home.”
“What do you mean?”
“We need to get out of here. Your mom and Jamie are coming down to help us sort everything out and take us back.”
“Why? Because I spent a day at the Reverend Hicks’s Camp for Wayward Girls? We haven’t cancelled a show yet and we aren’t about to start cancelling shows now.”
“Katy…”
“What, Preston?” She clenched a fist and held it against her hip. “You start running now and you know what you’re going to end up with? Sore feet. That’s it. You said you’d do anything for me, right?”
I laughed. “You want to cash that one in right now?”
“By my accounts it’s a lifetime supply. There ain’t no ‘that one’ about it. It’s time to put your dukes up, boy.”
Pauly’s Uncle Louie used to say that to me when I was little. He was the biggest man I’d ever know until I saw him on a hospital bed after open heart surgery. “I know. I already have a plan.”
She clasped her hands behind my neck and rested her head against my chest. “When were you planning on telling me about this plan?”
I took a deep breath because I knew of only one way to clear Pauly’s slate and free everybody from Dani’s tangled words in one fell swoop. And that it would hurt. “Never.”
I kissed Katy’s forehead and cupped my hand beneath her chin.
She kissed me back, and then pulled away.
I said, “What?”
“You need to take care of your brothers.” She wiped her hands on her apron and grabbed two pint glasses from a rack above the big stainless dishwasher.
“Water. Lots and lots of water. And don’t let either one of them leave. Especially Pauly. Mr. Simoneaux said tie him down if you have to, but don’t let him out of this building.” She pointed to a plastic pitcher by the sink. “And tell Ben that the West Virginia contingency will be here soon.”
I filled the pitcher with tap water and backed into the hall. As the door swung the other way, Katy added, “Ibuprofen’s in my purse.”
In the rear of Simoneaux’s juke joint, across from the office where Katy and I slept, sat a storeroom. Through the little window I could see cans of beans and cases of beer and booze. I flipped the light switch, stepped inside, and waved off the acidy/sweet stench of whiskey puke.
Ben’s bedroll leaned against a shelf, unrolled, next to his PTSD drugs—Zoloft, Klonopin, Paxil. He slept on the floor beneath it, curled up into a little ball. Pauly slept farther back, sprawled out like he’d been shot. His shoes were off, one arm covered his face, and his foot rested on Ben’s hand. Between them sat a bottle of Jack, half-full with the lid screwed on. When I prodded Ben with my toe, I saw the second bottle—the empty one—beneath Pauly’s head like a pillow. “Up and at ’em, sunbeams.”
“You feel froggy? Then jump.” Ben covered his face with his arm. “Or get out.”
“You do whatever you want. I just need Pauly.”
“Well, I’m taking care of him,” Ben said. “Gave him a Klonopin.”
“Thanks. I can see that. You didn’t literally push him off the wagon, did you?”
“I hopped. I couldn’t think of any other way to wrap my brain around what happened last night. If I stop to think about it I’m gone, going to totally lose it, man,” Pauly growled from beneath his arm. “So I’m going to hop again. All day long. Like I’m in a fucking bounce castle.”
“A puke-scented bounce castle?” I slid the vomit-filled trash-can out into the hall with my foot. “Like a redneck Kennywood. You supposed to mix antidepressants with alcohol?”
“Who made you den mother anyway?” Ben sat up real slow and rested his face in his palms. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but the other day it was you on the floor, right?”
“Yeah, I know. But I’m trying to make it right. You don’t have to help, but you ain’t got to stand in my way either. Besides, your dad and Rachael are on their way and we all have to give statements. Coffee’s on in the kitchen and I’ll keep running water back to you guys.”
Ben shook his head, dismissing me just like that.
“What?” I said. “We got Katy, which was supposed to be the hard part. Right? Getting her out seemed like a virtual impossibility but we got her. And now she’s out there in the kitchen making beans. You did that. With Pauly and me. We got her, man.”
Ben said, “Then why does this all feel like ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag?”
Pauly watched, like he hoped I had the answers he needed too.
“Because we got loose ends to tie up. We’re going to spend a lot of time answering questions. They found your Jeep already, so they been to the camp.”
“Okay. Give me a few minutes.”
“Pauly?”
“Yeah, man. But stop being such a fucking jag off. Let me go back to bed, okay? Been a while since I felt like this and the body don’t recover like it used to.”
“You ain’t going to go running off or anything?”
“Stop being so nebby, Grandma. I’m going to sleep, think about how I ain’t got a fucking thing to look forward to. Later I’ll call my sponsor and tell him I made a deal with the devil.”
I thought about the plan I’d put together in my head, a way to end all this in one shot, and said, “You may want to hold off on that, man.”
“Why’s that?”
Ben stood, stretched, and walked into the hall. “He ain’t going to do nothing stupid, Pres. Just let him work this out in his head, will you?”
“We got this, Pauly. Okay? I took care of this once and I can do it again. As far as I know I’m the only person who can and I’m telling you I’ll take care of this. Trust me.”
He put his arm back over his face. “Hit
the light, please.”
I flipped the switch and shut the door. When I turned, the sight of Ben still standing there gave me a bit of a start. “Jesus, man.”
He pushed me down the hall. “He talked in his sleep all night. About dead people. Must’ve woke him up from nightmares six or seven times.” He grabbed my arm as I walked away. “What the hell is Pauly talking about? Is this real?”
I shrugged and tried to pull away. Ben wouldn’t let go of my arm.
“Maybe your dad can explain it to you. I spent a year talking about this to anybody who’d listen and him and Katy are the only ones who believed me.” I put my head down and went back toward the kitchen. “Until now.”
Simoneaux had said that, “Cuttin’ your own switch is the price of forgettin’ your manners” before he went outside to greet Jamie and Rachael and Chloey.
Which I knew, because Pauly’s grandma raised us the same way. No matter how you chose you ended up black and blue.
Lesson learned.
We watched their arrival from behind the buzzing blue and red neon tubes of the “Dixie Beer 45” sign that hung in the big front window. Our punishment kept us confined to the relative safety of Simoneaux’s juke joint. Grounded against temptation.
But Rachael didn’t spend much time outside. She burst through the door and greeted Katy with a long embrace. Katy’s little sister, Chloey, came in on Rachael’s heels and the three of them held each other for a long time. I still stunk of shame, and ducked into the kitchen like I hadn’t heard Rachael ask where I was.
“Preston!” Chloey shouted. “Get out here, scaredy cat.”
With my head hanging down I went back out, even though I felt like I didn’t belong in that unit. Felt like it’d been my responsibility to keep Katy safe, and that I’d failed. And when Rachael pulled me into the circle with her girls a wave of guilt hit me.
Chloey said, “Does somebody need his belly rubbed?”
I relaxed as Rachael held me tighter. She smelled like home, like she’d accidentally brought a bit of the mountain spring down in her coat and scarf. Rushing water and lonely winter birds. When she finally let me go, she said, “Elaine packed biscuits and elderberry jam if you kids want any.”
I shook my head.
“Mom’s cousin, Elaine Collins? From Boone?” Katy exhaled slowly.
I still didn’t follow.
“Jesus, Preston, we stayed with her after that workshop at Appalachian State? She had that cat that ate pizza and spaghetti?”
“Oh, yeah. My head still ain’t right.” Through the side window I watched Jamie nod while Simoneaux showed him the bottle tree out front, pointing to the blue bottles specifically.
“Going to take a lot more than a bottle tree to stop what’s coming,” Katy said, before leading her mom and sister to the back to get freshened up.
“You think?” I said, still watching, wondering if it could get worse before it got better. I knew it could always get worse.
While Katy got back to chopping onions and garlic in the kitchen, with Chloey at her hip, yapping, Simoneaux told me and Ben to stack the tables and chairs on the stage. Then, before stepping back out to help Jamie carry stuff in from the car, Simoneaux added, “Put a real quick shine on that floor while you’re at it. Dust mop’s in the closet.”
“That’s all you,” Ben said, before disappearing behind the bar as soon as Simoneaux left. He grabbed a bottle of something brown and drifted toward the hallway.
Thinking that he kept Pauly from sobering up ate at me, especially since I felt like Pauly needed something more right now. “Ben. That all for you?”
“Half of it is.” He turned toward the door.
“I thought we agreed to let him sober up?”
“Don’t you go getting your gussies up. Besides, I don’t remember agreeing to that.” He pushed the door open and drifted back to the storeroom as Katy came through carrying a big tray of clean highball glasses.
“Your cousin’s starting to piss me off.” I walked over to the closet and grabbed the dust mop.
“Tell him about it.” She stacked the glasses onto a shelf beneath the bar.
“For real? That’s your answer?”
“Yup. He’s pouting and Pauly’s scared. And drinking is better than fighting, which you know is what Ben wants. He came home less than six months before Jane died, then all that with the Lewises happened, so my guess is that a big part of him never left Jalalabad. He pops those antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds like they’re Gummy Bears. There’s a thin line between PTSD and addiction.” She walked to the end of the bar, sliding the tray along the top as she went. “But his attitude is going to come in real handy over the next few days.”
I met her at the end.
“Listen,” she said, laying her head on my chest. “Right now Ben is taking care of Pauly, and by extension, of himself. That’s where I want them both. Out of our hair. I’ll tell them when they need to be on their toes. And you’ll help me make sure they are.”
“I don’t want trouble with Ben.”
“Then don’t give any. You look at him, and say, ‘Ben, give me a hand with this.’ Don’t order him and don’t ask him.”
“And when he ignores me?”
“Then you can say ‘please.’ It’s up to you. This is the kind of stuff I deal with all the time. Club owners and drink tabs. Insurance on the rentals. Deposits on the gear. Look at it as a promotion.” She patted my shoulder.
“Well, if you’re giving me your old job what are you going to be doing?”
“Preston…” She crossed her arms. “I’m doing my best to make sure everybody leaves here in one piece. That’s why I want Ben and Pauly in the back—drinking, if need be—and you watching everything Jamie and Simoneaux do. Tonight’s going to be a long one. You’re going to be front and center for all of it.”
“You really think they’re going to find us here?”
“I think the fact that you asked me that shows how important it is you stick with Jamie and Simoneaux. Mom and Chloey are going to babysit Pauly and Ben tonight.”
“And what about you?”
“I’m going to be wherever you are. I’m never leaving you again.”
“I’m sorry, Katy. I really am.” I pulled her head back to my shoulder.
She resisted a bit before closing her eyes and giving in. Her tears warmed my shirt. I rested my cheek on her head. The thought of her being violated sparked something dark in me. I did my best to hide my rage, but the way she grabbed my fist, and slid her fingers into mine, told me I hadn’t done such a great job.
“He’s dead, babe. I saw him blown into heaven with my own eyes.” She sniffled.
“He wasn’t the only one. Boggs?”
“They don’t matter right now. They’re ants and we’re about to have a lion problem.”
And before I could say anything else, Simoneaux came through the front door with my Tele and the road case with our mics in it. He pointed at the beer taps and said, “Darling, would you be so kind to pass that big box of kosher over to your man?”
“Sure thing, Mr. Simoneaux.” She handed it to me with a smirk. “See? A promotion.”
“Just Simoneaux, Miss Stefanic. After Preston cleans the floor like I asked him to, he’s going to pour a little pile of salt in each corner, then wait for me before doing anything else.” Simoneaux wiped his brow in exaggerated frustration. “Think he can do that?”
“Want me to ask?” Katy smiled. “Can you manage, my love?”
“Yeah. Clean the floor. Then pour salt all over it.”
And when I finished doing what Simoneaux’d asked, he went into the dead center of the dance floor and poured the rest of the salt into a neat little mound. He said, “Preston, go on into the back and get me four cans of lye from the storage room.”
Since avoiding the storage room had been part of my plan, especially with Ben holed up in there, I dragged my feet down the hall before stopping and listening at the door. When I didn’t hear
anything, I flipped the light on and pushed the door open.
“Damn it, Ben…”
The floor was empty. Ben’s shit had been removed. The office, where Katy and I’d spent the night, was unoccupied too. I whipped around, rushed back up the hall, and busted through the kitchen door.
First thing I saw was Pauly with his head in his hand sitting behind a ginormous plate of biscuits and gravy. Ben sat next to him, his mouth full. Chloey stood right over Ben, chirping about the pictures in her phone. Ben looked up at me. Pauly didn’t.
“What’s wrong, honey?” Rachael asked from behind the wall of steam that rose from a pot. Smelled like cayenne and garlic.
But I felt guilty for assuming they’d run off and said, “What the hell’s lye?”
“They use it for hominy and a bunch of other stuff. Probably comes in a can.”
Katy pushed through the door. “C’mon.” Ben watched as I backed out of the kitchen, eyeing me suspiciously as he sopped his plate with a biscuit. As the door swung shut, he said, “Don’t let it hit you where the good Lord split you.”
Katy grabbed my arm and pulled me down the hall. “Preston, he’s blowing off steam, okay?” She opened the door, found the lye and held a can up for inspection.
“Get the hell out of here.”
“Yep.” She said, “Red Devil Lye,” and went back to the kitchen.
When I got to the front Simoneaux was placing another armload of our gear on the stage. Jamie came in from the cold with Katy’s fiddle and a few mic booms.
“What’s all this?” I asked.
“Don’t you worry about that.” Simoneaux took the lye from me. “We’ll get to the music as soon as we finish ‘evil-proofing’ the house.”
“’Evil-proofing?’”
“Yup,” he said, passing the lye off to Andre.
After that, everything happened a lot faster. Jamie went into the yard with Andre to bury a Red Devil can in each corner, labels facing inward, for protection. Simoneaux took a wooden crate filled with tall blue bottles out to an old tree on the corner and placed them on the dead limbs, making a second bottle tree. Rachael worked at the back door, scrawling Inscriptions into the lintel with chalk and coal ash and prepping the storeroom and office with witch balls and bundles of ash twigs.
The Revelations of Preston Black (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 3) Page 21