“Look at you guys,” I said, kneeling down on the edge of the stage. “It’s a long drive, ain’t it?”
“About seven hours,” Ray said, shaking my hand. I could smell weed on him.
“We partied the whole way out, so it didn’t seem that long.” Vance spit into a Mountain Dew bottle he carried inside his coat pocket. “We left yesterday.”
“Well, last night. Then we hooked up with these guys in Birmingham.” Ray pointed to a bunch of dudes in flannel shirts. “They brought those girls with them.”
“Yeah,” Vance added, “When we told them how we drove you out to them crossroads to talk to the devil, they got real interested.”
“You told people that? Shit, Vance. Don’t do that. Like I need people thinking I’m insane.”
“It’s all good. They all got it in their heads that this is going to be a big deal tonight.”
“Because of what you told them?”
“I don’t know about all that. But being on the news all week helped, I’m sure.”
“You saw that, huh?” I stood and tried to see what it looked like in the lobby. “Maybe I’ll catch you after the show. Grab pizza or whatever. Just don’t go blabbing to everybody, okay?”
“Word spreads, man,” Ray said, smiling. “One way or another people find out.”
“Ain’t nothing private no more. You should know better.” Vance passed his Copenhagen to Ray.
“You’d think,” I said with a wave, then left.
When I ducked back behind the curtain, Pauly said, “Sounds like a good Friday night kind of crowd.”
I shook out my hands. “Well, we’ll see what happens once I plug in.”
“Preston.”
I turned around to see what he had to say.
“Have a little faith.”
“Thanks, baybruh. I will.” Saying it didn’t help my nerves. I tried curling my toes as a way to calm myself.
Except for Henry sawing on Katy’s little fiddle, everything was mostly quiet backstage when I ducked into the bathroom. I pushed the drain stopper down and ran the cold water to shove the ambient noise away. After so much music, I wanted quiet. When the sink had filled, I held my breath and lowered my face into the water. I could still hear Henry getting ready, doing me a solid, but the sound didn’t comfort me. His playing had a harsher, more traditional edge to it than Katy’s. Sounded more like Jamie. When the music finally came to a halt I figured I needed to go give him a pep talk.
I dried my face off with a clean white towel that smelled a little like the fabric softener Pauly’s mom used. I tried to pee, and couldn’t. Anything to kill time. But the play clock ticked faster, and I made up my mind to make the best of whatever happened tonight, figuring I could deal with the fallout on Monday. But when I turned the corner I heard a bunch of voices in the green room.
I clenched my fist and slowly drifted toward the end of the hall. That was when I saw Rachael standing in the doorway.
“The Collins clan doesn’t do anything quietly,” I said, relaxing a bit. “How’s everybody doing?”
“We’re good. How’s Preston doing?” She put her arm around me.
“Better now.” I tucked my hands into my back pockets as she let me pass. I said, “Jamie and Ben?”
Rachael gently placed her hand on my elbow and said, “Jamie’s at the soundboard.”
“And Ben is at the bar,” Chloey added.
I looked at her and said, “How’re you?”
A bandaged little hand peeked out from behind her jacket’s zipper. Her left sleeve hung limply at her side. “It hurts bad.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
She half-shrugged. “I got a prescription for the pain, but Mom’s afraid I’ll abuse my pills and become a druggie.”
“Want me to kiss it and make it better?” I laughed, awkwardly.
She smiled. “I got something you can kiss.”
“Chloey,” Rachael scolded. “Preston, my little girls were so innocent until they met you.”
“Sorry,” I said. She probably didn’t know how much I’d truly meant it.
She hugged me and held me for a moment. “I can’t wait to have you guys back home. What do I have to do to keep you from running all over like this?”
Katy stood in the far corner next to Alex, slipping a tiny white rose into her hair behind her left ear. On the table next to her fiddle sat a bouquet of flowers in a vase, a fruit basket, and a bottle of champagne that the label must’ve sent over.
But I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She had a curl in her hair and cherry red nails and lips. Beneath her eyes she wore just a little more dark eyeliner than usual. She pointed at her fiddle, there on the table.
I defended myself with, “I asked him to sit in on a few songs.”
“Is that right?” She turned to her cousin. “Or did he think I wouldn’t show?”
Henry answered as diplomatically as possible, which meant he didn’t say a thing.
“Thanks, man.” I grabbed Katy’s little hand and pulled her over to me. She smelled like a plum blossom and looked like an angel. I kissed her. “Where’d you go?”
“Retail therapy. Got my nails did.” She rested her head against my cheek and held out her fingers. “Mom bought you a new shirt. She thinks we should start matching, like The Osmonds.”
“No, that’s not true, is it?”
Katy said, “She’s not denying it.”
I smiled, but didn’t mean it.
The small talk was nice, but I wanted a chance to be with to her in private, and knew that wouldn’t happen until we were in bed at the hotel. It frustrated me, not being able to say what I wanted to say because of everybody hanging around. We’d been in this situation a thousand times before, moments when a few words in private could’ve offset a squabble later. When I felt my stomach ball up, I figured I needed to say what I had to say no matter what. This was too big to put off until later, when we were both exhausted. I said, “Are you mad?”
“Pres, tonight, baby. Okay? I’m not mad. I’m too tired to talk.”
“I understand that. But I have to know what’s going on with us. We didn’t talk last night when I got back and we didn’t talk today. We never even got a chance to talk after the church camp and the boat. All I want to do is talk to you. I miss you, okay? I love you, Katy. Your disappearance scared the shit out of me. You’re my best friend, and I want to make sure you’re okay. And that we’re okay.”
By now nobody could say anything. It was so quiet I could hear the rowdy audience on the other side of the curtain. Katy looked at her mom and cousin and baby sister. They all seemed to want to know where she stood as well.
“Honestly?”
“Why not?”
“I want to pick up right where we left off at the truck stop. Pecan pie and butter pecan. I want to finish that conversation before we have this one. I figure if we finish that conversation, this one won’t matter.” She put her arms around me.
When I held her, I felt invincible. I wondered how this girl could make me feel so safe and strong. When she exhaled I felt her breath on my neck. When she blinked I felt her eyelash against my cheek. When she was with me, every breath felt like a laugh, and every time I opened my eyes it felt like waking up from a dream.
Henry raised a finger to get our attention. “Shhh,” he said.
I held my breath.
From the crowd I heard a chant, a familiar cadence. But the curtain muffled it too much to be certain. I said, “Just hang back for a second,” and followed Henry toward the stairs.
The voices grew louder, more unified as we got to the top of the stairs. I closed my eyes like that would help me hear more clearly. Then they got to the chorus.
“Katy,” I went back down the steps and grabbed her hand.
She crept alongside me, slowly putting one foot in front of the other until she heard it too. Henry handed her fiddle and bow back to her at the top of the stairs. There was no light behind the curtain except for
the LEDs on my effects rack until Pauly walked over from the far side of the stage with a little flashlight in his hand. He handed us our IEMs. “You ain’t going to believe this shit.”
When he signaled for the curtain to be raised the audience didn’t react. As the gap between the floor and the golden tassels grew, I could see them, bathed in the house lights. Hundreds of people packed between the seats and aisles, every back turned to us. People in the balcony tried to make sense of what happened on the floor below them. Even though they couldn’t see, they still sang. “Preston Black couldn’t sleep the whole night through…”
Katy shook her head and smiled.
I couldn’t believe it either.
“Preston Black couldn’t sleep the whole night through…”
The remainder of Hicks’s congregation pushed in from the lobby. With Boggs locked up, A.G. Ashby and the girl with the crown of thorns tattoo led them. Should’ve figured we hadn’t seen the last of her. I’d imagine seeing your beau blown into heaven ain’t the kind of thing that dries up and goes away like a zit. Figured she wouldn’t be happy until Katy suffered a little more. The rest carried the same old signs we saw in Louisville and Nashville, but freedom of speech only goes so far. And they chanted the same hate-filled rants. But our crowd, a unified mass of otherwise unrelated people, made sure their noise wasn’t heard tonight.
“He’d lay in bed ’til the morning came, but the devil’d visit him just the same…”
I walked to the edge and waited. The raw energy coming from the unaccompanied singing made me woozy. My knees wobbled. I wished my mom could’ve been here to see something like this. And I couldn’t have that thought without thinking about what John had told me back at the bar, so I looked for Jamie, back at the soundboard. His look of shocked disbelief said it all.
Then I looked for Ben, at eye level in the box to our right. He smiled, and toasted me with his PBR as Rachael, Chloey and Alex joined him.
I looked for Pauly. He stood in the dark with his arms crossed, watching just like me.
When I turned to Katy for acknowledgement, I heard the squeal of fiddle through the PA. At once the crowd rose in a gigantic roar. They turned to the stage where a single spot lit Katy at her mic. People had their hands over their heads, some were balled into fists. The applause had mass, like a dense fog.
They all stopped singing at the break before the next verse. In their collective silence I heard the God hates witches chant from the protestors.
I stepped up to the mic and said, “Y’all know the words…” and they turned around and picked right up where they left off. At the end of the line they whistled and applauded wildly. A long wash of static that left me speechless. Pauly shrugged as he walked out to meet me. “Atlanta P.D. is on its way.”
I put the IEM into my ear and joined Katy back at the center of the stage as the crowd sang, “Preston Black went down to the crossroads…”
This whole situation with the crowd and the song felt like the climb right before the Jack Rabbit’s double dip at Kennywood, the click-click-click like a stopwatch, counting down the seconds until you felt like you were going to fly right off the track. Afraid that any move I’d make would feel anticlimactic, I put my guitar around my neck, but didn’t play. Instead, I stepped to the mic and sang right along with them.
The protesters went limp as soon as the cops showed up, dropping to the floor as a passive resistance tactic. Some grabbed chairs or audience members, others tried to disappear into the crowd. Ashby became violent, swinging his retractable baton in a wide arc before being tackled from behind by a couple of skinny guys in black T-shirts. If the bright house lights and awkward silence hurt the mood the crowd had created with their act, then the shouting and shoving and tension buried it.
Almost instinctively, some of the guys in the crowd formed a wall by locking arms, preventing the intruders from escaping into the audience and disappearing. Fans blocked the doors and assisted the incoming police officers by doing whatever they were asked even as they were spit on and cursed at. House security filtered in from their various spots throughout the theater to step in between the protestors and the fans, taking the punches and insults from what remained of Hicks’s people as they were laid out on the floor, face down. The crowd cheered.
“Thank you all for your patience and cooperation.” I spoke into the microphone. “You sure know how to throw down a welcome.”
I backed away while they applauded.
“And you all know how to take care of guests. I want to thank the ladies and gentlemen in blue for coming out and making us feel safe after the week we’ve had.” That line was almost a prerequisite, but I’d meant it. “And as they get all these folks ready for the paddy wagon, I got something I want to say to them.”
I ran my hand through my hair because I didn’t know where I needed to go with this. “Anything else I have to say after these people are gone, I’m going to say it with my guitar. But this, right now, is for the folks in the back. The ones who saw fit to take Katy, and drag her into a camp in the hills where they could force their beliefs upon her. And I’m going to say it in a way they understand.”
I licked my lips and looked for a bottle of water before realizing I’d forgotten to bring any up from the green room with me. So I went on. “You all are really good at telling people what they need because it’s what you need. But that doesn’t work for me, and I’m not going to pretend to speak for anybody else here tonight, but I’ll bet it doesn’t work for some of them either. Even the people who worship the same God you do.”
I unbuttoned another shirt button and wiped my forehead with my sleeve.
“I listen to ‘Layla’ and I feel like I’m a part of something bigger, because in my experience, God doesn’t only exist in cathedrals or out in outer space or in some other dimension. In my experience you find him wherever you find him. And that’s all I want for me and for Katy and for anybody else in here who doesn’t believe same as you do—is to be able to stumble upon what we believe where and whenever we’d like.”
Rachael watched from their box. I tried to gauge my progress by her expression. But she motioned for me to go on. “When the piano kicks in, and Duane’s guitar soars, I can close my eyes and be anywhere on earth. Anywhere. And it’s not just the guitar—Mick says a guitar’s just a block of wood somebody saw fit to take a saw to—it’s the union of guitar, piano, drummer… It’s a group of people locked in to each other, making something more beautiful and more perfect than a single man could ever make alone. The piano by itself doesn’t go anywhere. It doesn’t say anything. It’s a chord progression. That’s it. Nothing divine there.”
I wiped sweat out of my eyes. “And Duane’s guitar?”
I waited while a bunch of the guys cheered and smiled. “Man, there’s a reason Clapton went looking for him down in Miami. In my opinion, divinity brought them together. Divinity put Duane’s slide with Clapton’s melody. And I don’t need the likes of you all telling me my ideas are wrong. Because I know who came through the darkness and saved me when I was down. I’d close my eyes and ask God to bring my mom back or make my presence less of a burden on Pauly and his mom and pap. And you know who answered?”
They waited in silence.
“Duane Allman, that’s who. He coaxed me to sleep night after night with that guitar. I let many a tear dry while I zeroed in on the sound he made with a bottle over his finger. You can call me stupid or whatever, but I thought Duane’s guitar sounded like angels singing. Who here is going to tell me otherwise?”
I paused, for drama, but figured I had to keep going even as the cops removed the last of the protestors to the street for processing.
“That’s what I thought. But there ain’t a single one of you can say that a choir of angels don’t sound like Duane’s guitar.”
People clapped. Responding to the mojo I worked.
“So if I want to keep praying to John Lennon and Joe Strummer and Johnny Cash and Duane Allman, I’m going to,
because those guys got me through more shit than any saint or priest ever did.”
They liked that line, and let me know it.
“I don’t know what heaven’s like. Maybe I ain’t ever going to see it. But I know what it felt like in the studio when those two got together because I heard it with my own ears. So keep your rattlesnakes and water moccasins. I got this song. And a hundred like it.”
I looked over at Pauly. He stood at his amp with his Fender P over his shoulder, cracking his knuckles.
“I do believe in something greater. It’s just not what you believe. That is my statement of faith.”
The polite applause continued. And I knew I’d talked too long. But it didn’t matter. I’d said what I needed to. And now the time had come to move on.
So I turned to Katy, and to Pauly, and said, “Let’s give them some of what they came for.”
CHAPTER Ten
I watched the stars, but they never moved, that night lasted days,
The devil came down from the mountain and found me straight away
She told me I could trust her, and made a promise with her eyes
I tried to run, but stumbled, and she replaced my dreams with lies.
“Hey, Hey Little Bluebird” Music and Lyrics by Preston Black
The inscription on Duane Allman’s grave read, “I LOVE BEING ALIVE AND I WILL BE THE BEST MAN I POSSIBLY CAN. I WILL TAKE LOVE WHEREVER I FIND IT AND OFFER IT TO EVERYONE WHO WILL TAKE IT… SEEK KNOWLEDGE FROM THOSE WISER… AND TEACH THOSE WHO WISH TO LEARN FROM ME.”
Only Jamie chose to visit the gravesite with me and Katy. And Katy only did it because she wanted to be with me, and I was fine with that. The rest went on to Sardis, Mississippi, to get a hotel and sleep.
I didn’t hear any music at his grave. No Les Paul. No slide guitar. The sun shone brightly on the white marble, nearly blinding us. In my head, I couldn’t understand that a body rested in the ground. That beneath the marble and dirt lay what remained of Duane Allman. In my head he was always smiling, smoking, riding his motorcycle, playing his Les Paul. Because of all the live recordings and the pictures and the little bit of video, he’d never have to be truly dead to me. In other words, seeing his grave didn’t change as much as I thought it would.
The Revelations of Preston Black (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 3) Page 28