The Revelations of Preston Black (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 3) (12 page)

I can’t help her if I’m dead
.

My light wasn’t the moon or Venus. She
was a little star. Anonymous. And I’d never been away from her for so long
since the day we played that first show together. Those few songs that changed
my life forever.

Relax
.

My faint little light.

Fading little light.

No stars in this dark sky.

Her face had been lost to me. Those
big blue eyes, which I’d woken up to every morning. And I couldn’t remember
them.

Everything is dark
.

At the end we are only alone.

Float downstream
.

In a river of black static, falling
away from myself.

Noise like songs, my songs, my
brain trying to hold on to life
. He knew he was dying.

A river of memory.

It is not dying.

Every moment of my entire existence,
in my head and accessible at this very moment. Knowing everything I’d ever
know. Every taste. Every scent. I saw my mother’s face in the half-light of the
winter of my birth. I saw my father on the day he left.

Every fistfight.

Every kiss.

I saw everybody that’d gone before me.

I felt no more pain. No more seconds
flying past my head like shooting stars.

No light except for the light he
remembered in his head.

Even when talking to himself, the
words seemed far away. Talking to himself to keep a foot on the ground. Talking
to himself, in his head, because he didn’t know what else to do. And he knew he
could stop the words whenever he wanted to.

Just stop the words. Let them trail
off.

He’d never known darkness like this.
He’d never really known alone, until this.

But he wasn’t alone.

He heard the others shuffling out
ahead of him.

A rushing noise built in my ears, like
wind over a mountain. A voice boomed with heavy echo from both sides of my
head. The words weren’t English. Small lights off to the side steered me away
from the darkness. I just knew to follow the ones in front of me.

It is believing
.

The voice got louder and my instinct
told me to back away from it, but doing so would’ve meant leaving them. They
weren’t my friends, but their presence meant I wasn’t alone. They drifted
toward a little light that grew on the very edge of a stiff horizon. Like a fog
in a forest. Like sunrise in a city. They moved faster and the voice came back.
Fading in, I heard it say

…
it is not dying
.

I heard my voice.

But the noise all around me sounded
totally different. Like the static from a TV station after sign-off. Flashes of
white and black light. A faint hiss and specks of color—but not color—each
existing for only a moment.

I turned to see where it came from.

Metallic warbles emerged from the
noise. “Yes, sir… Let’s hear it for Rose Maddux.”

It came from all over.

I spun, still looking for the man who
said it.

“That’s the kind of singing they like
down in Houston. Sings like her motor’s still running, don’t she?”

Whistles and hoots came from the
crowd. The light got brighter, and came from all directions. I held my hand
over my eyes. Sweat formed on my temples. Straight lines and movement emerged
from the dark blur. Noise and words attacked me from all sides. So many I
couldn’t make sense out of them.

On the edge of the stage, the
announcer wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, and said, “Got a big show for
you yet, so don’t you go running off.”

Electricity streaked through my arms
and legs as Johnny walked past. He stood a little shorter than I anticipated,
wearing that white jacket with the black piping. Behind me a little Fender Pro
breathed steam into the old civic center. A wall of heat and hum that knocked
people back into their seats. I pulled on my necktie to loosen it, and for the
first time all night I could breathe.

I fixated on a large illuminated clock
behind the stage right curtain. A white face with black block numbers. Seemed
like the only thing that truly made sense to me.

Then Johnny nodded, giving me the
signal to go.

The second I set my pick to that
string the crowd stood. That Fender Esquire sounded like an angry dog barking
at a freight train. Girls in pale pastel dresses with hair twisted and sprayed
into beehives watched Johnny swagger up to the mic. Guys in suits and skinny
ties—now that they were being ignored by their girls—watched my fingers work
through the first few notes as the announcer rushed to finish his introduction.
He said, “America’s greatest folk music star—Johnny Cash!”

The kids sat back down, and before
that old square could even get his ass off the stage Johnny hovered over the
mic banging out the chords to “Big River.” I looked over at Marshall plucking
that big old upright bass’s strings. He just smiled away as he counted out that
old ‘one, two, one, two…’ with his hair pushed straight back from his forehead
by a gob of grease. Marshall Grant was a good old boy, all right. He smiled and
bounced to the beat, kicking his leg out and slapping those strings like he was
swatting a bee.

With my eyes closed it felt like a
train rolling down a mountain without brakes. A warm calmness enveloped me. A
feeling that crept beneath my clothes, like only my skin was drunk. That
feeling told my mind to stop fighting.
I’m home.

My mind couldn’t keep up with my
fingers. Only the clock mattered. The second hand ran backward like an egg
timer.
7:59
PM.

Row after row of kids bobbed their
heads. Some of the girls wore little white gloves. Some had handbags to match
their sleeveless dresses. It felt hot. And I was nervous. My mouth felt like it
was stuffed with cotton.

And my head ached like nicotine
withdrawl on top of a hangover. The notes sounded right in my ears, but they
didn’t sound like the notes I picked. It felt like in a dream when a door opens
into the wrong room. On the edge of the crowd I saw a girl I thought I knew
from school. I could’ve sworn I saw Abby Fincher. She died in a car crash my
senior year, and I wondered how she got all the way down here in Texas.

I rushed the beat. Probably because
any time we’d ever played this Stu jacked the pace up. I watched Marshall for
the tempo and picked out my rhythm and flashed my cheesy grin for that Texas
crowd. When I tried to stretch out my solo Johnny turned and gave me a look.

Marshall clicked to get my attention.

“Huh?” I said, upset that he’d pulled
me out of the moment. I muted the strings with my palm.

He pointed at Johnny.

And I only knew the song ended when
they applauded. Embarrassed, I stared at my shoes as he thanked the Houston
crowd for being so dang polite. His way of saying they needed to make a little
more noise.

In a way I felt like I should have
gone over and talked to him before he got into the next tune, but just thinking
about it scared me. My feet wouldn’t move. Keeping my head in “Big River” had
taken all my energy.

Marshall leaned over to me and said,
“You see her yet?”

“Who?” I said.

“Don’t play coy, Preston.” Marshall
chewed his gum so hard it made my jaw hurt to look at him.

“Before we play our next number I’m
going to tell you who we brought with us.” Johnny turned and gave Marshall a
scolding look for his chit-chat. When he returned to the mic, he said, “We call
these boys the Tennessee Two. He’s from West Virginia and he’s from
Mississippi.”

While the crowd laughed, Johnny turned
and gave me a wink. My body glowed, like I’d been touched by the hand of Jesus
Christ himself. My tongue got real dry and the butterflies came back big time.

Johnny said, “We ain’t had the heart
to tell Preston, but he’s been dead for a year.”

I knew Johnny meant Luther Perkins,
not me. I knew this because I had this concert on my laptop. I listened to it
all the time.
Luther’s
been dead a year. Not me.

It didn’t matter though. Maybe seeing
June off to the side of the stage helped me relax. Helped me realize I belonged
here. I knew Johnny’d get the joke right next time.

Johnny stepped off stage to get a
glass of water.

I looked for the clock.
7:25
PM.
I
didn’t want to think of what happened when it counted all the way down, and
said to myself,
Maybe
this wasn’t heaven after all
.

Maybe hell would be losing these
feelings again, over and over, for an eternity. Knowing that I was always,
truly alone. Like my lifetime spent practicing disappointment would finally pay
off. I could almost see Katy if I focused my thoughts.

A metallic hum broke my concentration
and I lost the image. Anger blew up in my throat like water boiling over from a
pot. The intense rage convinced me I was still alive.

I needed to sort this out and decided
to talk to Johnny. He’d disappeared into the heavy curtain, and I dove in right
after him. Thick waves of velvet engulfed me, buried me in darkness. I spun and
called for him. “Johnny.”

I paused to listen, but only heard
murmurs from the audience. “John!”

Somebody in the audience screamed. A
girl. Then I heard another cry.

“John.”

Then I heard a thousand more.

The screams expanded and I tumbled
forward in the dark, almost like I’d been shoved. Over my shoulder somebody
laughed. Shadows moved on the floor by my feet. I pushed toward them.

A multitude of small lights like
exploding stars appeared as I emerged. Noise grew like a jet that never passed.
It only ever got closer and closer. Like I was being reborn into a whole other
universe. Lights flashed behind us. Above us. My eyes followed the flashes
around a complete circle. High above, a great silver dome reflected it all back
down. A large box hung from the ceiling. A scoreboard. Without any warning at
all, I heard John Lennon say, “One, two…” and the rest disappeared into the
static of screams.

The game clock on the scoreboard
counted down.

5:59.

In my head I knew we were standing in
the very spot where Sidney Crosby slapped the wrist shot that should have let
the Pens clinch the series with Ottawa. Instead the game went into three
overtimes. Stu wanted to drive to Pittsburgh that night and drink on South
Side.

I banged out the “Twist and Shout”
chords and turned to watched John Lennon at the mic, squinting, shoulders
hunched forward in attack mode. He was blind as a bat without those glasses on.
Even though I needed to talk to him, I took my place at the other mic,
harmonizing with Paul on the backup parts.

The music fell over me like sunlight,
and I laughed. I hit every note, every vocal cue with a smile. When I looked
into the darkness and waved a torrent of screams bounced back at me. I heard my
voice pouring out of the PA, not George Harrison’s. The notes were my notes.
The words were my words.

We wore the grey suits with the skinny
black collars. John’s tie hung loose and he wore his black fisherman’s cap. His
voice cut right through the screams, backed by a wave of guitar noise that
pushed across the stage like an offensive line. But the crowd didn’t let up.
Thousands of tiny vocal chords screamed for the slightest look or nod from one
of us. I couldn’t even hear drums. The only way I could tell where we were in
the song was to watch John’s hands. I backed up to his Vox amp and let his
music infiltrate me directly. Soaking in every note. Every wavelength. The
volume felt like life itself. The noise—that’s all it was to some people—that noise
sounded like heaven to me.

The music became a meditation. It let
my mind clear for a moment. Made me wonder what I was even doing here in the
Pittsburgh Civic Arena. A building that they ripped apart and demolished back
in 2010. In the dim house lights I saw the Foodland ads on the boards near the
goal at the far end. And the WDVE ad. The Thrift Drug ad. In the dark corners I
saw The National Record Mart ad on the boards in front of the bench. The arena
looked just like it did in the videos from the 1991 Stanley Cup Finals. I
watched that clip of Lemieux taking Phil Bourque’s pass and threading between
those Minnesota defenders a thousand times, at least. When I realized I didn’t
know why I was here, my heart raced.

In the audience I looked for faces I knew.
The only way to see them as people instead of as a flock was to look at their
eyes. In the very front row I saw a slight girl with fair skin and dark hair
wearing a little black dress. Her hair was pulled back with a silver barrette
that flashed like a mirror reflecting sunlight. I smiled, but she didn’t. I
waved to get her attention, but she watched John. I recognized those eyes, and
crept toward her, getting as close to the edge of the stage as I dared, but she
wouldn’t look up.