The Revelations of Preston Black (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 3) (11 page)

I almost asked her to clarify, but she
cut me off. “That’s something the angry boy digging the grave ought to explain
to you.”

I looked at Pauly. He just said, “This
is all Rachael. What she said to do.”

“Everybody quiet now.” Nadhima bowed
her head and took my hand again. “Oh, Father, lord of Heaven and Earth, we pray
to thee, extend your right hand and bless all elements in the earth and in the
sea and in the sky, and all the creatures—your children—and hallow them in thy
name. Grant that this meal make for health of body and this water for health of
soul, and let us prepare for the return of our lost little girl. In the name of
the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

Amen
.

The okra tasted a little like a home
I’d never known, but I couldn’t enjoy it. So I stuck with the cornbread.
Letting the butter melt down before plopping it into my mouth became a kind of
meditation. I didn’t have to listen to the wall clock or the ticks of the
cooling oven while I waited for butter to melt. Pauly kept my sweet tea topped
off.

Ben came to the back door with a man I
didn’t know. Andre’s dad, I figured. Ben’s jeans and work boots were muddy. He
didn’t come all the way into the kitchen. I stood as the door swung shut behind
them. Ben said, “As soon as you’re ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“Best not to talk about it if you ask
me. You don’t want to know what you’re in for.” He turned and went back
outside.

I stood as Andre’s old man came over
to shake my hand. Andre and Pauly stood, too.

“Good morning, Reverend Betters,”
Pauly said.

He shook my hand. “George Betters.
Nice to meet you.”

“Preston Black. Thanks for—”

“Don’t thank me yet.” Without sitting,
he heaped a mound of peas onto a slab of cornbread and began to eat. Turning to
Pauly, he said, “I love you like a son, but I ain’t comfortable with all this,”
and waved his fork over the table like he disapproved of lunch rather than the
circumstances of our visit.

Pauly said, “I know, George. I’m
sorry.”

“Don’t pay him no mind. He’s still
bitter about Alabama passing on Sylvester Croom. Tomorrow it’ll be something
else,” Andre said. “No need for the reprimand, Pop. You know Pauly’s taken good
care of me and letting him use my yard for whatever he wants is the least I can
do.”

“Dhima, this is delicious. Thank you
kindly. My boy’s lucky to have you.” George cleaned his plate with a few big
bites and served himself seconds. “Son, I mean no disrespect. But you’ve got to
know what I seen in my time to make me believe what I do. Staring at
topographical maps for twelve hours a day didn’t get me out of Khe Sanh—getting
saved did. I never preached to you, but I have a right to testify.”

“Yes, sir, you do,” Andre cut him off.
“I know what you’re going to say next. You’re going to quote the New
Testament—John—something about charity, right? Maybe, ‘…if a man closes his
heart to a brother in need, then God’s love can’t abide in him?’ But we don’t
need them to believe. Just need to be there for them.”

Figuring it was my time to speak up, I
jumped in. “I spent enough time with Katy’s people up in them mountains to know
the kind of things that can happen when faith is strong enough. It can change
the weather, pull fire from a wound.” I stood and wiped my hands on my pants.
“So, let’s see how this goes down. Hate to say it, but I’m a little curious
myself.”

“C’mon, sit down now. Banana pudding
is cooling.” Nadhima stood when I did.

But the back-and-forth irritated me.
Figured talk wouldn’t get Katy back. I didn’t even hold the door open when I left
the house. Ben sat in the grass, wiping his face on his shirt. When he saw me,
trailed by Pauly and the rest, he stood, jammed the shovel into the fresh earth
and tucked his shirt into his waistband. He said, “Pauly, you were supposed to
blindfold him.”

I said, “Well, that ain’t happening.”

The hole rested in a grove of twisted
trees shrouded in kudzu down the slope from the back door. The leaves were just
little green nubs but were dense enough to make it feel nice and secure. A pair
of headstones sat tangled in ivy at the edge of a greenbrier thicket, an old
door rested against a chain-link fence. I could smell the river, and when I
stood on tip-toe I could see it through the trees.

“What’s the hole for, Benjamin?” I
asked.

“Ain’t for sticking your dick in,
that’s for sure. Said you weren’t going to like it, but Rachael says this is
how we find Katy. That should be enough for you. You have to trust me.” He
tucked his dog tags into his T-shirt.

“I’d feel a little better about it if
Rachael was here herself.”

“No time for that. Cops ain’t doing
anything. News ain’t reporting it. She’s gone, bro. Rachael wants her back. I
want her back and I know you want her back. This is how we do it before there’s
no longer a Katy left to save.” Ben pointed at my feet. “Start by taking off
your shoes and emptying your pockets.”

I handed Pauly my phone, Katy’s phone,
and my wallet.

“George, let’s start that water.”

The old man nodded and went back up to
the house.

Andre had his hands in his pocket and
kept shaking his head. “This ain’t right.”

Ben said, “Your shirt and jacket.”

I hung my jacket on the old fence next
to Ben’s tan, grey and green camo-patterned field jacket. As I lifted my
T-shirt over my head, water spurted out of the end of a green garden hose.
Without a word, Nadhima put her palm on my forehead, then pulled me forward so
she could drape several strands of colorful beads around my neck. Strands of
black and green and yellow and red sparkled in the dull grey light. Ben held
his phone and dialed. Sabra set a small first aid kit on a lawn chair. She
opened it and took out a CPR pocket mask. She stuck a valve into it and wiped
it with alcohol.

Just then I realized why she had the
stethoscope. “What the fuck is this?”

Nadhima spread an old blanket out in
the grass next to the hole.

Ben handed me his ringing phone.

Pauly and Andre took the old door from
the fence and stood it up next to the grave. I stood at eye level with the
small square window. The broken glass had all been cleared away. “Hello?”

“Hey, Sweetie.” I heard Rachael’s
voice and got choked up. “This is going to happen pretty fast, so you have to
listen really well. We’re on our way down now. Be there tonight or first thing
tomorrow, okay?”

No ‘how you holding up’ or anything.
My hand shook.
Fuck
me.

“Remember that you are in control. You
have to end it. Ben and Pauly can’t help you and it’s important to remember
that you end it.” She spoke a calm and forceful tone. “Find Jane and talk to
her then get out. Understand?”

Down by the river I heard the scream
of a thousand birds taking to the air. “I think.”

“No, Preston. Listen to me. You have
to make certain you get out of there. Remember that Katy is waiting for you. I
know you can do this.” She sniffled. “You have to find my little girl, okay?”

I took a deep breath. “I promise.”

“Don’t lose track of time because…”
She sniffed and talked to somebody in the background. “Jamie wants to talk to
you.”

Pauly put his arm around me while I
listened to Jamie. In the background I heard Chloey’s voice.

“There’s a reason you’re going and not
Ben or Rachael. You know that, right? Ain’t many folks out there to walk away
from what you walked away from last winter. This is going to hurt but I know
you can be strong. Mom and Pap are home thinking about you.”

“No pressure.” My dry mouth released a
couple of low clicks. Blackbirds circled above the little grove.

“I’ve been talking to Nadhima and know
you’re in good hands. But you have to have faith. We all love you, Preston. You
familiar with the
Tibetan
Book of the Dead
?”

“No.”

“Okay, well, ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’
then. Think about John’s words. You need to remember that this is not dying.
Got it? You got to get yourself out of there as soon as you talk to her,
understand?”

“I do.”
I
didn’t.

“
Now let me talk to Ben.”

I handed Ben the phone.

Pauly looked at me, but didn’t say anything.

“I know, man.”

“What the fuck is this, bro?” His eyes studied my eyes,
my mouth.

Nadhima pulled a small sack made of
red flannel from her purse. “Black cat bone and Angelica root,” she said, dangling
the bag in front of my eyes. She shoved it into my front pocket.

Ben watched, still talking with Jamie.

Nadhima handed me a small silver
barrette. “This belonged to your beloved?”

I recognized it. “Yeah.”

She kissed it, then shoved it into my
other pocket. “Get on down there now.”

Ben set the phone on the lawn chair
next to the CPR mask and my wallet and phone. I watched Sabra write Jane’s name
on an old tombstone with chalk. She turned, Nadhima nodded. Sabra crossed out
Jane’s name and wrote mine just above.

Pauly said, “You end it. Remember what
they told you, all right?”

I looked at Pauly, then to Ben and
Sabra. Not a single one of them looked too happy about what was going down.
George had his back turned and his arms crossed.

“George, you should know by now I can
pull mojo out of the air like plucking peaches from a tree.” Nadhima slipped
off her shoes and hiked her dress up to her thighs. “This here isn’t my first
black baptism. But you can pray if you’d like.”

The cold water rose easily past my knees.
Bits of leaves and grass circled endless in the red clay-stained water. Small
clumps fell from the side of the grave and circled before sinking. Blackbirds
flocked to the bare branches over my head, blocking out much of the grey light.

“Don’t think, man. Just do it.” Ben
held the old wooden door, and I could see that it was a little narrower than
the hole. “You have to go on your own.”

Pauly stood on the other side of the
hole and held onto the old wooden door. Through the small opening I watched grey
clouds move past tiny patches of blue sky. My hands were shaking. “I’m scared.
I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Katy needs you, bro.” Ben forced me
into the hole by gently guiding the door. “Rachael wants you to bring her
little girl back.”

I got on my knees but fought to keep
that little patch of sky above me. Blackbirds crowded my view. Water flowed
over the lip of the grave. “What if—”

Nadhima stood in the water circling
me, chanting something. When she at last came face-to-face with me, she made
three crosses on my forehead with her thumb then climbed out of the hole.

“No doubt,” Pauly said. “You got this.
Don’t let that doubt in your head.”

“Don’t think,” Ben said.

I leaned back. My jeans felt really
cold and for a second I tried to think if I had any clean clothes left after
this, but they pushed the door right onto me and I sought a reprieve from the
sky directly above. The clouds had covered it all. I looked for Pauly. His eyes
were red. I looked for Ben. He forced a confident nod.

The cold snapped me out of the moment
and my legs jerked out to the side to keep myself from sinking lower and I
tried to grab the sides of the grave. The mud and clay gave way in my hands. I
grabbed the door. Splinters of paint and old wood dug into the soft skin beneath
my fingernails. The pain lasted only for a second before the cold took over.

My lungs burned. I fought to push my
face through the small opening. The tiny window that let friends in and kept
strangers out. I kicked at the clay walls and tried to force my lips into the
sky above but the patch of light seemed very far away. My lungs burned. Pain
worse than the pain in your legs after gym class. I remembered what Rachael
said about ending it. By forcing my arm through the window I tried to end it
with everything I had in me. A pair of hands grabbed my wrist and pushed it
right back down.

My toes hurt from trying to kick at
the door. My chest felt tired from holding my breath, like I had a black mass
locked away in my ribs. A tumor pushing the air out. Not pain. A feeling like
an ending. A feeling like my line stopped right there. A feeling that my
forever, which had been a certainty since I met Katy, had been taken from me.
And I remembered all I had to do was breathe. That the pain in my lungs faded
meant I was dying. My brain wrestled with what it felt and what it knew, but
only the fading pain was real.

Johnny Cash said the water’d
wash my sins away, but so far it had only made me wet
.

So I let it. Because it seemed easier.
I wanted the pain to end.

Turn off my mind.

Water filled my mouth and throat and I
knew I’d made a mistake because Katy’s face was the only thing I could see and
I jammed my hand back through the opening. But my hand blocked the light and I
knew, man, I knew I didn’t want to be in the dark. Not now. I never wanted to
be in the dark again. Mud colored the water, making my little patch of sky a
red smear. I’d never been so far from the light in my whole life. But she
waited somewhere else, in the hands of people who wanted to hurt her.