The Revelations of Preston Black (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 3) (13 page)

“Thank you, thank you,” Paul said. His
voice never seemed to come from one specific place. Instead it came from all
around, like no matter where I turned he stood behind me. After a long moment,
he added, “Ooh. It’s a bit loud, isn’t it?”

John turned his back, and went into his
little cripple act. He goofed like that to get a rise out of Brian Epstein, our
manager. I tried not to let Brian see me laughing and seized the opportunity to
move closer to John—close enough to smell the amber and wood in his British
Sterling.

Nobody in the sea of bodies looked
like a stranger to me. It felt like playing to a roomful of old acquaintances.
A pair of kids from school who got killed senior year. Drowned in the Cheat
River after a night of drinking and jumping off Jenkinsburg Bridge. I saw an
eighteen-year-old version of Pauly’s grandma in a little knit dress. My own
mother stood close to the front. Her blond hair was pulled back by a white
headband and she wore a tiny black sweater with short sleeves. She looked so
proud and clapped enthusiastically. So I stood taller for her. As soon as I
could, I grabbed John and said, “There’s my mom.”

“Yer mum?” John mocked me.

“My mom.” In order to relate to him I
said, “She died when I was a kid, you know. Just like your mom. Except I was a
baby. Somebody else raised me. Just like your Aunt Mimi raised you. My aunt was
really Pauly’s mom. No relation.”

But instead of giving me the nod and
the pat on the back I expected, he said, “Your mum’s dead? What’s she doing
here then?”

I couldn’t really know what he’d meant
for certain and couldn’t find the words to reply. I spent a long time thinking
of the right thing to say.

“Better yet,” he said, interrupting my
concentration. “What’re you doing here?”

“I’m not sure.” I put my hand over the
mic and raised my voice, “It feels like this is exactly where I’m supposed to
be.”

“I don’t know, my friend.” He took off
his cap and wiped the sweat off his brow with his sleeve. Without thinking he
looked at Brian, who waved a handkerchief at him. “Seems like the kind of thing
you’d know before leaving home without knowing, isn’t it?”

Seeing my mom and knowing that I’d
made her proud left me feeling like all the nights sleeping in another family’s
house were worth it. The notes that I’d played for her came directly from heaven.
I knew the set didn’t last long and knew that I wanted to etch every moment of
it into my memory forever. I stared at her so I would know which parts of me
were from her. Her smile, which I’d never seen in a photograph, looked like my
smile. I didn’t want to leave.

John grabbed my arm. His appearance
changed—he looked like he did on
Double Fantasy
. Much older,
calmer. He wore a leather jacket, jeans, and white sneakers. “You have to find
a way out. Pull the plug, brother. I’d show you the door, but I can’t.”

But I wanted to talk to my mom. Just
hear her voice one time so I’d know what she sounded like forever. I wanted to
see her up close and put my hand into her hand. And I knew not to look up
because I didn’t want to see the clock. And I didn’t want to see so many
forgotten faces, fragments of my past there in front of me like reminders of
what waited for all of us at the end.

I closed my eyes because I didn’t want
to lose my mom all over again. The thought of losing Katy, or Pauly, or Mick,
or Jamie filled me with emptiness and sorrow. And closing my eyes didn’t change
any of that.

In the dark hallways of my mind I saw
a cemetery waiting for all the world’s dead to be buried. I read the names on
the graves and knew that time, no matter what name it took, delivered us all to
the same end.

I saw my own grave—the grave where
Sabra wrote my name before I lowered myself into the water—plain as day.

Then I saw the small cemetery behind
Katy’s pap’s house. The only name I recognized was her cousin, Jane’s. But the
images existed only in my head. They were lies.

I opened my eyes to face the truth.

The room smelled a little like sweat,
a little like weed. Speakers stacked from floor-to-ceiling made a wall of sound
and a fuzzy vibration that made the hair on my arms stand up. I followed Joe
Strummer to the stage. I’d follow him to the end of the planet if he’d ask me
to.

Armed with the white Les Paul, I
spread my legs and waited for the lights to come up. The Les Paul weighed much
more than the Esquire and the Gretsch. I waited for the drums to start. Waited
for my turn to bring destruction—to split skulls with a power chord and a
little sweat. I knew as long I kept the pick pinched between my fingers,
nothing could hurt me.

I could see Joe Strummer slumped
against the dim light from the lobby. The audience whistled and shouted. They
knew we were up here.

In the back of the room, in the glow
of the mixing board, I saw a small clock. A reminder that this all ended
somehow. An orange light let me see the minutes count down so fast they may as
well have been seconds. Pauly’s mom had the same clock in her room. I
remembered because we weren’t allowed to be up until seven on Christmas morning
and Pauly and me would watch that clock for hours. It wasn’t digital. Little
metal numbers flipped over. One per minute.

4:36.

Joe Strummer didn’t start us off with
a count. He just banged his Tele like he was beating on a drunk in a parking
lot after the pubs closed. The lights bloomed in an explosion of wattage that
knocked me back a step. I had no choice but to pick up everything Joe dropped.
Hammering away at those two chords. London wasn’t calling. Joe was. I did all
this for him.

4:30.

He bounced and jerked his fist.
Twitching in perpetual agitation. He spit and held the mic like he’d choke
every last breath out of it. He lunged at the audience. Screamed at them while
the drums pulled me into the air, bouncing me higher and higher. I knew this
was heaven. And I knew all I had to do was keep playing this guitar forever. I
knew I stopped breathing when they ran that hose and drowned me in that fucking
grave in that fucking backyard in fucking Alabama. And I looked for my mom, but
she left. And I looked for John, but as far as I knew he’d left me too. For a
second I thought this show was from The Clash’s stand at Bonds Casino based on
what Joe wore. Which made this 1981.

John Lennon should’ve been dead and
buried by now.

But there he stood, arms crossed,
looking pissed-off. Right at the end of the second row near the fire exit. Just
beyond a big stack of speaker cabinets.

He shook his head, disapprovingly.

I ignored him and sidled up to Joe
Strummer, but he never once looked back at me. I wanted him to know how much
his songs meant to me. How he’d saved me. So I played my leads, letting
electric fuzz fill my head like a lifetime of lies and Strummer never once
turned around and acknowledged me. And I knew it wasn’t because he was a bad
guy, or self-centered. I knew he had his own dragons to slay. He believed he
could change the world. I never once made that mistake. I tried to get close to
him the way I got close to John but he was in his zone. Philosophizing for the
kids out there. The ones who paid to be here.

But he’d forgotten that I paid to be
here, too. That I was one of those kids, and just because I was on this stage
instead of in front of it didn’t mean that I wasn’t worth his time.

3:42.

So I played to get his attention,
pounding those strings with fury. I stood next to him and hammered that Les
Paul as loud and hard as I could. But he never noticed. And I knew it wasn’t
because he was cold or unkind. His agenda didn’t include me.

I had my own agenda.

So I looked for friends in the
audience. I saw Mike Davis. A kid who went to school with me. Smashed his
Toyota into a stone wall one night a few years back. Never should’ve happened.
His funeral made me think about my own death for the first time. His kids were
there. Two little boys who didn’t have a clue. And I found Sylvester Knox in
the audience. Hit by a car walking across a highway the year I started working
at Mick’s. Never should’ve happened. Not at their ages.

Stu stood in the center of a group of
guys, bouncing to the beat. He jumped, fists in the air. I knew why he was
here. I knew I was supposed to keep him from going back into the Army, but I
couldn’t change his mind. Stu was my drummer, not Topper Headon, or Ringo
Starr. He was my heartbeat. My backbone. My lifeline. For the biggest part of
my life, time didn’t matter unless Stu counted the seconds off. I was supposed
to be with him down there. Not up here.

Stu was my friend. Not Joe Strummer.

I rested the guitar on the stage, sat
down on the edge, then stepped into the crowd. They didn’t part like they were
supposed to. Like they did in movies. They fixated as Strummer preached—a punk
prophet for kids without degrees.

I locked eyes with Stu, my other
brother. We lived for music, man. Lived for those quarter notes and half notes.
Lived for lyrics that may or may not have meant shit to anyone else. It seemed
unfair that I still had choices and he didn’t, all because he gave his life for
something greater.

“But we’re both here now though,
aren’t we?” he said, responding to my thought. I nodded.

“We both had choices to make, didn’t
we?”

I said, “Music should’ve let us live
forever. I’m sorry that serving a purpose higher than the one I served put you
into an early grave.”

My hands started to sweat. Joe caught
his breath at the mic, and gave a little speech about his politics. And they
listened. They hung on everything he said and I felt like a fool. I said, “Like
I’d ever save a fucking life with a guitar.”

“Who’s to say my higher good is better
than your higher good? Who says serving a government is better than serving the
kids who love what you’re playing? Where the fuck is it written down? What
about the kids at your shows? The kids who want to be you? Do they deserve
another set? What about Katy”

I nodded. I didn’t know what to say
because I’d never thought of it that way.

Stu wouldn’t look away and it made me
real uncomfortable. Here I was, dreaming my own dreams instead of the dreams
they taught me in school. Instead of the dreams the TV wanted me to dream.
Instead of the shit FM radio dreams. And I just wanted to figure out how I
could get Katy back. Dreams were only shadows in a world without her.

Stu had his arm around a girl. A young
girl, with a sweet face and blue eyes. Just like my Katy. She didn’t move to
the music. She didn’t mouth the words.

“Jane,” I said.

Stu said, “Remember what you came for.
And remember that you have to put on the brakes.” Then he turned and got lost
in the crowd.

I didn’t know what to say to her, so I
waited for her to act.

She looked so much like Katy and her
cousin, Henry. Pale blue eyes, surrounded by black eyeliner, and dark hair
streaked with red, shaved on both sides. In her hair, she wore Katy’s silver
barrette. She watched Joe Strummer even as I stood right in front of her. Her
skin was pale beyond fair. It glowed in the lights from the stage, letting me
see her red lips and slight shoulders. Her arms were crossed. She had on a real
short skirt and fishnet stockings and high black Doc Martens. She wore a denim
jacket with the sleeves hacked off. Pinned to the jacket were all sorts of
patches. And she’d taken a Sharpie and written verse all over. Lyrics and lines
from poems.

Written over her heart, I saw the
first song I’d ever written for Katy.

Hey, hey little bluebird, why
don’t you stay?

I thought I heard you singing,
I thought I heard you say,

That you loved me…

The band launched into its next song.
Should’ve been “Safe European Home” but they ended up playing “Janie Jones”
instead, like an affirmation that this night, for whatever reason, wasn’t going
to end up like I thought it would when it’d begun.

“Jane?” I said.

“C’mon.” She turned and pushed through
guys in leather and girls with safety pins through their earlobes. Red Mohawks.
Black eye makeup and face paint.

“Fucking bitch,” I heard more than
once. I wanted to stay and fight each of them, but knew I had to stick with
Jane. I knew that she was important, even if I didn’t know why.

“Jane,” I shouted, even though we left
most of the noise behind us when we entered the lobby. I lowered my voice, and
said, “So what do I have to do?”

“You want to get Katy back?” She
stopped so fast I nearly knocked her over. “You’re going to have to call her.
Just pick up the phone and call her.”

“Call who? Katy?”

“Not Katy.” She walked toward the box
office. “You’re running out of time. Hear that?”

“Jane, wait!”

She walked into the chilly London
night as a massive bell rang a few miles away. The sign on the post said Queen
Caroline Street. An elevated highway flew above us. Big red busses drifted out
of the metro station down the block near a sign for the Underground. I wondered
if this was the Hammersmith Odeon or the Lyceum. Couldn’t figure out why I
thought it was Bond’s. I guessed right about the Cash show and The Beatles’
show. Being wrong about this one confused me.