The Revelations of Preston Black (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 3) (16 page)

The PA hissed to life, “Hands where we
can see them. Real slow.”

I spread my legs, leaned over the
hood, and whispered, “They ain’t even real cops, are they?”

They parked the car so that it blocked
the Jeep’s path to the road. The driver strolled around the front of his car
with a shotgun cradled in his arms. He wore a black hoodie and an old Alabama
hat with the elephant logo on it. Greasy hair covered his ears and his wrists
were scarred with the same type of contusions that the protestors at the shows
in Louisville and Nashville had. My heart kicked into high gear.

The second one stood directly behind
me “This property’s private, you know.”

“We didn’t, officer,” Pauly said,
forcing a very polite tone. “Didn’t see any signs.”

“Signs don’t make a property private,”
the guy in the ’Bama hat said as he cuffed Pauly. He stood about the same
height as me but looked about seventy-five pounds heavier. He breathed through
his mouth and smelled like fried food.

“That’s not what I was implying,”
Pauly said, still playing along. His voice cracked with a nervous edge.

“Which one of you belongs to the shake
and bake?” The one behind me threw a plastic grocery bag onto the ground in
front of the Jeep. A two-liter soda bottle wrapped with duct tape and plastic
tubing rolled out. “This is what y’all are out here looking for, right?”

“Officer,” Pauly said, “I’m a recovering
alcoholic. Been sober for a year. Meth isn’t something I’d ever fool with.”

“Right away you knew what it was
though,” the man behind me said as he cuffed me. “Ain’t it, Herlin?”

The adrenaline made me more defiant
than I had any right to be. “You going to read us our rights, or what?”

“Shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for
you,” the one behind me said. “You gave up your rights when you set foot out
here.”

After collecting our wallets, our
phones, the keys to the Jeep, the man who cuffed me pushed me into the back of
the cruiser next to a box of little green Gideon Bibles. He wore work boots and
a camouflage jacket and he smelled like asshole. I knew better than to resist.

As soon as Pauly joined me in the back
seat, I directed his attention to the crucifix hanging from the rearview
mirror. “Look.”

“Whatever,” Pauly said. “They got the
guns.”

They searched Ben’s Jeep while we sat
there. They had the hatch up and rooted under the seats and floor mats. Herlin
called somebody on his handheld radio.

“You see their wrists?” I said. “All
bruised up. Thought it was from shooting up, like my dad. But it looks
different. The marks are all in pairs.”

“Just be quiet, man. Running your
mouth ain’t going to get us out of here.”

“Yeah, well sitting and waiting feels
the same as letting Katy die.” I said, “Maybe we should head for the trees and
find Ben?”

“Giving them an excuse to shoot us in
the back? And blowing Ben’s cover? Preston, just shut the fuck up.”

“You boys are a long way from West
Virginia, ain’t you?” Herlin yelled over from the Jeep. “You going to tell me
what you all are doing out here?”

I said, “Looking for ginseng.”

“Ginseng.” Herlin’s partner laughed as
he slammed the hatch shut. “Boy, you must be as stupid as you are dumb.”

“How much time you think they’re going
to give you for cooking meth?” He waved his shotgun at me when he said it. “You
know, Raney?”

“My sister’s beau down in Magnolia
Springs got life in prison for running a little operation out of his bedroom
closet,” Raney said as he sat down in the cruiser. “So life, I guess.”

Herlin rested the shotgun on the floor
next to his feet after he sat down, did a four-point turn and headed back down
the road toward the gate of the church camp. A few crimped wires stuck out of
the dash where the radio should’ve been. A pair of handhelds jammed between the
seats and the center console took its place.

I said, “This is flat out bullshit and
you both fucking know it.”

Raney said, “You got the right to
remain silent, and if you ain’t going to exercise that right I’m going to
silence you. Hear me? Boy, I’ll slap you so hard you both’ll feel it.”

“You know a lawyer’s going to walk
right through this shit.”

“Where is he, son?” Raney twisted
around in his seat. “You ain’t going to find a lawyer in this corner of Alabama
going to come against us. Ain’t nothing can come against the truth, and the
word of God is the only truth you need to worry about. There ain’t going to be
a trial and there ain’t going to be no jury. Only God can judge.”

We drove past the rows and rows of
white crosses and washing machines and burnt out cars on our way back toward
the main road. Even when I closed my eyes I saw the white crosses in my head.
But about a half-mile before we would’ve hit the main highway, Herlin turned
into the trees at a right-of-way where a bunch of power lines crossed. The old
gravel road snaked beneath the towers for a quarter mile before curving back
into the wood. We bounced along that worn-out stretch of road for five slow
minutes. The sky opened up as we crossed beneath another power line right-of
way. At the clearing I could see the river in the distance, and on the other
side, an old power plant spitting white smoke into the sky.

We slowed to a stop, and Raney got out
and unlocked a large gate. As we passed through he closed it. We continued down
the road for another half mile, where it ended at an old gas well. Right next
to it sat a cinderblock shed with a flat corrugated tin roof. I could barely
make out
Dixie
Drilling
on
a rusty tin sign bolted to the steel door. Just

above the sign was a small opening
covered with a metal grate.

All I could think about was how
people’d been telling me it was time to be a man, time to grow-up. Making a
move right here and now was the only way to make good. “No way,” I said.

Both back doors flew open at about the
same time and me and Pauly were yanked from the car by our wrists. I got onto
my knees while Herlin unlocked the shed’s door.

Pauly went in first. He turned, and
Herlin uncuffed him. Pauly rubbed his wrists and moved to the back wall.

As soon as Herlin unlocked my right
hand I spun and lunged at him. I wrapped my arms around him and pushed him to
the ground. I knew my attack wouldn’t last very long. But I had to make it look
worse than it really was. I hit him in the gut once. A weak punch.

Almost immediately, Raney grabbed a
fistful of my hair and pulled me off Herlin. My hand ripped his hoodie pocket
as I tried to hang on. Raney backhanded me and threw me into the ground.

When I got myself out of the dirt, I
turned and looked for Raney. As soon as I found him I raised my fists.

“Pres…” Pauly said. “They’re going to
put a hurting on you.”

Herlin got me from behind. He grabbed
my throat and shoved me into the concrete block wall so hard I saw a bright
light.

And getting off the ground didn’t come
so easy this time. I sniffed blood back into my nose as I caught my breath.

“Pres. Stop it.” He helped me up and
said, “Better the devil you know, right?”

As I got my feet beneath me, I
replied, “That’s what I said.”

“We had enough of you.” Herlin
straightened his hat. “How about a bullet through the brain pan?”

“I’m done.” I wiped blood off my face
and stepped inside.

Herlin slammed the door shut and
locked it. I coughed as I caught my breath. Raney got into the car first.
Herlin watched for a minute before finally getting in himself.

As soon as they disappeared around a
crook in the road I showed Pauly my phone. “Got it from Herlin’s pocket.”

“They’re going to be back for it.”
Pauly said, “Who you going to call that’s going to be able to do a damn thing?”

I scrolled through my numbers as Pauly
watched. He figured I was about to do something stupid. He didn’t know what I
knew.

“You’ll be lucky to get service out
here—” He stopped himself when he heard the car coming back.

I found a number I hadn’t called in a
long time. And the phone rang, and rang, and rang. She didn’t pick up, which I
half-expected. But it didn’t matter. The call was made.

Raney jumped out before the car even
came to a full stop. Herlin parked it, got out, and leveled the shotgun at me.

I pushed the phone through the metal
wire and lied. “No service.”

“Well, no shit. Y’all going to order
pizza? No thirty minutes or less out here, tell you that right now.” Raney took
the phone.

“There’s a Chinese take-out up in Tennessee.”
Raney held the phone to his ear. “Ching-chong, ching-chong.”

“You’re all alone. Once you see them
bright stars looking down on you tonight, and tomorrow night and the next,
you’re going to realize that,” Herlin said. “Dumb shit Yank.”

Raney nodded at Herlin, then sat down
in the car. Herlin raised the gun at me.

I fell away from the door as he pulled
the trigger. The crack of gunpowder and the immediate snap of a thousand metal
pellets hitting steel filled my head. Even as Pauly told me I was okay and
patted my cheek, my brain swam in a soup of reverberating sound.

Slowly the hiss of trauma left. Herlin
laughed. Pauly sat me up and pushed me onto my knees. I stood in the little
opening to catch my breath.

“It’s coming down, man,” I said. In
the distance the sound of faintly calling birds and crickets rang in my ears.
The cries of peepers drifted up from the water below. “It’s going to hit you
like a bag of fucking hammers.”

As
the sun flew higher it got hotter than a ninth-grade boy at his big sister’s
dance recital in that concrete box. Never experienced anything like it in my
life. Science is science no matter where on earth you ended up, but this heat
defied anything I’d ever felt. Whenever I stood up from the wall my back left a
wet patch that took a half hour to dry. Right after they left I took off my
button-down shirt to wipe my forehead. Didn’t take long for it to become
completely soaked through. I took off my T-shirt, rolled it into a ball around
my other shirt and used it as a pillow.

We took turns at the window doing our
best to suck up a little of the breeze. The only problem with standing in the
door was how the bright light hit you right in the face. Me and Pauly ran out
of stuff to talk about real fast.

We’d spent most of the afternoon
trying to kick the door and hoist each other toward the high ceiling. Probably
wouldn’t have gotten so sweaty if we’d relaxed and waited for whatever would
happen next. The only good thing to come out of it was thinking if somebody had
to save Katy, I’d have rather it been Ben than me.

Just admitting that felt like a punch
in my gut. All that stuff I said to Katy earlier about keeping her safe and
protecting her was talk. Bullshit musician talk.

Fantasy
. Not that I
ever fantasized about shit like this. Still, always figured I was more Han Solo
than C-3PO.

“Somebody’s coming,” Pauly said.

I stood and pushed my face into the
little opening. Into the sunlight. I could see the shape of individual trees if
I squinted, but I couldn’t see the vehicle. I said, “It ain’t the cops coming
back.”

“How do you know?”

“Diesel engine.” I knew who it was
because I made the call. I just didn’t want Pauly to know yet.

The silver car rolled to a stop right
in front of the door, shiny paint reflecting light right into my face. I held
my hand up to shield my eyes. A door slammed shut and I heard the crunch of
feet on gravel. Pauly pushed his face into the opening next to mine.

“Like two little rabbits in a
cardboard box,” she said.

“What the fuck, Pres?” Pauly released
me and backed away from the door, but not so far that he couldn’t see.

“Sorry, man. I called the only fallen
angel I could think of.”

As she stepped closer I could see her.
Wearing a plain grey dress with a black belt and sleeves down to her elbows,
she examined my face through the grate. “It’s been such a long time.” She place
her fingers through the grate and stroked my forearm. Her touch felt hotter
than the day. “I always knew this time would come.”

“Hello, Danicka.”

“Why so formal?” When she spoke I felt
her hot breath on my cheek. The sensation calmed me. “It is because you need
something, I suppose.”

Trying to keep my head straight, I
said, “For a while I couldn’t cross the street without thinking about you.
Spent a lot of time watching my back.”

“What the fuck’s wrong with you?”
Pauly said, “Don’t even talk to her.”

“To think I’d devote so much time and
energy is arrogant, even for you. To think so much of yourself—that I must sit
around with only you on my mind.” She didn’t blink when she talked. Her eyes
never left my face. “In a way it is very, very sad.”