 
Witch Ridden

A Shot of Murder Ballads and Whiskey

Jason Jack Miller

WITCH RIDDEN

Jason Miller

Copyright Jason Miller 2014

Published at Smashwords

WITCH RIDDEN

I could easily explain the bloody milk.

Growing up on a dairy farm on the other side of West Virginia's Blackwater Canyon—the wild side—allowed me see a variety of the ailments that could affect a heifer. Could've been an edema or swelling in the udder, or mastitis. Could've been something as simple as stress. Weather could be hard on an animal, so could a cougar or black bear prowling the forest near the farm. But the most likely explanation was 'milk poisoning,' a fever easily diagnosed by feeling the animal's ears. My pap said if they were cold to the touch, you had your answer.

And I had no intention of walking out to the barn in that downpour just to find out what I already knew.

"It's probably an infection," I said, insistently. "It most certainly is not a hex."

"Ain't it just like a college boy to come into a person's home and judge? Your mama must not have taught you no manners." Edda Lundy glared at me from the darkness of the kitchen. The old coal stove threw off a ruddy red light. "You come down here, making tapes of my uncle's music. Bet you he don't see a dime from it. Bet you I'll hear that fiddle on the radio when I cross over the mountain and I'll know exactly what you did with them recordings."

"I told you same as I told Dempson—I won't see a cent. And the whole reason Dempson even agreed to do it was because he knew I was creating a permanent record of all these old fiddle tunes. Old Johnny Perkins down in Elkins vouched for me. So did Pastor Hicks up in Alpena." I took off my glasses and rubbed my eyes. My face got hot and I fought to control my tone. "Look, I can show you my notebook and let you hear my tapes. I've been on over fifty field trips to archive these old fiddle tunes down in Braxton County, down in Lewisburg, over by Smoke Hole, into the Shenandoah. I'm just a grad student in WVU's Appalachian Studies Program, putting together my thesis and I have no reason to lie to you or to your uncle. You can call the university if you'd like."

I stood and tried to pass my notebook over to her. She crossed her arms and backed into the darkness.

I said, "Look, I have a baby on the way and I want her—if it's a girl—to grow up hearing this kind of music. The kids aren't playing the old time stuff the way they used to. This music will tell her who she is in ways I can't. I figure if I raise her up right she'll want to pick up a fiddle one day. You know, they aren't making guys like your uncle anymore. People are going to want to know what these hills sounded like, and I feel like this is an important endeavor. That's why I do it. It was never about money for me. Never will be."

The hot stove made the air really dry. Talking so much made me cough on the sulfur fumes that burned off the coal.

Dempson remained quiet through all of this. He clutched that old fiddle close to his chest, shaking just like any man shakes after ninety years in the dark, brooding Appalachians. He sat on the edge of that old recliner and stared at a fading wedding portrait in a chipped frame. A younger, leaner Dempson, wearing his Army khakis stared back. By the looks of his uniform and his demeanor, he hadn't deployed yet.

"It ain't the vouching I'm worried about. I know all about you uppity Collins, acting like you all are above your raising. Look at how you're trying to change your words just a little, saying 'ain't' to be cute and all. That supposed to put me at ease? That one of them tricks they teach you up at that college in Morgantown? I'll show you how smart you are."

I hadn't given my name. "I'm sorry, do you know me or my kin?" Since I couldn't really see her face in the half-light of the coal stove, I fixated on the SATOR Square above her head. It was a group of letters arranged to read the same forwards and backwards, vertically and horizontally. My aunts had them over their windows and doors. Meant to keep the devil away. My mother forbade us from ever talking about any of that stuff with my dad's sisters. So we didn't.

"I know your baby sister, Rachel. After they closed down Parsons High School the school board started bussing all of us to the new school up the mountain. All them kids from up in Davis thought they was better than the rest of us."

"Well, maybe you know my wife then. Let me start over..." I put the microphone down, stopped the tape, and stood. "My name's—"

"Don't you dare belittle me, Jamie Collins. Or I'll fix you too." With that, she disappeared into the kitchen.

I stopped to gather my thoughts. Edda shook down the ashes in the coal stove by furiously banging the iron poker against the side. Every clang set my hair on end. After my time with the 506th Infantry in Vietnam's lovely A Shau Valley, I stopped responding so well to loud noises. I'll always have Operation Apache Snow to thank for that. And I wouldn't be able to record another fiddle tune with such clamor. "Dempson, maybe you could ask her to keep it down?"

The old man's voice quivered when he spoke. I'd assumed it was his age. Now I wasn't so sure.

"Why don't you run on out there and see what she wants?" he said. He looked down at his old work boots when he talked. "It ain't about the cow."

"What is it?"

"Why don't you run on out there and see?" His voice broke. If I didn't know better, I'd have said he was scared. "She's madder than a hornet's nest right now. Ain't going to quit banging until she gets what she wants."

So I stood and shook out my hands. Edda didn't see me enter the cluttered kitchen. The smell of rancid butter was so thick I thought it'd stick to my clothes.

"Sorry for getting off on the wrong foot back there. I meant no offense."

She jammed the poker back into red hot coals and slid the pail of bloody milk into the center of the floor with her foot. She cursed in a mangled form of German.

With a quick stabbing motion she rammed the hot poker into the pail. Steam rose, and for a second, the scent of warm milk filled the little kitchen. Reminded me of being a kid. My mom would put cream in a pot over low heat for Ovaltine when we couldn't sleep. "Anything I can give you some assistance with?"

Her hands shook, like the hot iron was trying to wriggle free of her grasp. When she lifted it out of the pail and slammed it back into the coal stove I covered my ears.

"I'm fixing to get that witch. You just watch. This will get her."

"How's that?"

"A spell. To turn around her hex on the cow. She's feeling it now. If you run up that hollow and talk to her you'll see she's burned. Her hands are on fire, I tell you."

My academic curiosity had been piqued. Like I'd come for tea and ended up sitting down at a turkey dinner with cornbread stuffing and sweet potato casserole. And if it let me get back to the music faster, I was more than ready to help. "Do you want me to go up and check on her?"

"You mocking me?" She reached into a cupboard above the sink and pulled out a small wooden box. "Let's see how smart you are. Take a look at this."

She handed me a crumbled bit of paper covered with dark letters. It had been wet, chewed, and possibly covered in manure at some point. "The hex," she said.

"Is that what it is?"

"When you see that witch you can tell her how I was the one who fixed her."

"Curiosity may have killed the cat, but I reckon I have eight lives left." I put on my coat and hat. "Seven if you count Tet 69. Where am I headed?"

"You must be addled in the head. But you got this itch that needs scratched and you think you're so smart. If I was you I wouldn't take no food from her. And I'd mind these loose hairs." She pulled a long strand of brown hair off my collar. One of my wife's.

"Like this one." She wrapped the hair around her finger and stuck it into the pocket of her housecoat. "That old witch is evil, I tell you. A deceiver. She ain't fit to be around people and that's why she hides up there in them hills. Her ways are old, dangerous. She'll trick you, and then we'll see how smart you are."

"Thanks for the warning."

She put her hand on her hip and laughed. "You head down to the lane, and make a left. After a quarter mile the gravel runs out and you climb the path there. The hill gets steeper and just when the mountain is pushed right up against your face, you head into the laurel. After a while you get to fixing on a knuckle. Stay real close to the cliff and you'll see it."

"I'm telling you, it's milk poisoning."

"She stole my mama's dulcimer. Try and get it back for me. And remember, every word out of her mouth is a lie."

It felt good to get out of the house. Like I could breathe again. Fog formed above the stream at the bottom of the hollow. The early spring storm turned snow into flood, and I wondered if this meant we were in for a long growing season. I pulled up the collar on my field jacket. It still smelled a little like Nam. I'd sewn a PEOPLE FOR PEACE patch like John Lennon's over my rank insignia. And I still wore my dog tags too. Figured I'd quit with all that once the nightmares stopped.

But I put my combat boots out of their misery as soon I was discharged. Incinerated those mobile fungus factories first chance I got. And I didn't shed a single tear.

As soon as I got to the end of the lane I realized I'd forgotten my notebook. When I turned around and looked at the dim light coming through that old farm house's grainy windows, I figured I'd be able to remember everything I needed to. Or I'd just find a way to come back one day.

Over the past few years I'd done a heck of a lot worse than settle a family dispute just to record a few fiddle tunes. Fought my share of greenbrier, that much was certain. Over in Pocahontas County I had to help a fiddler birth a calf before he'd play a note. One time, maybe my third or fourth trip out, I had to help a man put on snow tires. Since then I learned to find out if the subject liked whiskey or chocolate, or both, just to grease the wheels a bit. Mabel Hamilton up at the bag store in Elkins believed I was a raging alcoholic until I finally explained what all the booze was for.

The fog rose as I started up the narrow footpath at the road's end. It would've been easy to suggest that the timing of its arrival meant something. But a life lived in these hills taught me that weather was just weather, not a sign from God or a maligned force. Fog was just fog. And I reminded myself of that over and over as I stumbled over tree roots and slipped up the muddy slope.

The smell of humanity reached me before the sight of it did. The cold breeze ran across a compost heap, piled high with old autumn limbs and wet silage before it met me in the laurel hell. Glossy mountain laurel leaves slapped at me, wetting my Levis, which had faired pretty well until this point. I began to shiver. The path veered to the right instead of continuing up the steeper part of the slope. I struggled to keep the trail beneath my feet. At one point the cliff pushed right up against me and I kept my hand on it to steady myself. The drop-off to my right ended in fog, and I contented myself with not needing to know how far I'd fall if I slipped.

And then, just as Edda had described it, I saw it.

It wasn't so much a house as it was a jumble of timber and plywood stacked against the cliff. Water ran from a rocky overhang to a dry rotted heap of shingles, over a mess of rotting and faded black and white photos, then down the steep hillside. Smoke came from several openings in the cliff, none of which was a chimney. If I'd have heard screaming I would've sworn the place was on fire. Instead I heard singing. A gargled vocalization, like the sound a raven makes. For the longest time, I just stood there listening.

It wasn't a language I knew. It didn't have Germanic roots, like the words I'd heard Edda use down the lane. Didn't sound like the Latin I took in school, or the French I'd heard in Vietnam, but it didn't sound Vietnamese either. And it sure as heck didn't sound like the Slovak my grandmother spoke when she huddled over the stove to make krafne for Easter.

The old woman's words sounded like they belonged to all languages, the syllables seemingly originated from time itself. Like the ancient tongue from which all tongues sprang. While I tried to figure out how I'd get power to run my recording equipment way up here, I heard the voice louder, and more clearly than I had before. When I realized it was coming from the other side of the door, I panicked.

"What kind of fool stands in the rain waiting to catch cold?" She pulled me in before I could protest. I think the words were in English, but wasn't certain. My eyes couldn't adjust to the sudden change in brightness.

The entry had been lit by several oil lamps. Black soot covered the ceiling above each one. It smelled like a latrine. The pungency grew as I got deeper inside. The cliff's rocky face dissected the room. A black mouth exhaled the breath of the mountain itself. A cool breeze that smelled like limestone and iron. She led me into it.

The velvety blackness staggered me. I shuffled my feet so I wouldn't lose my footing, but the floor was smooth, and covered with a very fine grit. Water dripped into a pool in a hidden corner. After several steps, a haze of light pulled me out of the blackness. I relaxed when I saw her crude living quarters. Books, a cooking area, a place to sleep. She had everything she needed down here.

My teeth chittered with excitement. I always knew I wouldn't have to leave West Virginia to do real anthropology, and here I was, seeing something the outside world could never grasp. I saw a woman living like her ancestors would've lived when they got off the boat from Ireland or Germany. This scene could've been 1774 as easily as 1974.

In this space, I caught a glimpse of Celtic Europe itself. Herbs drying above a fire beneath a natural chimney. Scrolls and leather-bound books. Eggs on a rack. Preserves in jars. And at each of the four corners of the small chamber, I saw a SATOR Square fixed to a wood beam or resting on a stone shelf. A mass of brown bats huddled in the highest nooks beyond the reach of the brightest light.

The woman walked with a permanent hunch, her babushka hid most of her face. Stringy white whiskers clung to her chin. She wore gumboots, and a dress of very thick material. Layer after layer of cotton or wool, perhaps. Made her look quite bulky, but in reality, she was probably bone thin. Over top of everything she wore a Baltimore Colts windbreaker snapped all the way up to her neck. Her hands stayed in her pockets the whole time.

I was about to introduce myself, and stood with my hand out, but she cut me right off. "Edda send you up for the dulcimer?"

She nodded toward a worn out instrument resting on the foot of a straw mattress. It'd been strung with gut, rather than nylon or steel.

"She did." I averted my eyes. "But I had no intention of asking you for it. I came to record Dempson play a few tunes. Coming up here was the only way to appease Edda. But I'm glad to make the trip. Real happy to meet you."

"You ain't met me yet, have you?"

"Well, no." I extended my hand again.

Hers never left her pockets. "Sit down. Better if I don't know you. That girl ain't right."

"Kind of figured. But I don't mean any disrespect."

"No, you ain't quite figured nothing out. I reckon she'll try and do you harm, if she ain't done so yet. Ain't no truth passing through her lips."

"She said the same thing about you, if I'm being honest. Said you hexed the cow?" I watched her hands to see if they'd been burned, or pained her in any way.

She giggled, turned, and threw a small hunk of wild cherry onto the fire. "Told Dempson that cow had milk poisoning, but he don't listen. Never cut out for farming. My brother left any sense he had in the trenches."

"So you're Edda's aunt?"

"Is that what she told you?"

"Well, I saw the dulcimer...."

"My dulcimer. One of the few things I own she ain't got yet." She looked at it admiringly for a moment, smiling with the three teeth she had left. "I ain't got no sisters. I'm that girl's mother. She's a deceiver. Best keep your head around her. She's mean-spirited. Ain't fit to be in regular society. I keep her real close so as to keep an eye on her."

"I see."

"No, you don't. And you won't ever 'cause you ain't lived around here long enough to know."

"No disrespect, but my family has farmed up in the Canaan Valley area since 1890, give or take."

"Like I said, newcomers. My people were kicked out of Pennsylvania by William Penn himself."

I raised my eyebrows. "Well, thanks for your time."

I turned toward the entrance. Somehow I'd gotten disoriented. It wasn't where I'd left it. "Maybe you would be kind enough to show me the way out?"

"She'll tear right through you if you return unprotected. Suppose you left your property down there? Personal possessions and such?"

I nodded.

"She'll have rooted through everything by now. Looking for loose hairs, a handkerchief. Something with a little bit of you on it."

"Is that bad?"

"You let a witch get a hold of something from your body—nail clippings, hair, food you was eating...She can control you. Or put a hurting on you."

I thought about the hair from my collar and laughed, and told myself that there was no way that could be true. No way. "But you have ways to protect yourself from all that, I suppose?"

"I do. It'll cost you."

I felt in my pockets. Didn't have much on me. Wallet. Keys. "How about my Buck knife?" I offered her the fine antler handle. My intent was purely academic.

She smiled, and tucked it into her waist band. When I saw that her hands weren't burnt I breathed a sigh of relief. I may have even laughed a little.

She said, "You don't look witch-ridden. Let's put some protection on you anyway."

"Witch-ridden?"

"Afflicted." She pulled a worn-out rag from a small drawer. Using a quill pen and a pot of black ink that smelled like swamp gas, she drew out slow, careful letters. "Exodus 33," she said.

"Sorry. Didn't spend a lot of time in Sunday School."

"When my glory passes, set thee in a cave, and I shall protect thee with my right hand." She set it aside to let the ink dry, then pulled out another, slightly smaller, scrap.

I watched as she carefully wrote out the letters, and held my breath.

S A T O R

A R E P O

T E N E T

O P E R A

R O T A S

"My aunts have these above their windows and doors. My mother doesn't like us talking about them. She wasn't raised up here."

"The names of the crucifixion nails are very powerful protection." Her shriveled hands fumbled with a safety pin. She reached into my jacket, gesturing for me to hold it open. "This is your ticket. No harm can come to you now. See these letters?" She pointed to the 'P,' and then the 'A,' and on and on until it spelled out the whole word.

"Pater noster," I said. "Our father."

"This," she held up the Exodus verse. "This will break her spell. Come with me."

I put on my hat and zipped up my coat. We walked back through her outhouse, then past a cold spring that ran into the cave. She moved carefully along the edge of the cliff, stepping lightly over fallen rocks and slabs of slate. The wind blew right into our faces, spitting tiny flecks of ice at us. The stream made a low whoosh in the valley below.

At once the forest opened up into a pasture small enough for a few sad chickens and some lonely rows of beans and potatoes. Last year's corn stalks had fallen flat against the muddy ground. A monstrous white oak—the biggest I'd ever seen—loomed in the fog at the end of the field. It had to be at least twelve feet across at the base. Twenty men couldn't clasp hands and circle the tree. Maybe thirty could. The roots stretched out fifty feet. All sorts of mushrooms and old brown ferns poked through last fall's leaves. My pap talked about seeing trees like this when he was a kid.

She patted the oak's trunk, and said, "This is the reason I live here. Nothing can hurt me with this watching over me."

She handed me a crude iron bore with a wooden handle affixed to the end. With her bony finger, she showed me exactly where to start.

The oak was solid, like steel, and it took me a good four or five minutes just to get dug in. As I worked, I saw other bore holes throughout the trunk. Each with a bit of fabric or paper in various stages of decay poking out. Each one a protection spell, I thought. And when I laid my hand flat on the trunk I thought I could feel the magic rushing through the tree like water and chlorophyll.

She waved me away when she thought the hole was deep enough. "Here," she gave me the cloth with the Exodus verse. "Stuff her on in there."

So I did.

"Now take this," she handed me an iron rod and an old sledgehammer. "Jam it in there. Don't be afraid to hit it real good. This will knock that witch flat on her back."

I tapped it.

"Hit it good!"

So I did. The clash of metal echoed through the valley.

Clang!

The fog seemed to amplify the noise.

Clang!

"You'll feel when it's good," she said.

Clang!

"Harder, now."

Clang!

This time, the tree kicked back. I dropped the hammer.

She smiled. "There it is," she said. "More."

So I hammered again. The rod shook, wriggling like a hellbender in a fishing net.

Clang!

She grabbed my jacket and pulled me aside. "Now put that down before you hurt yourself."

The iron rod jerked and writhed in the hole. Growing longer and longer as the tree forced it out. Then in an anti-climactic flourish, it fell right to the mud.

"That's a good one," she said. "Should stick. Now you get on out of here. Go and put old Dempson on the radio."

I expected her to walk back with me, but she stayed in the field, picking mushrooms and dropping them into her apron one by one. She didn't disappear into the fog or anything dramatic like that. She just kept on picking those mushrooms. I waved a goodbye anyway.

The distance went by much faster on the return trip. I didn't linger on the cliff, but took another good look at the house as I passed. Then I missed the turn-off in the laurel hell, and had to double back, but once I got myself aimed the right way it was easy going. When I finally set foot on the road again, I swore I could hear Dempson's fiddle.

Edda waited in the doorway. As soon as I got in earshot, she said, "I don't see no dulcimer."

Feeling a bit playful, I said, "You mother says, 'hello.'"

"And I told you every word from her mouth was a lie."

"Funny, she said the same thing about you. By the way, her hands were fine. So either you got the wrong witch or a cow with milk poisoning."

"They teach you that in college? She could've cast a hex at you and you'd never even know. Did you give her anything?"

I didn't say a word about the knife.

"You best find someone to do some witch-doctoring on you. You look a bit witch-ridden. Whoever told you it'd be okay to come up here sniffing around in business that don't concern you wasn't your friend."

"Dempson did. Back in Albright, at the square dance. So as far as I'm concerned, this is between the two of us. He invited me. I'm his guest." I went up the steps and into the house, through the dark kitchen to the parlor. Dempson wasn't there. All of my gear had been piled up in the middle of the floor. "Now why would you go and do something like this?"

I dropped to one knee.

"Because you wasn't getting the hint."

I wrapped up my cables, put my tape recorder back in its leather case. I carefully returned the mics back to their zippered pouches. "This could've been something really nice for your uncle, you know."

She stood by the door, smirking. "And tell that whore sister, and that whore wife of yours that I said 'hello.'"

She slammed the door when I got onto the porch. She watched as I put my things into the Jeep, while I cursed the waste of time, the waste of gas. The waste of a whole day. And I was so mad I almost left without my notebook. I ran up to the porch and saw it sitting on the top step, soaking in the drops of rain that overflowed the gutter. I stuck it into my pocket.

I sped out of there, bouncing along the rutted driveway. Chickens flew into the laurel when I passed. At the top of the lane, just before I made the right onto the road, I saw a farmer puttering toward me on an old red International Harvester tractor. When he waved, I waved back.

His hand was bandaged in fresh white gauze.

By the time I got to the hospital everybody was there except for Rachel and me. Somebody had to wait at the farm and fill me in on the situation, and when I saw my sister, standing in the rain at the edge of the driveway, I knew it wasn't going to be good.

But I didn't think it'd be my wife. Or my baby. Rachel had sense enough to wait until we got to the hospital to tell me the truth. And when I sank to the floor in a heap of tears, they were all there to catch me.

Except for my wife, Belle. She was still in post-op.

"What happened?" I said, trying to keep myself in the hard plastic seat. My mother rested her head on my shoulder. Rachel held my hand.

My mom said, "We were making bread and she started to cramp. I helped her into the guest bed and noticed she was bleeding, so I called an ambulance."

"Bleeding? The doctor told us a little spotting was common in the first trimester? Shouldn't have been enough to...."

"The blood wasn't down there. It soaked through her shirt." She patted her chest.

I clenched my fists and pushed them into my eyes. My dad helped me with my jacket and hat. My wallet and notebook fell out of my pocket. "I should've been here instead of wasting time in them hills."

It was hard not to think about Edda and the woman in the cave. I didn't really believe then. I still didn't want to believe. "This is my fault."

"Don't be so hard on yourself." My mom used the same tone she'd use when I skinned my knee. "Things just happen, Jamie."

"Maybe they do," Rachel said, holding my notebook. "Maybe they don't."

"What is it?" I swiped it out of her hand. "No. No way."

I flipped through the pages.

"Impossible."

"Show me, son," my dad said. "Let me take a look."

I handed it over, and he read it.

Line after line.

Row after row.

Pages after page after page of hexes, curses, and evil little rhymes. Just a little something from Edda Lundy.

T _o show me how smart I really was._

MURDER BALLADS AND OLD MAGIC

Originally appeared on TENNESSEE HICKS' blog.

In my novel _Hellbender,_ things aren't always what they appear to be. It's set in an Appalachia where serpents can be called forth from rocky crevasses and rattlesnake beads can be used to keep the devil away. Springs can be poisoned from afar, and milk can be 'blinked'--or tainted by a rival witch. The Appalachians of _Hellbender_ may not be the tallest, but they are the oldest, and as such, contain many nooks where beliefs remained untouched for generations. In some instances, the valleys and ridges blocked modernization so well that the culture of the mountain people could be totally forgotten by the 'outside' world. In other words, the mountains have let time stand still.

Where streams carved hollows into the lush Appalachian Plateau, families found shelter from the same kind of persecution that forced their ancestors out of Europe a generation earlier. Many of the first Europeans to settled Appalachia were Germans who picked up stakes when Pennsylvania got just a little too crowded for them. They filtered down through the Shenandoah Valley, trickling westward as rivers like the Potomac and James poked holes in the imposing Allegheny Front, and later, through the Cumberland Gap. They brought fiddle tunes, some of which remain virtually unchanged in Appalachia compared to their counterparts in Europe, melodies that either succumbed to contemporary styles or had been forgotten altogether. The new wave of settlers brought their food culture--no place on earth expresses the German love of deep-frying like Pennsylvania, with its potato chips and funnel cakes, and Southern culture's chicken fried chicken and hush puppies. Even the log cabin, the butt of many an Appalachia joke, came from Germany and Scandinavia by way of those first Europeans.

Living so far from civilization had its quirks. Laws were less likely to be enforced, or just as easily ignored depending on which side of the law you fell. The Whiskey Rebellion is a prime example of folks thumbing their noses at distant lawmakers. The influence of the Catholic Church diminished in much the same way. It wasn't until Protestant churches ordained 'lay pastors' to venture into the wilderness to tame the savages that religion gained a strong foothold in Appalachia. Not that it mattered to some folks, who were content to rely on the traditional culture of their ancestors, the magic that kept the devil away. The Swiss and German-speaking people of Helvetia, West Virginia still burn an effigy of Old Man Winter on _Fasnacht_ , a pre-Lenten holiday that falls on the cross-quarter day of _Imbolc_. It's a tradition that can be traced back to pre-Roman Europe.

At its most basic, the magic of Appalachia is a response to the dangers of the new landscape. Mountain lions, wolves, bears, snakes, harsh winters, floods and unruly neighbors were just a few of the perils faced by those first settlers. In times of severe famine, or when a cow had been cursed (or had simply just stopped producing milk) an axe could provide magical sustenance. The blade is stuck into a tree and rag is tied to the end. With the utterance of a few magic words, milk will drip from the threads into a bucket providing the family with nourishment. The magical nature of the ax comes to Appalachia via Scandinavia, most likely as a result of the magical nature of Thor's Hammer.

From _Hellbender_ : " _There's still plenty of women in these hills who can get a full pail of milk from an ax handle or an old rag. And Mary Lewis was one of them. I seen it done with my own eyes a hundred times_."

Hair magic is another theme seen in Appalachian folklore. The idea that you could have control over a person if you possessed something that belonged to them is a belief expressed in many different cultures, not just Appalachian. Folklore says if just one of your hairs found its way into a bird's nest you'd end up insane. So hair clippings and fingernails are buried, and their location is kept a secret by the buriers. It may sound strange, but the same idea is a building block of Roman Catholicism, with the consuming of the body and blood of Christ.

From _Hellbender_ : " _She wrapped the hair around her middle finger and made three crosses over Alex's lips. Inaudible words flowed from Chloe's mouth to Alex's ear. Chloe pulled a silver coin out of her pocket, dropped it into the cup and tipped the purple liquid toward Alex's gasping mouth. "Put the coin in your mouth, but don't swallow it."_

The ultimate expression of Old World magic comes from a need for the most basic of human necessities--protection, mostly from enemies, especially from the Devil. Of course, the magic needed for such an old foe is an old one and there are none older than the SATOR Square. SATOR Squares have reportedly been found at the ruins of Pompeii, destroyed in 79 A.D. Early Christians considered it a sign of their coming savior. One found in Manchester, England in the Second Century was taken as proof Christianity had spread at least that far in less than 200 years.

Essentially a multi-directional palindrome, a SATOR Square is place above a window. The devil becomes confused by the repeated letters. It's a key piece of the iconography of the _Hellbender_ cover, designed by Hatch Show Print of Nashville, Tennessee.

From _Hellbender_ : " _Jamie picked open a pair peanuts then threw the shells into the fire. "SATOR squares? I don't know. They're like puzzles I suppose. They've been found on the walls of buildings destroyed by Vesuvius at Pompeii. Early Christians say it was a message from God saying their savior was on his way."_

He gestured for Dave's stick and began drawing rows of letters in the dirt. "Five lines of five letters arranged in a square that form multiple palindromes."

I tried to read the letters, but it was difficult in the low light. I leaned over to see. It read:

S A T O R

A R E P O

T E N E T

O P E R A

R O T A S

"Some people say the words are nonsense, but when rearranged in a cross they spell out 'paternoster' flanked by an 'A' and an 'O'." Jamie handed Dave back his stick. "Our father and the Alpha and Omega." Jamie stomped the letters away with his foot.

Silence fell over the camp. By now the crickets were in full swing. Finally, I couldn't keep my mouth shut anymore. "In my life I'd never seen anything to prove magic was real. Magic would've kept my mom around. Would've kept Jane alive."

I've witnessed some crazy/scary things in my time here in Appalachia--mountain lion footprints where mountain lions were thought to be extinct, back-to-back comets after 50 years with none, ball lightning, mountaintop removal. Things that have rational, explanations, even if the explanations are unpopular. But I've had even more amazing experiences with people I've met and friends I've made here--making music, drinking wine, paddling wild rivers.

Something's going on up in the mountains, but it's not my job to figure it out. Nobody believed me about the mountain lion footprints anyway. Maybe is has something to do with the people. After all, it's people who end up passing those stories on. And maybe the stories are so hard to believe because of how they went down. Late at night. Middle of nowhere. Not a credible witness in the bunch.

Or maybe it's the mountains themselves. Over the last three-hundred million years they're the only real constant in this equation. Moses recieved the Ten Commandments on a mountain. The gods of ancient Greece lived on a mountain too. So maybe it's only in the mountains, my Appalachians, that snakes can be called, and protection from the devil can be obtained with a few rows of ancient letters. Doesn't matter what I believe, those traditions will be here long after I've gone.

## Magical Realism in Contemporary Fiction: Pardon Me, I Think That Stream Of Blood Is Trying To Tell You Something

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## Originally appeared at Fiction Vale.

##

I've spent a lot of time thinking about what magical realism is, and what magical realism isn't, even though the question is mostly esoteric. I'm not sure many writers pay it much mind, and I'm quite certain only a handful of readers really ever actively seek out magical realism, even though it's more common than one might think. (I asked the guy next to me at Panera to discuss magical realism and he wouldn't even look up from his Frontega Chicken Panini, thus, affirming my thesis.) So my conundrum isn't really a question about magical realism, as much as it's like a haiku or Zen koan without the enlightenment, transforming What is the sound of one hand clapping? into its magical realism counterpart—Why does that dude have wings if he's not a mutant?

Because _Gabriel_ _García Márquez_ said so! That's why.

_Márquez_ is kind of the padre of magical realism, and his seminal novel One Hundred Years of Solitude was cited by critic and writer William Kennedy as "... the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race." I'm not sure I entirely agree with Kennedy (about the Bible at least. [I moonlight as a high school earth and space science teacher, and some of the stuff in Genesis doesn't exactly make sense scientifically]), but he's dead on about _Márquez_. The book is brilliant. Long, but brilliant.

Marquez uses realism—muddy, mundane realism—to build his world and establish a baseline of trust with readers. There's (mostly) nothing special about the setting and (mostly) nothing special about the characters as they work through some pretty typical circumstances. But this is why One Hundred Years of Solitude does such a great job of illustrating how magical realism isn't a genre unto itself. _Márquez_ uses magical realism for flavor. It's not a main course. Like masala. Tastes good, but you can't eat an entire bowl of it. One Hundred Years of Solitude is straight-up mainstream fiction. So is Yann Martel's Life of Pi, Carlos Ruiz _Zafón_ 's Shadow of the Wind, and Sherman Alexie's Reservation Blues. You've also seen magical realism in Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth or Tim Burton's Big Fish, based on the novel Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions by Daniel Wallace. In each of these instances, the final product wasn't ABOUT the magical realism elements—because in the end, that's all that the Library of Forgotten Books, the big fish, and the crazy labyrinth dude were. Each is an element the creator _utilized_ to move the reader (or viewer) THROUGH the plot. These elements are not 'plot' in and of themselves.

One of my favorite examples of magical realism comes from One Hundred Years of Solitude. In this passage, _Márquez_ brings a metaphor to life (somewhat literally) to show how news and gossip spread after a traumatic incident. When José Arcadio dies of a mysterious gunshot wound, his blood crosses the street, stops for empanadas, takes a siesta, goes to confession, visits his ex-wife, buys three goldfish at the pet store and watches the Columbian football team trounce Venezuela. Actually, it goes a little something like this:

A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the Buendía house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid the dining-room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed without being seen under Amaranta's chair as she gave an arithmetic lesson to Aureliano José, and went through the pantry and came out in the kitchen, where Úrsula was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread.

"Holy Mother of God!" Úrsula shouted.

The set of concrete details that accompany this trickle of blood anchor it in reality, while transforming a mundane concept, like the spread of bad news, into something awesome and memorable. This works because _Márquez_ takes the trust that he'd built with the reader, and interjects it into the invisible space that exists somewhere between the Buendía family's Catholicism (where the ingestion the blood of Christ is ritualistic and mundane) and the traditions of human sacrifice that exist amongst the indigenous inhabitants of the jungle around Macondo, Columbia, where One Hundred Years of Solitude is set. He mixes the everyday with the fantastic, which is different—much different—than fantasy as a genre.

Another, non-literary, example of magical realism—my favorite, perhaps—is Van Gogh's Starry Night. He's painted an actual sky that relies on our perception of reality and concrete details, like freshly plowed fields and lights in the windows. The viewer doesn't see any dragons, UFOs, comets, fairies, or witches because the artist is creating a fantastic sky, not a fantasy (as in the genre) sky. And Van Gogh even uses a fairly common palate of naturally occurring color—blues and yellows that we would expect to see in the night sky above our own roof. So in the end, Starry Night is an exaggeration of all the things that make a summer evening so sublime. Shadows and stars and clouds, moonlight on rooftops and blue hills that disappear into nothing....

For it to work, we must remember that it's a real sky.

But it's Van Gogh's version of a real sky. And oh, what a magical version it is.

THEY CARRIED IT ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS

Music and Magic in Appalachia

Originally appeared on Darcia Helle's blog, A WORD PLEASE

Appalachia is a battle zone.

For 500 years cultures have clashed on mountain ridges and in dark hollows. It's a war fought with words and music. In courtrooms. With hunting rifles. In kitchens. Those who emerge with the fewest scars come from places where topography provided them with a natural fortress. Such shelters exist, still, in West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee.

But in my little corner of Appalachia, things played out a little differently. My great-grandparents crossed the Atlantic in the earliest part of the twentieth century, arriving in a land that had already been tamed by the English, Scot-Irish, and Germans. The wilderness here had no wild left in it by 1900. Rivers, like the Monongahela and the Allegheny punched right through the mountain walls, letting immigrants from Slovakia, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Croatia, Poland, and Italy flood in. Like many of my great-grandparents' Croatian countrymen, they ended up in southwestern Pennsylvania, toiling in dark coal mines and hot steel mills. They brought their own churches with them, and buried the dead in their own cemeteries. These Hunkies then had the nerve to add halupki, pierogi, halušky, and Paska to the regional menu.

Even today Slovak culture thrives in southwest Pennsylvania. Look no further than the Duquesne University Tamburitzans (which two of my great uncles performed with many years ago,) a traditional Croatian song and dance company that still plays monthly throughout the United States. Music was a way for the new immigrants to remember the language and customs of their homelands. Music was a way to keep them from forgetting all that they'd left on the other side of the Atlantic.

Why all this talk of Slovaks?

Because Slovaks, and Italians, and the other ethnic minorities that trickled into my corner of Appalachia killed that music and magic that the Germans and Scot-Irish and English that settled here in the 1700s had brought with them. Southwestern Pennsylvania was not protected by deep mountain valleys and high ridges. My grandparents did not have fiddles hidden in closets and did not believe that a sick cow could be made to give milk by uttering a simple incantation. My grandma had my Uncle Francis's accordion up in a closet. Magic consisted of putting a turkey wishbone over the front door to draw suitors for unmarried daughters.

To find people that live like the first Europeans lived, you have to go deeper into the mountains. Like I said, such shelters exist.

The isolated peoples living in Appalachia's last dark hollows don't know a babushka from a polka. Slovak immigrants continued to the northwest, to Cleveland and Chicago, rather than south into the mountains. Therefore, the customs and culture of the mountain people didn't get transformed by the Slovaks and Italians like the culture of my area did, even though it had arrived from Europe in much the same manner.

Pennsylvania place names tell the stories of the earliest settlers. Donegal. Berlin. Heidelberg. York. Nazareth. Bethlehem. You can see what was on the minds of the first Europeans to put down roots here. They played the music that reminded them of home, same as the Croatians two-hundred years later. When the Germans and English and Scot-Irish fled south and west over the mountains, they cut themselves off for the metropolitan centers of the coast, and their beliefs and the songs that they sang went on unchanged. Over the years Appalachian music incorporated the banjo, an instrument delivered from Africa and the Caribbean via escaped or former slaves heading north. The mandolin came from Italy, and may have been delivered by the immigrants I mentioned above. The Monongahela River acted like a highway heading due south from Pittsburgh into Appalachia, and the mandolin was an instrument Italian immigrants could've easily transported in a pack or on a boat. And I know Italian stone masons were in demand in the mountains near Davis and Elkins, West Virginia, to build bridges for the railroad. The Spanish had guitars in the New World as early as the mid-1500s, though this probably wasn't the origin of the guitar in Appalachia. Most likely, an 1810 European craze for guitars arrived on American shores by 1830, where they were simply carried into the wild by the people escaping life in Philadelphia, Baltimore and New York.

And the magic the German and English brought to the New World with them travelled through Europe much the same way. In West Virginia and places south, the power contained within an axe handle to provide milk in hard times drifted west to England and south to Germany from Scandinavia, where Thor's axe was believed to hold the power to feed the hungry and cure the sick in times of famine and hardship. Even the Christian traditions of Easter and Christmas have an origin in ancient Europe.

Oestre or Ostara, may be a European tradition that dates back to the second century BCE, although its origins are somewhat sketchy. Yule, on the other hand, is a well-documented tradition that the Romans incorporated into Christianity by the 4th century. The assimilation of an old culture by a new one is more common than one should think. The Spaniards let the Maya incorporate their sun and moon gods in Christianity when they invaded in the 16th and 17th centuries. People fall into line easier when you let them hang on to their beliefs, or so I'm told.

So Yule is a pre-Christian Germanic tradition that survived Roman rule. Two thousand years later it was carried across the Atlantic by German immigrants to Pennsylvania's Great Valley. When the expansion of Philadelphia pushed west, these people carried their music and tradition into Appalachia via the Shenandoah Valley, where they gradually trickled up into the Appalachians all the way down through Virginia, and West Virginia, and North Carolina, and Tennessee, and Kentucky, where the high mountains provided a refuge for their culture and beliefs. Same as the mountains did for animals like the mountain lion and hellbender. Civilization can't take what it can't see.

Helvetia, West Virginia still burns an effigy of Old Man Winter on Fastnacht, February 2nd. This is a tradition that comes directly from Alsace, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. This is the day on which the remaining butter and fats are consumed before Lent. Without the mountains to provide shelter, the layers of later cultures, like the Slovaks, would've surely wiped this custom out. But the mountains provided a haven for people and their beliefs. And if you venture far enough off the main road, you may find people who belief that milk can be gotten from an axe handle, and that the elderberry will bloom on Old Christmas, just like their ancestors did, two thousand years ago. Without the mountains, the subsequent waves of immigration, like those that brought my great-grandparents to America, would've wiped out these beliefs long ago.

But don't be too hard on my Eastern European kin. Back in the Old Country, the Slavic holiday Maslenitsa was celebrated at the Vernal Equinox, and later at Lent. Pancakes, sweet breads and a cottage-cheese bread known as pashka were baked. Now, my Spanish is a little rusty, but isn't Pascua the word for Easter? (Pascha in Latin, Pâques in French, Pasqua in Italian.) The people also baked little cakes in the shape of goats and cattle, known as kozuli. And the best part of Maslenitsa? When the ancient Slavs decorated eggs to roll along the ground in a ceremony meant to transfer fertility from the egg back to the earth.

GREEN TOMATO PICCALILLI

This recipe originally appeared on Natalie Wolfe Duvall's blog

Piccalilli probably arrived in West Virginia shortly after the British and Irish did. They knew a thing or two about short growing seasons and preserving foods. Even today, Heinz makes a piccalilli that sells well in Ireland. It can be used in salads, on sandwiches or roast or grilled meat.

From _Hellbender_ :

"Frost tonight," Tom said, as he poked at white hot coals with a long stick. Over a dozen small venison steaks sat in a heavy old cast-iron skillet waiting to be cooked up with onions and peppers and a green tomato piccalilli.

My pap stood behind him with a hand on his shoulder and said, "How's the ackempucky coming along?"

"She's coming along just fine. I know how much you like ramps, so—"

"Stop acting ugly. The thought of eating those weeds makes me sicker than a dog on a gut wagon." He used Tom's shoulder as a handrail to help him take his seat on the log. "Straighten up and act like you have some sense or you'll be sleeping on the ground."

**GREEN TOMATO PICCALILLI** from http://southernfood.about.com

Ingredients:

5 cups coarsely chopped green tomatoes (about 5 tomatoes)

5 cups coarsely chopped cabbage (about 1 1/2 pounds cabbage)

1 1/2 cups finely chopped yellow onion or sweet onion

2 cups coarsely chopped bell pepper, at least 1 red for color (about 4 peppers)

1/3 cup kosher salt or pickling salt

2 1/2 cups cider vinegar

1 cup light brown sugar, packed

1 tablespoon yellow mustard seeds

2 cloves garlic, finely minced

1 teaspoon celery seed

1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes, or to taste, optional

Preparation:

Combine the chopped vegetables in a large nonreactive kettle or bowl. Add the salt and stir to combine thoroughly. Cover and let stand for 4 hours or refrigerate overnight.

Prepare the canner and jars. Add water to a canner with rack and heat to a boil; reduce heat and keep at a simmer. The water should be high enough to be at least 1 inch above the filled jars. I usually fill it about halfway and I keep a kettle or saucepan of water boiling on another burner to add to the canner as needed. Wash jars thoroughly and heat water in a small saucepan; put the lids in the saucepan and bring almost to the boil; lower heat to very low to keep the lids hot.

Drain the vegetables and rinse thoroughly.

In a large nonreactive kettle, bring the vinegar, brown sugar, and seeds and spices to a boil. Reduce heat to medium low and continue simmering for 5 minutes. Add the drained vegetables and bring back to a boil. Reduce heat to medium low and simmer for 10 minutes.

With a slotted spoon, pack the vegetables into prepared jars. Cover vegetables with the pickling liquid, leaving about 1/4-inch headspace.

With a clean dampened cloth, wipe the rims of the jars. Place the flat lids on the jars then close caps with screw-on rings tightly, but do not over-tighten. Arrange the filled jars in the canner and add more water, as needed, to be at least 1 inch above the jars. Bring to a full boil. Cover and continue boiling for 10 minutes. Remove the relish to a rack to cool completely.

Check for seals (the middle of the caps should have made a popping sound while cooling and will stay depressed.)

Makes about 4 pints.

Read an excerpt from

THE DEVIL AND PRESTON BLACK

The MURDER BALLADS AND WHISKEY SERIES

 THE DEVIL AND PRESTON BLACK

 HELLBENDER

 THE REVELATIONS OF PRESTON BLACK

The Devil and Preston Black copyright © 2012 by Jason Jack Miller

Raw Dog Screaming Press

Bowie, MD

First Edition

Cover: Cover design elements and typography by Hatch Show Print, Nashville,

Tennessee, a division of the Country Music Foundation, Inc.

www.RawDogScreaming.com

Heidi,

Thank you for the words, for the harmony, for the sweet notes

you sing to me. Without you, there is no music.

CHAPTER ONE

I wish I could say I found that record the first time I walked into the joint. But honestly, I'd been going into Isaac's Records every week since he'd hung his shingle out. Ever since I started giving lessons next door, at least. Killing time at Isaac's was easier than killing time with Mick's Strats and Twin Reverbs. The guitar shop had become too much like work, Mick too much like a boss. If I showed up early he always found meaningless little jobs for me to do, like tuning the Guilds and refilling humidifiers. If I showed up a minute late he was all, 'Get yourself a watch.'

So I'd hide out at Isaac's until my lessons arrived, soaking up the juju that dripped off the old vinyl like heat from a spotlight. The simplicity of an album, its lack of moving parts, spoke to me in a way CDs didn't. Vinyl had a tender, handmade feel that made me believe the music had been born into a more authentic era. Like a record could somehow be more sincere than a CD or mp3. But I knew all that was a load of crap. In the end, only the music mattered.

For me, walking into Isaac's gave me the same feeling some people get when they walk into a church or a mall. I can't describe it. Maybe enlightenment, but I'm not sure if I've ever experienced that feeling. Either way, all I had to do to soak up the collective wisdom hiding in all of those vinyl grooves was appreciate the music, and try to understand where the artist was coming from.

I swore if I browsed long enough I'd find whatever guidance I needed to get me through my paper-thin life. And since my own father ran off long before I ever learned how to hold down a G chord, I'd never have to worry about overdosing on guidance.

The guys my mom brought home didn't have a lot of wisdom to pass on.

They all either wanted to preach to me or beat me. I didn't need a semi-employed union pipefitter around giving me shit when I had the Holy Trinity of John Lennon, Joe Strummer and Jerry Garcia steering me toward dreams of stadium gigs and gold records. Each of these guys came into my life when I needed them the most. And each left just like my own dad did—long gone before I ever had a chance to say goodbye.

But their lessons stuck. Joe Strummer taught me it was okay to throw a few bricks, and that a cop was something I really didn't want to be. John Lennon taught me if you were clever they hated you, and for a fool it was worse. Robert Hunter wrote it, but it was Jerry Garcia who sang the devil's friend sure ain't a friend of mine.

In hindsight, I should've listened to Hunter—or Jerry—I guess, because the morning I found the old LP that started all of this, I'd been browsing near Ozzy, a friend of the devil if the devil ever had one. Before then I assumed lyrics were just lyrics. Didn't know they could be their own warning labels too.

Besides, the douche bags who worked at Isaac's treated me like I had the musical tastes of a ten-year-old boy. I couldn't help it I never heard of Black Flag or The Pixies growing up. My brother and me were pretty much forced to listen to whatever mom played in the car. Mostly country. Kenny and Dolly singing "Islands in the Stream." Garth Brooks, if we were lucky. Most people didn't have to dig as deep as me to find something they recognized in an old record or song.

And digging deeper was pretty much what I was doing the day I found my LP misplaced behind The Blizzard of Oz. On my way to return it to the BLUEGRASS section the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen stepped out of the stacks in front of me. She smiled. I smiled back. She asked what I had in my hand. On the album cover a bunch of anonymous pickers sat in front of an old log cabin. The back of the record said Uncle Mason's Front Porch: Best of the Blackwater Sessions.

And on the track list, between "Pretty Polly" and "Hangman's Reel" was a song called "The Sad Ballad of Preston Black," written by E. Black.

I knew right then and there that if I could ever find the man who'd written that song, I'd have found my dad.
CHAPTER TWO

Pauly honked the horn and revved the engine like gas was free.

"David, what time is your mom coming?" I nodded at Pauly, who fidgeted impatiently in the Jeep across the street.

"I don't know." David set his guitar case on the sidewalk and blew his nose into his sleeve. The wind off the river blew me against the stickers and signs on Mick's glass door—Fender, Ernie Ball, Visa and MasterCard accepted, No store credit, not even for Dino Michelino!

"Here." I gave the kid an old Dairy Queen napkin. "Maybe call her or something? It's freezing."

Mick usually didn't have a problem with us waiting inside. But he'd just gotten the carpets steamed and didn't want salt and ash tracked all over. I tucked the Uncle Mason album under my arm, rested my guitar case against my hip and pressed my hands against Mick's glass door. No sense letting all Mick's heat go to waste.

"You're smearing up my dang door." Mick rapped on the glass. He slid his bifocals back up the bridge of his nose, then wagged his finger until I shoved my hands back into my coat pocket. "Hands off the door."

"Jesus," I whispered. Not that I worried about offending the kid with foul language or blasphemy, but I figured I probably should try to be a role model. From what I could see his own dad wasn't much of one. "You practice?"

David sniffed. "My mom makes me." He sat on the tiny ledge beneath the big plate glass window. In the display case behind him Mick kept merchandise he couldn't unload. A pair of Korean Strat knockoffs—a black one now faded to gray and a red one that grew pinker by the month. Two cowbells, a tambourine, a chipped ride cymbal and a Mel Bay instruction book rounded out the motley assortment of junk Mick used to lure unwary consumers into the shop.

"You mean you don't just want to practice?" I asked, watching the Westover Bridge for David's mom.

David handed me back the napkin. "Not really."

"You keep it. Just put it in your pocket or something."

David dropped it onto the sidewalk I spent a frosty half hour sweeping this morning.

I shook my head.

David plucked the napkin up and held it like he'd hold a dead catfish. When he flipped open Mick's mailbox and plopped it in, I just shrugged my shoulders.

"I loved to practice, and I couldn't wait for Monday afternoons to show my guitar teacher how much I'd learned." The first time Jeff played "Crazy Train" for me would've been better than the day I lost my virginity and the day I smoked my first joint had both things not happened on the same day. "David, I practiced until my knuckles looked like marbles."

Because of Jeff I learned to love music more than I ever loved Tony Hawk or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I pestered him for more songs, more riffs, and more guitarists over the next three years. When the time came for him to pack up and leave for college I figured I had to strike out on my own. I just needed to know where to start.

Jeff said, "Start with the blues."

I bought a slide, an old Coricidin bottle like Duane Allman used. But when I tried to get into Elmore James and Muddy Waters, I ended up with a bunch of CDs I never listened to more than once or twice. For a white kid growing up in a patch house on the outskirts of Morgantown, West Virginia, the blues may as well have been N.W.A. or Public Enemy. I thought Jeff'd steered me wrong.

So I started hitting record stores like Charlie Watts hit Mick Jagger after that 5 a.m. wake-up call. I knew my personal thread through the music went deeper, and I was more than just an orphan who'd been passed around like a bottle of Boone's.

Music made me keenly aware that I could be more than my guidance counselors ever expected me to be. I had my own roots and didn't have to buy into somebody else's past or culture to feel complete. I didn't know nothing about my mom or dad, but I knew I was conceived to Led Zeppelin III and I knew when I finally kicked it, I'd kick with a guitar in my hands.

David struggled to pick his case up from the sidewalk. I helped him tip it upright. The top came to just below his chin.

He said, "Sometimes I just want to play video games. Sometimes my hands hurt."

"Listen," I said. "With a guitar you don't need video games. You write your own stories. You can make girls fall in love with you. It's a cool thing you're doing. I didn't start playing until I was in eighth grade. What grade you in?"

"Fourth."

"Music lets you write your own checks. Don't ever forget that. You keep practicing and you'll be the only sixth grader taking an eighth grade hottie to the Valentine's Day dance. Women love musicians."

David didn't respond.

"I got a phone number tonight in fact. In the record store just before your lesson. I think she's Russian or something." I wondered how I'd never seen her around town.

David could care less about Danicka Prochazka, the woman I vowed I'd marry.

I'd practiced saying her name over and over just like she'd said it, with the same accent and everything. But David just stood there, stunned like Punxsutawney Phil right after he'd been plucked from his hole. I changed the subject. "Is Mrs. Vascheck still principal?"

"Yeah." David said. "That's where you went to school?"

"A long time ago." My mind drifted back to eighth grade. Back before things got bad. And before I could stop talking I found myself saying the kind of shit old people say. "Things were a lot different back then. No cell phones. No iPads." I gestured with the record to make my point.

"Did you buy that?" Too cold to take his hands out of his pockets, David tilted his head toward the record.

"Yeah, picked it up before your lesson." I blew into my hands. My fingers were already getting stiff. I slid Best of the Blackwater Sessions out of its brown paper bag and poked at my name. "'The Sad Ballad of Preston Black.'"

Seeing it there plain as day still gave me a bit of a start. "See that? E. Black. I think that's my dad. I've been looking for him since I turned sixteen and this is the closest I ever got, I think. But I'm going to find out." I waved Pauly over to see, but he had his phone in his ear.

"So... You don't know your dad?" David pulled away, like I told him Santa didn't exist either.

For a second I thought about what I should say. David had both of his parents and seemed like a really nice kid. The kind of kid who'd been to Disney World a few times. The kind of kid who didn't need a guy like me giving Mick a twenty every now and then to cover his guitar lessons.

But, I didn't see the point in lying to him. So I aimed for tactful. "No, David. I never knew my dad. Or my mom. I live with Pauly and his mom. He's like my half-brother but I call him my brother. And I call his mom my mom. But she's not my real mom." And Pauly wasn't even close to being a half-brother. He'd be the opposite, whatever that was... A full brother. A brother and a half. "Maybe some of your friends at school have parents who've gotten divorced. Same thing."

"Oh," David said.

Realizing I was headed into a corner I couldn't back out of, I switched gears.

"There's the song." I slid the record out of its cardboard sleeve and knelt on the sidewalk. "You guys have a record player?"

David shook his head.

"Me neither." Me and Pauly had an old, red and yellow Fisher Price record player when we were little. I wondered if mom kept it. "The record spins around and the grooves make a needle vibrate, like a guitar string. Each line is a new song."

I ran my finger across the surface, like it was some type of Braille that my finger could hear.

"Which one is yours?" David wiped his nose on his sleeve again. I pulled another napkin out of my pocket with my free hand and gave it to him.

"This one, right here." I flipped it over and held it up so David could see.

"It's all scratched."

"I know." Pauly'd probably say the same thing, and how stupid I'd been to waste money on it. "I'll download it later."

"Pretty Polly" and "Nine Pound Hammer" and the rest of the gang looked near mint. Like the record had been pressed this morning. The jagged grooves of "The Sad Ballad of Preston Black" split side B like a musical San Andreas. Like somebody gouged it out with a box cutter. "Just wanted to have the record, I guess. Thought it might be kind of cool. Maybe I was stupid to buy it." I ran my finger along the track, around and around, hoping I'd be able to coax a note or a word out of it before sliding it back into its sleeve. I couldn't tell if David cared or not, and I wondered why I tried so hard.

"Well, here comes my mom." David yanked on the handle of his guitar case like he'd been waiting his whole life for this moment to end. The case swung twice before smashing into the sidewalk like a fat kid on a see-saw.

Down at the bottom of University Avenue a VW Touareg turned onto Pleasant.

I stood, wiping salt and ash off of my knee.

"No!" David yelled as he stepped toward the curb.

I put my hand in front of him like a crossing guard.

David said, "Make Abby get in the back seat."

David's mother, all lipstick and Chanel shades, rolled the window down. "Thank you for waiting. I appreciate it. I would've been here sooner..."

"It's no problem, really. I didn't want to leave him by himself." The wind blew right through my thin coat. I suppressed a shiver and cinched my scarf. Besides, of all the kids I taught, only David's mom tipped me at Christmas.

"I promise I'll be on time next week." David's mom smiled. David, like every other fourth grader, probably thought his mom was the prettiest in the world. He'd be mostly right.

"David?" I said, "Hey buddy, listen to the radio and think of some songs you want to learn, okay? And practice your scales. The more you practice the less your hands'll hurt."

An apathetic 'okay' came from the backseat. David's mom gave me a smile and a wave. As she pulled away Pauly whipped the Cherokee across the street like he was rehearsing a bank heist. The fan belt squealed as I flung open the hatch to put my guitar case in. "Let's move," Pauly yelled from the front.

"Unlock it. I'm freezing my ass off." I banged on the passenger door.

Pauly clamped an unlit Camel between his lips and reached across the passenger seat to get the handle. As I climbed in he moved the Snickers bar and bottle of iced tea he always brought for set break to the center console. "Well tighten your babushka then, grandma. What the hell was all that, anyway?"

When he smoked he only talked out of one side of his mouth. Reminded me of his grandfather, Papa Pasquale Oliverio. Pauly Pallini'd fit right in with his pap down at the Sons of Italy, playing bocce all weekend and bitching about the weatherman.

"What do you mean?" I put on my seatbelt even though we were just going a few blocks.

"You and that kid? All that Big Brother crap?" Pauly tore up Pleasant Street, caught a green light at High Street and barely made the yellow onto Spruce. "I thought the whole scene was kind of cute. Like you're trying to save West Virginia, one tone-deaf kid at a time." Pauly lit his smoke.

"Beats driving a delivery truck." I rolled my window down an inch. The dry winter air had already made my throat scratchy, but the smoke was worse. It wouldn't have mattered so much if I wasn't singing tonight.

"Yeah, driving a truck beats the hell out of being Mick's bitch any day." Pauly thought that was a good one, and laughed into the rearview mirror. "How many guitars you tune today?"

I ignored his jabs. "If we played more of my songs maybe we'd be able to make some real money. Playing Blink covers at frat houses and bars ain't gonna get us our own Graceland."

The Jeep's heater made noise, but nothing came out of my vent. I banged on the dash until a trickle of warm air finally huffed out.

"Your songs can get us the Fillmore? Didn't think so."

I shook my head and held myself back from saying what I really wanted to say.

"Man, I can't help it you haven't been able to get your dick up about anything since high school."

Pauly got quiet because he was pissed. And he didn't get pissed because I dissed the band, he was pissed because he knew I was right. So he kept his mouth shut.

Tapping the radio dial for emphasis, I said, "I'm sick of puking up somebody else's greatest hits for a bunch of drunks. Man, I have a notebook full of songs. One of them could be the song that really matters to somebody. But that's not how we do it around here. We drink and whine about the gray skies and everybody says, 'Nobody from here ever makes it,' so nobody ever even tries."

"Wow. What in the hell has inspired you?" Pauly laughed. That was how I knew he'd heard that speech one too many times.

"Nothing. I don't know. I met a girl at the record store. Holy shit, she is beautiful. She had an accent. Like a Bond girl. You think it's all right that I invited her to come tonight?"

"You invited her to a frat house basement? She must be special."

"Yeah. She's amazing. Too amazing for me. We kind of started talking when I found the record. And I had to get to my lesson, so my mind was all over the place."

"You know, you fall in love way too easy then end up all jacked up. Remember Giana? She only wanted to be around you when nobody else would see. Wonder why? She made you park behind the fire hall and only called when it was convenient for her. And she always cheated on you with the biggest douchebags. Remember—"

"I get it," I cut him off. I took the album out of the paper bag and rested it against the dashboard. "Looky here."

"You collecting vinyl now?" Pauly said. He had the attention span of a cat.

"No, just look at track eleven."

"No shit. You and 'Eleanor Rigby' should hook up."

"C'mon, man. You don't think that means anything at all?"

"Here's how I'll tell you what I think—if you see white smoke then you know I picked a new pope. And if I'm drinking a Snapple then you know I don't give a shit." He picked up his tea, snapped the cap off and chugged a few times.

"You're a dick. You know that?" I tapped the album cover, tried to think of something else to say, then figured Joe Strummer never wasted time worrying about shit like this. Besides, I had bigger things on my mind than what Pauly thought. "I wonder if the songwriter's related to me. Like, maybe my dad wrote it?"

"Just keep that shit down around mom." Pauly got defensive, like he had more of a right than me to get defensive about family matters.

"I know. But if I have a chance to find out about my real parents..."

Pauly had another smartass remark in the chamber, so he cut me off. "Didn't I tell you? I saw your dad at an AA meeting last night with his parole officer. Looked just like you, I mean exactly like you. No shit. Except his teeth were all fucked up. Worst case of meth mouth I ever saw. If you ever came to meetings with me maybe he could sponsor you."

"Fuck you, Pauly. Even Mick gave more of a shit than you. I've been looking for my dad for ten years... Hoping he'd show when we were playing or whatever. I went to hospitals to look for my birth certificate. Tried to find my baptism record. You guys always wanted me to give up, and I did, and now that I'm this close I'm going to find him." I slid the album back into the sleeve, let it drop onto the floor. "Fuck you, Pauly. You know what? Sometimes I fucking hate you."

Pauly took a long drag and coughed. "C'mon, Pres. Just relax. You're overreacting a little, don't you think?"

I picked up the record and laid it on my lap. "I don't even know my own fucking birthday. God damn it if I can't try to get a clue to who I am. You're mean, Pauly, you know that. Fucking mean. You've gotten worse since you started back to meetings. I bet you don't treat any of your AA buddies like this. I may not be educated but I'm smart enough to know what your fucking problem is."

At the top of High Street girls in short skirts made their way down to the clubs on Walnut for two dollar well drinks and Jello shots. Parents in imported SUVs waited in front of apartments that were nicer than me and Pauly's for their sons to gather up two weeks' worth of dirty laundry, unaware or unwilling to believe that the stains came from binge drinking and bong water. A group of professors walked to their cars, picking up their pace as they passed a pair of football players, not because they were afraid, but because they knew no matter how hard they worked they'd never mean as much to the university as those special teams nobodies. No matter what all those people on campus had or didn't have, educated or not, they knew who they were and where they came from.

My phone buzzed and I dug into my pocket to get it.

<Talent and education don't take the place of persistence. There are loads of educated tossers out there.>

"Sorry, Pres." Pauly held out his hand.

I ignored Pauly and read the text again. When I decided I didn't know who'd sent it I put my phone away. "Whatever, Pauly. Why do you have to be a dick on tonight of all nights? Why do you always got to take the spotlight?"

"I don't want Stu to go either. Maybe that's why I'm edgy. This is going to suck." My comment stung him a little, snapped him back to reality. He put out his hand and went back into funny guy mode, "Happy Birthday, huh?" Pauly watched the red light and offered me a Camel.

"I quit. Besides, my throat's already scratchy. And you know it's not my fucking birthday. Asshole." I let his hand hang like trailer court Christmas lights in July.

Pauly knew the birthday was a touchy subject, especially since I didn't know the exact day. All I knew was that it came the week before Valentine's. Next week. And I was pretty sure I'd die sometime in the next year, so I sure as hell didn't feel like blowing out any candles.

I said, "With this 'curse of twenty-seven' thing hanging over me you think you'd be a little more sensitive. All the signs are there, man."

"What signs?"

"Hendrix and Cobain, Pigpen—all grew up in really unstable homes and used drugs or alcohol. I just have a feeling, man. A really, really, bad feeling."

"Those are some pretty non-specific signs. Besides, how do you know it's not your birthday, you bastard? You might already be twenty-seven. Mom said you were about three or four months old when your mom died, so it's right around this time of year. Let me sing to you tonight." He placed the offertory Camel next to his Snickers and tea.

I didn't say anything. If Pauly was good for anything it was squirming his way out of situations before he ever had to feel bad about anything. Even the judge gave him a slap on the wrist for his most recent moving violation. I had to spend a month in rehab and do community service for a year. For his road rage Pauly got AA, anger management and a job.

He said, "I'm sorry, Preston. Okay? I just don't want to lose you to an asshole nobody who vanished before you were born. So, maybe this guy is your dad. But why didn't he take custody after your mom died?"

"You know I don't know."

We hung a right on College Avenue and headed up toward the shitty frats by Price Street. Zeppelin came on the radio. "Trampled Under Foot."

"C'mon, man." Pauly fidgeted, his seat squeaking like a pair of mice going at it in a box spring.

Being mad about shit like this wore me out. But I knew my biggest problem was forgiving Pauly too easily. I loved him too much. "Say it then."

Pauly took a drag, stalling for words. "I thought we had, like, an unspoken thing between us." He cleared his throat and spit out the window. "People notice that... We're like—"

Pauly tapped the steering wheel while he tried to think of words that meant something to me. "John and Paul. They were like brothers. Or Johnny and Joey Ramone."

"Jesus, Pauly. Johnny and Joey weren't even fucking related and they hated each other. Did you forget that or just never know? I can't figure out which is more disappointing."

"Whatever, man. You're my brother and I love you. Without you and the band, I would have been just another loser failing gym."

"And what else?"

"Dude, I'm Pipeline's Ringo." He laughed.

"Bullshit, Ringo wrote "Octopus's Garden." If anything you're our Steven Adler." I grabbed his Snickers from the center console and ripped open the wrapper. With a mouthful of caramel and nougat I said, "And you'd better fucking remember that."

For a second I forgot where we were playing. Just before reminding the crowd of Jackson's non-smoking Wednesdays I realized it was Thursday, and the Delts smoked as much as they wanted. They were a bunch of pussies—Pauly called them the Felts—but they liked us and paid us all right. And they always had a lot of girls there.

My throat wasn't cooperating. I knew the words and how they should've sounded, but they came out of my mouth like black smoke from a tailpipe. Besides, our farewell show was supposed to be twenty years from now. In a stadium.

After rushing through "Wild Horses," I retreated from the apathetic crowd to the open window behind my Marshall. By now we'd amassed quite a collection of beverages on the windowsill. Pauly drank cranberry juice and sweet tea and Stu drank the Bud Lite and Jack and Cokes. I sipped a vodka and Coke. I started the night with MGD that tasted like it'd been poured from a keg that kicked before the Sugar Bowl. The fresh air tasted better to me anyway.

"Can we get a few more drinks for my boys up here? And a pop for me?" Pauly yelled into the mic like he didn't really understand the mic's sole purpose in life was to amplify noise, specifically voices. "It's Preston's special day today."

"Don't do it," I spun in a rush, knocking some of the drinks into the driveway below. Flat beer and cranberry juice splattered across the hood of somebody's Toyota Camry. A spindrift of cups disappeared into the night.

"Happy birthday to you..." Pauly sang with all his might, as if volume alone would make me happier. He raised a palm to the ceiling, and the crowd sang along.

I wiped my face with an old bandana as I returned to my mic. Tonight belonged to Stu. And maybe Pauly tried his best to hold it together. Maybe this was just his way of releasing frustration, so I let him have it. One of the pledges brought a few shots right at "...dear Preston...." I passed Stu's over his toms. As the basement decayed into a drunken roar, I found Stu's eyes and raised my cup. "Here's to you, man. Be safe."

Jäger.

Like a drop-kick to my woozy gut. I should've eaten something, although I wasn't entirely convinced that wings and nachos were the cure-all I required. I took another look at Stu. My face got hot, my throat got full, like I was trying to swallow a ravioli without chewing.

I returned to my mic. "Thank you all for having Pipeline back one last time. We love playing here, you know that, right?"

Drunken woo-hoos echoed off the cinderblock walls. We never even filled the places we used to fill.

I couldn't make eye contact with the crowd, not while I was lying. I ran my finger along the chipped edge by my Tele's strap knob, the only blemish on the thing. "We have a lot of requests to get through, and we're going to keep playing until you hear everything you want to hear. Tonight's a real special night for us. And a little sad. Pauly and me are saying goodbye to Stu, you know."

I extended my hand to Stu without looking back at him. "He's taking a year to see the world with a really long stop in Afghanistan. Is that a government-issue haircut or what?"

Everyone applauded quietly giving me their first genuine response of the night.

"Count us off, Stu."

I let the feedback grow before catching Stu's beat a half-step late. With my eyes closed, I threw myself into the riff. Our take on Weezer. But "Tired of Sex" wasn't really the way I thought I'd say goodbye to one of my oldest friends.

Stu kicked his bass drum so hard my ribs tingled. Each beat helped me to forget who I was and where we were playing. In my head, this band was for real. And a good band. I stepped up to the mic, eyes still closed, and sang. Sweat crawled down my forehead, onto the bridge of my nose, into my eyes where it stung like the ocean.

An ocean of sadness.

"I'm tired. So tired..." I pounded the strings. The pick squirmed between my sweaty fingers. It was easy to get lost in the music. My body rocked to the wall of rhythm Pauly and Stu built. Squinting into the room, I didn't see anybody even really watching us.

Ever since I picked up a guitar I counted down the days until I'd be playing my own stuff to of a room full of people who'd paid to hear me. But my timer would never reach zero. Fayette County, Pennsylvania, was the closest we ever got to making it out of West Virginia. Pauly nodded for me to take my solo, but it didn't feel right. Nobody out there gave a shit anyway. They were too busy dry-humping.

Pauly looked at me. "What the hell?"

I skipped the last verse too. Pauly and Stu followed me straight to the outro.

They were pretty good that way. Finding a good drummer until Stu got back would be tough. "Thank you," I said. "Thank you very much. We're going to take a ten minute break."

"What's that about?" Pauly pulled his squares from his jacket and tapped the setlist with his toe. He lit a smoke before he even had his bass in its stand. "We got requests to get through."

"Grab me a cranberry juice?" I asked, and began wiping the sweat off of my strings. "I don't feel good."

Stu patted me on the back as he came between his high hat and my cabinet. "Good call, Pres. I have to piss like a motherfucker."

"Anything for you, brother." I gave his shoulder a gentle slap.

They pushed through the crowd, the two of them, not afraid of anything or anybody. And the Felts stepped aside even though they owned the joint. Because nobody ever challenged Pauly Pallini or Stu Croe. Not because they were the toughest. But because they weren't afraid to give every last drop. Whatever it took to win.

Except for when it came to our music. I plugged back into the Twin and turned the volume up to 8.

Alone, on the stage, I strummed, playing to hear myself play. Soft, slow chords.

Just my Tele's neck pickup through the old Twin's bright channel. It wasn't even a song, just some harmonic minor thing. I noodled with a few chord changes. Pauly waited by the bathroom door and watched. Since it seemed like the only thing left to do, I stepped up to the mic.

"Here's a quiet one for you all. But mostly, this one's for Stu."

I had notebooks full of songs and hadn't memorized a single lyric, title, or chord. Even though I'd be singing a lie, I leaned into the mic, closed my eyes and drew in all the breath I'd ever need. I whispered the first line to "Strawberry Fields Forever."

A few people clapped.

I ignored them. This song was too beautiful for this crowd, for this room. And as I sang, the true meaning of the song began to unfold like a map of the universe. I used to think Lennon meant that the people with their eyes closed just had to expand their consciousness or whatever, a metaphorical eye-opening. Start seeing with their hearts. But while I stood there, strumming somebody else's chords and thinking that Stu's departure meant the end to my time making music, I realized that my eyes had been closed.

And it wasn't that I couldn't understand the things I saw. The truth was I was only capable of seeing misunderstanding. I'll be doing covers forever.

Stu came out of the bathroom and stopped. I found his face and shut out everybody else's. I knew it was a dream, and he knew that I knew. But the words I sang were words I needed to hear. Maybe more than Stu needed to hear them.

But if Stu and everybody else thought I sang to Stu I figured it was okay to go on letting them think that.

Nothing is real, I kept telling myself. Because we never built anything real.

Like maybe I should've been trying to make something of myself instead of worrying about what Pauly wanted. People clapped though. For the first time tonight somebody did something on this stage worth acknowledging. Stu pointed at me then saluted. If only he knew that I'd have done anything to keep him from putting that uniform back on.

Into the mic I said, "I love you man. I don't want you to go," and I yanked the cable from the Tele's jack and let it drop.

Stu blew me a kiss and laughed.

His gesture snapped me out of my mood. "Who's going to take care of my boy?" I reached into Pauly's jacket for a smoke. Pauly waved me over to the bar, holding up my juice.

"Give me a second." I pointed upstairs.

He gestured at a group of DZs who were coming in through a side door. They were all blond, they were all wearing short skirts and they all had on jackets or hoodies with their chapter letters on the sleeve. But they were too young. I shook my head, snuck up the steps and made my way to the front. In my haste to split I forgot my coat, and could already feel the night chilling the sweat on my face and back.

"This is how I end up with pneumonia."

The front door stood wide open to the street noise. The piggies making out on the couch didn't even notice. I picked up a Bic from the end table and pocketed it.

As I stepped onto the porch I put the cigarette to my lips. "Fuck." Until Pauly quit smoking I didn't stand a chance.

The lighter sparked on the third try. My hand shook as I raised it up to my face. I knew the last cigarette didn't kill you. I coughed on the cold and the smoke. But the rush of nicotine cleared my head. I shivered as my blood soaked up the drug.

I sat down on a couch that should've been torched back in November. Except Pitt won. More than anything I wanted to flick the butt into the street and finally quit again. I told myself this was the last one forever.

"Preston." A woman's voice came from the house. Probably a DZ Pauly sent up. Probably told her I needed cheering up.

But I didn't answer. I wasn't in the mood for Pauly's shenanigans. I took a long pull from the Camel. "If Pauly sent you up..."

Her heels clacked as she stepped onto the porch. "I thought I had an invitation."

I flipped the butt into the yard. Two drags too many. I looked over my shoulder.

"Holy shit." I jumped to my feet and rubbed my palms on my jeans. In the few moments I'd spent talking to her earlier I memorized every square inch of her face, but still couldn't believe she'd come to see me. Now nervous, I hid my hands in my back pockets. "I'm glad you came. I really am."

She slid onto the porch like a bead of mercury across a glass plate. Knee-high black boots and a short gray skirt. All of it shivering beneath a gray wool trench.

Her hair sat up on her head, like a librarian's. She wore eyeglasses with small, round lenses. "Are you hiding from somebody?"

She tapped a Lucky Strike out of a crisp pack tucked in her purse. I offered my new lighter.

"White? You should know better." She dug through her purse and produced an old Zippo.

When she moved real close to me, I smelled herbs, like anise and citrus and mint. Mostly I smelled cigarette smoke and was pissed that the smoke killed my sense of smell. "Just a little distracted tonight. That's all," I said. In my head I kept referring to tonight as our 'last gig' and it made my mouth dry.

She leaned against me, shivering. Her skin was fair like a dogwood flower, soft like Van Morrison. I'd been accused of falling in love way too easy, but this time it was real. And I barely knew her. All I had were ideas about how things could be. Ideas about who she was and what we could be together. Her dark eyes pulled me in.

She said, "I'm sorry tonight is your last show. Unless you have plans after maybe we can go out for a drink and talk..." She pulled me into a small kiss, then said, "And then talk some more."

I forgot about the cold, about Pauly and the Blackwater Sessions record. Her kiss helped me forget why I'd been so sad. Like that kiss was the only thing I'd ever wanted. Like I'd been living my whole life for that kiss.

In the basement Stu banged his drums. Pauly yelled into the mic, "Preston Black, please report to the stage. Mr. Preston Black. That is all."

"To je jak když hrach na zeď haze." Dani took a long pull on her cigarette and smiled. "I'll wait," she said, leaning against the railing.

I'd hoped for one more kiss, but she'd turned toward the street and pulled out her phone.

The lights were off, our gear was stashed and the brothers of Delta whatever were tucked safely into their beds. Pauly followed a group of girls up the street to get phone numbers. Purple streetlights buzzed. Falling icicles tinkled onto slippy sidewalks. We stood out there in the cold like we were waiting to be invited back inside. Stu ran his fingers along his scalp as though he'd been expecting to find a lot more hair up there. "Bring your girl, man. It's no big deal."

Up the street, Dani's silver car sat in the shadow formed by a big holly blocking the streetlight. I tried to see her through the dark windshield. Stu was right about my priorities tonight and he knew it. And he knew I knew. But I figured being on stage with him was a better goodbye than watching ESPN and eating greasy pepperoni rolls at Casa D'Amici. "Yeah, but what kind of goodbye is it with a sober Pauly?"

I pointed at her car up the street and said, "Besides, this whole thing is new. I want to make sure I'm taking all the right steps. She's too good for me. I'm not ready for her to figure that out."

Stu said, "Not to be nebby, but why didn't she come downstairs?"

"She came down. After that break?" It came out a little more defensively than I would've liked.

"I don't know. Maybe I missed her. I just kept seeing the same hoes over and over. I thought you would've pointed her out to me." Stu looked big tonight.

Pumped up like an action figure. He said, "You going to call Larry up again? Is he still drumming in town?"

"Larry Benco? No, he's horrible. He couldn't keep time with a pair of stopwatches. Besides, he's a little old. And he has no idea who Rise Against are. I'm thinking about auditioning a few guys—younger guys—maybe trying to play with a few different people 'til you get back. Try to tweak our sound a little."

"Well," Stu said, "maybe you should just try to hook up with another band. Might be easier?"

"What about Pauly?"

"I don't know if his heart's in it."

"Bullshit. He's in it as long as I am." Then I thought for a second and added, "Did he say something to you?"

Stu avoided the question. "Well, you do what you want. What if I don't come back? I don't want you wasting your time waiting for me."

I got angry and scared. "What the fuck are you talking about? Don't say shit like that, man. You'll be back. I'm serious. Don't say shit like that. Ever."

Stu put his hands up, a surrender. "Dude, chill. I'm talking about staying in this time, not taking frag in Marjah. I'm thinking about having a career and making money."

"Don't tell me Pauly's in your head. He's all about the money. I tell him all the time we're good enough to write and record our own stuff but he doesn't listen."

I started to shiver. "No, I'm holding your spot 'til you get back. Any drummer we get's going to know up front the gig's only for a year."

Stu didn't say anything for a long moment. He just looked at me. "Well, don't forget the packages. Beef jerky, Cool Ranch Doritos and Dairy Mart pepperoni rolls. I don't care if it all gets smushed and crushed. And magazines. I can't ask my mom to get them for me but a perv like you should have no problem."

"Same as boot camp."

"Exactly."

"You know, I still have all your letters."

"I knew you would, you sentimental fuck."

"You're looking and talking more like a soldier and less like my drummer."

"Like Charlie Watts said, 'I'm not your drummer. You're my guitar player.'" He laughed. "And I got to get back in the right frame of mind. That's all."

"You keep that part hidden from me and Pauly. But I see it when you're with the guys from your unit. I feel like the stories we have can't compete with your army stories—"

Stu cut me off. "That's bullshit and you know it, man. You think I tell army stories when we're in the shit waiting for a patrol to come back, or waiting for air support? Fuck no. I tell them about the road trip to Huntington when we told Pauly we were going to Seattle and how he didn't know the difference because he'd never been out of Morgantown. Shit like that."

He put his hand on my shoulder. "Listen, I tell band stories over there to remind myself what I'm fighting for. I tell army stories back here so I don't forget what it took to get all this."

"Sorry, man. I'm going to miss you. That's all." We both watched Pauly come down the hill waving his phone to show us the numbers of the girls who'd never take his calls.

"I know."

Pauly lit a smoke and said, "Let's go, bitches." He got into the Jeep and turned the key. Just before pulling the door shut he yelled, "Don't forget about Mom's water pump tomorrow."

"I know," I held my hand up. "Just give me a fucking minute here."

I shook Stu's hand. Really I wanted to hug him. "I had a lot more I wanted to say."

He smiled. "Put it in a letter."

"Last time you left the weather was like this. We got pizza and your family came over. It felt different."

"Afghanistan is going to be a lot different than Iraq," Stu said. "But you'll see me before you know it." He let go of my hand, went around the Jeep and got in. Pauly turned on the dome light and lit a smoke for Stu. They laughed, and Pauly flipped the light off.

Slush and old, ashy snow crunched as they drifted down the street. It wasn't very often the two people in this world I felt closest to went off without me. I didn't like the way it made me feel. The future, which had once been full of shows and songs, now seemed quite empty.

My phone buzzed to life. A goodbye from Stu. But instead of his name in the display, it read Unknown Number.

The text said, <Bloody hell, mate, you write your future.>

I replied, <Who the hell is this?>

A small beep came from Dani's silver Mercedes, a car that looked like something the Sean Connery-era James Bond would drive. It sat in the intersection like a bullet just waiting to be fired, with its little round headlights and curved hood. Pauly and Stu weren't coming back, so I put my phone away, walked up the hill and got in.

Before I had my seatbelt clicked she took off, racing down University toward High, red lights suddenly becoming green as she sped beneath them. Old buildings collapsed beyond my window, neon signs little more than streaks of magenta and electric blue.

Brake lights on the cars ahead of us were just propositions, which Dani ignored. She hit the bridge over Deckers like a fastball into a catcher's mitt. The Mercedes begged for third gear, screamed for fourth. Then, just as suddenly, Dani hit the brake to swing onto Dorsey, skidding on a little ice. She smiled as I steadied myself on the dashboard.

Forcing myself to look relaxed, I sank back into the leather seat. It felt more comfortable than my own bed. "Nice car. So you're not a student I take it?"

"Tváří se jako by neuměl do pěti počítat. You're sweet. I received the car as a gift. Payment, I should say. You don't want to hear about the paperwork just to get it here." She stroked the steering wheel like it was a sleeping kitten. "Maybe you can drive it when you're sober."

I knew Dorsey, but not many of these side streets. Always considered this a richer part of town, even if I'd never been around real wealth enough to know what it looked like. The wraparound porches and ivy-covered trellises and stained glass windows were a far cry from the patch house duplex I grew up in. I rationalized my feelings of unworthiness by telling myself I was an artist, and that some things were more important than money, and.... Whatever.

From Dorsey we made a right then another quick right. The blacktop ran out, and the little Mercedes bounced along on a brick-paved road. The brrrrr of the bricks shook my head, getting lower in pitch as Dani slowed to a stop. In the chilly glow of a dusk-to-dawn light I could make out the back of a large Victorian. "We're here."

"This is your place?" I shut the car door and looked up. The bulk alone amazed me.

"No," she laughed and gathered her scarf. "I rent a room."

I held my guitar in front of me and let her lead. Inside, the old house smelled like wood smoke with a hint of cloves. Heat from big radiators made me sweat. I unbuttoned my coat. The building felt safe, like the Fortress of Solitude. Nobody slammed doors or said filthy things in a house like this. Things were always Pee Wee's Playhouse and Laffy Taffy here. This was the kind of place I always dreamt about growing up in, although anymore I confused dreams with wishes so easily that I kind of lost track of which I'd been doing.

We started up a flight of stairs. I said, "You never told me what you do for a living." My voice was afraid to do much more than whisper.

"It's boring. And you didn't come here to talk." Dani softly touched my chin with her thumb. In the mild light of a lonely floor lamp she smiled. "Not this late, right?"

Not sure if this was a trick, I hesitated.

The corner of her mouth revealed the tease. "I translate books and contracts. Taking words and twisting them into brand new sentences. English to Japanese. Czech to German. Mostly contracts. Not the long-lost Božena Němcová novel I dream of. My legacy will be rewriting small deals for little business men who want to be big business men." She led me up another flight of stairs, to a landing below a half-circle of stained glass.

While she fumbled for the key I held her bag and turned toward the ornate semi-circle window. Venus de Milo rising from a scallop. "You should have a light up here. You'd feel safer, don't you think?"

She twisted my lame aside into a lesson, "Preston, I was born in Prague before the Velvet Revolution. I studied literature at La Sapienza and linguistics at La Sorbonne and received my Arabic to English certificate at NYU. West Virginia does not scare me."

I mumbled a frail, "Point taken."

She stepped inside, letting me hold the door for her. After dropping her coat on an overstuffed leather armchair she tugged the pull chains of a brass bookshelf light and a nearby lamp.

Shades of stained glass and mica cast the room in a bronze glow. Large shelves held leather and cloth-bound books with titles written in faded gold. It looked as if the ceiling were held up by books alone. I recognized a few names—Kafka and Dante. For every name I recognized there were a hundred I didn't. Joost van den Vondel. Jacques Cazotte. Josef Čapek. Charles Baudelaire. My lack of education would've been more embarrassing if Dani hadn't been so far out of my league.

Somebody like Stu would've been out the door by now. Pauly wouldn't have made it up the steps.

"Did you think we came up here to read?" Dani took my coat and scarf. "Would you like to wash?"

She went into the bathroom, flipped the light on and told me to come in. An old pedestal sink sat across from a big claw foot tub. I set my record on the chair and followed her in. If I pressed my cheek against the small round window I could see the lock and the city around a bend to the north. The lights looked too far away.

Not miles away, but years away. Like I didn't believe for a second I was looking upstream at the same city I grew up in.

"The lights of any city still amaze me. Travel was not convenient when I was young—Prague had many checkpoints. Only when I was twelve years old did I finally see the city at night." She flipped the light off, leaving me with the view of Morgantown and the lock and the Westover Bridge. "Would you like a drink?"

"Thanks." I joined her back in the main room, and said half-jokingly, "But I already had plenty to drink tonight."

She smiled, letting go of a little of the sternness she'd worn all night like brass buttons on a fancy coat.

I came around the large leather sofa and found her leaning against the counter holding a Japanese teapot over a pair of small glasses with heavy stems. She slowly dripped water onto a sugar cube that rested on a fork lain across the top of the glass.

Little by little the sugar dissolved. "The water releases oils from the absinthe the same way the drink frees your mind. Like a metamorphosis, maybe?"

She rested her elbows on the countertop and put her nose right up to the rim of the glass. Like a little kid peeking into a Mason jar full of fireflies. She placed the tip of her finger into the liquid, then swabbed my lip. The smell of black licorice rushed into my nose.

Dani put her arm around my neck and pulled me into a soft kiss that lingered on my bottom lip. She handed me one of the little glasses. Cloudy green liquid sloshed up to the rim.

"Na zdraví. You only ever get one first sip." She held her glass up, and I imitated her. She took off her glasses and set them on the counter.

The drink was more potent than anything I'd ever put down my throat—whiskey, bourbon, tequila. The closest was this purple stuff a chemistry major made with Everclear at a New Year's Eve party a few years ago. I almost died that night.

Dani took another sip and smiled, then led me to the leather sofa, dark like coffee. She took a seat at the other end and put her feet onto my lap. "My little feet are so tired."

I put my glass on the floor. Her toes curled as I loosened her shoe's black leather strap and carefully slid it off. Little spots of pearlescent red danced beneath her black stockings, back and forth, like a cat about to nap. She held a sip of absinthe on her tongue before swallowing.

"Preston Black." Dani rested her cheek against the leather cushion.

"That's me." My old buzz, now reactivated, dribbled into my head, down my spine and through my limbs like splashes of dusty sunshine through the windblown leaves. It took a minute to realize Dani had been waiting for me to go on.

"Not much to say, especially if you've seen me play. Speaking of which, you didn't come downstairs and watch the rest of our set?"

"I went for a coffee," she said unapologetically. "You had been saying?"

"Oh." Her forwardness tripped me up, my mind drifted a second. "Well, anyway, I was born and raised here. Raised by Pauly's mother."

"And what about your parents?"

I picked my glass up and swirled the drink around in it. "Nothing like building up to the tough questions, huh? My mother died when I was a few months old. Car crash on her way to work at the mall. Sometimes I think I remember her, but probably... I was probably too young." All the sad talk distorted my mood. "She had me when she was, like, seventeen.

"And my dad? The bastard left my mom before I'd even been born." I laughed and poured a big swallow down my throat. "That makes me the bastard, I guess. But I think I finally found him, though. I have a bone to pick."

At the risk of sounding too angry I paused to rethink my next words. "But I don't know if I have a bone to pick as much as I just want to look at his face and see if I can see any of myself in there. Like, after so many years of not knowing, to wake up one day and finally know? For me it's like being able to hear after years without sound. And then, maybe after the newness wears off I'll get mad, thinking about how I've been cheated out of a big part of my life. You know, I'll probably want to yell and punch him right in the mouth. I don't know. But I just want to have that option. Sometimes I think Pauly'd like to take a shot at him, too."

While I talked I ran my finger along the arch of Dani's foot. Her toes curled like guitar strings pulled from tuning pegs. She crossed her legs at the ankles, an invitation for me to play with her other foot.

While waiting for her to speak up I finished my drink. But the lull in conversation got to me. So I went on. "Pauly's my best friend, but I'm afraid things are changing fast. I always felt like he held me back musically but I stuck with him for all these years like I had to take care of him. Now Pauly's trying to get sober and Stu's leaving and I have ideas, a notebook full of songs we never played. I'm not sure when I'll play for an audience again."

"Just find another drummer, right?"

"I know. Except something tells me the credits are going to roll soon. I'm not sure Pauly's heart's in it anymore. He never loved it like I did. And because I didn't try to get myself a better gig I'm the one left out in the cold."

"You should remain hopeful though, right?" Dani let out a breath. "Growing up, I didn't understand the idea of Communism. When I think of Prague now, I think of all the colors and lights and the Žižkov tower at night and the red tile roofs. It's hard to forget the city's past. Without hope, my childhood is only winter—the gray Vltava and dark, quiet, streets and cellars."

She swirled the slurry of sugary liquid around the bottom of her glass. "They made us march in parades and we had to wear red scarves around our necks. So, gray and red."

In one swift motion she tilted her head back and drank the rest. She smiled and said, "I'll prepare another?"

I handed her my glass.

"Luxury things were rare. Later I learned that nobody had rich foods and fine things—not just us. I counted every penny and learned little by little to appreciate. You have nothing, then suddenly, you have a little. When I smell clementines I think of Christmas and my childhood memories get a little brighter." She returned to the couch. This time she sat closer to me, and after handing me my drink, shook her hair free from a pair of silver barrettes. "Back in Prague I knew quite a few hopeless young girls. That's where I learned all about those ugly qualities that separate a child from an adult. Sranda jak v márnici."

I shook my head.

"It's like 'having fun in a morgue,' so, a little sad."

"Your parents didn't spare you from all that?" She'd diluted the absinthe even less this time.

"Prague was a very sad place when I was born. Thinking and speaking against the party was illegal. Living in the Panelaks was only a little better than living in a barn stall. But the people were always hopeful and remembered that life is short. Just after my mother had me, Prague said goodbye to the Communists. They came together, shouting 'This is our city.'" Dani told the story as if she'd memorized it from a plaque in front of a museum. "And when I left..." Her stare drifted a bit. "All my life they told us the West was a horrible place and people died because they didn't have enough to eat. And I went west and thought, I'm the poor one, where are the others like me? It wasn't what I expected. Outside was so much more.... The sestra did a very good job of protecting us. Once I was out I had to make my own way and I guess that's why I stayed away."

"So your parents died in the revolution?"

She laughed like she had to shake away bad thoughts. "Of course not. You never heard of the Velvet Revolution? No, after I was born my father ran off to Italy to find a better job. My mother fell in love with a man who already had a family. She left me with Barnabite Nuns at the Church of Saint Benedict. Cabbage every day. But there I learned Latin and German and Russian. Somehow I got the idea that speaking many languages improved my chances of finding a family."

She looked into her drink. "When a man and a woman came to look for a child I would say 'dobré jitro' and then 'dobroye utro' and finally 'guten Morgen.' That's how I ended up in Munich, a holčička turned Fräulein." She switched accents like I'd switch chords. "It's easy for me to forget how very fortunate I was."

I almost interrupted to say something sympathetic, but she went on. "In the orphanage, we learned first to grasp the world through language—for us—the language of Bible. But the regime didn't approve. To release my frustration I conjured up demons to attack StB agents—Státní bezpečnosta secret police force in plain clothes. I enjoyed this very much."

For a long time neither of us said anything. Sometimes she'd rest her head on my shoulder, then she'd just swirl her drink, forever around and around. When she finally finished her drink she took my glass.

"No more," I said.

She stood and said, "One more," then returned to the kitchen. While she poured the drinks I took off my Vans and set them over by the door. She returned, handed me the tiny glasses, then she undid the clasp on her skirt and let it drop to the floor, exposing thigh high stockings and garters. She took her drink from me, then unbuttoned the top and bottom two buttons on her gray shirt. She tapped my foot with hers. I uncrossed my legs and she sat down again, this time leaning right against me. I rested my arm over her shoulder, and she took my hand into her shirt and placed it on her belly. Her smooth skin felt warm, like August at nine in the evening.

Her delicate fingers clasped my forefinger and made small circles around her belly button. Her cultured ways made me self-conscious. My fingers were calloused from playing and my knuckles were scabbed from scraping the track bar when me and Pauly changed the Jeep's tie rod the other day. Never in my life had I felt so strongly that I wasn't good enough for somebody. I forced the rest of my drink down.

Dani didn't seem to mind, holding my forefinger like a pen as she continued to write half notes between her belly button and the top of her panties, whole measures on the black lace whorls that separated my fingertips from her skin. When she slid my finger to her other thigh I figured this was only the first verse. Her breathing changed. Half notes became quarter notes. She arched her head back, looking for a kiss. She wrote measure after measure until the staff was full.

I wanted to add a verse of my own.

"Not yet," she whispered.

Guiding the pen to the page she continued to write. Little by little the chorus revealed itself to me. And as she pushed me into her panties I wondered if we were headed toward the bridge. She arched her head back again and found my mouth, singing lyrics directly into me. She twisted, took my glass, mostly empty, and set it on the table behind me. One by one she undid my shirt buttons.

She straddled me, rocking and rocking before finally settling upon my still-buttoned fly. Gently, back and forth, establishing a tempo. Writing her song with her thighs, and with the in between. Rocking still when she found my belt.

I undid the last of her buttons and slid her shirt from her slender shoulders. Kissing her neck, her throat and the soft skin above her breasts elicited a half smile from her thin lips. In the broken light of the stained-glass lampshade I found her eyes, pupils wide in a bed of amber. She pulled my shirt over my head, then my t-shirt. She guided my hand toward the clasp on her bra. The more she took off, the more I could see that she wasn't a goddess. She was just a girl.

Dani reached behind me and turned off the light. She slid off of me and stood—now the brightest light in the room. She whispered, "Are you going to let me rewrite your song, Preston Black?"

I kissed her neck and shoulder, gently tugging her toward her bedroom door.

"Preston?" Dani looked up at me with serious eyes.

"Yes, if that means you want to be with me."

She kissed my chin, then my cheek.

"It does." She slid her hands along my waist, pushed my jeans and boxers to the floor. Nothing left to hide.

Her room smelled and looked exactly like I thought it would, like nothing could ever go wrong on this big four-poster bed. Like clementine and mint and anise.

She threw back a heavy, embroidered throw and down comforter, scattering little pillows, all purple and green with gold tassels.

I fell into a clump of over-stuffed pillows with Dani on top of me. Even before I could slide her panties aside she reared up, like a cat upon a mouse. Her breathing and focus let me know I had catching up to do. With the tips of my index fingers I unclipped Dani's thigh highs from her garter and slid the panties off of her hips and down her legs.

She lifted herself for a moment and found me again as she kicked them off of her ankle.

I focused on a window, seated at the end of a deep dormer, and tried to think about Duane Allman or the cafeteria from my high school. Anything to curb my excitement. She kissed my neck, my chest. She bit at my earlobes and lower lip.

Beyond the window I could make out a few stars. "Slower," I said, my voice barely a whistle in the wind.

She never looked at me, but I couldn't look away. Her hips pulsed, fluid contractions that came from deep within her. She squeezed herself around me. I tried to assert myself and change the tempo. "Slower."

Her breath, like a huff of steam from a boiling tea kettle, blew onto my neck. The scent of clementine and mint and absinthe lingered beneath my nose. Dani angled herself further forward and pushed her hips faster. The smooth skin between her breasts glistened with a touch of perspiration.

I scolded myself for letting my focus drift and directed my attention back toward the window. The stars didn't seem to be moving fast enough. After all the insecurities I felt tonight, the least I could do now was hold on as long as I could.

Dani smiled, said my name, then muttered something in Czech. The sound came from her throat, from somewhere deep inside her. The tone sounded familiar, but the words were ice in the desert. The way she said them made me lose it.

Synapses fired electric light into my skin and bones. She raised an eyebrow, kissed me, then rolled her hips forward twice, almost like taking a bow. Then, letting go herself, she sighed a sigh that filled my head, her breath filled my lungs. She fell onto my chest.

"Preston?"

"Yes, Dani? Danicka. I like that better, I think."

"I like the way you say it." She pushed her hair behind her ear, then sat up without getting off of me, asking, "If wishes were real, what would you wish for?"

I didn't say anything, thinking maybe she was being rhetorical. I closed my eyes.

"Preston." She forced my attention, holding my chin in her hand.

"I don't know." I didn't feel like talking. This was time to sink into the bed, drunk on love. "What do you mean?"

"For example, how would you change things, if you could change things?" she asked very earnestly.

"Why're you asking me now?" I tried to put on a face that hid my confusion and rested against the headboard.

"Maybe I don't do this kind of thing very often and want to know you a bit better. Why do you need an explanation?" She pushed me back into the pillows.

"Really?" I wanted a quick shower and a long night to dream.

"Really. Before I say 'goodnight' I want you to tell me three things. Three things you would change." She laid her head on my chest. Her thick hair fell onto my neck.

"Three wishes?"

"No, it doesn't have to be a wish. Just something you want. Save wishes for things you know will never happen."

"I don't know." I thought about it for a second. My life had been changing so fast I found myself wanting quite a bit. Too much to boil down into three easy statements.

"I wish I could find my dad, I guess. So I at least knew where I came from. That's easy."

Part of me felt afraid to say these things out loud, like not telling anybody what you wished for when you blew out birthday candles. But I wanted to feel safe with Dani, like she could be different and I didn't have to put on an act.

"Maybe I wish Stu'd come back. I don't care how he gets back, I just want him back. Because then all this uncertainty about the band wouldn't matter and Pauly'd see that we can take it to the next level and all the mistakes he's making if he gives up." I found the stars again, but not the same ones I'd seen earlier.

"And the last thing, I think, is that somehow I'd like to be a part of music forever. Real music, the kind people never forget. I'm afraid life—real life—like jobs and taxes will tear me away from what I love. I'm afraid if I lose music I'll be just like everybody else. And that scares me." I forced a laugh. "Is that too much to ask?"

"No, it's not too much." She laughed with me, gently pulling my face toward hers. "Polib mě."

And we kissed again. If I didn't know any better, I would've sworn right then and there that she loved me, too. I'd never been kissed like that.

She didn't cover herself when she left the room. I sat on the edge of the bed while she went into the bathroom and ran the hot water for the shower. After a few minutes she called for me.

The steam went into my lungs easy, like a shot of Jameson. I wiped moisture off the mirror and looked at myself, not proudly, but not regretfully either. But when I saw the extra toothbrush and the bottle of Prada I felt a little shame. I didn't know French, but I knew POUR HOMME.

Danika remained silent while we showered. She gave me a big, soft towel and told me to get some sleep while she dried her hair. She kissed me and said she'd join me in a few minutes. And when I returned to the bedroom I saw a hundred things I didn't see before—a pair of cufflinks and another bottle of cologne on the dresser. I cracked her closet door open and found a white dress shirt and a pair of neckties, one gray and one red. I probably could've found more, but didn't want to.

When she returned I pretended to be asleep. With my back to her I watched stars through the dormer window, still thinking that they were moving too fast.
CHAPTER THREE

Pauly met me down at Mick's. I hated leaving Dani's so early, but she had work to do and I promised Pauly I'd help him put the new water pump in Mom's car. He nebbed about Dani all morning. My head hurt too bad for his crap, but I tried to hide my hangover.

Pauly had a way of turning a two hour job into an all-day thing. He lollygagged, going to three auto stores to compare prices before going back to the first one, which he knew was cheapest anyway. The whole time I forced ginger ale into my belly to keep from puking. When we finally got to the house he took his time at lunch, acting like he'd never eaten a freaking meatball before. Then he bullshitted with his pap while I finally went out and got started pulling the bad water pump out.

When Pauly came out he just kept giving me shit for being hungover. Besides the hangover I felt cranky anyway. Instead of being able to sleep the way I wanted to, weird dreams hassled me all night long. Dani sleeping next to me should've been all the sedative I needed, but instead I had to walk Joe Strummer's dogs for hours and hours. I knew he was asleep inside his big house, about to die, and I was afraid to take the dogs back because I didn't want to be the one to find his body. When I tried telling Pauly about the dream he kept getting hung up on the fact that they were Joe Strummer's dogs and asked me how I knew.

By the time we'd gotten the water pump in we'd talked about English Bulldogs and pit bulls and how purebreds were really inbred, and all kinds of other, mundane stuff, but never really about the dream, which was the whole reason I'd brought it up in the first place. When we finished and headed inside to wash up I didn't have much left to say on the subject. Or any subject.

"You eat yet?" Mom already had her waitress apron on, like if we sat at the table long enough she'd fill up our coffee cups, pull out her pen and pad and take our order. Pauly's grandpap slept through the evening news in the other room.

Pauly said, "No time, Mom. I just came back in for my birth certificate. I got to bring it in with me tomorrow. We have to get to Mick's before closing time then I have to get ready for a meeting. My sponsor gave me shit for missing last night."

"Did you tell him it was Stu's last show?" I could've eaten, especially since I knew she didn't mean she'd be cooking. But ever since Pauly's child support and clothing vouchers ran out, dinner meant going to Mountaineer Doughnuts while Mom worked and getting her discount. I said, "What's your hurry anyway? Why can't we just run it up to Mick's tomorrow? I have lessons, so I'll be there all day."

"Rent's due, and I'm counting Stu's drums as part of what you owe me." Pauly pulled his coat on and stuck a Camel in his mouth. "My sponsor says I got to be on top of shit like this."

"Take it outside," Mom said, whisking him away like a dust kitty. "Don't you light that in this house."

"Yeah, anyway.... We're rolling." Pauly grabbed the doorknob, lit his Camel with his free hand, and flung the back door open to the cold evening. A rush of February wind brought cigarette smoke and the buzz of the dusk-to-dawn light back into the house.

"Sorry." I apologized for him and put my arm out for a hug. "I'll stop up later this week."

"You boys be good." She leaned in and kissed my cheek. "Remember, the devil is a tempter, and an enemy of souls."

"He sure is." I replied. I liked her better as a Catholic. As far as I could see the benefits of being born-again hadn't kicked in for her just yet. I mean, she lived in a shit house, had a shit job and she sure as shit wasn't glowing or walking on water.

I buttoned my coat and followed Pauly out to the Jeep. My heart sped up when I saw I'd missed a call. I hoped it was Dani, but Mikey Kovachick, a former student, left the message wanting to see us about a gig. I put the phone away.

The driveway's cold gravel and old snow crunched beneath my feet. Beyond the city, spread out below like buildings from a model train set, the winter evening arrived with a smear of magenta and crimson gels. February fooled you into thinking winter would end soon. Each sunset felt like a little white lie, hinting at a spring that remained too far away. I told myself it couldn't look like this in New York or LA. I wondered if the only reason I liked this town was because I thought one day I might leave it.

"So Pauly, I've been thinking about the band." I pulled my sleeves down over my knuckles. My breath clouded the windshield, and I wiped it clear with my elbow.

Pauly tried his hardest to get warm air out of the cold engine. He pumped the gas pedal and twisted the heater knobs, each time holding his hand over the vent like he was using the old Jedi Mind Trick. Nothing ever moved fast enough for Pauly.

Wheezy heaters, red lights and little old ladies were all the same to him.

I made my pitch. "Like, who says you have to be from L.A. to make it? Look at some of these douche bags getting record deals nowadays."

The Jeep lurched into drive. It needed transmission fluid. We drifted down the hill. I lifted my collar and tried to hide further down into my coat. "You know, I would've died for Joe Strummer or Eddie Vedder. Those guys are legendary now because they're real. They aren't just guys who want merch money and pussy. Who's the realest band playing right now?"

I waited for Pauly to answer, but he focused on the road. Passion made me talk with my hands. "I say somebody like Radiohead. Or Wilco. But shitty bands still keep getting deals." I added my own exclamation point by chopping the dashboard with the side of my hand. "And we don't even do any originals. So what does that make us?"

Pauly turned onto Richwood, then made a left onto Darst. If there'd been more snow on the steep hill we'd be dodging sleds and snowballs. But anymore the winters weren't like the ones back in the day. Either too warm or too cold, but never the same.

"Like, what if instead of just looking for a drummer until Stu gets out, we get us another guitar player too? Get away from the covers and challenge ourselves and really try writing our own stuff?"

Pauly waited for traffic to clear before making the right back into town. Steam from the old buildings along High and up at the university rose into the cold dry evening. White puffs from brightly side-lit chimneys and smokestacks rose into the dark blue sky. Streetlights were as bright as the first stars that poked through the sunset.

"Even if we can't get both a guitar player and drummer one or the other is fine. I'll sing and play drums if I have to. Like Phil Collins. People like the covers, but maybe we could take a few weeks and reinvent ourselves or something, maybe kill Pipeline—at least 'til Stu comes back. And when Stu comes back I'll go back to playing guitar or whatever and we can start working originals into our sets. This time it can be—I don't know—an organic experience where we move forward as a band, rather than a group of individuals doing their own thing just to make money. We write and record, write and record."

I waited for Pauly to say something. Anything.

"Well, what do you think?" I asked after a few seconds.

He just sat there. I could've kicked him in the nuts right then, and he wouldn't have budged an inch. For a moment I thought he was thinking about what I'd said, but the look on his face said he wasn't thinking about it at all. He took a long drag, pinched the butt between his finger and thumb, then flicked it into the cold night.

"Look, man. I got a job interview tomorrow."

It took me a second to process. "That's fine. I can take care of everything myself then. I'll walk up to the campus and start posting fliers."

"I have an interview. I'm getting a real job." Pauly's head nodded almost imperceptibly, like this was pretty much how he thought the conversation would go.

"Well, we can be flexible with gigs. That's what I'm saying." I made my counter-offer and turned toward him.

"Listen." Pauly stopped at a yellow light at the intersection of Spruce and Walnut. Some asshole in a Jetta laid on his horn as he zipped around us. "There ain't going to be a new drummer or guitar player. My sponsor says there ain't going to be anymore gigs for me. I'm done."

"But the band... Listen, Mike Kovachick called me and says he has a gig for us. We're supposed to go up and meet him tonight. We can't turn down a gig."

"Preston, grow up. Stop daydreaming." He slid another Camel from the pack, offered it to me knowing I wouldn't take it, then put it to his mouth and lit it with a snap of his Zippo. The flame illuminated his face. "There ain't going to be a band anymore."

He took a long drag, coughed and blew the smoke out the window. "At least not one with me in it."

"You don't think you owe me just a little more notice?"

He didn't say anything else.

"You talked Stu into reenlisting, didn't you? You probably said something about the money being a hell of a lot better than working at the beer distributor and playing in the band. Is that right? Shame on you, man."

But like I said, he was done talking.

I added, "Then fuck you, too."

Of all the times I'd ever been dumped, this hurt the worst. Pauly stood over by Mick's basses, mostly Fender Ps and a lone Thunderbird knockoff.

Unsure of whose side he was supposed to be on, Mick remained unusually quiet throughout the transaction. But he had worked out a pretty generous deal with Stu for his kit. If I had enough money I would've bought it and kept it for him until he got back. Mick finally asked, "So, what the hell's wrong with you two?" The old cash register flipped open with the clang of a bell.

"Pauly's going to be bringing his rig in, too. But I wouldn't be so generous with him if I were you, Mick." I crossed my arms and looked down at the holes in my Vans. On my list of things I needed to survive new shoes came below guitar strings and Captain Crunch. In a perfect world rent and utilities, all the shit society tricks you into thinking you need, would be even lower.

One by one Mick slid twenties from his drawer to the glass countertop between a jar of Dunlop picks and a few bottles of Martin guitar polish. "Pauly, you throwing in the towel?"

"We can't all be Paul McCartney, right? So I guess I'm going have to bust my hump for a living." Pauly stayed at the other end of the counter.

Mick scratched his scalp, leaving wiry hair standing at a hundred crazy angles. "Have to keep the lights on, right? Who gets this?"

"Give him half," Pauly said. "Stu said to split it fifty-fifty."

I counted out my part of two months' rent and slid it back to Pauly.

"Thanks, Pres. I can buy you dinner now." He tried to act all innocent in front of Mick, like he hadn't been making a big deal about the money all week. He slid a gumband around his cash and put it in his front pocket. "I guess we're rolling." He shook Mick's hand.

"You go ahead. I'm going to hang out. Maybe see who's playing before I head up to see Mikey."

"Don't be an asshole. We can get a bite to eat." Pauly seemed genuinely surprised I wasn't caving.

"No. I'll find my own way."

"You're for real? Christ, Preston, one of these days you're going to have to give it up." Pauly zipped up his coat with a dramatic flourish. He put his hand into his pocket and dug for his keys, adding, "How you getting home?"

"I'll walk."

"Look both ways before you cross the street." With that, Pauly turned and left.

He waited on the curb for traffic to clear. He lit a smoke and stormed over to the Jeep. With the squeal of a belt he vanished up Pleasant.

Mick watched, too. When I laid Stu's drumsticks on the counter, he shrugged.

"I know."

Mick slid the sticks back to me and waved his hand like a cat waves a paw at its own puke. He backed over to his stool, took his glasses off and dropped them into his shirt pocket.

I gave Mick forty back.

Mick said, "Preston, keep your money. Maybe those boys need to find a way to pay for their own lessons?"

"I can't, Mick. I want to keep it straight with you."

"Do those boys even realize you take care of them like this? They know you don't work for free, right?"

"Yeah, they're very appreciative. I told them they can pay me back when they get famous. In the mean time I'll keep paying for the lessons." I peeled off another pair of twenties for tonight and put it into my right pocket, then slid the rest into my left.

In bars and in bottles were the only places I knew I could get away from Pauly. I put my palms onto the countertop. "I don't know what the point is. Maybe I'm stupid?"

"Don't lean on the counter," Mick said, then without missing a beat added, "Stupid for wanting to make music?"

"I guess. I don't know how to do anything else. It's not like I can just go be a teacher or accountant. I wouldn't even make a decent bartender. When I drop into a groove with Pauly and Stu, no bullet in the world can stop me. I truly believe I was born to make music."

My phone vibrated in my hand. Without thinking I flipped it open. The text came from another unknown number. It said, <supposedly, authority comes from wisdom. you better become a sodding authority fast or the system is going to crush you>

I clenched my jaw. Joe Strummer said something like that in an article I read in SPIN after he died. I replied, <who the fuck is this? Fucking pussy.>

Mick watched from his stool, arms crossed. After a moment to let me calm down he replied with sudden earnestness, "I suppose you have to ask yourself if it's worth it. You think I saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and went to bed that night dreaming about running a music shop? My band gigged five or six nights a week anywhere we could—roller-rinks, amusement parks. But you know what? I met a girl and had some kids. Now I have grandkids. I figure my life's okay. Not what I'd hoped, but okay." Mick stiffened as a pair of high school students came in. They headed straight back to Stu's drum kit.

"And at least once a day I ask myself, what if I'd have kept at it for another year more?" Mick waved me aside. Once his line of sight cleared he relaxed. "What if I'd have given it another year?"

I watched traffic rumble up Pleasant Street. Part of me secretly wished I'd see Pauly back out there. "So you think I should keep going?" I checked my phone.

Dani said she'd call.

"You're going to fail a lot before you ever get it right, son. Your skin's thick enough and your head's hard enough that in a few years you'll know if it's time to give it up. Giving up too early leaves a pretty sour feeling. Might be the only thing worse than hanging on too long." Mick tapped each word of his last sentence out on the counter.

I waited for what seemed like an appropriate amount of time before asking, "Can I bring some of my old stuff down here and put it on consignment?" Asking him wasn't easy, especially after he'd just shelled out all that money for Stu's gear.

"I'm not a bank."

"I know, and that's why I said consignment." I pictured the most humble person I could think of and tried to say it like they would.

"This ain't a pawn shop either." Switching gears, he said, "Before you go running off I got something for you."

He rang the register open. He lifted out the cash drawer with a clang of nickels and pulled out a scrap of paper. He set it onto the countertop. "It's about that record of yours. A friend of mine from the university says the songwriter's from up in Davis. There's an old-timey music thing this weekend. My friend says you should start nebbing there for Earl Black."

"Earl Black?" I said, just as stunned by the name as I was by the news.

"Jamie says the E's for Earl."

"I don't know what to say."

"Then don't open your mouth and ruin the moment like a brand new puppy shitting all over the carpet. Be here tomorrow morning by nine. Jamie says bring your guitar."

"Thanks, Mick. I mean it." I shook his hand, then tucked the scrap of paper into my wallet.

As I buttoned up my coat to leave, Mick said, "I'm trying to look out for you, son. The devil haunts a hungry man."

When I left Mick's the air went into my lungs a little stiffer. The city, and my life, felt a lot smaller than I thought it would without Pauly in it, like this really was the first day of the rest of my cliché.

I stopped at Monongahela Brewing, an old roller-rink just down the block from Mick's. Sometimes people called it 'The Stink' because of the yeast smell, but really it was the smell of the river in the summer. Big silver vats sat where the skate rental used to be. The stage sat at the other end. It was a big place, and if nobody showed up you sure noticed it. When a band went on, Ted lit up Lady's Choice or depending on how much he liked them. I'm pretty sure Pipeline was the only band to play the joint as a roller-rink as a brewery.

Onstage, Billy Club ripped through a set of generic southern rock. The song they played sounded like an obscure .38 Special tune but they passed it off as an original. On the floor, business casual women in crisp white sneakers boogied to slide guitar and lyrics about what happens at the end of dirt roads on starry July nights. Or whatever. Les Popovich sang to a pretty empty floor.

Les used to sing for Pauly and me until the strain on his poor voice got to be too much. It wasn't like we were asking him to be Freddy Mercury or anything.

After he quit I took a Sharpie to a Sex Pistols shirt he'd left at our house and wrote 'I HATE' in big letters right above the band's name. I got the idea from Sid Vicious, but apparently I'm the only person in the whole wide world who ever saw that episode of BEHIND THE MUSIC. In the end Les's split benefitted me because I never would've started singing otherwise.

I ordered bourbon from a bartender who had tried to get with me one night after a gig at Squares in Sabreton. She ended up with Pauly instead, poor girl. She had great blue eyes and a nice body, so when she smiled, I smiled back and wondered why I hadn't taken the bait. After I made a few jokes she loosened up and started setting me up with doubles. I told her about Isaac's and my dad and the record and put my phone on the counter in case Dani called.

I drank two right quick while I spun my phone around and around on the counter. When Les left the stage for set break I gulped the rest of my last drink down and followed him. Out on University brake lights set the cold evening aglow with electric warmth. On the track above, a PRT car rumbled with all the ferocity that an electric tram could muster. Les and his drummer each lit up a Marlboro Light.

"Pres, hey man. How's it been?" Lester's gaze drifted to his drummer for a second and they shared a look.

"You guys sound good." I lied and stuck my hand out. "Preston Black."

The drummer put his cigarette into his mouth then shook my hand. "Denny Meyers."

"Hey Les, you looking for somebody to play a little rhythm? I could do the whole Keith Richards thing for you. Maybe sing some two-part harmony?" I felt like a fucking encyclopedia salesman or Latter-day Saint. Begging for sales or souls.

"What happened to Pipeline?" Les laughed. Still a douchebag.

"Stu's unit got redeployed," I said. That shut him down fast. "And Pauly got a job."

"You still got Mick, right? Maybe you and him can start something." Les laughed.

I studied his smirk for a moment. "Whatever, man. Go fuck yourself."

I pushed between them and walked toward the intersection.

"C'mon, man," Les said. "Here's my number... Three. Zero. Four."

I turned around and walked backwards for a few steps. "You're still an asshole. And your band sucks. Way to pack The Stink. Maybe pass out free t-shirts next time."

Les flicked his butt into the street. He put his hand onto Denny's shoulder and pushed him toward the door. "Maybe we need a roadie? That interest you?"

Adrenaline rippled through me and I had to keep shaking out my fists. My face burned. If Pauly had been with me we would've rolled him into the river. Instead I waited for the light to change. High above, another PRT tram clacked toward the University Avenue station. Behind me, Walnut ran beneath an old rail trestle down to the river's edge. Cold waves lapped the gravelly shore as a tug pushed ten coal barges up the river. When all was said and done, everybody was going somewhere except me.

The cold had a sobering effect on me, and I didn't like it. With my phone in my hand I went up to High, crossed against the light and went a little further up the block. Back in the day there were a bunch of good clubs for live bands through here—the Shining Star, The Oasis, Rosewood and The Wooden Nickel. Johnny Cash supposedly played at the Nickel one time while running from state troopers trying to serve him with a warrant in Wheeling. Now dance clubs with loud music and cheap well drinks bookended The Nickel. They made playing there sound like playing in a blender. I paid my cover to a bouncer who didn't realize I always came in through the back door instead of the front.

I found a stool near the door, but far from the band. The smoke hung so thick I couldn't even really make faces out. Maybe I didn't want to. I set my phone on the bar and waited for the bartender. He flowed to a girl wearing fishnets and a Dead Kennedys t-shirt. The kind of girl who didn't know Henry Rollins from Harry Potter. An eight, but no Dani.

"Hey." I tried to get the bartender's attention. Then I recognized him. "Hey, Little Stevie Croe."

I stood up and shook his hand. "What's all this?" I reached across the bar and tried to grab his goatee.

"Hey, Preston. What the hell're you doing here?" Steve held onto my hand.

"Trying to get a job interview." I looked back at the band.

Stevie grabbed me in for a quick hug, then pulled three shot glasses from the counter. He grabbed a bottle of Jameson and filled the glasses. "Good seeing you, brother."

Stevie raised the glass, closed his eyes and we drank. It didn't burn enough, and that's how I knew I was making a mistake.

"This one," Stevie said. "This is for Stu. Doing his duty so we don't have to." He refilled us.

"Fuck duty," I said, throwing it down. My throat glowed. My chest glowed. My head felt like Christmas lights. And before I could get sad, Stevie refilled the glasses again. I said, "He'll be fine."

"I know. But every time he goes back his chances get worse. Statistics, right? Like playing the lottery?" His thoughts tripped him up.

"He's fucking bulletproof, Stevie. I'm not worried," I lied like Madonna at confession. The seed Stevie planted in my head grew like skunk weed.

"I miss him already, Pres. And he's not even leaving the country for a few more weeks."

"Me too. But we'll be doing this with him in a year." We drank again. For a second I felt like I was drowning and got a little freaked out.

"I know." He put the bottle away and asked, "Where's Pauly? I ain't seen him in a while."

"Pauly's busy. I'm flying solo from now on."

"Tell him I said 'what's up', okay? Want anything else?" Stevie wiped his hands on a towel.

"Maybe a little more." I pointed at the Jameson. "Maybe a Coke to wash it down? Who are these guys?" I pointed at the band. They tried really hard to sound like The Ramones, except instead of singing about sniffing glue they stole their lyrics from The Misfits. "...The devil knows what's in your brain." I tried to ignore them.

He said, "They're from Uniontown," like I'd know what that meant. Stevie went back to the chica in fishnets. I drank and watched myself getting drunker in the mirror. More drunk?

The band made me jealous, the roadies made me jealous, Little Stevie Croe, who'd no doubt get a hand up that short black skirt as soon as he made last call made me jealous. I checked my phone again.

That Dani hadn't called me today only made it worse, so I put my phone away and had another Coke. When I finally stood up everything got real slippy, like I had ice on the soles of my Vans. I stumbled, and Stevie and the girl and the guys in between suddenly all looked a lot more sober than me. Stevie stepped to the end of hte bar and I sat back down.

"Easy, Pres."

"Sorry, man. I'm okay." Every bartender knew that nobody was ever really okay, especially when they said they were. I tried to give him a ten.

"You're not driving, are you?" The way he said it made me realize how pathetic I must've looked. Like without a band or a girl I crumpled. Like I was never meant to be a solo act.

"Pauly got the kids and the car in the divorce. I'm hoofing it tonight. The walk'll do me good. But we should get together and talk, man." I never said shit like that sober. For a second I almost told him about the record and the song. But that all seemed kind of silly now, so we shook hands, then Stevie returned to his project.

The goth girl dropped the coy act and smiled at Stevie like he was passing out free Gummi Bears.

I took my time getting up and went back outside. I shuffled through the semifrozen sludge toward the Met, simultaneously nodding at and hiding from people I thought I might know. But my people left town a long time ago.

When I got to The Met I sat down and ordered a Coke. The Met was the kind of place I'd hang out at if I ever had time to hang out. We loved playing there. Lots of memorabilia on the walls—pictures of old local bands, vintage beer ads, LPs.

Mikey caught me between songs and waved. He had reason to smile. His band had the place packed. People bounced at the edge of the stage. I sat for a few more songs then drifted toward the back of the crowd.

All around people smiled, texted. It'd been so long since I'd seen a show from the floor. I looked for people I knew, but the people I knew had gotten older, got jobs, had kids, moved away. Some of these students might think I was too old, but they had no idea how old you can get in six years. At the far end of the long bar I saw Dani throwing down a drink.

She leaned against a skinny rich kid in a nice shirt, tie and vest and a fat silver watch. Pauly always said bitches like Dani never craved Big Macs. She looked at the guy in the vest like a pit bull eyeballs a T-bone.

I looked down at my shoes, pulled out my phone and pretended to text. It took a long minute to shake my reaction off. The way she laughed and touched his arm didn't make it any easier. When the band ended their set I slipped toward the front door. Just before going outside I waited to catch Mike's eye.

He held up a finger. I nodded and pointed at the door before heading outside.

Despite the house music kicking in, the night suddenly seemed too quiet. The streetlights kept me from seeing any stars. I waited against a lamppost, watching the crowd spill from the club.

After ten minutes Mikey appeared in the door. He spotted me and came over, smiling like the star of a flipping Dentine commercial. "What'd you think?"

"You guys sound good. Really good." I put my hands into my coat pockets and made fists.

"Thanks a lot, Pres. Glad you liked it." He was starting to lose his hair very prematurely but hid it beneath a New York Mets cap.

"I mean it. I wouldn't just say that."

"Yeah, I know. I was going to stop in Mick's and tell you, but didn't have a chance—" He got cut off by a pair of students slapping his shoulder. He turned and gave them each a 'what's up?'

Still beaming, he said, "We got a deal, man. A three disc deal with Blindside..." He paused, like I knew how his sentence ended.

It took a second for me to respond. "That's amazing, man. Your mom must be happy."

"She's a little freaked about the tour stuff, but she's happy. She keeps asking me if I'm going to finish school, though." Mikey waved at a group of girls crossing High.

I looked at him, my jealousy replaced by concern. "Don't stop for anything, man. Once you get momentum you have to keep going. Don't ever pass up an opportunity. Joe Strummer said you have to be slightly stupid to make it anyway."

Mikey asked, "So, your band..."

"Yeah, until last night we've been gigging pretty regularly." A smoke would've calmed me. I needed a smoke. "I wish I would've been able to come out and see you guys sooner."

"I just heard about Stu's unit being reactivated. Sorry about that." His phone buzzed. He glanced at the number.

"Yeah... Off to fight the bad guys."

"If I hear anybody's looking for a guitar player I'll let you know. I kind of had an offer for you guys, but it doesn't sound like it's going to work out." He took his sweat-soaked hat off and wiped his forehead with his sleeve.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Well, we're playing at The Stink on Valentine's Day. A launch party kind of thing. Our A and R guy's going to be there and maybe somebody else from the label. I think he said they're sending a photographer and an engineer to record some stuff for an EP. I wanted you guys to play."

"I'll do it," I said with a genuine smile, probably a little too eagerly.

He laughed. "Who're you going to play with?"

"I don't know yet, but I'll work it out. Don't ever pass up an opportunity. Who famously said that just now?"

Mikey laughed. "Okay, but let me know if things don't work out. We'll back you if you can't get anything together."

"It'll work out. I'm really happy for you, man."

He gave me a real quick hug. I was about to tell him about Isaac's and the record, but he said he had to go in and help the guys start to load out. "Two weeks. Down at The Stink. I'll call you about sound check and all that stuff."

"Okay, man."

For a long time I just stood there. Like, I wasn't ready to go home and be alone. Being rejected by Pauly, Stu leaving, the record and the search for my dad, seeing Dani inside—the list of things that sucked got longer by the second. My feelings about Mikey's success started to itch and I wondered how a flaky kid like him could become the rock god I was supposed to be. My feelings embarrassed me, and at the same time I wanted everybody to know I was the one who taught him. The worst part about it was believing I could've had what Mikey had. I just had to want it bad enough. I started walking up to the apartment. While waiting for the light to change my phone rang. It was Dani.

My first reaction was to ignore it.

"Hello," I said, not sure what to expect from her. My pulse picked up a few extra beats. Without giving the slightest hint that she'd just been inside, Dani said, "Preston, tonight I finished a little later than I expected. You can meet me out on High. In front of the gelato place, if you'd like."

I walked back up the hill, past where Backstreet Records and Utt's Music used to be. After all the insanity today, maybe Dani's call felt like a win. A tie, at least.

Her silver Mercedes sat against the curb, its diesel engine tapping Morse Code into the quiet night. I peered inside, but it was too dark to see anything.

I heard the click of the lock and pulled on the handle. A tiny light from the dash cast dim light onto Dani's high cheekbones. She had a dark gray wrap covering her neck, her hair fell over her ears. She had her glasses on. Classical music, heavy with shrill violins, spilled through the open door and splashed onto the curb.

She offered no apology or further explanation. And once we got up to her apartment, and had a few drinks, we barely talked about anything at all.

Jimi Hendrix coughs. Everything's dark except for a sliver of light from the streetlamp below, but there's enough light for me to know it's him twisted in the sheets. I stand in the corner of the old hotel room, afraid to move for fear of being caught. He's talking in his sleep, but I can't understand the words. It sounds like he's saying, "The author of all evils." He doesn't seem to be referring to anybody in particular.

As my eyes adjust to the dusty blue light details appear like images on a Polaroid: a green wine bottle smashed on the septic white tile of the bathroom floor, plastic hair rollers scattered beneath the bed like cookie crumbs, a guitar case, latched and silent, standing in the corner opposite me. His white Strat's inside.

Suddenly I know this is the night he dies. Jimi says, "The author of all evils," and coughs again. I wonder if it's from one of his songs. The scent of sour red wine makes me lift a hand to my nose. He's vomiting.

He needed help, but I couldn't move. I was like a camera on a tripod. If I could get to him I could roll him onto his side. He says, "She is the author of all evils."

Jimi is awake now, drowning in his bed sheets, clutching at the headboard. I think he's crying for help, but the long gurgle he expels doesn't sound human. His tongue clicks against his palate as he tries to form words. He puts his hand into his mouth. He's trying to clear his airway.

Now the camera is at the foot of the bed. When he touches me his hand is warm and moist and stinks like vomit. Instinctively I try to pull myself away, but can't move. He heaves silent heaves then snorts. Vomit trickles from his nose. I've only ever seen Jimi with half-closed eyes and a cat smile. Like from the Monterrey video.

Now his eyes are white, rolling up like window shades while he tries to form words. He pulls at my shirt.

Jimi's eyes can't find me. They just make wide circles that take in the whole room. His lazy eyelids flutter like moths around a streetlight. Gurgles and clicks are the last song he'll ever sing.

After the dream, I went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face, but couldn't get Jimi out of my mind. The smell of his vomit wouldn't wash away. All night long Dani's bed had felt like a prison. I'd watch the clock, fall asleep only to wake up and watch the clock again. The dream had been the last straw. I lay on the couch until indirect sunlight finally filtered through the bathroom window. Danicka was still asleep when I went into the bedroom. I gave her a little nudge. She rolled over.

"Hey," I whispered. "I have to meet somebody at nine."

"Let me drive you," she said, pushing herself up on her elbows.

"I'm fine. Maybe I can call you if I get back early?" I kissed her on the cheek.

"How do I know you'll call?" she said, her sleepy eyes trying to stay closed.

I said, "I always call."

"Okay. Zavolej mi. Don't forget."
CHAPTER FOUR

In tenth grade I skidded into a real rough patch. That was around the time I figured out me and my mom weren't related any more than me and John Lennon were. I made sure everybody who crossed my path knew the world owed me something.

Growing up I always played the good kid. I got out of bed on Sunday to go to mass with grandma while Pauly slept in. I took out the trash without being asked. But in tenth grade I learned the Golden Rule was a bunch of shit. Doing good to others hadn't done good for me. Soon enough failing class and getting suspended got to be like falling off a bike. Teachers I used to like got on my nerves. Skipping class and starting fights became a lot more fun than going to mass ever was. Only problem was getting kicked out of school didn't kill the loneliness and sadness I felt.

I lost a lot of old friends that year.

By the time summer rolled around the depression got out of control and I thought about killing myself a lot. Like, I'd imagine schemes that'd cause the least trouble for Pauly and my mom. And of course, it had to be painless. So jumping off of the Westover Bridge in January always seemed like the way I'd do it, figuring if the fall didn't kill me the cold would. But Pauly told me anytime anybody stopped on the bridge for too long the cops were called, so I never did anything more than think about it. Back then, I drifted off to sleep every night thinking about shit like that.

It was either July or August. One of those nights when an open window and a box fan only made things worse. I sat on my roof, crying or something. Probably crying. I had Pink Floyd Animals playing over and over. A full moon crept up over the mountains, shining a dense blue light bright enough to make nighttime shadows appear. Without wind I could hear every cricket for a thousand miles. A couple of hound dogs had a raccoon treed down by Deckers Creek. And, for a moment, I felt like the only person on earth. Like all the loneliness manifested itself in the sudden disappearance of everything I'd ever known. The world, with just me in it, suddenly felt like a very cold place.

At some point the tape had flipped back to side one. "Dogs" came on, even though I didn't really notice it. And the humid air, an amplifier for all those nonhuman sounds, brought the crickets and the hound dogs right up to my roof. The moon came over the treetops, washing out the city lights below me. And the dogs—either the ones from the tape or real ones—got closer. The dogs were like a bridge between the tape and real life, and it became hard to tell which was which. Suddenly being alone really scared me.

Even though that phase of my life ended that night, the details will always stick with me. The way the moon and the city looked. Individual trees, and the leaves just scattering the moonlight like a chrome bumper scatters brake lights. The feel of the shingles and the slope of the roof on my bare feet. I didn't know if it was the most dream-like experience I'd ever had, or the most life-like dream, but last night, up in Dani's apartment, felt just like that night on my roof.

If last night had left me feeling the way I wanted, I'd still have been in bed instead of hoofing it back to town. But the choice wasn't mine. The Hendrix dream made me feel like I did when my mom finally told me she wouldn't help me find my dad, except sicker. I woke up feeling like I was responsible for Jimi's death. Had the dreams been about Dani, I would've kept my eyes closed for hours instead of wondering if finding my father wasn't something I'd regret later, wondering if I was better off never knowing.

I got another text. This game had lost a lot of its intrigue. I just wanted to know who'd been fucking with me. The message sounded like something John Lennon would say. <everything's proven until it's disproven, isn't it? who's to say your dreams aren't real?>

I deleted it.

An empty bridge was the only thing that separated the gray sky from the gray river. I let handfuls of snow melt in my mouth to moisten my hangover.

Tugs idled above the locks, just like they had last night. Light snow fell from the milky sky. Every so often I looked back up the hill, taking note of my footprints falling away behind me. Memorizing the twists and turns that'd get me back to her. My cold feet produced cold footprints that disappeared like breadcrumbs beneath a cloud of sparrows.

Wind snapped through my scarf, the cold bit my fingers and toes. Lucky for me my ride waited for me on Pleasant Street. An older guy with a bristly gray mustache gave a tentative wave, then put his Subaru into drive to meet me by the stoplight.

"Preston?" He asked through a gap in the window.

"Preston Black. That's me." I said as I blew into my cupped hands. "It's extra nice to meet you this morning. Jamie, right?"

Jamie laughed as he took his wool outback hat from the passenger's seat and flipped the door lock. "Jamie Collins. It's a pleasure."

He shook my hand, a perfect handshake. A secret handshake. His hand had the same grip as mine. I recognized a fellow musician.

"Mick told you to bring a guitar?" He released my hand and turned up the heat.

"Uh, I didn't go home last night. But my apartment is real close. If you don't mind?" I was suddenly afraid of smelling like booze. But the shame warmed my cheeks, so I let it sit a little longer.

I lead him up to Fayette, to a space right behind Pauly's van. Sneaking into the apartment felt like sneaking into a movie. I knew to let sleeping Paulys lie. I crept up the steps and slowly twisted the old knob. A pizza box sat on the counter.

I flipped it open. Pauly had saved me half. Sausage and peppers and onions. I left it and continued down the hall. In my room I sat on the edge of the bed.

It didn't feel like my bed anymore.

I threw on an old Clash t-shirt, faded and thin like shirts from when you were a kid, worn to translucence because they had Darth Vader or Snake Eyes on them. Thinking about the cold made me add a layer. As I buttoned up the old flannel I looked for a hoodie and scrounged around my closet floor. In the pocket of an old gray sweatshirt I found a thin navy toboggan which I pulled over my ears. I threw the hoodie onto my guitar case and looked for gloves.

But I couldn't remember owning any. I grabbed the record to show Jamie. As I tied my scarf I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. An ex-con if I ever saw one.

On my way to the door I grabbed something heavier, an old pea coat from the Army/Navy store.

"Asshole, is that you?"

I held my breath.

"Pres..." Pauly shuffled in his bed. The box spring squeaked as he got to his feet. I made for the door.

When I shut it behind me, it hurt. Last night didn't feel like the fights we had growing up, usually a few punches followed by a quick apology and a smoke.

Maybe I'd let Pauly simmer a little longer.

Outside, Jamie had the hatch ajar and directed me to slide my guitar into a space he'd made for it. He had a few other instruments back there.

We stopped off for gas at the Dairy Mart along University Avenue. In middle school we'd score pepperoni rolls and Mountain Dew there. In high school it was forties of St. Ides. But no matter when I went in there it felt like fourth grade all over again and I got cravings for goofy shit like Big League Chew and Atomic Fireballs and Lik-A-Stix.

I offered to pay for half of his gas. Jamie said, "I'd be heading up with or without you. I have to make a real quick stop along the way anyway." I offered to buy him a pop or tea, which he readily accepted.

The bright lights in the Dairy Mart hurt my eyes. I stomped my feet on the mat. Ice and black slush fell off my shoes. I made myself two cups of Earl Grey and made a cup for Jamie. While they brewed I picked up a package of Hostess Ding Dongs. Then, by the register I spotted Julia's Pepperoni Rolls and grabbed a pair. A breakfast that'd make Johnny Ramone proud.

Back outside I handed Jamie his tea while juggling my own. "I just put a little sugar in. I didn't know how you took it."

"Much obliged. Your old guitar case piqued my interest. I wanted to take a look, with your permission?"

"Sure thing," I said, perhaps with a little too much exuberance. Before I set my teas on the roof I offered him a pepperoni roll and he shook his head. So I slid the Tele out from between the other cases. The spring-loaded latches flipped open with a metallic rattle.

"Wow," Jamie said. "She's beautiful. What year?"

I liked the way he held it. One hand, beneath the neck. The way a mom would hold a newborn. "It's a seventy-one. Had a refret done a few years back. Everything else is original."

"Beautiful," Jamie said again as he slid it back into the case. "Bet it sounds real pretty through a nice old tube amp."

"I have an old Fender Twin. Sixty-seven. I had to choose between that or college." It was a joke for me alone.

"Can't wait to hear it." He paused, kind of biting his lip, waiting for me to say something different. "Mick didn't specify when he said bring a guitar, huh?"

"Specify?"

"It'll be all acoustic music today." Jamie let out a restrained little laugh as I pushed the Tele back in with the others. "I got you covered." He patted a big, battered old guitar case.

We got back into the car, the heat made me sleepy. After Jamie buckled his seatbelt and set his hat on the backseat, he said, "Maybe I will have one of those pepperoni rolls? The heartburn'll be worth it."

"Here, take them both." While he ate I showed him the record. He wiped his hands on his jeans and ran his fingers through the tracks. Then he slid the vinyl out and looked at both sides carefully before stopping on my song. He traced the track with his fingers, nodded, and gave it back to me.

He said, "Hmm. E. Black." And that was it. Like, after we exhausted all the small talk there wasn't much left to say. Or maybe he was waiting for me to ask the inevitable question. All morning I'd rehearsed how I'd say it over and over in my head. After leaving town and twisting and turning up old Route Seven, and waiting for the right moment, and hoping another subject would come up I finally spit it out.

"You friends with Earl Black?"

"Well," Jamie began. Then, after pausing to get his words in the right order, restarted, "Acquaintance is a better word. I don't know him well enough to ask if he left a wife and kid down here, if that's what you mean."

"That's what I meant. Sorry about that." I shook my head to show him I knew how stupid it sounded.

"It's okay. I know it's not easy," he said.

I felt bad for being so nebby and went back to looking out the window and listening to Jamie's music. Violins and a man who sounded just like a raven when he sang. I tried to tune it out and fall asleep. At some point we turned onto a dirt road. The transition from asphalt to gravel woke me up. After about twenty bumpy minutes Jamie said, "Here we are."

Keeping my feet out of the mud while loaded down with instrument cases and mic booms was dang-near impossible. Up here in the mountains they had a lot more snow on the ground than we had back in town. All around us pines mingled with naked, gray trees sprinkled with long-dead yellow leaves. A stream of melted snow ran right down the middle of the driveway.

Jamie said, "I won't be offended if you wait in the car." He took a few steps toward the old house.

"No, I'm good." I scraped my muddy shoe on a crusty snowdrift, leaving a brown smear.

"It should be quick and painless. And May usually bakes. It'll be over before you know it. I wouldn't have even stopped if it wasn't unfinished business. Don't like leaving loose ends. People get older and you keep putting stuff off... These folks won't be around forever." He walked toward the house.

"When I started most of the people I recorded lived a long ways off the grid." He pointed at his canvas bag with a stub of a pencil. "I'd take this little recorder and I'd run a line out to the car battery if I needed juice. Heard a lot of amazing music. There's not much of that left up here anymore. The grid got a lot bigger."

I followed his footsteps around the muddiest spots, up the hill to the old house.

White curtains, thin like a hospital gown, hung limply behind gray windows. The house was really just a cabin with an addition, neither part built in the last hundred years. The chimney hung off to the side like a bent cigarette. Yellow coal smoke came out.

Jamie knocked on a thin door covered with only a sniff of paint. A sweet little voice said it'd be right there.

I stood off to the side while Jamie smiled and gestured with his hat over his heart. The skinny old lady stood there like Joe Pye weed poking up through snow in her rubber boots and thick framed, un-ironic, Buddy Holly glasses. A quilted flannel shirt hung loosely over a flimsy floral dress and pale apron that had the dirt beaten out of it. Her hair was up in rollers, like after we split her day got even more eventful. She held the door while Jamie went in. I hesitated, and she gave my sleeve a good tug. With a big smile she said, "C'mon now. I hain't paying for to heat the whole county."

I let her pull me into the small kitchen. The table had a sparkly Formica top like the counters at Murphy's downtown back in the day. There were two wooden, straight-backed chairs and a metal chair with red vinyl padding that had been patched with black electrical tape. She pulled out that chair for me and said, "Jamie, I thought for sure you was going to forget about me. And this young man, it's been such a long time since I seen him."

Jamie hemmed and hawed with his gear, speaking without looking at the old lady like he didn't want to call attention to her error, "I'm sorry. May, this is a friend of mine. I'm not sure you do know him." He unloaded jars of jam and a few books from his bag and laid them across the table.

May said, "I feel like I should." She stood behind me with her hands on my shoulders, holding me into the chair.

"Well then, this is Preston Black, he's from town."

She pulled her hands from my shoulders and took a step back. She wiped her hands in her apron. "Well, I reckon I don't know him then."

I stood up to shake her hand, but she responded weakly, like I owed her money. "You know the song?" I asked.

"I heard it but I don't know it." She drowned a battered teapot in the stream of spring water that dripped from the spigot. "But that song ain't of no account and you can honor my hospitality by not asking no more about it."

Jamie watched the whole exchange like a wino waiting for his horse to place so he could get another drink. But when I looked at him for some kind of intervention he just shrugged. So I sat back down feeling a little embarrassed. I didn't care about the song—just the guy that wrote it. To cover the sting I tried to come up with something clever to text Dani, but ended up just sending out a <how's it going?> and watching my phone for a moment, like she'd text right back. I finally put it away and said to Jamie, "Give you a hand?"

He passed me a boom and pointed to a spot on the floor where he wanted it, then tossed me the mic cables. As soon as Jamie hit his recorder's phantom power switch the tea kettle screamed, ruining his sound check. He said, "At least I didn't have headphones on."

May didn't ask if we wanted cream or sugar. We both got our tea weak with a little honey. May said it was dandelion blossom. I sipped mine while Jamie tuned his fiddle, slid up to the mic and began sawing away. I couldn't take my eyes off his fingers, working the fretboard like a cat works a pillow before it lays down.

When she sang May's voice wasn't even as sweet as the tea. It sounded dry and throaty, like a turkey call, and hard to listen to. Her words curled in, like old movie posters, and her lips didn't move very much.

During breaks Jamie asked May about cousins and nephews, said he saw old so-and-so down in Elkins and Mary said thanks for the book and she'd call this spring. Since none of it pertained to me I took my phone out again. Somehow none of my texts ever made their way back to me, like fishhooks with no worms. I stood to stretch my legs, drifting over to the sink for a sip of water. The curtains were so thin I could see right into the yard and across the mountains. For a long time I watched the clouds scatter across the aquamarine sky like they were being chased by wolves. I looked for my house, then town, and couldn't find either. The music May and Jamie made didn't seem as bad when it was in the background.

Above the window I noticed a small square of wood with hand-written letters on it. The top row said SATOR. The next four lines were written so the vertical columns were very straight, so they could be read up and down too. The next row across said AREPO. The next said TENET, then OPERA. The last said ROTAS. I squinted my eyes and looked again.

S A T O R

A R E P O

T E N E T

O P E R A

R O T A S

I looked at Jamie and pointed to see if he saw it, but he shook his head for me to forget about it. May kept on singing like a sick little bird. She didn't even open her eyes. I stepped across the kitchen and looked into the other room and saw the same square above a window. I didn't need to see the letters to know it said the same thing. I started toward it and Jamie said—stopping me in my tracks—"You might like this next song."

I almost said, "I'm good" when he motioned for me to have a seat. "Last one," he said.

May sang a real sad song about a jealous girl who threw her sister into a river. I kind of got lost in the middle part, but the end brought me back. The guy that found her body made a fiddle out of her clavicle and used her finger bones for tuners and strung the bow with her hair. When he played the fiddle it sang the name of the murderer.

When they finished I said, "Are there any more like that? Like, ones that tell stories and all that?" I buttered a biscuit and slathered some sassafras jelly on it. The butter melted a little from sitting out for so long. The jelly tasted like root beer. I wanted to eat more, but only finished half.

Jamie wiped his strings down with a chamois. "They all tell a story, don't you think?"

All of a sudden I was back in English class, not sure if I knew how to answer.

"I guess."

Jamie said, "Or, maybe you liked the little bit of magic at the end? That the narrative had little details like the fur hat and gloves to anchor it in reality. Then when the magic comes you are forced to believe it because the tone was believable up to that point." Jamie pulled the biscuits away from me and buttered one for himself. His mustache went up and down when he chewed.

"Yeah," I said, but inside I felt a little lighter because he had understood exactly what I meant. "Like, how, because everything was real, the magic seemed real too."

Jamie nodded and licked his fingers. I liked Jamie a lot.

May 'retted up' while me and Jamie talked. My grandma used to 'ret up' the house when we were little, and when she got tired of retting up, me and Pauly had to ret up.

Jamie had another biscuit then looked at his watch. Time had come for us to ret up too. Jamie had a particular way of coiling his cables and packing everything, so I played roadie and just held stuff for him. On our way out May gave Jamie a big hug. I waited to see if I should shake her hand or whatever, but she just waved at me.

As soon as May's house disappeared from the rear-view mirror I asked Jamie about those little squares above the windows. Jamie made like he was thinking about it. He said, "Let's see how to put this..."

Then he took off on a different subject like a hound dog after a rabbit. "No matter how poor you are, you always have music. That is, until they find a way to tax it." Then he went on to say how West Virginia was special and he could show me places that had more in common with Switzerland and Germany than with Pittsburgh or Baltimore. He said that there were people up here who not only believed in magic, but practiced it.

The way he talked about everything besides what I'd asked made me a little tense. He was treating me like I just brought home a stray puppy.

When I stopped nodding my head and responding, he took a deep breath, and finally said, "People up here live on slow time. A good many of them fear the devil and rely on practices handed down from generation to generation to protect themselves from him. I can introduce you to fifteen people today who could give you firsthand accounts of running into the devil up here."

When I realized he had been answering my question all along, I asked him for a specific or two.

He said, "The specifics aren't mine to tell."

I thought about those words for a few miles, and just when I finally figured out exactly what I wanted to ask, he said "You ever come up for the Buckwheat Festival?"

I looked out the window at Kingwood's old buildings and gas stations and nostalgia took over most of the space in my head. "Yeah. Mom used to bring us up. Buckwheat Fest felt like a minor holiday and she'd give us a few bucks to play games. Pauly'd come home loaded down with prizes, no lie. Like, he could get the ring around the penknife or the ping-pong ball into the goldfish bowl freaking first try. I never won squat."

In my head it was 'I never won shit.' "So I ended up buying fried dough or cotton candy with my money. Always felt bad because Pauly spent his money so fast, so I'd share with him on the way home. Pauly was always win-win. Should've known then I wasn't lucky."

Jamie laughed, and said, "A while back there was a young writer from down Huntington way. Breece D'J Pancake. A mouthful, right? Supposed to be the next Hemingway. Praise like that doesn't get bandied about too casually amongst writers."

"I suppose." I didn't really know.

"Well, a while after The Atlantic Monthly published his first story, the boy shot himself. Now, you can say what you want, about luck and whatnot—"

"It's not like his truck stalled on a railroad crossing. Not sure what luck had to do with it."

"You're exactly right. But to kill himself two years after he gets his big break? Maybe he'd have been better off staying unpublished. Maybe it was the pressure of success and the high accolades. Either way, he couldn't use the good of his situation to find a reason to go on. Maybe I don't believe in luck, and maybe what I'm trying to say is don't go out of your way to make a good situation bad. Luck or no."

He held his finger up like there was more coming, then added, "Maybe a more straightforward way to put it is don't go digging up old graves."

"Sounds like you're trying to talk me out of something." I started drumming my fingers on my knee. "Man, I've been searching for my dad all my life."

Jamie put his hand over his mouth like the Speak-No-Evil monkey, then returned it to the steering wheel and said, "I don't think that's what I'm saying, son. Maybe it is. But what I mean is, if you're happy with the way things are, whatever happens today shouldn't change it. Don't go making bad luck for yourself, right?"

"I suppose. And I appreciate you making yourself clear." I took a long look out the window. These mountains made me feel little, like I'd been back in town living with a bigger idea of who I really was. But from up here I could see my whole world in a single view. Like all along I'd really been living too small for my own good, and seeing it all laid out down there just confirmed it.

I checked my phone for texts. No signal. If Dani called I'd never know it.

Jamie caught me looking and said, "You'll pick something up a little closer to town."

"I didn't mean to be rude."

He laughed. "You're fine. I'm not what you'd call an early adopter, but I like my tech. I'm converting all my old reel-to-reels to digital right now and remastering them. Some of those old tracks sound better than they ever did in my memory."

For a long time I didn't say anything. I just thought about what I would say to my dad. Like, I wanted to be his friend, especially since he was a musician like me.

And I reminded myself a hundred times not to get angry or say something stupid. Just smile and nod. Smile and nod. I reminded myself that I'd been waiting my whole life for today.

I said, "Pauly used to look out the bedroom window so he could see his dad come up the road on visitation days. Then he'd leave and I'd be all by myself."

I knew I should've been content to look out the window and keep my mouth shut, but I couldn't. "Back there you talked about Earl Black like you knew something."

Jamie turned his music down then sighed. "Maybe I do. We'll just have to wait and see."

I nodded, and said, "It's cool. I probably shouldn't have put you on the spot like that."

"You have a right, son. You have a right. No need to dish your chances just yet, though." Jamie's voice trailed off and he leaned forward in his seat. With a new smile, he put on his turn signal. "I have to show you something real quick."

We wound through a thick stand of pines, across a little bridge made out of collapsed corrugated steel pipes and up a really steep hill that made all the instrument cases slide back to the hatch. Jamie stopped the car at the bottom of a big white and gray field with old fence posts poking out every few yards. At the top of the hill stood a barn, and next to it a house. The way the blank windows stared out across the field and down the hill gave me the same feeling you get when you're in the cellar by yourself and you know something else is down there with you.

Jamie said, "Look up on the barn there." He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes like he had no need to see it for himself.

"Where?"

He put his glasses back on and leaned toward me. "The paint's really faded. At the top, just under the eaves."

"A pentagram?"

"Technically it's a hex. But that's what you saw at May's today. A sign. For protection. Magic."

"Magic?"

"Magic. SATOR Squares have been used for all sorts of purposes—removing jinxes, protecting cattle from witches. This one here didn't work." He pointed at the pentagram on the old barn. "Supposedly a witch lived here. Had a falling out with a cousin. Notorious feud about thirty years ago. Anyway, the cousin got a hold of some hair and used it to curse this woman. Her cattle started giving poisoned milk."

"Guess the hex didn't work."

"No, that's why a SATOR Square does." He was about to go on, caught himself then added, "Supposedly."

"The words on the SATOR Square are the names of the nails pulled from Christ's body. And palindromes can't be tampered with, not even by the devil himself." Jamie put the car into reverse, but I couldn't turn my back on that place.

"So they're to keep the devil away? Like an apple a day?" I tried to make a little joke.

Jamie said, "I guess you could say that."

"It that something I need to worry about?" I said it with a smile.

Without looking over, Jamie shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know."

The thin aluminum walls gleaming in the cold mountain air reminded me I'd traveled a long way from High Street. A sign on the side said, 'DAVIS VFD Enjoy Coca-Cola'. The fire hall's thin walls did little to mask the shrill twine of violins and banjos. The bluebird-blue sky didn't carry an ounce of warmth or moisture; I couldn't tell if the mountains I saw were one mile or ten miles away. I followed the music, and Jamie, inside.

Rows of folding chairs faced an AstroTurf-covered stage that sat beneath a giant bingo flashboard, a ginormous oil painting of Blackwater Falls and an American flag. Student art covered the wall, mostly handprint turkeys and Christmas trees from last year. A small picture of Jay Rockefeller, the governor, not the senator, hung less prominently off to the right, near a snack bar where blue-haired ladies sold Sloppy Joes and hot dogs for a dollar and hot dog sauce—whatever that was—for a buck fifty. If I had to determine where I'd landed based on my surroundings alone, my guess would be somewhere between South Middle School and 1977. I wanted a Sloppy Joe bad.

The music from the trio on stage sounded like The Chieftains without the flute and drums. A guy with white hair, wearing a camouflage jacket and coal dust-stained ball cap, played guitar next to his twin, the only difference between the two was the mandolin the twin played and the coveralls he wore.

The bulk of the music came from the girl that stood between them swinging her fiddle bow like a bucksaw. Her exaggerated mannerisms contrasted sharply with the men's stony scowls. Light brown hair streaked with hints of blond fell from a loose bun on her head. Each time she blew a strand away, her nose and mouth scrunched with annoyance.

When she finished, the audience applauded mildly. Not a single person stood up or even showed a sign that her playing interested them any more than the Sloppy Joes did.

These hicks, I thought, wouldn't know music if it knocked their daughter up. So I set my Tele and Jamie's acoustic on the floor and clapped singular claps that punctuated the fire hall's dead air. "Whooo!" I yelled.

People in the audience turned and looked, just staring, their eyes full of confusion and pity. Jamie picked up his case and clamped my shoulder. The violinist gave Jamie a little wave from the stage, then shrugged her shoulders.

"I don't get it, man. She's phenomenal."

"Well," Jamie said, pulling me toward the back, "Katy plays here every week. And most of the people here in this room can tell, just by listening, that she's a little off this afternoon. Probably thinking about boys or some fool thing."

"Wait, what?" I couldn't pull my attention away from the stage.

"She's a little sloppy today. They've heard better from her. She's a student of mine, so I'd know."

"Wow. So that's sloppy? What does it sound like when she's on?"

Jamie said, "When she's on, she'll make you cry."

The trio on stage began another number as Jamie led me down a long hall. Doors to the right opened up into the big garage where the pumper and ladder trucks slept. Along the left sat a pair of rooms. The first contained a group of kids strangling violins while a big man in a wheelchair patiently begged them to stop. He had a heavy gray beard and wore a Carhartt jacket with a POW/MIA patch on the sleeve. He'd lost both of his legs near the knee. He looked like a mama bird fretting over how to divide one worm among a dozen chicks.

Jamie made a left into the second door. I followed him into a small, woodpaneled room containing a pop machine with old glass soda bottles trapped inside. Jamie hung his coat on the back of a folding chair as the three men inside tuned.

I waited anxiously for Jamie to introduce me to Earl. Before I could take off my jacket the banjo player, who looked too much like a turtle stuck halfway in his shell, said, "Is this the city boy?"

"Hector, be nice, now," Jamie said.

The mandolin player had wavy red hair and I knew right away he wasn't Earl Black. Jamie said, "That there's Tim." Rather than reach across Hector to shake my hand, he just nodded.

Jamie stood directly behind the guitar player and gave the big man a good pat on the shoulder, then said "This here's Carter O'Dell. Sit where you can keep an eye on him. He'll show you chord changes and whatnot. Hector, why don't you switch him seats?"

"C'mon. You know how I hate sitting with my back against the door," he said.

"He needs a clear run at the window in case his ex-wife shows up," Tim deadpanned. He clipped an electric tuner to his mandolin.

Jamie lifted his old violin out of its case. The delicate oak leaf and acorn near the bridge had been worn smooth where it rubbed against his chin. "I'll be right back. Have to find some rosin," Jamie said and flitted out of the room like a squirrel in search of a nut.

"Fiddlers and their superstitions," Carter O'Dell said as he tapped Jamie's guitar case with his foot. "What're you waiting for, boy?" He watched as I unlatched the clasps on Jamie's old guitar case. The smell of old wood, like my grandpap's attic, made a beeline to the part of my brain that missed Captain Crunch and Super Friends on Saturday morning.

"Wow." I held the old Martin, all too aware of how close the chairs were. "Never had much of an interest. I always wished my amps went up to eleven."

I sat on the folding chair, put my head beneath the soft leather strap, then strummed an E. The thick strings bucked beneath my fingers like an angry bull trying to throw a rider. The body of the guitar wriggled beneath my arm like a kid about to get his first haircut. Switching to a D minor diminished the guitar's liveliness a little, but sonic waves continued to pour out of the wood and into my ribs.

Tim tossed me his tuner. "Get yourself straightened out there." He noodled while I tuned, piecing together a little something that sounded like "Blackbird" meets "Bron-y-aur." Hector plucked rebuttals to Tim's twiny chirps.

Carter O'Dell rocked back in his chair, lifting its front legs off of the floor; his big hands clamped his Gibson's neck like he wanted to choke it. He thumbed the low G and picked out a simple bass line, a little glue to hold Hector and Tim together. Carter gave me an exaggerated nod, my cue to come in as soon as I tuned.

I watched his fingers for a few measures then joined in, picking out bass notes on the E and A strings. The notes came right out of the Lydian or Mixolydian mode, and once I chugged right along with Carter he played the full chords while continuing to walk along with the bass. My brain figured out the simple pattern before my fingers did. Bass-chord-chord. Bass-chord-chord. Bass-chord-chord. Boom-chuck-chuck. Jamie's Martin thumped like a bass drum kick.

At the end of the measure Carter left me high and dry to play a variation on the melody Tim had started us out with. Carter's Gibson had a crispy tone, like wind chimes. Just like that Tim went from melody to rhythm, accentuating my downbeats with palm-muted strums. The sudden shift in dynamics—Carter's transition from rhythm to lead and Tim's move to percussion—made me think, Holy shit, that's sweet. I let a little smile slip out.

Carter took the melody and twisted it, building rooms onto his foundation, turning it into a house. He hammered-on to a minor fifth, and now Tim's melody sounded a little heavier. Hector put a metallic exclamation point on it by playing a droning minor chord. Tim picked up the subtle key change and chucked out the new chord. I looked at Carter.

"A minor," he said.

At some point Jamie came back. Standing just over my shoulder he entered the song little by little. The whining fiddle filled the space in our tune like rain water fills a rocky riverbed. Hector backed off just a bit, assuming a more rhythmic role to let Jamie take the lead. Where Carter's guitar, or Tim's mandolin had been able to change the mood from jubilant to melancholy, Jamie's violin added nuance. Taking a pick to a hunk of marble that'd been hacked at with a chisel for too long.

Tim's head bounced, his glasses slid further down his nose as he tore through a frantic solo. I switched my A minor to an A minor seventh to give it a slightly funkier sound. Beneath the volume of our song Carter mouthed the words, 'one more time'.

I attacked the strings with my Dunlop HEAVY pick. The fierce vibrations radiating from that old slab of wood shook my fillings, for crying out loud. I looked for the cue to end.

A false silence filled the room as all the strings were muted to a stop. Phantom notes kept my ears ringing just a bit longer. Residual echoes went out into the universe, putting a firm time stamp on this musical event.

"Not bad," Big Carter said. He ran through a few warm-ups, his fingers bounced over the heavy strings like water droplets falling from treetop leaves. I silently chorded an F. My hands had grown so used to an electric guitar that I felt kind of weak, like my pointer could barely keep the low E down. My calloused fingertips felt like they'd been living easy for too long.

"It's a little different being in the background," I said, mostly just to have something to say.

In a drawn-out, exaggerated kind of way, Tim said, "Leave rhythm for the drummer, huh? Then give him five bucks and thank him for the pizza."

Before I could defend myself Tim let loose another. "What about the kid who tells his mother he wants to play lead guitar when he grows up? She laughs and says 'you know you can't do both.'"

Carter said, "Har har."

Knowing I'd been busted, I laughed. "No, I'm having a hard time wrapping my brain around the dynamic. All this time I thought I knew music. Guess I have a way to go".

Jamie said, "Not always a bad thing."

Before I could add to my defense Jamie said, "Let's keep it going. 'John Henry,' key of G? One, two, three, one two three."

Carter kicked the door open with a bass-filled run. I watched his fingers, trying to decipher the transitions he used to walk from chord to chord. By the time I had "John Henry" down Tim called out the next one, "Greenbrier River."

We went around the room like this for the next few hours—them shouting out tunes I never heard of, me trying to keep up. My hands throbbed, the old Martin reminding me song after song who was boss. And I forgot all about the Sloppy Joes and the beautiful girl playing the violin. I even forgot about Earl Black for a second. For the first time in years music coursed through me, rather than through an amp and away from me. My mind rewrote every song I knew, rearranging them with chords and bass notes. I tried to predict how it'd sound, just me and a guitar doing all the songs that we did as a band. I wondered if somewhere in the old notebook I used for songwriting I'd find my very own "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" or "Story of My Life."

We took a break while Carter and Hector packed up their instruments. I stretched a little, standing to shake their hands and shake out my legs. Carter leaned in and said, "You might be more valuable if you come prepared to sing a few next time. Singers are a rare thing around here, and Jamie's niece says you can sing."

After Carter shut the door Tim and Jamie made the circle a little tighter. "Without Hector we'll be able to hear ourselves think. Let Tim and I play a few bars of this next one. Join in when you think you know it.

"Key of D," Jamie said. He slid his bow across the strings and began playing a melody that reminded me of the first warm day after the snow's finally all gone.

Then Tim joined, and music crawled around the room like a vine that produced a little white flower every so often. I couldn't figure out where to begin.

I didn't enjoy this one as much. Without a crutch I kept falling over. Besides, my mind kept drifting back to Earl Black. I didn't want to miss him. And to make that point I stood up when the song ended. I flexed my fingers a few times, a not-so subtle hint that my hands were achy. Jamie rested his fiddle on his lap and said, "I guess that's a wrap?"

"I have to get a move on, too," Tim said, wiping his glasses on his shirt. As he put on his jacket, he said, "Preston, it was really nice meeting you. I hope we'll see you up here again." After a bit of a thoughtful pause he added, "And I hope things work out for you today."

My eyes found Jamie's. He gave me a resigned look.

Tim patted me on the back as he stepped past. He shook Jamie's hand before slipping out the door.

The room seemed really big with just Jamie and me in it. I put his Martin down and slid the pick into the strings before shutting the lid.

Jamie asked, "You ready for this?"

"I guess so. I came all this way, right?" I had more to say, but decided to hold it. "What's the worst thing that can happen?"

"I know you've probably spent a lot of time thinking about this." He coughed into his fist, perhaps taking an extra second to find words. "Whatever happens, it doesn't change who you are. You have to remember that. The man I met this morning doesn't change because of what happens today, okay?"

He made such direct eye contact that I eventually had to look down at my feet. "I promise." I extended my hand. "And thank you. I mean that."

Jamie took my hand. His shoulders dropped, perhaps relieved to have had my word. He stepped into the hall, shuffled a few steps, then turned around. "You know, my son never had an urge to touch a musical instrument."

The long hallway had fallen quiet except for the music from a pair of violins in the main hall, intertwined like blackberry brambles. Jamie led me toward the music.

In the big room the snack bar had been shuttered. No Sloppy Joes for me today, I thought, my belly rumbling. All the folding chairs but one had been leaned against the wall in rows. A pair of basketball hoops had been lowered, the scoreboard glowed, HOME 0, VISITOR 0. Neither bonus arrow glowed.

In the center of the floor the girl I'd seen on stage earlier faced the big guy in the wheelchair from the clinic down the hall. The girl stopped when she saw me and Jamie come in. Her eyes were the kind of blue Miles Davis must've dreamt about when he recorded "Blue in Green." The drums on that record sounded like raindrops on city sidewalks.

"Sorry to interrupt you all." Jamie put his hand on my shoulder, gave a little pat, then said, "I'd like you all to meet somebody. Preston, this is Katy Stefanic. Katy's mother is my baby sister."

She clutched her fiddle with the crook of her arm and slid her bow alongside it. She smiled, her big eyes seemed to glow a little. "Nice to meet you." Her hand felt warm and dry. Not hot, like Dani's. I didn't want to let it go. She put her violin into its case on the floor, then took the man's.

"I heard you playing earlier. You sounded really good." Saying it reminded me that I'd made an ass of myself.

Katy blushed, then softened my embarrassment by saying, "I started young." I could listen to her soft voice all night long.

My mouth dried up as the man turned toward me. I straightened myself and tried to stop my hand from shaking. I tried flexing my fingers a few times. I thought for sure I'd cry, and swore I'd hate myself if I did. But I could already feel it in my throat.

Jamie grabbed my shoulder again, then slid his hand to the nape of my neck to keep me from bounding forward. "Earl, this is the guy I told you about."

I leaned forward and took his hand. The touch sent a jolt through me. A jolt of what, I didn't know. Maybe a little anger, a little sadness. Joy. "Preston Black, sir. Nice to meet you."

He flinched a little when I said my name. I thought it was certainly a sign of guilt. A multitude of questions and accusations flooded my head. Before I could get any of it out Earl said, "Just like the song, huh?"

"Yeah. I brought the record along..." I handed it over to him.

He looked it over real good and slid the vinyl out, just like Jamie had. He said, "That's me, alright. I'd get up, but..." He studied my face.

I opened my mouth, a placeholder for the things I meant to say, but Earl cut me off.

"I'd get up," he said again with a bit of a stammer, rushing his words, "...but a little incident I had on a trip overseas keeps me in the chair. Something that probably happened long before you were born, in fact. But if I had a son he'd be a lot older than you are, ten years at least. Jamie told me that's why you're here."

I cringed when he said that.

"It's okay. I can see why you'd think that, with the song and all. When I left Vietnam, like this, I married my sweetheart. We didn't make it last, not without me being able to.... Served in Ninth Division, in Tan An Delta. Thought the leeches would get me, it was a booby trap. Spent a few years wishing it would've killed me."

I let my eyes drift to the big scoreboard. Still read HOME 0, VISITOR 0.

"I'm sorry, Preston," Jamie said. "I could've told you, but I think it's better to have seen it for yourself."

"No, I understand. It's all good," I said with a forced laugh. But my odometer had been set back to zero. "Hey man, it's nothing. When I saw the name, I just thought..."

Earl handed me back the record and said, "If Black wasn't such a common name up here I'd say we could've been related. Who knows, maybe we're cousins?"

"Yeah."

Earl looked at me like I just had my bike stolen. "I am sorry it didn't work out like you hoped."

Katy stood beside me. "No news isn't bad news." She handed Earl his black violin case, which he set on his lap.

"I suppose." I couldn't find much more than that to say.

"Thanks, Earl," Jamie said. Then the two of them headed toward the door. Katy lingered next to me for a second, then fell into step behind them.

"What about the song? I'd still like to hear the song, if you don't mind," I said, trying to get something to take with me.

"That was a long time ago," Earl said.

"Please, man. I don't have any family pictures, no birth certificate. You can give me something real."

Earl glared like a possum that'd been poked with a stick.

"Sorry. I'm not trying to provoke you."

"It's not my song. I didn't write it. I heard it from a great uncle fifty years ago and slapped my name on it."

He said, almost more to Jamie than me, "I can't drive a truck, can't mine coal or railroad. What was I supposed to do?"

The air suddenly felt thick and awkward, like sitting too close to a bonfire.

Jamie shoved his hands into his coat pockets and wiped an invisible smudge off of the floor. Katy was about to push the door open for Earl when he turned around and started to sing.

"Preston Black couldn't eat and he couldn't drink, Preston Black couldn't eat and he couldn't drink," his frail voice wavered. "But he'd sit at the table all the same, waiting for handouts from wherever they came."

He cleared his throat, then finished the verse. "Preston Black couldn't eat and he couldn't drink."

I knew he wasn't singing about me. At least that was what I kept telling myself.

"Preston Black didn't have a ma or pa, Preston Black didn't have no ma or pa. Didn't know when he'd been born, didn't know when he'd die, didn't know nothing about the how or why. Preston Black didn't have no ma or pa."

I silently recited the verses, doing whatever it took to etch the song in my mind. I looked at Earl.

Earl looked at the floor. "Preston Black never sang in church, Preston Black never sang in church. Though he knew the words to every song, the preacher told him that he didn't belong. Preston Black never sang in church." He grabbed his chair's wheels and gave them a few pushes. And the dirgeful groan that came from his throat reminded me that I was getting everything I asked for by digging up old graves.

"Preston Black couldn't sleep the whole night through, Preston Black couldn't sleep the whole night through." He stopped and crossed his arms. "He'd lay in bed 'til the morning came, but the devil'd visit him just the same. Preston Black couldn't sleep the whole night through."

Right now I wished it was last Friday instead of this Friday and Pauly and me were good and I'd never found the record. And I wished it wasn't so cold.

The night sky looked bigger than I'd ever seen it. Stars practically dripped down onto the old wool in my hat. No wind blew, and the whoosh of the Blackwater River reminded me that even though the distance was less than a hundred miles, home was still very far away tonight.

My phone's blue LCD screen killed the bright starlight, ruining any wish I would've made. When I scrolled through my missed calls and saw I wasn't alone, some of my fear shrank. At the prompt I entered my PIN, waited for my voicemails and turned my back on the stars.

The metallic female voice said, "First unheard message received today at 9:47 a.m."

"Preston," Pauly yelled into the phone, "you fucking bastard. You got a lot of fucking nerve sneaking around the apartment. You're being a real pussy, you know that? How long 'til you grow the fuck up, huh? I ought to change the locks and rent out your fucking room. Call me."

Message deleted.

"Next unheard message received today at 11:32 a.m."

"God damn it, man. You're really going all in this time. Whatever. I'm on the road for a few days, so you can have the apartment all to yourself. Maybe when I get back we can sit down and talk about all this. Later."

Message deleted.

"Next unheard message received today at 4:42 p.m."

"Hello, Preston?" Dani's voice sounded so warm, like an April breeze that blows just before rain comes. Hearing it reminded me that winter would be over soon. "I miss you. I had a good time last night. I couldn't remember if we were supposed to do something tonight, so call me."

"Shit," I flipped my phone shut. Jamie and Katy chatted with Earl as he loaded himself into his van. Looked like they were waiting for me.

I made my way over to Jamie's old Subaru. Katy opened the back door.

"Take the front," I said.

"It's okay. I'm getting out first." She wore a hat with bright knit flowers on it and a scarf to match. Her brown hair framed her pink cheeks.

"Well, let me help you then."

She handed me her fiddle, a case so dainty compared to my guitar. She scooted in then reached for her instrument.

"Thank you," she said, smiling. Her pupils looked quite large in the dim glow of the dome light, making them seem like they were smiling too. She watched me for a long moment.

As soon as I sat down Katy poked her head between the front seats and held her mittens up, as if collecting phantom heat from vents that had yet to produce any. She smelled like ginger and vanilla. "Uncle Jamie, what's the deal with Earl and all that anyway?" She turned the stereo down until only the footprint of a song remained.

"Katy," Jamie cleared his throat, almost a tsk-tsk. "Maybe we can talk tomorrow."

"I'm heading back to town tomorrow. I won't see you... Maybe 'til spring break." She sniffled into a tissue.

Jamie squirmed, more nerved up than a rabbit at a dog show. He ran his fingers along his jaw a few times. I knew he'd never find a way to put it delicately. He jammed the car into gear and drifted through a break in a snowdrift on the berm.

I tried to help him out. "A few days ago I found a record at Isaac's."

Katy interrupted, "On Pleasant Street? I'm in there all the time."

"Really? I work at Mick's. You need to stop in some time. You a student?"

"Grad school. PhD. Mick always has to special order my stuff and always gives me a hard time about it. Anyway..." she said, like it was my fault the story wasn't progressing.

I said, "So I find this record with my name on the back. As one of the song titles. At the time it made a lot more sense, but I thought the guy might've been my dad. Like maybe the song was about me. Sounds stupid when I say it out loud."

"Preston," Jamie said, "it was a good hunch. And now you know. You don't have to wonder anymore."

"But eliminating Earl as a candidate means my dad is still out there somewhere." After a moment to think, I said, "You think Earl was holding something back?"

"I don't know. I'll take a look at my tapes and see what I can come up with. Either way, it's more than you had this morning."

We bounced onto a gravel side road. A light snow fell through the headlights, joining the old snow rotting along the edge. The dark blue night swallowed everything but what the headlights touched. Around a sharp bend we passed a pair of homes flanking a barn. From an old foursquare with a big porch, blue television images flickered into the yard, and I could see a single person sitting on a couch, watching.

Up ahead on the right sat another house, spotlights from the front porch shined into the old field between the house and the road. A pair of deer spotted Jamie's Subaru and froze.

Katy said, "You guys going to play any more tonight?"

"I suppose we could. You don't have to go home now?" Jamie slowed to a crawl at the top of the long gravel driveway.

"Did Aunt Izzy cook?"

"She said she made lasagna."

"I'll just have my Mom run over and pick me up after dinner then. If that's all right."

Jamie sputtered, a typical Jamie move, I discovered. He glanced at me, then looked back in the rear view mirror before I could meet his gaze. "I suppose."

Katy chirped until we got to Jamie's. She went on like one long Facebook status update until Jamie rolled to a stop in front of a long, wide porch. She didn't stop until I interrupted. "If it's okay I'm going to make a real quick phone call."

Katy retreated into the back seat like a kitten from a vacuum cleaner.

"You might be able to get a signal out here," Jamie said like he really, really hoped it'd be different than the rest of his life, when a snowball had a chance in hell of getting coverage.

"Really? So, sometimes you can get coverage here?"

Katy chimed in gleefully, "Jamie was just being polite. You won't get a signal out here."

I shut my phone off, waited, then turned it back on.

Searching for signal.

Searching for signal.

"You can use the house phone."

But once we got into the house and I saw the phone hanging on the wall in the kitchen, I declined. Jamie said nobody'd mind, but I couldn't see myself trying to flow to Dani while Jamie and his wife and niece ate lasagna.

After dinner we all pitched in to ret up, then Jamie led Katy and me into the basement. Instead of the busted Craftsmen circular saws and old croquet sets we had at home, Jamie had shelves of sheet music and old cloth-bound books about music theory and artists. He had shelves of CDs, cassettes and old reel-to-reels resting above a row of vertically stacked LPs, with small tags sticking out like hitchhikers' thumbs to keep them in order. In the corner to my right Jamie had a 24-track digital recorder and mixing board. Neatly arranged booms, some crowned with condenser mics, some with vintage mics, all waited patiently for the music to start.

The biggest wall held a curtain of musical instruments—more than a few fiddles, a half-dozen banjos, a quartet of mandolins, an upright bass, an autoharp, a bouzouki...

And guitars. Man, the guitars. I walked right up to a pair of Gibsons. In a floor stand Jamie had another Martin, this one much smaller than the D-28 I'd used all day long. The varnish had faded to the point where it had all but disappeared, perhaps it had simply been played away. This was Jamie's tool shop. These were his hammers and screwdrivers.

Jamie ran his finger along the rows of cassette tapes, pulled a few here and there, then did the same thing with the row of reel-to-reels. He saw me looking at the guitars and said, "Help yourself."

I picked up the little Martin. The wood felt soft, like parchment or an onion skin. I ran my fingers across the strings. The finish was light and sweet, like butter pecan.

Katy watched. I hoped she wasn't waiting for me to impress her, because I learned a long time ago the challenge of trying to impress a girl this way. After a few bars she pulled a violin off of the wall, put her ear close to the strings to check the tuning, then began to play a Celtic-sounding melody. She tapped her foot to the time I'd kept, but seemed to want to rush the beat.

"Jamie, you going to jump in?" She dropped the violin to her belly as I kept playing.

"Go on. I'm going to put some of these tracks on a disc for Preston." He licked his fingers and flipped through the pages of an old moleskin journal. He took a pencil from behind his ear and made a few notes. Then he stood up, without really looking up from his notes, and went back to the shelf. "Why don't you show Preston the 'Wildwood Flower'?"

Katy got right into it without putting up any fuss. She blew her hair away from her eyes and began playing a melody as sweet and syrupy as berry pie.

"C," Jamie said.

I quickly fretted the cord and finger picked along. When the chord changed I pretty much knew what came next and slid into a G.

"G7," Jamie corrected. "Is your record upstairs?" he asked, then jogged up the steps without waiting for me reply.

The second time around I thumbed the bass notes like I'd learned at the fire hall.

Jamie returned and sat down, put the LP on the turntable. A long-forgotten sound, the low hiss of a vinyl, rose from the speakers. He plugged in a set of headphones and held them up to his ear. After a minute or two he dropped the headphones into his lap, spun in his chair, and began to sing along with me and Katy.

"Oh, I'll twine with my mingles and waving black hair..." He pronounced 'hair' like it rhymed with 'fur'. Katy cracked up. When she laughed her hair fell back over her face. It'd been years since I saw somebody laugh like that. I laughed too.

With that, Jamie put his headphones on and spun toward the desk. I put the little Martin back in its rack and took the iced tea-colored Gibson off of the wall. It sounded louder than the little Martin, maybe even louder than the D-28. But it didn't come alive in my hands the way the 28 did.

"Sing something," Katy said.

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Something good. Something to wow me." I couldn't figure out whether or not she was being sarcastic.

I couldn't think of something that'd sound particularly good acoustic. My fingers slid into a Cadd9, and I inhaled. I strummed the chord, but before I could begin to sing Jamie dropped his headphones on the desk and spun his chair.

"Bingo. I have it."

"What?" Katy asked, her interest in my song thinner than a Chili Cheese Frito.

"The record. Even though his picture isn't on the front I recognized Jesse Currence's fiddle. He's not even listed on the inside. That lead me to a version of the song I recorded in 1984 up in Pocahontas County. When I thought Earl wrote the song I decided not to look at my notes. But the record—it's all on here."

"Really?" I asked, unsure if I wanted to hear more. What I'd already heard sounded bleak enough.

"It's a good news, bad news situation." Jamie looked at his notes like they'd done him wrong.

"Bad news first," I said, hanging the Gibson back up.

"I only have the same four verses Earl sang at the fire hall. The tape just cuts out. There's more to the song, but I either forgot to flip the tape, or... I don't know what happened. My notes say it's four minutes long, but there are only two and a half here." He looked like he genuinely felt bad about it.

"There's good news?"

"Yes, there is good news." Jamie's eyes widened. I'd only known him a short time, but never imagined he could get so animated. "The good news is we have provenance. Get ready for a road trip."

"Where to?" I said.

Jamie flipped his notebook shut, leaned back in his chair and folded his arms behind his head. "We know where Earl got the song from. And if we know the source, hopefully we can get the remaining verses. We're going to Pocahontas County to get the rest of the song."

He stood up and grabbed a fiddle. Just before he slung his bow across the strings, he said, "We're going back in time."
CHAPTER FIVE

I didn't sleep well, but at least I didn't dream. Instead of eating breakfast I had a few cups of tea. Jamie told me he had a few things for me, and led me downstairs. Last night, after Katy went back home, he put together a few more CDs. He said the songs were arranged chronologically, and I should listen to the CDs in that order to hear the progressions.

He set the discs next to a small stack of books, two or three years' worth of reading for me.

"Look here," he said, "some people think that a tree is the best way to illustrate evolution of a song. But it's really more like a flower bed. The roots are all intertwined, and a song that springs up in Braxton will sound different when it springs up in Lewisburg, and different still when it springs up in Virginia or Kentucky. The same seed stock begat each song, but different growing conditions change the final product. So a flower closer to the downspout gets more water, and maybe gets a little fuller and taller."

"And that's what these are?" I pointed to the discs.

"Uh, yeah. And then some that you just have to get to know. I couldn't stop myself." He grinned.

He put them off to the side, and then set the books on his lap. "Now these... I've noted important passages with note cards." He held the books up to let me see. "What you'll find interesting—at least I did—is the way the song is seeded."

Jamie got kind of quiet, kind of serious in a way that made me perk up my ears. He leaned in and lowered his voice so much that I had to meet him halfway to hear what he said. "Instead of coming from one seed, it comes from many. Like maybe it's been bastardized quite a few times. At least a lot more than most of the stuff I recorded. One version of your song goes back to 1229. Came from the Codex Gigas?"

He waited for me to acknowledge, but I shook my head.

"It's a famous book from Bohemia. It's said to have been written in one night by a monk who'd made a deal with Lucifer to avoid being walled up alive."

To show I was paying attention, I asked, "Bohemia?"

"Czech Republic," Jamie said, then told me we'd know more about the song later in the week. The song really didn't mean that much to me, especially since I was just looking for my dad. Maybe Jamie's enthusiasm kept me caring.

When I heard Katy knock at the door I stood up and stretched and shook Jamie's hand. "Thanks for everything. I really mean it. And, you know, it's okay if this doesn't really end up being fruitful. You know, the search?"

Jamie handed me the bag of books and recordings, then slid his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. "We're pretty close. By this time next week we'll have everything we need to put this to bed."

"Yeah, I understand. But I'm just saying I think I got more than I expected." I didn't want to say that maybe I realized who I was didn't depend on a song or my father. "Like, maybe if I started to focus on music instead of thinking the universe has it in for me, maybe then things would start to happen."

Katy waited by the door, tapping out her impatience on the bannister.

Jamie said, "I understand. Would you prefer that I didn't set anything up for this weekend?"

"No. Let's see where this goes. You've done a lot for me, and I owe it to both of us to see what we can learn."

Jamie agreed and continued to lecture while I got my shit together. My books and discs. My Tele, which—compared to Jamie's acoustic—seemed lifeless without an amp and a cord. Jamie and Isabelle each hugged Katy before giving her big care package to get her through another rough week in Mo'town. Jamie shook my hand.

"Thank you for everything," I said.

"And I'll call as soon as I find anything out. I'll be in town this week, so we'll leave from there. I'll bring the Martin for you." Jamie held the door while we stepped onto the porch.

"Thanks, but I have to take a look at what Mick has again. Maybe try to get something on my own."

"Nice. Let me know how that goes. If you want advice, just give me a yell, although I'm sure Mick'll have plenty." Jamie waved again, then shut his front door.

Katy slid into the driver's seat of her little Honda. I couldn't tell if it was silver or champagne from the salt crusted to the paint. On the back window she had a few stickers—WVU, of course, and Mountaineer Girl. There was a Black Bear Burritos sticker and one that said YMSB. I slid my stuff into the back seat next to her laundry baskets and groceries.

She backed the little car out of the driveway with all the grace of a tugboat pushing a barge through the lock. I tucked my hands beneath my armpits. We chitchatted as we passed through Davis and then Thomas. After a few more miles of polite small talk I asked, "Would it be rude if I checked my messages?"

She shrugged. "It's fine." Her tone implied she minded.

"I can wait."

"No, really, it's fine."

I flipped my phone open, waited for a sign from her to see that she'd meant it, then dialed up voicemail.

"First unheard message sent today at 9:03 a.m."

Dani.

"Hello, Preston? I'm thinking about brunch. Call me if you are interested. Goodbye."

She sounded sleepy. I struggled to recall her face and the way she looked at me.

Shit.

"Next unheard message sent today at 12:15 p.m."

"Maybe you didn't get my first call? I don't know. I have to go up to the library. Call me, or maybe we can meet this week. Goodbye."

"Shit." I snapped my phone shut with a bit more force than I'd meant to.

"Everything all right?" Katy said it like she'd take a little pleasure in hearing that it wasn't.

"I suppose. Keep missing somebody, that's all." Then I said, thinking out loud, "It's like the more excited I get about something the more I'm dooming it to fail."

"Sorry."

"It's fine. I should've waited to check. I didn't mean to make you feel weird. It's this girl—woman—I met this week." I watched the winter-weary landscape drift by. Fields that looked old, houses that looked even older. White mountains with a dusting of naked trees. With just a bit less color it would've been a black and white photo.

"Should've known it was woman troubles." She said it with excessive exasperation, mocking me.

I tried to laugh. "Are you making fun of me?"

"You think?" She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear, and went on, "I'm sure you have boxes filled with panties the ladies throw at the stage. We saw you guys play down at Mon Brewing a few times. Way to keep the Nineties alive."

"Ouch. Who pissed in your Cheerios?"

"You did. There are guys up here who would play you into the ground, but nobody's ever going to hear them because they aren't as pretty as you." She kept looking into her side-view mirror. At the speedometer. Anything to keep her eyes from drifting to the right.

I kept my mouth shut for a long time. Plenty of silent miles slipped by. I should've been okay to let it go. But that wasn't what happened. "You know, I work hard for what I have. And I'm not about to apologize for growing up in town instead of out in the boonies. So don't give me what for like you know what you're talking about."

"Don't be mad. I'm just playing." She turned on the radio, flipped through the static, then slid a CD in. "You're an easier target than I thought you'd be. I thought city kids had street smarts."

She looked at me, her blue eyes pleading, then smiling. "When I first got to Morgantown you played at the Nickel all the time. My friend, Chelsea, thought I had a thing for you. I always told her that you'd probably be arrogant. And here I was right all along."

"Lovely." We came past the waterslide at Marilla, all frozen and quiet. It felt good to be home.

"You guys playing there this week? Maybe I'll bring Chelsea down to meet you. Now that we've bonded and all."

"The band's done. Finito. I'm a solo act now."

"That's too bad. Well, if you ever get the itch to hang out with amateurs we're up at the coffee shop a few times a week."

"Starbucks?"

"You would think that. No, I prefer to patronize local businesses instead of filling fat corporate coffers. Mountaineer Doughnuts, up on Spruce."

"How high and mighty. But Mountaineer Doughnuts is hardly a coffee shop. A couple of guys putting in a stage and hiring baristas doesn't make it a coffee shop."

"Touché. Maybe there's a little more to you than I figured, Preston Black."

"That maybe Chelsea was right?"

"Never. I'd throw my panties at Pauly."

"Jesus."

"Where can I drop you off?"

"Mountaineer Doughnuts is fine."

"Okay. I made a mixtape for you."

"You serious? It's been years since anybody made me a mixtape, and this weekend I get two."

"Well, a CD. Just some stuff you may have never heard. Sara Watkins, Yonder Mountain String Band, Uncle Earl." She handed it to me with an apologetic smile.

"Thanks a lot. I'll listen to it today." I got my stuff from the back seat.

"Yeah, right." Katy tooted as she drove away.

I stood on the corner waiting for whatever would happen next. Walnut Street looked a lot different today than it did Friday night on my drunken stroll up High. The sidewalk felt a little slippy, so I shuffled my feet, my Tele acting like a counterweight to all of the material Jamie had loaded me down with.

I thought about heading straight to Dani's, but remembered she said she'd be up at the library. Pauly's message that he'd be on the road for a few days reminded me I had the apartment to myself. My stomach growled. The easiest thing would be to take it into the diner to see Mom. But she'd know I hadn't been talking to Pauly and ask a lot of questions and tell me how sin makes us a prisoner of Satan and all that.

Seemed like a lot of trouble for a cheeseburger.

Pauly had parked the Jeep on the side. Even though I knew he wasn't home I crept up the steps anyway. My shoes thudded against the bare wooden stairs. The click of the old deadbolt echoed through the naked hall. On the day we moved in, August sunlight had warmed the wood floor, so the whole place smelled sweet, a lot like Isaac's. Like an attic full of everything you ever loved. The drafty window at the end of the hall let winter blow right in. Winter killed that smell.

The lights were off, the TV asleep. The heat hadn't been run in a while. The sink stunk like dirty dishes, and the pizza box from the other night sat in the trash with my half of the pizza still in it.

I tapped open the door to his room with my foot. A pair of shirts hung over the closet door still wrapped in dry-cleaning bags. The embroidery on the patch above the pocket said 'Paul'. He had a picture of the three of us tucked into the mirror above the dresser. Paul and Stu and me at the Fayette County Fair. We thought we were on our way to a record deal and a big tour. Like driving up to Pennsylvania for a show was a big deal.

The fridge was empty. Not only was he still on the wagon, maybe he'd started a hunger strike too. In the freezer a container of halupki waited like that baby mammoth they found—encased in ice, furry. Somehow we could never get fifty bucks together for a microwave. Always had money for Jack, though. Maybe when we're dead and gone somebody'll take a DNA sample from the halupki and try to clone it.

The second-best cure for hunger is sleep, so I headed back to my room. Pauly had cleaned out the Jeep. He'd made a big pile of my gear right in the middle of my floor. My Fender Twin, a Marshall half stack, two Chico San milk crates full of pedals and processors, cables, an EMG 81 I'd put into the Strat that I sold to get the Twin. Looking at that pile felt like looking at a museum exhibit.

Tomorrow I'd sell it all.

These things were no longer essential to the way I made music. Stuff came and went. I sold my Strat for a ring. An opal. I'd never seen an item depreciate so fast.

A nine hundred dollar guitar bought a five hundred dollar ring which apparently wasn't worth the hand that had given it to her.

I sold my first car to pay a fine. Ironically, without the car I wouldn't have incurred the fine. And without the car the six month driver's license suspension didn't matter.

But all the effects pedals and amps and guitars were small potatoes. I'd sold my soul to play covers in a bar band. Might never get that back.

I undressed and kicked all my dirty clothes into a pile by the closet. I pulled Jamie's CDs from the bag, dropped one into my player and tried to fall asleep to the sound of fiddles speaking in tongues, their accents choked with mountain laurel and pine trees.

The fiddle buzzed like hornets in a soup can. A man's dissonant voice sang, "Preston Black couldn't eat and he couldn't drink. Preston Black couldn't eat and he couldn't drink. But he'd sit at the table all the same, waiting for handouts from wherever they came. Preston Black couldn't eat and he couldn't drink."

That first verse could've been about anybody else in West Virginia. I got all that stuff about metaphorical hunger. Like, maybe I hungered for affection, or I thirsted for spirituality or whatever. But the first verse didn't sell me on the song.

Jamie must've felt the same way, because when Earl sang it back in the fire hall Jamie didn't pay it much mind. But by the time Earl finished the second verse, Jamie looked at me like he'd just seen Elvis.

Another instrument came in on the second verse. Maybe a banjo. Not a crisp, hard banjo, like the one Bela Fleck played. I could almost hear fingernails grazing the head.

"He'd hide in bed 'til the morning came, but the devil'd find him just the same. Preston Black couldn't sleep the whole night through."

I hit REPEAT and let it play over and over. After a few more listens I didn't just hear my name just at the beginning of each verse; I heard it in every malnourished note.

Almost like the devil himself was singing about me.

I hurried and pulled the glass door shut behind me but still managed to let a little winter into the vestibule. Red offertory candles shivered in the cold air. For a second I stood next to the holy water, wondering whether or not I should bless myself.

Figuring it couldn't hurt I dipped my fingers then made the Sign of the Cross. "In the name of the Father, of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen."

Up front a small group of women prayed their rosaries. My grandmother used to be one of them. Their murmurs unsettled me when I was little, like they were saying something secretive and magical. When my grandmother died I stopped coming to mass, like maybe it wasn't so magical after all. The smell of the candles and the Stations of the Cross didn't mean as much to me now. The old church, pretty much unchanged since my thirteenth birthday, didn't seem to have the soul it used to.

Some people think talking about souls is old-fashioned, but that was the one thing I clung to after I stopped coming. The idea of a part of us that lives on after we die took away my fear and made the future seem a lot less scary. Like, even if Heaven or Hell didn't exist, I could buy into the idea of the soul being absorbed by the energy of the universe. As much as I liked to think I'd outgrown that superstition, I knew I wouldn't be here if some part of me wasn't still hanging on to it.

I slid into the pew without genuflecting. I didn't kneel and pray, and retrospectively got a little angry for crossing myself when I came in. Tried to tell myself it was just habit. Two people waited ahead of me for the confessional. The stained glass windows sparkled like fireworks. The low sun turned the tired window into neon emeralds and rubies. Cinema from a less-sophisticated time. If I looked long enough I could almost see Mary turn to me and smile. She watched over me while I waited. As soon as I went into the confessional she'd go back to looking at her newborn.

When my turn in the confessional came I got butterflies. After I pulled the door shut, in the dark, I said, "Hello?" I figured it didn't matter who spoke first, since I didn't actually come to confess.

On the other side of the screen the priest shifted.

"Father, I haven't been in here since—" I tried to think of a way to say it that sounded less like a lie. "I haven't been to confession since my confirmation. Sorry if I forgot how it goes."

When he spoke I realized the voice didn't belong to Father Turek. "That's not the best opening, but now you can just tell me why you're here."

"Why I'm here?"

"You know, the whole 'forgive me Father, for I have sinned' spiel."

I stared into the screen, trying to get a feel for the man on the other side. "Well, the thing is I'm not actually here to confess."

He said, "So you've been living without sin?"

"Ha. No, not exactly. But—and I know this sounds crazy—but I think I might actually have a bigger problem."

"Don't be so sure of forgiveness that you add sin to sin." His tone reverted, like he'd reminded himself of the serious business taking place in here.

For a while I didn't know what he was talking about, so I didn't say anything. But the darkness made the time pass like melting ice. Enough time to make me believe I'd made a mistake. "Sorry, man. I'm going to roll. I'm probably not supposed to be here for this kind of thing."

The priest slid the screen open. "Wait." He sat hunched over like he was three sizes too big for the small bench. The robe he wore looked funny because he was so young. "This isn't the appropriate place for a discussion, but we can talk in the office. You came for a reason, right?"

I didn't say anything.

"As soon as I hear confessions we can talk, okay? Promise you won't leave?" He used his youth pastor voice.

"I'll wait." I opened the door and went back into the church. But before I could sit he opened the door a hair.

"Were you the last?" He peeked through the small opening. The only other people were in the first few pews.

"Looks like it," I said, waiting to see what he wanted me to do.

He stepped out of the confessional and stretched. He had to be seven feet tall.

"Jeez," I said, a syllable shy of Jesus. "Basketball much?"

"I'm Father James," he said with a smile and a handshake. "Center at St. Vincent's in Latrobe."

I shook my head.

"What? Mr. Rogers' hometown?" He walked toward the stairs behind the altar. "Rolling Rock?"

"Yeah, Rolling Rock. That's right," I replied, wondering how a guy not much older than me could go the rest of his life without ever making love again.

"It's this way." He ran his thumbs along the outer edges of his purple stole.

"I remember. I served as an altar boy back in the day."

"For Father Anthony?" He nodded toward the women in the second pew. They were all deep in prayer. None noticed when he passed.

"No. Father Turek. I didn't last very long." Father James's height made me feel like I was ten years old again. We went around the altar and down the stairs to the basement. He asked me to wait in a wooden school chair at the old teacher's desk in the basement office. Returning to a scene that hadn't changed in seventeen years had the same effect as a time machine. I hated to admit it, but being in that building calmed me.

Father James returned. "Something to drink? Pop or tea."

"Tea sounds good." I took my coat off and laid it over my arm.

He filled an old teapot with water from a big plastic water cooler and placed it on a hot plate. "So, what could be a bigger problem than leaving the church? You may not like my tone, but I believe it's best to get to the point in situations like this."

"It's not the tone that bothers me. It's the way you talk to me like I'm in sixth grade. But I came to you for help, so I'm willing to put up with it."

He smiled and lowered his eyes. "You're right. I apologize. Usually I'm dealing with frustrated freshmen asking me to justify premarital sex and birth control. It's just an old routine."

He opened a cupboard and took out two mugs. "Cream or sugar? And it's skim milk, not cream. Don't know if that changes anything."

"Just a little sugar. Thanks."

He stood by the hot plate, waiting for the water to boil. He folded his arms and said, "So what's on your mind?"

Realizing that saying it made it real, I took a breath and started with the record and my dad and how those lead to the song which scared me because of the way it hit a little too close to home, especially the whole part about not having a mom or dad and not sleeping the whole night through. And then I added real quick a few lines about how I didn't really believe it, but I kind of did and I didn't know if it was real or if my mind just played tricks. I finished up by rambling about evil, hoping he'd get the gist of what I was saying without actually making me say it. I ended with, "I want to know about evil. Like the devil from the Bible. Like, does evil exist or do we imagine it?"

The teapot hissed, but the priest grabbed it off of the burner before it could scream. Steam rose from the cups and the priest tugged on the teabag strings to jumpstart the brewing process. He put a towel over the kettle, set a kitchen timer for four minutes and brought the mugs over to the desk. Instead of sitting across from me he sat in the other wooden school chair and stretched his legs. "St Augustine said, 'I sought the source of evil, and I found no explanation.'"

I nodded appreciatively. "Maybe I should've been more specific. It's my fault for not wanting to embarrass myself. I was more interested in hearing about the devil. Specifically."

Without taking the same thoughtful pause he'd taken before, he said, "Evil is a very active presence, not just the absence of good. Evil infiltrates us, perverts our way of thinking. Sin pushes us away from God. That's when evil attacks." The timer went off and he removed the teabags from the cups. "God is the source of all life, and sin cuts us off from God. Sin cuts off our source of life."

"Sorry." I held my hand up just short of waving him off. "It's hard for me to say this without sounding stupid. But I really wanted to know more about Satan I guess. Like, does the church think he's real? Can we lose our souls to the devil? Make deals with the devil and all that? Specifically, does the devil exist? Is he on Earth now? I guess that's specifically what I'm asking."

He blew into his tea. His reply took a long time to get to me. "Saint Paul said the Devil was 'the god of this world' and Christians don't have to be concerned about just one, but many devils."

He leaned forward, clasping his hands and resting his elbows on his knees. "The Devil was there for mankind's original sin, and the Devil knows how to work his way into our hearts through temptation, through our libidos, our urges and wants. When we get jealous of somebody. When you see a young lady and think about hopping into bed with her before you wonder what her name is. Any of the dark thoughts we have before drifting off to sleep. When we get drunk and say crude things about other people, we are widening cracks that let the Devil in. We defend ourselves by arming ourselves against sin. Grace and innocence make us powerful. Jesus teaches fasting and prayer as a way to protect ourselves from the Devil's methods. 'Be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.'"

I pushed my tea away and stood up. "Thanks a lot. I appreciate your time. I know that you have more important things you could be doing right now."

I buttoned my coat. "You know, I have no problem with good and evil and sin and all that. I know what you're saying. But fasting and praying won't change the record and the dreams. I don't need to know about penance and original sin. I need to know what I can do about this devil thing."

Father James didn't try to convince me to return to my seat. As I tightened my scarf he said, "In the desert Jesus kept Satan at bay by totally adhering to his Father's plan of salvation."

"So you don't really know?"

"Church doctrine is cloudy. Almost like it's hidden in the same darkness that hides the Devil himself."

"So that's it?"

"I've answered your question as thoroughly as I can."

"What do you think? You personally? Man to man."

Father James stood, and walked over to the sink. He held his teacup over the drain and flipped it over, shaking out the last few drops. He rinsed the cup out, wiped it dry with a paper towel, then said, "I've already told you what I think."

Before I left the vestibule I called Dani. No answer. I hung up as it went to voicemail, then called right back. "Hey, Dani? This is Preston. Sorry I missed you, I didn't expect to end up staying down there so long. I found out a lot and I'd love to tell you about it. Give me a call if you want to get together again. Maybe I can meet you in the library, if you're still up there. All right? Goodbye."

The only way I could get to the library or anywhere on campus—except for some of the frat houses and the bars up on Sunnyside—was by starting from the Mountainlair. I bundled up and crept forward in that general direction.

With my head down and my eyes shut to the wind, I shuffled. I felt a drunk coming on. A whiskey drunk. I wanted to smoke. Marlboros. I could feel the soft paper against my lips and could smell the match come to life. I could feel the smoke catch in my lungs. Making me cough a little. I'd watch the paper flake, then disappear into the night. Somewhere in the middle of all those thoughts my phone rang. Like my sour little prayer had been answered.

I knew before I even got the phone out of my pocket that it was Dani.

Her old Mercedes didn't feel quite as impressive the second time around. The seats weren't as warm. The windows weren't as clear. The music a little harsher. The company a little colder.

"I'm sorry you had to come into town. I didn't know there were two libraries." Saying it like that seemed to validate her frustration. "I would've hopped the PRT up to Evansdale if I'd known."

Asking her to run by the apartment first so I could grab a change of clothes and my Tele made me feel even smaller. I apologized as I got out of the car and ran up the steps. I threw a few clean shirts into the backpack with all the books and CDs in it. Right before shutting my door I noticed the notebook with all my songs in it sitting in a milk crate. And the record. I threw those into the pack too.

By the time I got back to the car she'd softened a bit. She said, "I haven't eaten all day. Are you hungry?"

"Let me take you out," I said. "Someplace where we can talk?"

"It's late, don't you think? Tomorrow I am driving to Hagerstown." A demand disguised as a question. "I've already ordered."

I hoped for pizza or Chinese. She'd called Edo Mama's and ordered sushi. Still wanting to honor my offer to take her out, I ran inside to pick it up. Forty bucks for raw fish made my neck hot. Forty bucks was most of what I had left until I sold my Marshall and pedals.

Up in Dani's apartment old floors creaked a meek welcome. Worn Persian rugs purred beneath my socks. The old electric light bulbs glowed like candles behind their dusty shades. She took my jacket and my bag and set them on the couch. I followed her into the kitchen and put the sushi on the table.

"Please, just sit. Tell me about your adventure." She poured water into a black, cast iron teapot and turned on a burner.

While she measured loose tea from a small paper sack I told her about Jamie and the fire hall and the song. She set small teacups at each place setting, nodding.

I could tell when somebody wasn't listening. When she returned to the cupboard I stopped talking about it altogether and asked her what she had to do in Hagerstown.

She composed a reply. "Nothing, really." Her voice trailed off, then picked right back up, like she'd talked herself out of feeling something. "More of the same. Contracts and deals."

I didn't say anything.

She raised her voice. "Translating books is not the only way I make money, Preston. I am free to choose whom I want to work with and the type of project. It may sound vain or proud, but I don't give a damn what people think when I take a job like this." The kettle whistled, and she slid over to the stove. She let the water sit a bit before pouring it through the tea leaves. She picked the teapot up by the handle with a cloth napkin and brought it over to the table. "I say let everybody write what she wants. Nothing at all matters until a writer puts it on paper."

She picked up a bit of eel with her chopsticks. "Critics think they are like gods—like I have to be grateful for their breadcrumbs. A world without writers and literature is a sad place. A world without critics is most certainly not. I remind myself of this often so I don't become bitter."

After a thoughtful pause, she added, "If it is not written on paper it never happened."

I sipped tea and listened while she picked through bits of tuna and salmon with fish eggs and mayonnaise and talked about books I never heard of. I didn't have an appetite for anything but the tea.

While she showered I drifted back into the living room. Faint singing rose over the hiss of the water. Her voice crackled like sunlight through fog. I took my Tele out of its case and settled onto her couch. After running through exercises and scales I tried to remember my song. But the phrasing and tone eluded me. It seemed simple—an A minor, an E, and a D. Or B7. Maybe the timing dragged a few beats; something sounded weird or off. As I played I sang, humming along, playing chords and variations of chords.

On the counter Dani's phone rattled to life, screaming like a baby with a dirty diaper. I stood up and looked at the incoming call. Clay. He must belong to the shirts and ties hanging in the closet. The guy from the Met the night I met Mikey. I told myself I didn't know her well enough to get jealous and went back to my guitar.

"Preston Black couldn't eat and he couldn't drink..." I sang, trying to get the rest.

Dani's singing from the other side of the door came to a stop. She let the door drift open. "Should we have something to drink?" she said, wearing a pair of white towels, one wrapped around her middle, one around her head. "I have a bottle of bourbon we can try. On the shelf by the refrigerator. Glasses are above the sink."

I got up and laid the Tele back in its case. She went from the bathroom to her bedroom, then back to the bathroom. I ducked into the small kitchen. Whiskeys, absinthe, schnapps and a scotch stood like kids in gym class hoping to get picked first. "Woodford Personal Selection?" I asked, giving each label a glance.

"That's the one."

I took two short, heavy-bottomed glasses from the shelf and poured three fingers into each glass. She walked in from the bedroom wearing dark blue pajamas, like a man's, but silk, and met me in front of the couch. She sipped a little, and said, "Mmm, it's very good? It is from a banker from Munich who invests for a consortium of horse breeders from Shelbyville, Kentucky. A very easy job." Dani looked deeply into her glass between sips. "Sometimes I don't feel good about doing so many contracts instead of novels, but it lets me stay."

I didn't follow. "Stay where? Here?"

"It's very important for me to remain invisible. I my name get around then I am 'on the radar,' and I'm not so ready to for that. Doing these jobs, where clients like to be discreet, lets me remain discreet."

"Like what?" I asked, "Immigration."

"Something like that." She sipped and savored the bourbon for a moment, then finally said, "Sundays always make me sad. It's guilt, I think." She tried to smile, but her thoughts got in the way.

"Sunday's when you're supposed to do nothing. Isn't that one of the big three?" I joked, but she didn't laugh. "Commandments?"

Disregarding my comment, she said, "First, we lined up in the coat room. During the winter the custodian kept the garbage cans in there so he didn't have to go outside. The smaller children needed help putting on their coats and scarves and mittens. In a line we'd go into the gray morning, happy to be outside. All of us in the same gray coats and scarves. The only color was our pink cheeks. Far below I could see Charles Bridge. I believed it had to be better on the other side."

Just listening to those few sentences made me realize how good I had it with Mom and Pauly. I muttered, "Singing was the only reason I liked church. I'd belt out all those old songs, especially at Christmas. The nuns told my mother I should be an altar boy. My mom didn't know for sure if I'd been baptized. Soon after she began inquiring, the priest asked her not to bring me back."

Dani smiled and went on with her own memories. She said, "Sometimes I miss the smells. Especially the candles. The beeswax smells like devotion, maybe? We always arrived early so the sestra could pray the Rosary. Always the same pew, always next to Christ's face is wiped by Veronica."

She took a moment to savor the memory. When her smile faded I asked, "What did they teach you about the Devil?"

"The Devil? Why do you want to know about the Devil?"

"It's been on my mind. I can't seem to shake the song."

She accepted the challenge with a smile. "The communists believed it was unhealthy to tolerate thoughts of the supernatural. All state art abided by their doctrine of social realism, which was meant to transform the spirit of the masses in a way that reflected the ideological rebirth of our nation."

She stared at her books like she could get answers from them with just a look. "But I always believed the Devil could exist one of two ways. He was either a malicious, magical force. Perhaps a formidable opponent to all but the most powerful saints. Or, maybe the Devil is a sophisticate, one who leads a literate and lavish sort of life. You know, he prefers fine food and drink and art and rich fabrics."

Like you, I thought, then immediately felt horrible for thinking it.

She took my glass and went into the kitchen for more bourbon. "Some Czechs, like our president Václav Havel, defied the party and wrote what they wanted to write. Havel wrote Pokoušení—Temptation. It's like Faust?"

I shrugged.

"In Pokoušení, a scientist, Foustka, practices black magic. It is all very biting and satirical, but Havel meant to show how the people maintained their beliefs despite the regime's attempts to suppress them. The devil is an informer named Fistula—means, like a birth defect, but sounds like Mephistopheles. Foustka seduces Marketa with eloquent words he learns from Fistula. But to keep pursuing black magic he must lie to everybody by claiming to be an informer also."

Her hands poked and jabbed the air like a cat toying with a mouse. "When Marketa speaks up on his behalf, to protect him, Foustka does not defend her. He cannot take a side. He has no convictions. And when he falls, he finally understands, saying that he was arrogant and he thought he could exploit the devil without signing away his own soul. But he learned the devil cannot be deceived."

I asked, "How is that different than the original Faust?"

Dani replied, "Faust was not cast into hell because his intentions were not purely malevolent or selfish. That is how he sidestepped his contract. In Pokoušení, Fistula says if the devil exists, he must exist in ourselves. A very different ending. But still I admire Havel. He is an excellent choice for our first president. He is proud, just like Prague. He is artistic, just like Prague. He is an achiever, and he is admired, just like Prague."

She kept talking, and I watched her, afraid that if I took my eyes off of her for even a second she'd disappear. I stared at her, unblinking almost, until she fell asleep at the other end of the couch. Then I poured myself another.

Only after I finished that drink, and another after that, and then one more, did I finally fall asleep myself. At some point Dani got up and covered me with a warm quilt, then went into her bedroom to sleep.

"Remember, no matter who wins or loses, this is a game. ABC News in New York City confirms this unspeakable tragedy..."

Tender little rye seedlings poke up through cracks in the sidewalk. Waist-high rye stretches down Central Park West and down 78th, rustling as cars roll through.

Nothing is real. This is my statement.

All these little kids playing tag in the rye, stomping it into the concrete.

The seedlings tickle my cheek.

I'm sure the large part of him must be Holden Caulfield, who is the main person in the book.

The small part of him must be the devil.

Maybe he was the type of guy who could get a bang just buying a Charter Arms .38 Special revolver. Nothing like a few bullets in the back just to find out where the ducks went in winter. Nothing phonier than bleeding to death on a cold sidewalk while the city goes on like nothing happened.

Four bullets. Just to make sure I'm dead. Seems like three too many.

Like I ever stood a chance. They all thought my world ended on a cold rooftop above Westminster one January a long time ago. Better than a cold sidewalk, just steps from my front door. Holden Caulfield has to grow up some time. Sooner would've been better than later. This morning would've been better than tonight.

Somebody will cry tonight. A wife, a son, at least. Maybe more. Somebody will miss me when I'm gone. Somebody will watch a cop car roll by, wondering 'Will he make it?'

New York City. Bleeding where whores shake and kids make. Central Park West where I lay me down to sleep. So far from Mimi and Mendips.

Don't let me down.

When they run past me to the cliff, I let them all fall. Nobody bothered to catch me. Not even St. Luke.

"Hard to go back to the game after that news flash."

John Lennon couldn't eat and he couldn't drink.

John Lennon couldn't eat and he couldn't drink.

Nothing's going to change my world.

Dolphins win.
CHAPTER SIX

Cold water rushed down the drain. The ambient glow from the streetlights brought just enough brightness into the bathroom to let me see my face half-illuminated in a dusky blue light. I had to walk the dream off.

The cold NYC sidewalk on my cheek gave me a chill. I heard sirens, saw city lights reflected in the windshields of cars on Central Park West. Yoko screamed. I even felt them lift me into the cop car. All I knew was that we were headed to Roosevelt Hospital. Christmas lights and wreaths drooped from some of the poles, but not all of them. Then I woke up.

I felt a hangover steeping in my gut. I thought maybe I could make myself throw up. The sulfur from Chapman's bullets bit the back of my nose, stuck to my sinuses.

My breath came back to me in the living room. I lay on the couch to sleep. I didn't want to wake Dani up. But out in the kitchen I heard somebody rummage through a cabinet. I rubbed my eyes and stretched and went out to apologize to her.

"Preston," John Lennon said in a very narrow voice, "Have a seat." He poured brandy into a second glass and pushed it across the table. John looked just like he did when he played Instant Karma on Top of the Pops. His hair had just been cut short and he seemed agitated, like the primal scream therapy hadn't kicked in yet.

I almost asked what he was doing here and he said, "If you knew he'd shoot, why didn't you stop him?"

My reply got caught in my throat like a hiccup, and I took a quick drink to ease it out.

Lennon said, "If it was you on the sidewalk and me on the street I'd have let you know. It's the right thing to do, right?"

"But I didn't know. I thought he was one of us."

"Oh, I see." John took a drink. He held the glass by the stem and swirled the brandy around. "One of us, huh? Like you, me, us, 'one of us'? Or one of you 'one of us'? Big difference, you know."

"I know. I meant just one of the crowd. Like, as harmless as any of us."

"That's a bit like saying he's one of us murderers and thieves, only more so." He drained his glass and poured himself another. He held the bottle toward me.

I finished mine and tipped my glass toward him.

He went on, "We're all Hitler inside. We're all Christ inside. I'm not keen on the idea, but it's true, isn't it? We've all got a little bit of the devil in us."

"I guess. I always thought it was just me. Before the song and all this, it wasn't so complex. I played my music and tried to be decent."

I could tell by the way he leaned over the table he'd grown frustrated with me. He struggled to keep his voice low so Dani couldn't hear. "That's just it, though, what've you done besides just being yourself? If you'd have seen the gun would you have tried to stop him?"

"If I'd have seen the gun I would've jumped on him and held him on the ground. But I didn't see it. I wasn't even there. I'm sorry." I felt really horrible. Like I was personally responsible for his murder.

"It's too late now, isn't it? I mean, I'm over here, all... And you're over there, all..."

"I know. I wonder what it would've been like if they could've saved you at the hospital?"

"What it would've been like? Is that really what you mean? Or did you mean to say, 'would we have gotten back together'? That's all anybody wants to know. But none of it matters, I suppose."

He was mostly right, so I didn't say anything.

"Look, if you have to smile when you don't want to smile you do it, because nobody gets hurt, right?" He pushed his glass away, like he was finished, so I did the same thing. "But when somebody's going to pull a gun, or push your girl in front of a train or steal your mum's purse you have got to make a choice whether you want to get involved or not. It's not as easy as forcing a smile."

I nodded.

"Nodding is the same as smiling. It's easy. The hard thing would've been to have kept your friend Stu from leaving."

"I tried. I begged him, man. I went up to the university and got him info on the GI Bill. He'd made up his mind all ready."

"So you saw the gun, but didn't try hard enough to stop it going off. What'll you do when you have to stop a bullet from getting your brother?"

"Are you telling me something is going to happen to one of them?"

He scratched the stubble on his chin. "Let's just say I'm showing you the gun."

He stood up and pulled his scarf tight. I wanted to shake his hand but he walked by like I was going to ask for an autograph. I followed him to the front door. On his way out he said, "Do you remember what Jimi said?"

I didn't know who he was talking about.

"Didn't think so. What if you saw the gun and it was pointed at you?" His eyebrows went up above the rim of his glasses.

The steps creaked as he made his way down. He shoved his hands into his front pockets just before disappearing into the darkness.

I went into the bathroom, shut the door, and with the light still off, tried looking into the mirror.

After a few minutes Dani knocked.

"It's open," I said, afraid of my voice, and sat on the edge of the tub.

She sat down next to me without saying anything. For a few minutes she just rubbed my back. Soft strokes along my shoulders. When she got up to leave she held her hand against my cheek for a moment. She said, "I have to get ready."

I studied the septic patterns of spearmint and blue sky tiles in the floor for another minute. Thinking about the dream made me remember that I loved Pauly and had to call him. Sooner, rather than later, before the rift turned into an ocean.

Click to read the rest of  THE DEVIL AND PRESTON BLACK.

Read an excerpt from

HELLBENDER

BY

JASON JACK MILLER

copyright © 2012 by Jason Jack Miller

Published by Raw Dog Screaming Press

Bowie, MD First Edition

Cover: Cover design elements and typography by Hatch Show Print, Nashville, Tennessee, a division of the Country Music Foundation, Inc.

Book design: Jennifer Barnes

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-935738-27-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012937685

www.RawDogScreaming.com

Heidi,

This dream is ours to hold, to keep, to write as only we can.

Ethnographer's Note

The first thing you have to understand about the Appalachian use of natural material for protection and bewitching is that the practice is not a fiction. The methodology didn't originate in the imagination of some fantasy novel author. Lead can't be turned into gold by the wave of a wizard's hand. A sorcerer cannot produce a fireball to slay an orc. In fantasy fiction, a person's magical abilities can result from special circumstances of their birth—planets align, ravens arrive with the midwife, a mysterious birthmark appears, etc. The Appalachian _Encyclopedia Fascinatica_ crossed the Atlantic as part of a tool kit that included the moldboard plough and the wheel. In other words, my people use hexes and herbs like a carpenter uses a hammer. In most cases, oral tradition is responsible for a majority of the knowledge passed along through the generations, especially amongst the Irish Celts, where the Roman imposition of Christianity made maintaining a vast body of concrete material dangerous. But some printed works do exist, most notably John George Hohman's _Der Lange Verborgene Freund_ and _Clavicula Salomonis_ , or _The Key of Soloman_. My people are in possession of both of these books, although I have not been permitted to examine them.

In my immediate family the use of old magic was somewhat suppressed by my father's decision to marry a woman from southwestern Pennsylvania rather than West Virginia. 'Kitchen' magic is typically passed from mother to daughter in the same way that recipes are, and my mother, a Slovak Catholic, was not part of that line. Therefore, my sister learned at a young age how to milk an ax handle and knock witches from my grandmother, aunts and cousins the same way I learned to skin a deer and tune a fiddle from my grandfather. But even when I did see my grandmother dowse for water or pull fire from a wound, it was as natural to me as seeing a full moon or a rainbow.

Eventually, my sisters learned to integrate my mother's Roman Catholicism into their grimoire, most notably at Old Christmas, which falls on January 6, The Epiphany. The stubborn folk of the British Isles refused to accept Rome's imposition of a new calendar upon them, thus maintaining Old Christmas on its original, true date. In Wales, the Glastonbury Rose is even said to bloom at midnight on Old Christmas as a reminder that this is the correct night of Christ's birth. A few hundred years later, we have a date where Christ's birth and the arrival of the Biblical Magi coincide (it should also be noted that The Miracle at Cana, Christ's first, occurred on this day) and my sister has incorporated frankincense, gold and chalk into her Old Christmas rituals. The first two materials remind us of the journey undertaken by the Magi, and the chalk is to inscribe _K † M † B †_ —the initials of Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, and the phrase _Christus mansionem benedicat_ on door lintels so the house may receive blessings. In Appalachia, elder bushes bloom at midnight in lieu of the Glastonbury Rose, and in barns all over the mountain the animals present in the manger on the night of Christ's birth cry out to announce the arrival of the Savior in recreation of the event. (I must make a point to reprimand the author for his portrayal of Old Christmas in the novel, and should caution readers to refrain from attempting to observe such activities themselves. In a well-known case from Harmon, West Virginia, Neil Yokum woke up blind and mute on the morning of January 7, 1978, after his footprints were found in the new snow leading into his uncle's barn.)

In Appalachia, these practices exist as a response to an unfriendly environment, where even today a hard snow can isolate a family for a week or more. Springs still run dry or go bad, leaving a household without water, and food stores can be ruined by rats or leaf rust. Snake bites and animal attacks can kill or maim a person long before proper medical help arrives. Maintaining traditions is survival, and as vital to a family as a knowledge of canning vegetables and distilling their own spirits. Nowhere is this as important as when protecting a family and homestead from witches and other dark forces. SATOR Squares, like the ones mentioned in the book, are protection spells at their most basic. Typically they are placed above windows and doors to keep evil away. (This practice of protecting the lintel isn't solely an Appalachian one. My mother's grandmother's family places a turkey wishbone above the door to attract suitors for unmarried daughters, a Slovak custom.)

The power of a SATOR Square extends beyond protection of the home. A cow that has been bewitched, and is giving bloody milk or has stopped giving milk altogether, can be made to eat a piece of paper upon which a SATOR Square has been written. Similar charms, such as hex signs, have been used for protection amongst some members of the Pennsylvania Dutch community, although the current trend amongst scholars is to suggest that the hexes are merely decorative and contain no magical power. In an article I wrote for West Virginia University's annual _Appalachian Voices_ conference a few years ago I hypothesized that the community's waning use of hex signs is directly related to the rise of violent crime and demonic possession amongst some Pennsylvanian and Ohioan sects.

Protection from witches is a fairly straightforward practice, primarily consisting of keeping very personal items out of a witch's possession. Burying things, like old clothing or hair clippings, in secret, sheltered locations is crucial so that the witch cannot possess a part of you, yielding ownership of such a personal item leaves your spirit open to attack. Most hair magic is the result of carelessness—the victim simply didn't know enough not to keep hair (or fingernail clippings, in some cases) out of a witch's possession. In North Carolina there is a belief that if a bird uses even one of your hairs to build its nest, you will go insane.

But protection from dark spirits is an entirely different matter, contingent upon the type of entity and the degree of fragility of a soul, the most frail being the newly departed. The Appalachian tradition of Sitting with the Body is a way of protecting a person from the forces that may try to corrupt the individual before receiving a proper burial. This practice originated in a time when viewings and wakes took place in the home of the newly deceased and three days were needed to properly prepare the departed. Wooden planks were laid across a pair of chairs and ribbons were used to bind the legs, cross the arms and keep the jaw from opening before the body stiffened. All mirrors in the house are turned to face the wall, denying evil an opportunity to enter. The person sitting with the body places a clean dinner plate covered half with salt and half with fresh earth on the newly deceased's chest for protection.

Close family members are particularly susceptible to entanglement by evil forces during a Sitting, so the person waiting with the body should be somebody who isn't kin, preferably a close family friend. One of the most famous Sittings I know of happened shortly after my parents were married. My mother was asked to Sit with a cousin, Martin Collins, who died in a sawmill fire down in Spruce. Some say it was an accident, but my grandmother said that Mary Lewis had been openly courting Martin for weeks. I personally question how any fire that starts in an open air mill during a hard April rain can realistically be called an accident, but I wasn't there.

The body was brought to my grandparents' home and my mother—reluctant as she was—received very specific instructions to flip the mirrors and maintain the plate of earth and salt on the body. She wasn't supposed to sleep, and various people from the community arrived throughout the ordeal to keep her company and bring food. My mother never said a word about the occurrences of the Sitting after the funeral, but Luther Brownfield said he had to help her pull the body away from the doors and windows several times each day and Sarah Cowger said she heard "... the ground cry..." whenever she took food up to my mother. I personally remember helping my grandpap pick embedded shards of mirror out of the walls when I was a kid. Even after they painted and put up wallpaper, bits of mirror continued to surface, as if drawn out by a magnet. I can also recall my grandmother using throw rugs to hide scorch marks on the floor where the body sat.

The following year my mother gave birth to her first child. My older sister, Kathryn, died before she ever turned two. Some say it was retribution for my mother's own life, which had been spared during the Sitting. Some say it was Mary Lewis, who wanted Collins blood for Lewis blood.

As an ethnographer, I try to remain unbiased in my approach to matters of the supernatural. I know that my people have a propensity for exaggeration that can sometimes render first-hand accounts of events unusable. Superstition and habit make it hard for them to see things as coincidental. Amongst older folks especially, if rain is prayed for and it rains, then by God it rained because of the prayer.

There are those events that I have seen myself, circumstances for which science has no plausible explanation. I try my darnedest to keep a foot in reality, but I have experienced several proceedings in my life that have left me without words. I fear it would strain my reputation and academic credibility to discuss them here, in this format. So for now they remain with me as they always have, with the understanding that there's plenty of room in the space between what is real and what isn't. I know that some of my people have found a way to work within that space, because I've seen it myself. And I am a very credible witness.

Jamie Collins, Davis and Elkins University

HELLBENDER

If I could've carried her by myself, I would have. But just the weight of the pine and spruce box was more than I could bear alone. The linens that covered her body and her clothes, the last she'd ever wear, made her heavier. The coins that covered her eyes added a few ounces more.

I could've carried her, by herself, forever.

January wasn't a kind time for a burial, but we don't get to choose. Old Christmas hid the sun behind a flat gray wall of clouds. January has a way of taking a person's optimism and crushing it beneath its bony heel.

I'd take June, when long days kept wayward pessimism at bay for just a few hours more. When blackberry blossoms spilt over old stone fences while young rabbits got fat and lazy. I'd take Summer Solstice over Old Christmas any day.

But we don't get to choose.

The procession left my front yard. Six pairs of feet tested the driveway's stiff gravel like it was new ice on a pond. The spindly trees lining the road could care less about my grandfather, who led us all with slumped shoulders and red eyes. He forced a shuffle, all alone, except for Champ, his old collie.

Ben, my cousin, was next to me, even though I couldn't see him for the casket. The box trembled as he cried. He'd been depressed since he got back from Afghanistan last year. At Christmas he finally started to smile again, and hasn't smiled again since.

My dad had fallen toward the back of the line. He was coming off a real good drunk and was working hard on his next one. I couldn't blame him. He used to be able to shoot a nickel off a crow's back. This morning I had to remind him to put on a coat.

We paused after stepping onto the worn-out lane, which led to my grandfather's house, before crossing the Blackwater and ending up in Davis. I shifted in the gravel—my bare feet relished the sensation of pain after the dull cold of the front yard. I left my shoes because I remembered how Paul went barefoot on the ABBEY ROAD cover. I must've thought it was traditional, or symbolized mutual suffering, or whatever. But standing here, without shoes on, I realized Paul was the corpse, not the pallbearer. I looked at my shuffling feet on the cold ground, then to my pap. He turned briefly, shrugged his shoulders, then surveyed the remainder of the procession. At his signal, the twine of two lonely violins split the afternoon, playing notes I vowed I'd never learn. My cousin, Katy, rolled her fiddle bow weakly across the strings, like flowers blooming too early in the season. My uncle, Jamie—Ben's dad—propped her up with his own playing.

We all walked to an easy rhythm, pallbearers' footfalls counting out a beat for the fiddlers to play to. My bare feet felt every note, accenting the downbeat of their mournful drone. Numb to everything else, my toes blistered and bled on the road, the longest I'd ever known. Past fields too tired to be plowed. Past a colorless stream too sad to see itself out of the valley. Past houses that sheltered frequent turmoil and suffering and up a hill to a hole in the ground where for one of us, days would end.

Katy and her mom, Rachael, Sat Up with the body for the customary three days, which was fine by me. They were way more capable than me of dealing with the kind of evil that could pursue a recently departed soul. Besides, three days was just about how long it took to dig a grave in West Virginia in January. The calluses on my palms confirmed it.

One evening to build a bonfire.

One night to let the coals thaw the frozen earth.

One day to dig.

Then again the next night. Then once more.

My poor hands proved the stubbornness of the rocky earth better than any words could. My cousins offered to dig, but it had to be me and Ben, who'd learned a thing or two about digging graves since he'd enlisted. My mind needed the routine of labor to steady itself against the storm spinning within it. My soul, by far my weariest appendage, bowed and snapped when I heard the news that my sister had died.

_Air without scent, hills without color, a life without her kind words_...

I prepared a eulogy for Janie as we walked. But the same sentence kept playing over and over in my head, and it embarrassed me that I couldn't think of more.

By the time we arrived at the family plot a light snow began to fall. My aunts had placed wreaths of spruce and ivy at intervals along the old wrought-iron fence. They'd placed fresh boughs of white pine on the grave of my grandfather's little sister, Sarah, and on the grave of his oldest daughter, Katherine.

_Women in this family sure don't last very long_ , I thought as the procession filed into the space around the graves.

At the far end of the plot, beneath an old cherry tree, lay the grave that Ben and I dug. The ground was more cobbles than soil and we did our best to separate the stones from the soggy earth. I stopped at the foot of Jane's grave, and stared into the hole as we waited for the others to catch up.

My Aunt Rachael and her youngest daughter, Chloe, raced to relight the white candles that the wind had blown out. Some of the mourners carried candles of their own, holding the flame close to their faces for extra warmth. The yellow glow on their cheeks made the sky seem especially dark.

It was a small group of people, almost all of them family from my dad's side except for Rachael's beau, Roy Lee Fenton, and just one of Jane's friends from school. Nobody really knew my sister. I can't even say that I did. I wanted to, and even tried on a few occasions. But she left the mountains as if she knew something we all didn't. Running from that which would inevitably kill her. Content to live in a small apartment off-campus in Morgantown, she severed almost all of her ties with our family and these mountains. The few sniffles I heard were more for the tragedy of a life lost than the sorrow of losing a loved one.

Sad for the body, not the person. Sad for ourselves for not making a greater attempt to reel her back into our lives. Maybe with the void her death created we realized we should've called and had coffee even when the inconvenience was too great. I was most sad for finally realizing I'd failed as a brother.

Ben and I climbed into the wide hole to direct the casket. This morning's mud had already refrozen. My other cousins stood at the edge of the grave and guided the box down to us. Roy Lee Fenton and a couple of cousins held onto the back of the casket to make sure its descent was fluid and slow. Ben and I gently placed my sister on the ground between us.

Jamie reached down to help Ben out. When he offered his hand to me, I couldn't take it.

I touched the coffin, made from a straight-grained plank of red spruce that Jamie had been saving to carve a fiddle. There were no knots on it, no blemishes, and Jamie would've burned it to see his niece alive. Never again would Jane and I share anything, let alone the same view. I pulled an old thistle from my pocket. I set it on the casket. The purple had faded a long time ago. Jane always thought they were especially pretty, and had a little pewter thistle necklace she wore. It turned up missing after she died.

"C'mon out of there, son," my grandfather said.

I stared up at them from that grave, a hole so deep I wondered how I'd ever fill it. Tiny candles threw upward shadows onto the mourners, leaving me unable to see their eyes.

My grandfather spoke as I accepted Ben's hand. "When somebody begins life on an ill-fated path, there's little that the rest of us can do, except watch. This woman never had a chance. She's part of a bloodline that knows hard times. Like my little sister and my little girl, Jane left us not knowing that life can be fair, that people can be just. She left the world as scared as the day she came into it, and for that, we remember her."

My dad leaned against the fence and stared at the cold, dry ground. His eyes were red from the whiskey. Rachael had her arm around him.

My grandfather nodded to Jamie, who led the men back to the house. The procession took its good old time as uncles and cousins paid their respects to my old man. I wasn't ready to say goodbye. It wasn't fair that only the women could stay.

"C'mon." Ben tugged on my elbow.

Aunts and great-aunts and cousins stepped aside as Ben and I passed. Nobody cried except for Jane's roommate, Alex. I always liked her, but Jane said she was off limits. Said I'd 'ruin her.' She was a 'little too country' for me. Rachael took her by the arm and told her to go with the guys into the house. The faint smell of lilac and lavender scented perfumes cut through the chill.

The women chanted old words I barely recognized. On the icy breeze I caught a whiff of spring even stronger than their perfumes had been. I turned, and saw the women pulling sprigs of ferns and thistle from their jackets. Boughs of red spruce and bright green oak leaves. Apple blossoms.

Ben said, "Don't look, man. Just let it go."

Painted trillium. Closed gentians. Indian paintbrush, blood red against the white light of Old Christmas Eve. Cherry blossoms burst open in a holler of muted pink from the tree above Jane's grave. But Old Christmas was just a belief my kin upheld. Just like their Irish ancestors, they believed the Holy Spirit chose the night of the Epiphany to manifest itself on Earth in the form of blooming flowers and God knows what else. But I didn't believe that any more than I believed the sheep chose this night to tell what they saw in the manger the moment Jesus was born.

"Flowers," I said, walking back toward the plot.

"I know. But you know what tonight is. I don't chew cabbage twice, so just leave it."

The amber glow of the wake called to me from the old farm house. Inside those walls my grandfather and uncles and cousins poured whiskey, plated food and exchanged heartrending looks. Jamie tuned his fiddle. Going from cold to warm like that wasn't good for an instrument, but he didn't fuss at all.

"Don't make me go in there, man." My pap's cattle watched from the field below, braying and breathing huffs of steam.

"Let the ladies do their thing. C'mon, man. Be strong, okay?" Ben threw his arm over my shoulder, gripping me in an embrace that solidified his anger and sadness. "She was like my sister too."

"Easy, Ben." I pushed him off me. "Let me have this, all right?"

"I'm fucking tired of it." Ben clenched his teeth. "It ain't fair what that Johnny Bull and his whores are doing. We can't let them get away with this."

"It's not a curse, Ben. It's chance. It's just how things are. She drowned, nobody drowned her."

"And Durbin's downstream..." He shook as I talked, getting angrier rather than sadder.

I said, "We have to understand that. I'm tired of this feud shit with the Lewises and all the hexes and spells. We have to..."

Rachael turned her back to Ben and me as the women blew out their candles. Their chanting grew louder and their circle tightened a little. Mid-winter dusk let a muddy light trickle into the bare forest and fields that ran down to the Blackwater. It was an unpleasant light. Katy, the oldest of all my cousins, handed her tiny fiddle to her little sister as the circle tightened.

But there was enough light to see Rachael scrawl Jane's name onto the temporary tombstone with a piece of chalk, cross it out with a hunk of coal ash, then moisten her finger and write Katy's name in the ash.

From the house came the wail of Jamie's newly-tuned violin, as loud as I'd ever heard it. Ben pushed me toward the back porch.

"Get off me," I said, almost ready to fight.

"No. We can't see this shit. You know the deal."

There was enough light to see Katy strip off her heavy coat and slip a thin white gown over her shoulders before climbing down into my sister's grave.

"You boys get in here now. Ben..." My grandfather called from the back porch. Champ barked and stepped into the yard. "Get back here, boy! Let's go Henry. I hain't telling you again."

Ben pulled me through the yard. The drone of violin made it too loud to hear anything else. The smell of food pushed through the evening. The promise of warmth made me feel guilty for leaving her in the cold ground.

My pap slammed the door behind me. But he wasn't quick enough. I'd heard it. Despite the barking dog and the chatter, despite the noise Jamie played as a distraction, I heard it.

Katy screamed.

My cousin's cry was more horrific than the wail of a cougar ruminating over the loss of a cub. Her cry was louder than the roar of the Blackwater after a spring thaw.

The assembly of men inside the house clapped and sang to drown out Katy's shrill screams, loud enough to speak to the dead.

_Loud enough to speak for the dead_. I'd heard Katy's words and knew what they meant.

Katy was crying the tears Jane cried on the night she died. Katy was meant to cry for all of us.

No matter how tightly I pulled my coat the cold air found its way to my skin. Ben and I were bundled up pretty good, but the night made no apologies.

"Hand me down them big ones first. Everything's going to settle after the ground freezes and thaws a few times."

"I don't think it matters. Just let me take the rocks from the top. We should've been done already," Ben said. His words smelled just like Jameson.

"It ain't so much about the rocks. All right? I don't care about the rocks. I just don't want you dropping one on me. Got it?" I'd been arranging the stone like pieces of a puzzle, trying my best to interlock them.

The night had calmed considerably. The flurries had ceased. There was no wind. But the clunk of the rocks and Ben's chatter were like a band saw buzz to my haggard nerves. I didn't have the luxury of intoxication.

Ben said, "We have to finish up before midnight."

"Jesus, Ben. How fucking old are you? Stop it with that nonsense. What do you think you're going to hear? Huh? Animals talking? I'm tired of this mountain superstition bullshit. Shit like this is why I'm leaving and never coming back. Never. Don't care if it's a wedding or another funeral. I'm never coming back here."

"I don't believe you, Henry. Not for a second." He said my name like he'd have said a swear word. "You're telling me—"

"Maybe it's my turn for once." I began pulling rocks from the pile myself. "I'm telling you, don't be surprised if you wake up one morning and find I'd split." "You don't mean it." Ben handed me another rock. "Where would you go?" "I don't know. Maybe it's time to find myself some new mountains."

Ben took another swig of scamper juice from my grandpap's old flask.

"Put that shine away. Have some respect." "Respect? I have respect, Henry."

"Then why are you saying my name that way?"

"Because respect, in this instance, means doing right by your sister. Respect means that you get proactive and find out what the hell really happened." Ben teetered at the lip of the hole. It was too cold, the air too dry, to see his breath. "If I ever catch Lewis by himself I'm going to gut him and skin him like a buck for all the shit they pull—"

"This isn't the work of any Odelia Lewis curse. It was an accident. And don't go putting ideas in my dad's head. Because he's going to end up in the slammer. I swear, if you don't cut out that Lewis-feud shit he's going to fly off the handle and hurt somebody. So give it a fucking rest already, will you?"

"C'mon, Henry. She drowned? Just like Grandpap's little sister and baby girl drowned in the river? That's got Odelia Lewis written all over it. Our people live so long we'll all be knocking heads come Judgment Day except for when Odelia Lewis gets fixated on revenge. Grandma said she ran a whole congregation out of Alpena. She got it in her head they had cheated Charlie over some timber and in a matter of months every person in the entire congregation had moved out. That's some fucked up shit. What if that's why Jane never came back here? She knew they'd get her. Maybe Morgantown wasn't far enough away?"

"Stop it. I wish, for just once, somebody around here would put all that bullshit aside and—"

Ben interrupted. "Well, you can wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one gets filled the fastest. Just listen. What if the curse had something to do with your mom leaving? Why else would she run all the way down to Florida like green corn through the new maid if she wasn't afraid somehow she'd be next?"

"Ben. Please."

"I'm just saying..."

"Not now. All right? Yeah, I'll do something about it. But not right now. I think I deserve some peace."

"I'm not saying you don't deserve a break. But Jane—finding out what happened is the only way to protect Katy and Chloe and the rest. We need to consider every option."

"I will. Just go home. I can finish by myself."

"I'm sorry. I'm just...I'm just worn out."

"Me too, Ben. Me too. But somebody has to finish this."

"I know. Switch me places." Ben pulled out his phone and looked at the time. The LCD screen ate at my night vision. "We can finish before midnight if...aw, shit."

The sound of plastic hitting the stones on Jane's casket made me jump. "Seriously! You just need to go home. You're drunk."

"I miss her, Henry. I always thought she'd come back home. I worried about her the whole time I was deployed, man. I never thought she'd end up in a grave before me."

I got on my knees and started feeling around for Ben's phone. "Shit." "What happened?"

"I pinched my fucking thumb." The bitter cold made everything hurt worse. I handed Ben my phone. "Call it."

Ben's first attempt was with his gloves on. After a few unsuccessful tries he bit the thumb of his right glove, pulling his hand free.

"I hear it." It had bounced beyond the stones I'd just placed almost to the edge of the casket. The glow fell upon the flowers the women had placed on top of my thistle. I crawled toward the ring tone. "Holy shit."

"What is it?"

In the glow of the tiny screen I could see that one of the nails holding the lid on had been pulled free. I searched for the next hole and saw that the nail from it, too, had been removed. "Ben, what the hell were they doing out here? Somebody had this open."

I stood up to hand Ben his phone. "Did you hear me?"

"Shhh." He was standing. In the light from the back porch I could see his head cocked, as if straining to hear. "Old Christmas is starting."

Leaving him to his redneck fantasy, I shook my head and pulled rocks from the pile myself. Cold sweat formed on my brow and against my back. "And you're drunk."

"You don't hear that?"

"You didn't hear what I said?" I continued working. More snow had begun to fall. "Tell me you can't hear that."

"I don't want to hear it. It's been a long day. I'm burying my sister." I climbed out of the hole.

"Smell that?" He said, "Elderberry."

"I don't smell anything but that hillbilly pop you been drinking all night." Heavy snow looked like moths around a streetlight as it fell past the floodlights hanging above my pap's back porch.

"C'mon, man. Listen."

The only way to get him to shut up was to bite my own lip, so I obliged. Dogs barked down in Davis and the occasional lamb brayed over my pap's barn. "I hear it."

"Really?" Ben smiled at being validated.

"No. I'm going to finish now." I sat on the edge of the grave. A stirring amongst my pap's cattle stopped me from getting back into the hole. I brushed cherry blossom petals, not snow, off my shoulders.

"And you're so full of shit your eyes are brown. It's coming," Ben said. He walked past the other graves and toward the gate. "Let's go."

The hinges squealed as he slipped past the fence. I lined the remainder of the stones on the lip of the grave so I'd be able to reach them from below. In the tree above, songbirds chirped an occasional exclamation. The air warmed with the scent of blackberry blossoms and hay-scented ferns.

When the wind blew I heard the susurrus of summer leaves in the trees above instead of the thin whistling of naked winter branches.

I could smell it. And I could hear it.

I stood there, all of a sudden alone. From the edge of the forest a buck snorted, startling me. It was just like the ghost in the basement all over again.

"Hang on, man." I jogged to catch up with him.

"Here." Ben handed me the flask as I caught up, but I didn't drink. Ben whispered, "Hay loft," and ran ahead.

A wheeze of cut hay and manure rolled out of the warm barn when Ben opened the door. We crept along the dry walls toward the ladder. Animals stirred in their stalls, creating an uneasy background of little noises. A bare bulb hung from a long wire, forcing naked shadows onto the old wormy chestnut. Dark stains clung to the splintered wood like long-eared bats.

Ben grabbed the ladder and gestured for me to climb first. The top rung had been bolted to a cross post with galvanized brackets. The ladder twisted a fraction of an inch with each rung I climbed. Each tiny twist came with a squeak.

I crawled along the edge of the loft, then watched Ben climb to the top. His flask was still in my pocket. I opened it, sniffed the barefoot whiskey—which reminded me too much of my dad—then set it on the ledge next to me. Ben crawled toward me, shuffling one hand at a time. He stopped a few feet from me, took his flask, then dropped his legs over the edge. He drank, then said, "So, what's up with that roommate, Alex? Where's she staying?"

"Really? Nothing like burning your mouth on hot soup, right?" I shook my head. "Didn't you notice the engagement ring?"

"Sorry. Want some?"

I waved the flask away. Him asking me to take a hit every four minutes frayed my nerves. "No, man. She's out of your league anyway." From the darkness a tiny voice said, "Give me a shot."

"Damn it, Katy!" I shouted a whisper. "What're you thinking? I 'bout jumped out of my skin."

"Hey, cousin?" Ben said. "Come on over."

Katy slid across the floor then plopped down between us without saying anything else. She just sniffled before taking a big swig. Her hair was disheveled and her eyes were red and weary. She rested her head on my shoulder. An old brown Carhartt coat covered the white gown she'd been wearing earlier.

With his cell phone in his lap, Ben counted down the remaining minutes. He and Katy killed the last of the booze in just a few more swigs. After that, except for Ben's countdown, there was only silence.

"Five 'til." He looked at his phone. The blue glow shined up onto his face. For the first time tonight I took pity. I wasn't sure until now that I'd have any to share.

He put his phone back into his coat pocket. "Henry...I'm sorry about..."

"Hush up, Ben." Katy's voice was raspy and raw from earlier. She coughed a dry little cough. "For once, just hush and listen instead of always being the one talking. Okay?"

"Sorry." The look he gave said more than his words would've anyway.

He was in sad shape. We all were. We all needed some time to get ourselves together. There'd be no music from this side of the Blackwater for a few days—only long mornings in bed and sad, quiet dinners of leftovers. Shitty rigatoni and soggy fried chicken and whatever else the neighbors brought up. I couldn't even say if there'd be any more tears shed or not.

If there were I wouldn't be here to see them. Right then and there I made up my mind that the time had come for me to pack up and go, first thing in the morning. I was sick of not sleeping, sick of worrying, sick of talking the guys from Thomas out of beating the shit out of my old man every time he got hammered. Tonight would be my goodbye to Ben and Katy.

"Two minutes," Ben said.

I put my arm around Katy. With all the quiet, sadness finally started to well up in me. Like my mind had nothing left to keep the feelings away. My chest and throat tightened. I could feel my face getting hot, pressure pushing behind my eyes.

I took a deep breath. I had to tell them I was leaving. But knowing what I wanted to say, and being able to say it, were two different things entirely.

Breaking my train of thought, Katy cleared her throat, and sang, " _Down to the sea, down to the sea, sinners on the shore, waiting to be freed_."

The broken silence seemed a lot louder than it had before. Shouting in the night always made it hard for me to get back to sleep. Like when my parents fought. Thank God I had a long bus ride and could sleep on the way to school. Otherwise I'd have my dad's words in my head all day, how, "...you don't know how hard life is 'til you start sucking up that coal dust..."

Ben took out his phone and checked the time, then shut it off and put it back into his pocket.

Katy's tune wasn't anything I ever heard my uncle Jamie play. It sounded like a melody written when language was still young, when mountains were still pushing up through the flat, green plains that stood in this very spot a hundred million years ago. " _One by one, by one, by one, into the water for the sins you've done_." Katy's rasp thickened with each syllable. A chorus of echoes carried her words further and further into the night. The animals in the stalls below huffed and shuffled.

I didn't know what to expect, but it sure wasn't this. Maybe part of me came up here to ease my mind, to prove to myself that none of this was real. But proof was never easy to come by, especially in these mountains.

And this was how shit always went down. Late at night. Middle of nowhere. Not a credible witness in the bunch.

_"Sink or float, sink or float, my Lord and Savior guides my boat_." A choir of voices hummed just below Katie's lead. The bull and rams sang low bass notes. The ewes muttered muddy refrains. Katy began to cry.

I looked at Ben for a sign that I wasn't losing my mind. He was crying too. " _The ocean will flood and the swamps will creep, to find the sinners where they sleep_."

_"To find the sinners where they sleep_ ," Katy sang once more, by herself. "How do you know the words?" I said.

"Jane told me." She wiped her nose on the sleeve of the old coat. "That's what they were singing just before they killed her."

_Man_ , I thought, _I have to get the hell out of here_.

ONE

Even though sun fell at my back, the sky ahead was still thick with rain. Through the stink of wet concrete and neoprene I could smell my mountains.

My Appalachians.

For better or worse, like how a dog belonged to its fleas.

A quickly moving front had streaked the sunny sky with charcoal clouds that dropped a quick half-inch of cold water onto the ground. Caught in the grip of the dying storm, my mountains gasped for a few more breaths of the fading evening light. Fog had settled in the river valley. A sprinkling of street lights made this lonely part of the world seem even lonelier. Coming back to Ohiopyle to work on the river hadn't been the therapy I'd hoped for.

Just a few ridges east and fifty miles south rested the mountains that I'd been running from. For the last five months I tiptoed around the shadow of Jane's funeral and the curse that may have killed her. I didn't believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy or God, so for the life of me I couldn't understand why this curse bothered me. It had never occurred to me that the mountains themselves somehow played a part in this. If that were the case, I'd have to do a hell of a lot more running to not end up in a grave myself.

The day after the funeral I made good on my vow not to let fate push me around like it had my parents and I split. I decided I'd rather dig my own grave and lay myself into it than let superstition have its way with me. And just like I told Katy and Ben, the next time I closed that front door I'd leave forever. Without a plan, I went back to campus and tried to find friendly faces. In the end, there was only one face friendly enough to let me in from the cold.

Alex.

She had a way that made me feel safe, like nothing could hurt me. I didn't know if it was her naive expectations about what the world had in store for her or her ideas about how far people would go to prove a point, but that time with her existed in a part of my mind reserved for Thanksgiving dinners and drive-in movies. But after just a few weeks in Morgantown I realized a life with her wouldn't be easy. Alex had just broken off an engagement with her high school sweetheart—her daddy said she was too young. Alex came from money and was under a lot of pressure to succeed. She went on family vacations and pledged a sorority. I'd just dropped out of school for the second time in four years. I got scared and left to spend a few cold weeks in an empty guide house.

Truth was I still felt blood on my hands for not doing more to help Jane or avenge her death. Maybe it didn't mean I had to pick up a gun and kill every last Lewis where he stood, but without ever letting myself have those kinds of thoughts, I'd never know. My worst fear, perhaps, was realizing, or remembering, that I could've done something differently. I feared Ben might be right about the feud.

The rest of the guides had cleared out all ready. _Probably on their second round of Yuengling by now_. I, on the other hand, was stalling. It was just me and the old life jackets and broken kayak paddles. The change house stunk of old pile fleece and foot fungus. When I started working on the river my senior year of high school, the job felt like the best thing in the world. So far this spring it just felt like work. Definitely not worth dropping out of college for. I hung my life jacket and helmet and spray jacket to let them air out.

My Jeep was parked on the other side of the playground, but even through the swing set and monkey bars I could see a blond wearing cowboy boots sitting on my bumper fooling with her phone. Girls love raft guides like rabbits love clover, and that didn't make her much different than any of the others. But she wasn't any other. And the minute I saw her I knew I was in trouble.

On the way to my Jeep I put my head down and tried to think of what I could say to justify what I did to her this winter.

"Henry," she said as I got within earshot. She put her phone away and walked past the sliding board, still covered with last fall's leaves. "For a second I was starting to freak out. Like, maybe—"

"Holy shit, Alex." Those weren't the exact words I meant to use even if the sentiment was precise. Her hair was longer—it fell halfway down her back and was much lighter than I remembered, probably from laying out. She already had a hint of suntan starting. Like she was spending more time partying at Blue Hole than she was spending in class.

The scent of her Chanel took me straight back to this winter in their apartment, the one she used to share with Jane. What really bugged me more than anything was the idea that if she could find me anybody could. Like playing hide-and-seek in too small a house.

"Well, hello to you, too." She put her phone into her purse and folded her arms.

She'd been crying. "Sorry. I didn't know nobody was supposed to find you."

She forced a smile and unbuttoned her jacket. From the first time I'd met her she'd been engaged in a series of minor struggles with inanimate things she could never beat: her phone, her purse, her hair. So much so, that fidgeting became as much a part of who she was as her voice or her name.

"Facebook gave you up, if you really want to know," she said. "A bunch of Phi Delts were on a rafting trip last weekend. Saw you in a picture. Probably should've called you first. Too late now, right?"

She had on jeans and a short little jacket that left a little bit of skin around her waist exposed. I made sure I didn't get caught looking. Her blue eyes weren't as soft or round as I remembered. Like she was tired or on alert. And she was wearing her cowboy boots. Which made me smile.

We strolled back toward my old Jeep. My dad thought it was stupid to buy a vehicle I couldn't haul a load of firewood in, which was precisely why I loved it. I said, "It's fine that you're here," and tried to change the tone of my voice to assure her that it really was fine. "I don't know what the hell I'm even hiding from anymore."

She put her hands into her back pockets and shrugged. After an awkward pause, I said, "How are you?"

Her blue eyes looked for answers from someplace far beyond this little side street. "Everything is different. This semester...it wasn't the easiest. I didn't finish. All the big plans I made for this summer and I couldn't even drag myself out of bed after you left."

"Alex." I tried to touch her elbow. "Sorry for that. Getting close seemed like a really dumb idea at the time."

"Like it's your fault? You were a distraction, but nothing I couldn't handle. Now, leaving the way you did, like some kind of creeper while I was in class? That makes you an asshole." She pulled away from my touch. Her expression remained the same, like waving a surrender flag for the last five months had finally taken its toll on her. Ignoring my olive branch, she said, "You told me to call you if I ever found anything that looked important. This was in with Janie's stuff."

Alex held a manila envelope stuffed with paper scraps and notes of all sizes— names, addresses, lines of verse that looked like song lyrics or poems, receipts, pages from phone books. She handed me a piece of notebook paper without making eye contact. The handwriting was Jane's, not mine, but the big cursive loops and circles over the 'I's told me it was from when she was much younger. I realized that I didn't want to see it.

There were two columns—Baby Girl Names and Baby Boy Names.

The first name was 'Henry.'

I handed it back to her. "I barely knew her."

She put it into the envelope. "What is it you think you don't know?"

She handed me a picture of Janie and me with my mom and dad. We were at my pap's house with our winter coats on. Janie had a bunch of books in her hand. There were two garbage bags of wrapping paper sitting by the door. Ben was on the stairs, watching.

I said, "Christmas Eve. On our way home to wait for Santa." I touched Janie's face in the picture. "She was harmless, Alex. Always so good. Never mean. How could this happen?"

My mind was still racing and my head wouldn't fully let me appreciate the pain

I felt. I asked, "Did she know I loved her?"

"She knew." Alex started to cry. "All she could do was love. She didn't know hate or mean or angry."

Alex sniffed and composed herself after another long minute, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. She took the picture from me and put it away. The last thing she had for me was a white envelope. My name was written on it in black ink. I carefully pried the sealed edge open with my pinkie.

Alex had kind of turned her back, like when somebody takes a phone call and you try to give them a little privacy. For a second I thought it was rude not to let her read it too, but decided that the note was just for me. I could share later if I wanted.

The note, written in Jane's careful handwriting, said:

_Henry_ ,

Sometimes this all seems like one long, bad country song that started way before Mom left. Day or night doesn't matter, the song never ends. Sleep and awake are pretty much the same for me because there's always a new verse or chorus. What else can it mean when I see shadows move in the dark, or leaves blow with no wind? When I feel like I'm drowning in my own bed?

It means I'm next, and I suppose I knew all along it would be me. Katy and Rachael are way too strong, and Chloe is too young. Grandma isn't directly in the path of the bad blood. Maybe it's because her people are from Pittsburgh and aren't a threat to them, although I can't figure out why she never became part of their plot, even if just for spite. Mom left because she knew she couldn't defend herself the way the rest can. That leaves just me. I'm blood and I'm an easy target.

There are ways to protect yourself, though, things you can say to defend yourself when you are sleeping. I honestly think that's how I've survived this long on my own. They're here though, in town, looking for me. I see Lewis Lumber trucks and get hang-up calls. Billy is in the halls between classes. He came down to Black Bear nights when I worked. You probably wonder why I didn't get help or do more to keep them away, but how do you go to the police and tell them your tap water tastes salty and your milk keeps going bad too fast?

There are also words to say that can hurt somebody, or make it so they can't see or can't breathe, to control snakes or to make people hallucinate. I know you don't believe in any of this stuff, and that is why it is so important for you to make sure Rachael helps you. You have to trust her and believe that they will do everything they can to help you.

In this envelope is everything I know about the Lewises and their little grudge. This includes times that I saw Darren or Billy in town in case something ever happens to me, songs and hexes that will protect you. Some of the things in the envelope are very important, I'm just not sure how or why yet.

Tell Dad I'm sorry I didn't make it home this year. I thought I might surprise you on Christmas Eve, but I came to my senses and went to mass instead.

Nobody can stop this. What will happen to me will happen no matter what anybody does. I love you, and I hope something in here helps you.

Jane

I tucked the letter back in the manila envelope and fastened it shut. My jaw hurt from clenching my teeth. All I could do was shake my head. Alex had been watching out of the corner of her eye like she expected to see some kind of emotional response from me. But I didn't cry back in January and I sure wasn't going to cry now. I took a few deep breaths and rubbed my jaw.

I said, "Janie said she knew it was going to happen. Didn't she ever say anything to you? I mean, the coroner said the toxicology report came back negative and the sheriff said there was no reason to suspect it was anything more than an accident. Did she act depressed or out of it or anything?"

"Henry, after the semester ended I went home. I tried to get her to come with me, but she lied to me and said she was going home, too." Alex leaned against my Jeep and tilted her head so a few strands of dark blond hair fell over her eyes. Finally, buttoning up her jacket, she said, "I knew something was going on. But not from Janie. I begged and begged her to come home with me."

"How did you know then?"

"My mom called me right before Christmas and said something big was up. Her mum had heard from a cousin that trouble was brewing and I was the cause of it. That I was 'up here in Morgantown running down the Lewises.'"

I set the envelope on the hood and pulled her to me. She began to shake. "My mom said her cousins are a hateful, vengeful bunch."

As calmly as I could, I said, "I don't think I know how this relates—"

"Yeah, Henry, you do." She backed away, for the first time looking more scared than sad or mad. She unbuttoned her jacket. "The Lewis boys—they're my mom's cousins. My dad's from Fairmont but my mom's from down Elkins. Her mother was born in Lewisburg, so, my grandmother is Charlie Lewis's first cousin."

She sniffed the rest of her tears away, then jammed her hand into her purse for her phone. After seeing she had no new texts or status updates, she said, "My mom says they have it in their heads that I betrayed the family, but I didn't pick Janie as a roommate. I didn't even know her until I was a freshman. The university put us together and I didn't do anything wrong. And I had no idea how horrible things were until January when Janie drowned. I don't know these people—maybe I saw them at a wedding or whatever. I don't know. But I'm not a Lewis and now they want to hurt me for 'slandering' the family. That's the word my mom used—'slandering.'"

"Just calm down. I don't blame you, if that's what you're worried about." I put my hand on her shoulder and tried to pull her toward me.

"You're not getting it. Or maybe I'm not explaining it right. But I'm not worried about whether or not you blame me. What I'm worried about is what my mom said." Alex pointed to a pair of suitcases, a garment bag and a little matching duffle bag on the ground by the Jeep's passenger-side door.

"What did your mom say, exactly?"

"That you are the only one who can protect me from Odelia Lewis and her dirty, evil ways."

I put my hands up and tried to wave her off. The superstitious bullshit annoyed me more now than ever. "Alex, I'm not sure—"

She cut me off. "My mom said I have to stay with you."

TWO

Billy Lewis was a thorn—nothing more, nothing less. I could yank him from my heel and smash him any time I wanted. But he wasn't a murderer. We went to high school together before he went down to live with his grandpap, Charlie, so I knew him the best out of the whole bunch. He was a poacher, a thief, and a low-level weed dealer, but he wasn't a murderer. Murder was more his grandpap's style. Billy had once bragged about stealing a bunch of medical equipment from the clinic in Elkins before burning it down. In my mind he wasn't as much evil as bad. A delinquent. Not the devil. Yet.

Billy Lewis and his kin represented the cold I'd catch if I ever went back home. Growing up, I thought every family had an enemy who stole shit from their property, who burned barns down and raised the kind of hell that kept your parents up at night worrying. Stealing livestock and poaching was everyday stuff for the Lewises. Family traditions passed down like making apple butter and bailing hay for me and Janie and Katy and Ben. Kid stuff. And the Lewises got worse the older they got.

My dad talked about them the same way he'd talk about cancer or Nazis. Billy's uncle Len was a professional prison snitch. He was serving time for knocking off a bunch of Walgreens for pseudoephedrine to make meth. Before that he got caught stealing hillbilly heroin from the VA in Clarksburg. Billy's cousin, Curtis, paid for police protection for his meth lab from money he made dealing at high school football games. Billy's grandfather, Charlie Lewis, once stabbed a guy with a screwdriver for making eyes at his wife in a supermarket.

But my folks never said more to me and Janie than they had to. Everything I knew about the Lewises, I overheard. Growing up, they were the only boogeymen I ever feared.

These mountains, for so many years were like a prison. Even though a world existed beyond these ridges, I never quite knew how to get there. Things like hunting season, buckwheat cakes, and ginseng had been written into my DNA.

So I guess I couldn't blame myself for letting the idea of revenge root itself in my mind. It was as much a part of me as my bones and skin.

A slight scrape gave way to the fluid embrace of the river as the little rubber raft left the put-in beach. With nothing but water beneath us, we floated across the frictionless green river. The water's surface swirled with the effects of the uneven underwater topography. A leaf falling into the river couldn't be certain if it would end up upstream or downstream from where it landed.

Sunrise hadn't woken me up this morning. Thinking about Billy Lewis dropping Jane into a frigid river kept me awake all night. The sheriff told us she slipped on ice while jogging out by Deckers Creek. He believed she slid down the bank.

I didn't buy it for a second, even back in January. Their apartment was way up on the other side of Ruby Hospital. Alex said when they jogged, they ran to the stadium and then up to Star City or out past the Mileground. But back in January I'd been able to suppress my suspicion because of the way the rest of my family gave into it. I felt like I owed it to Jane to keep my head.

We ferried across the current below Ohiopyle Falls then allowed the flow to carry us back to the trip. Mike Duff was telling the rafters about eddying out. He loved this part of the job—the BS and the bad jokes. Stuff like, "These are paddles, not oars. Oars stand on street corners and give you syphilis for money."

Alex tugged on the straps of her lifejacket, like it was still too loose, and said, "I slept better last night than I have in months. It feels like nobody will ever find me here."

I felt real bad for bringing her on the river with me and making her sleep in the back of the Jeep. She was used to her beach house and shopping trips to Pittsburgh with her mom. But there was no way I could take her back to the guide house and risk her getting tetanus or cooties or worse. And I didn't know how else to protect her. We talked a lot last night and I got her to relax a little when I told her we could go back to West Virginia after Memorial Day, even if the thought of going home made me a little sick.

Changing the subject, I said, "What were your plans for this summer?"

"Well, I had an internship in Charleston for a wind energy lobby. But this semester wasn't very kind to me. And besides, my dad thinks getting involved with anything that isn't coal in West Virginia is a bad career move." She didn't look at me when she spoke. "I'm the first one in my family to go to college, so I guess I have to finish no matter what. My daddy ain't going to be too happy if I don't go back in the fall."

She caught her slipped 'ain't' and shook her head for another go. " _Isn't_ going to be happy. Might have to miss the beach this year and everything. My dad and his brothers have a big house right in Nag's Head and they have a bonfire every night and beer and all kinds of food like barbeque pork and blue crabs and biscuits. But my mom says that might not happen this year and I should try to get used to the idea that things need to blow over. Like it's already cancelled, no matter what. So I'm trying to accept the idea that this spring, and now this summer, never happened. I hope fall can be a do-over. You going back?"

I watched the rafts spin and bounce through Entrance, keeping an eye on boats stuck on rocks, hoping they'd be able to get their asses off by the time we got down there. This was usually where I'd put a pinch of Copenhagen in my lip. "Seems kind of pointless to pursue school, you know? Talk about do-overs. At this rate I'll be twenty-five when I graduate."

I looked downstream for a long time. "I guess I should've been using this time to find out what really happened, or if it's even possible to find out instead of hiding out up here like a rabbit. And, I guess if I do find there is somebody to blame, well, it's my duty to retaliate."

She looked at me, her eyes reflecting the chicory-blue sky. "Sorry for bringing it up."

"Alex," I said, "Billy Lewis. What if he did do it? Then I'm a fool for not reacting. And a damn coward."

"Listen to me. You've been able to stay here and go on with your life. Don't let your mind run away with this. I loved Janie like a sister. She wouldn't want this. She saw your lives getting better, not worse, you know?" She put her other hand on top of mine. "You have friends and a life here, right?"

"Well, somebody has to do something. Morally? Like it's 'part of the code' or some shit?" I felt trapped on the raft, which until now, I'd been enjoying.

"Well, revenge backfires, so you'd better think about what you want to do."

Her words knocked a little wind out of me.

"Just wait, okay? There will be a better time. I'll have to talk to my daddy. Maybe he can help. If you want to file a civil suit he has guys who can advise you on how to proceed. But this redneck stuff never ends well. That family is crazy. My daddy said I was not to get close to a single one of them. He told me a story, from back when he was first dating my mom, that Charlie Lewis and his brothers drove to Florida for a wedding they hadn't been invited to. He beat up the groom, then left. Drove down and back non-stop to prove a point, so you need to think before you do anything."

"That's fine." And I knew I should've kept my mouth shut, but my mind still wasn't super clear. After a long pause I said, "Just out of curiosity, how long were you thinking you'd need to hide out?"

She closed her eyes.

"Sorry. Alex..." I put my hand on her knee. "That didn't come out how I meant it."

"It's okay. But since you asked, I'm going to stay for as long as it's not safe to go back." She put her sunglasses on and stared at me. I couldn't quite tell if she was angry or not, so I paddled.

So many times I'd guided this stretch of whitewater, face to the sun without a care in the world. The soft rubber, heated in the afternoon light felt so good against the bare skin on my legs. Cloudless skies and a glassy calm reflected it all heavenward. Trees towered over their reflected twins, helping me feel like I was a part of something much larger.

From a raft on this river my problems were distant. I rarely thought of them when I guided. I knew nothing of politics or current events when I paddled. Nothing of pop culture or gossip. I was an island adrift in a stream of calm, and outside forces couldn't affect me. A universe, albeit a small one, existed between these two mountains.

Experiencing the river through Alex made me love it that much more. She focused on the next few yards, always trying to be aware of rocks and waves, always listening for my next command. A drop over a small ledge knocked her over toward me. I steadied her. She tucked her sunglasses into her life jacket, her honey-blond hair relaxed on her brown shoulders. Her blue eyes scanned the banks, taking in the rocks and birds and laurel. I told her how Cucumber Falls was named for all the copperheads there because copperheads are supposed to smell like cucumber. She laughed as we spun into eddies and she squealed when frigid water splashed onto her arms and down her back. I smiled as she took in the chaotic bliss of my river.

We kept our distance from the group, floating what was left of the Loop with ease. I taught her about J-strokes and the difference between waves and hydraulics. I told her stories about Duff and Smurf and Bo and Rich and Chaz, about my first time on the Cheat.

In the long stretch of flat water that came between Railroad and Dimple, I thought, for the first time, it might be possible to accept what happened to Jane was an accident. I looked at Alex, and thought, maybe it would be okay to love her.

But optimism, I knew, was ephemeral, like a long, slow drag from a joint. A little burn as I held it in my lungs, a little cough as I let it out. _A few hours with your head buzzing, your hands unable to hold the strings down, your feet unable to take you away from the cold place that hurt so badly to remember, even if it hurt worse to forget_.

I figured anything I'd ever have with Alex would always exist in the shadow of Janie. So I inhaled, and tried to let in the green that would push the cold out.

The green of these mountains in my lungs smelled like an old friend, one who wouldn't tell lies to you. One who understood. One who knew pain didn't go away just because you wanted it to. And when I exhaled, only the sweet scent of smoke, and a dry mouth, remained. But the scent was enough to rekindle the memory.

Green in the hills above. Green in the water below Green in my lungs.

A little green in Alex's eyes when she smiles.

Reflected in each was something different. In the water I saw faces and bones, my past written in fossiliferous hieroglyphs scattered among the rocks and hellbenders— the giant salamanders that have watched these mountains change for over three- hundred million years. They saw dinosaurs and mammoths come and go. I didn't see myself outliving them either. In the green hills all around me I saw my present. I'd allowed these green hills to become my prison, my holding cell. I feared they would never let me leave. So I looked at Alex. In her, I saw a green glimmer of hope.

Her green gave me a chance to move away from the black of revenge.

So I closed my eyes and reclined on the raft and joked with Alex and let the river carry us down to Dimple. I let the river make my decision. It had been around a hell of a lot longer than me.

"What's this about?" Alex nudged me when she saw the rafts pulled into a big eddy on the left.

Duff and Smurf tossed me their throw bags as we drifted toward them. Every inch of rope mattered here. We lined up to run Dimple Rock Rapid first. I sat up, clipped the ropes onto a D-ring with a carabiner. I checked the straps on my life jacket, and gestured for Alex to do the same. Even though I'd been down this river five hundred times, at least, my heart beat a little faster right about here on every single trip.

"This is Dimple." I pointed at the big rock sleeping in the shade on a submerged ledge just downstream and to the left. Sunlight rarely fell onto the rock. It was cool and dark all day long. "Some of the river washes around and some goes beneath it. This is the big one today. It is undercut and dangerous. Basically, there's a room beneath the rock. A boat flips and you have to start counting heads to make sure they all pop up. This is the real thing, right here. Ropes, radios... No slacking or somebody's going to get hurt. Just don't stop paddling until I say, okay? But when I say stop you have to stop. That's about it. Easy, right?"

I dropped my paddle into the current, jammed my foot beneath the cross tube and leaned out over the river to pull the raft into position. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of Duff pulling into the current behind me.

As he passed, he said, "Just follow the bubbles, right?"

Alex looked at me for some sort of affirmation.

I said, "Should've waited until we were past the rock to tell you about the undercut and all that, huh? Let's go easy forward."

She tensed up, holding her paddle like it was a battle axe. Like she was fighting zombies. Upstream, Smurf began his talk-up.

"Relax, it's all good. Give me a few strokes easy forward, okay? Three strokes easy."

The boat gained speed as the river narrowed. I leaned on the paddle, ruddering to point the nose of the raft toward Pinball, the big rock just upstream of Dimple. Hitting Pinball wasn't a great idea either.

"You're going to stop now. Just stop."

I kept talking mostly just to hear myself. The whoosh of the pillow got louder. "Threading the needle, Alex. Nice and easy forward now."

Pinball got close fast, and she tensed up.

"We're fine. This is where I want to be. I need you to keep it nice and easy forward. Three more," I said, nearly yelling.

She started to lean toward me.

"Two more then we're going to dig it in." I back-paddled to keep our angle, then gave a few quick forward strokes again.

"One more, then..." I held my paddle just above the water.

The front of the boat drifted right past Pinball and I hollered, "Go! Go! Go!" Dimple got huge—seemed to double in size as we hit the big aerated pillow of whitewater that formed in front of the rock. I reached into the river and took two big J-strokes. The back of the raft was so close to Dimple I could've reached over and smacked the rock with my paddle.

I started back-paddling and, catching my breath, I said, "Easy, right?" She smiled and her shoulders dropped.

I said, "Not yet, I need you to back-paddle. I have to go up on the rock and give hand signals. Getting the rest of the trip through is the tough part."

We hit the rocky shoreline, and after a quick scan for snakes, I pulled the boat onto the rocks. I handed Alex the bull rope and a throw bag. I said, "Give these to Isaiah and just hang out for a bit."

She shrugged, mostly because I hadn't given her any other option. "Sure thing."

I took a few steps upstream before realizing this was kind of a 'moment in the spotlight' for me, so I said, "Or, you can come up and watch me?"

I stuffed the throw bag into my life jacket and led Alex up the rocky shore to a ledge where she could sit. She put on her sunglasses and clasped her hands over her knees. She looked tiny sitting in all that rhododendron at the base of the cliff.

As I climbed onto Dimple Rock, Smurf paddled into the current. I got situated as he eddied out behind Pinball. While I sat on Dimple, I ran my fingers over the cool sandstone. One of my first lessons as a guide came at this very spot. After flipping here trip after trip—with guests, with lunches, in rain or sunshine—I learned that no matter what I did, this rock would never move for me. So I got a hell of a lot better at going around it.

To get to his video spot, Duff had to push his way through the throng of geek boaters crowded onto Vulture Rock, on the other side of the main flow of water. The geeks were usually from the city, either Pittsburgh or D.C. and guides kind of hated them. They had money and drove nicer cars and acted like they owned the river. Like the bars stayed open just for them. Like all the redneck locals were no different than black flies. Like Ohiopyle was their playground, even if they only paddled when it was eighty-five degrees and sunny.

My job was to deny them any sort of entertainment. I looked over at Alex and smiled.

She didn't smile back. Instead, she said, "So there's a room underneath the rock?"

I nodded and that was it. Duff believed that the amount of time you spent looking at a rapid was directly proportional to your likelihood of flipping. And talking about a rapid, like Alex was doing, was even worse.

She said, "Like, water goes beneath the rock?"

I put my finger to my lips. "Shhhhh." I pointed to draw her attention to the first

raft, now entering the channel above Dimple.

I blew my whistle to get their attention and took a deep breath.

They quickly developed a right hand angle, just like Smurf told them to. I had them drift forward. All four faces in the raft watched intently, waiting for the 'paddle hard' command.

"Not yet." I shook my head and waved my hands.

"Not yet." I held up my pointer fingers.

"Go! Go! Dig! Dig Dig!"

Their well-synchronized strokes took them easily past Pinball and I relaxed a little. I looked at Alex and raised an eyebrow. "One down."

The second boat was already in the channel. A group of high school boys. I

blew my whistle and waved my hand to get their attention. Then I gently gave the 'paddle forward' signal. High school boys were the best, usually. When they didn't want to look stupid in front of the guides. They watched me and did exactly what I asked and my hand gestures were essentially a repeat of my last set of commands.

"Right." "Steady." "Steady." "Hold." "Right." "Hold."

I looked over at Duff and shrugged. Days like this didn't sell videos.

He made a 'V' with his fingers. "That's only two."

Upstream the next raft careened into the channel. I blew my whistle to get their attention, but they hit the ledge on the river left side and spun. Duff stood up when the geeks on the rock behind him started to cheer.

I blew into the whistle so hard my ears rang. I stomped my foot and yelled, but the family of four couldn't get their shit together. From the back of the raft the dad yelled, but his two sons wouldn't budge. Both looked a hell of a lot younger than the minimum age requirement—their life jackets looked gigantic. When I saw they weren't going to make it I sat on the rock, preparing to put as much of my weight on the raft's downstream tube as I could.

In one gushing motion the raft hit Dimple and swamped. The upstream tube disappeared as the river swallowed the dad. The geeks on the rock applauded when I pulled the mom and smaller kid onto Dimple with me. Clinging to the center tube, the older brother floated downstream alone in a raft filled with knee-deep water. Smurf peeled out of the eddy and hustled toward the dad.

Raucous applause from Vulture Rock alerted me to the presence of another boat already in the channel—another potential disaster. I waved my hands over my head, but the paddlers never once looked down stream at me.

"What the fuck did you tell them, Smurf?" I blew into my whistle so hard I got lightheaded. I waved my arms, but they never once looked at me.

The snowball effect was in full swing. I frantically kicked the boat away from Dimple, but the raft cart-wheeled and its paddlers disappeared below the rock. Smurf readied himself in the eddy below Washover Rock. I waited to count heads.

One by one they popped into the current below Dimple. Smurf coerced one, then two then three swimmers into the raft with the dad and his kid. The last swimmer bounced over a nasty ledge into some really shallow water. Isaiah hit her with the bull rope and pulled her to shore.

The next two rafts came through just fine, and Duff's voice returned to a normal speaking level. He had enough carnage to sell his three videos. Shaking my head, I turned and did another head count downstream. I couldn't believe I was having a day like this with Alex sitting right there watching. She probably thought I was a joke. Upstream, the next boat entered the channel.

Before the current could take it, a second raft pulled into the stream behind it. I blew my whistle and gave the second raft the sign to hold, but the first boat misinterpreted. They back-paddled, hit the second boat and spun sideways as they entered the channel.

The four girls in the first boat yelled at the four guys in the raft behind them. Collectively, the eight of them did a great job of ignoring me. They splashed each other with their paddles while I jumped up and down and blew my whistle. My teeth hurt from clenching my jaw over the hard plastic.

The current swept the two rafts right against the rocky ledge. They bumped and spun, clueless to the fact they should've been paddling. The geeks on Vulture Rock stood up, yelling and hooting. They shouted out commands to confuse the spinning rafters. " _Back! No, forward!_ "

I started to lose my composure—my hand signals were like sign language to a blind man. The girls in the first boat froze. The four guys finally got their shit together, but were powerless to maneuver around the raft in front of them. I scooted toward the edge of Dimple.

The girls' raft came at me like a mosquito to blood. I dropped onto my ass to stomp on the boat and shouted at the girls to lean into the rock. The two girls closest to me followed their instincts and jumped away.

The raft flipped.

Before the girls could surface the second boat hit the raft and flipped. Eight people swimming.

Duff put his camera down and waved his hands to stop the anymore rafts from entering the current. I stood up, looking for swimmers, counting heads. Smurf coached one of the girls and two of the guys into the raft with the swimmers from the previous flips. Isaiah snagged two girls with the bull rope, one of whom appeared to be bleeding from beneath her helmet. Probably caught a paddle.

"Mike!" I shouted. "Looking for two!"

He shook his head. "Right there!" he yelled and pointed.

In the wash behind Dimple a swimmer materialized. She jerked awake with the rush of air into her mouth. Her hands frantically cleared the hair from her eyes.

Smurf paddled into the eddy behind Dimple. "Fuck me," he said, eyeballing me like it was my fault.

"One more," I said. "Looking for one."

"Collins!" Duff blew his whistle and pointed.

In the white foam pillowing in front of Dimple the last gurgling swimmer appeared, his eyes locked on the sky. He sank as fast as he'd appeared. The buoyancy of his life jacket kept him from getting swept free of the rock. He bobbed there, like a fishing lure.

Duff threw a line across the swimmer's shoulder, a perfect shot. The swimmer didn't respond. I got on my knees and blew my whistle, a prayer to whoever was listening. At that very moment I hated myself. _Six feet away and not a fucking thing I can do about it except blow a fucking whistle_.

"Rope! Grab it!" Duff blew his whistle and jumped up and down on the rock. "Grab the fucking rope!"

The swimmer made no motion, no movement at all except to cough.

"Grab the rope!" Duff slowly reeled his throw bag in, hoping the movement would attract the swimmer's attention. Like trying to get a trout to notice a fly.

The swimmer washed up to Dimple again, then disappeared. I stepped to the edge of the rock and looked at Alex. She was on her feet with her hands over her mouth.

Duff blew his whistle again as he traded his throw bag to one of the geeks for a new one. Duff aimed and tossed it, another excellent shot. But there was nobody to receive it. The foam had swallowed the swimmer.

I took off my hat and threw it to Alex. _Tucker County High School Baseball_. One of the only things I grabbed when I left the house. Then I picked my own throw bag up, waved it at Duff, and tossed it to him. I yelled, "I need people in the water. Mike, get some of those guys in their boats."

I pointed to the eddy behind Pinball. To their credit, the geeks scrambled. Maybe it was just to have the story to tell. Whatever. My hand was shaking.

I took my end of the rope, clipped a carabineer into the loop then wrapped it over my left shoulder and beneath my right armpit twice. I clipped the end Duff held back into the carabineer.

"Henry!" Duff yelled. "Collins! Don't, man. Fucking don't." From the other side of Dimple Smurf yelled, "What is it?"

Duff said, "Stay in your boat and watch me. Got it? Just stay in your boat." "Just follow the bubbles," I told myself. "Follow the bubbles."

I locked eyes with Duff on Vulture Rock. A thousand miles away. "Don't let go, man." I laughed when I said it.

And before he could say anything back, I dropped into the water to the right of the hole where I thought the swimmer was.

Cold washed over me and took my breath. The rush of current filled my ears. I fought to surface. The green of the deep pool gave way to the clear blue of late morning sky as I found my feet on the ledge. On the other side of the rock Smurf yelled at Isaiah to get the radio from the big first aid kit and to get on it.

I could no longer see the swimmer. I swept my foot through the current hoping he'd be close enough to grab.

"Do you see him?" I stood in the shallow water next to Dimple with my left hand on the rock. "Does anybody see him?" I yelled.

Dimple loomed next to me, same as it always had. The swimmer had vanished, swallowed by the hole below the rock. I turned, giving one last look at Mike on Vulture Rock. He shook his head 'no'.

To deny why I was doing it would've been stupid. Jane drowning. Me staying up night after night thinking about how I could've saved her. I knew if I died saving this guy nobody'd be able to say anything about me not doing enough for Janie.

If I died beneath Dimple, with my lungs full of water, nobody'd ever be able to call me a coward.

"Do you see him?" I yelled. I wanted him to be out more than anything. "Fucking look!"

Nobody responded. "Follow the bubbles," I told myself, one last time. "Look!"

I knew where he was. I didn't need visual confirmation.

"Henry!" Duff yelled again. "Just wait!"

I exhaled deeply then inhaled through my nose, then repeated the breaths, hyperventilating so I'd be able to stay down longer.

I felt for the edge of the ledge with my foot. My toes hit the end and the current started to pull. I forced myself to keep breathing. "Follow the bubbles."

Another step and the aerated pillow swallowed me. I succumbed to the fluid. The only thing I could do. The bubbles were all going the wrong way. Everything went down into the blackness. My lungs tightened.

Feeling my way along the underside of Dimple brought me to his limp body. The same current that threatened to rip me away held him fast under the rock. I grabbed the shoulder of his life jacket to keep from getting washed downstream.

I thought I could hang on to the rope with my free hand and let the current pull us both out, but he wouldn't budge. I tried pushing off with my feet, but the river water was like concrete. Illuminated green water forced itself into my eyes and mouth, but I clung to him like a deer tick on a hound dog.

The air in my chest started to boil. I didn't want to fail. _Follow the bubbles_. With options washing away I did the last thing I could and put an arm around his waist. The current pushed me into the rock, cutting my back and shoulders as I unbuckled his PFD. The green started to fade.

The first three buckles came undone easily, but the release of tension caused him to sink down until his chin pushed against the last buckle. Now more like a noose. I couldn't get my fingers around the strap. I reached for the knife on my PFD.

My heart thudded wildly in my chest. No air. Didn't want two bodies down here. Time ran away from me, the cold made me weak. _Let go of him!_

My plan was shitty. I'd end up just cutting his throat. I dropped the knife and released the rope, my lifeline, to free up both hands. My arms and legs felt nearly played out. I clamped my fingers beneath his armpits, forming an iron ring. His hair touched my face. I didn't want him to be a person. If he was a person, he could die.

I felt so weak.

I shrank into the rock, paused, then pushed into the current with what I had left. I looked for bubbles.

But it was all black. The tiniest bit of green hid at the edges, but it faded fast.

_Bad plan, Henry. Bad plan. Now you're going to die too._ The strength to keep the water out of my lungs left me and I started to cough. Inches above my face sunlight fell through leaves and splashed onto the river's surface. A movie started to play in my head—in a single moment I knew everything I'd ever know. I saw every picture, heard every voice, every day in school, every birthday party. I saw everybody I ever knew. Nobody was dead. An unending calm came over me as the river's surface rushed toward me. I didn't fight. I didn't cry. I didn't pray.

It wasn't until I slammed into Washover Rock that I realized we were free. My body tried to breath before my mouth could find air. More water washed into my nose and throat. Mike started to pull on the rope.

"No!" I yelled in between coughing fits, but my voice couldn't find enough air to make any sound. My heart went off like a string of firecrackers. I waved my arm. "Help!"

The tug of the rope beneath my armpits flipped me onto my back. I tightened my grip to make sure nothing could pull the swimmer from me. But hanging on to him was drowning me.

"Let go of the rope!" In my mind I yelled it, but I don't think any words came out. Just coughs. Violent, never-ending coughing. The shore looked so far away. The water was cold. I didn't have anything left. We dropped over a shallow ledge. Blood came from brand new scrapes on my elbows. Suddenly I realized I couldn't hang on to him and save myself too. I had to quit. I tried paddling with my free arm and kicking with both feet, but the shore got no closer. I just wanted another second here. Another second to make things different. I'd give a pint of blood for a few seconds. For a few more seconds I'd live a whole other life.

I squeezed my eyes, shut them to the thought that he wouldn't make it. My arm had to be iron.

Has to be. I can't do this again.

From the eddy I heard a voice. Smurf paddled up to me. "Grab my loop!" he yelled.

Unable to respond, I clung to the swimmer like he was my only chance at redemption.

"Collins!" Smurf's eyes found mine, snapping me out of my daze. He offered the loop at his kayak's stern again, then paddled furiously to the left-hand shore while I hung on. On the hot dry rocks a flurry of hands pulled me from the water. More hands took the victim from me and moved him to a backboard.

Somebody patted my shoulder as he ran past, but I couldn't see who. I sank into onto the sunny rocks, breathless, coughing up water. Life returned to me slowly.

After a few minutes Alex plopped down next to me. She was wearing my hat. She reached into the river and splashed cool water onto her face, then gazed upstream, at the cliffs and laurel. "You get paid to do this, huh?"

Alex wanted to hang out 'with the guys' and meet the rest of my friends despite my insistence I didn't have any more. All I wanted to do was protect her from a sleazy dive bar, smoky and loud with neon beer signs and bug lights for ambiance. Not her kind of place. And not the kind of place her mother had in mind when she sent her to me for safety. For Alex I pictured candles and a waiter, maybe even some silverware. Definitely not fifty-cent tacos and dollar drafts.

And no more river stories. After today—rehashing the incident with the boss, paramedics, state park officials and the state police—I didn't want to hear any more river stories.

Gravel crunched under the tires. A small puff of dust hovered in a shaft of light that lingered in the still evening air. The smell of grease and hot sauce announced to the world it was wing night, practically a holiday up here. Glossy green mountain laurel leaves shared space with hand-painted dogwood flowers on the sign in front of the bar. At the end of the lot were five or six ginormous pickup trucks, the kind driven by lumber company buyers and land guys. They were worse than the geeks as far as a sense of entitlement went. They wouldn't let anybody near the pool table. They were brutally mean to the local girls. And they liked to fight.

Out on the patio, people bullshitted beneath strings of small, round light bulbs that erased the stars. Tiki torches and bug zappers kept people from drifting into the woods far better than they kept mosquitos away.

"Last chance to back out. You sure you about this?" It was a loaded question, because I wasn't. I didn't want to talk about Dimple, the river, and I sure as hell didn't want to share Alex with all the guys she didn't meet today. I didn't want to share her with anybody.

Alex fiddled with a braid. The tiny blond strand fell over her high cheekbone, reminding me of the first time I ever saw her. Down at Black Bear after helping Jane get settled in at the Towers her freshmen year. I rode the PRT back up to Evansdale with them, even though I'd been parked in town.

Tonight Alex had gotten 'dressed up' for our outing—a sparkly little dress, make-up and strappy shoes instead of her ever-present cowboy boots. Too much for the ladies of the Wildwood. I wanted to tell her this wasn't High Street and that she'd have a better chance of seeing a mountain lion eating a possum than one of WVU's starting five. But I also wanted to tell her she looked nice, and couldn't find the courage to do that either.

"Henry, everybody wants to see you, and I need to be around people laughing for a change." She looked at her phone and seemed disappointed she didn't have any texts waiting.

"I don't know, I'm a little..." "Nervous?"

"No. Today brought back a lot of things, and—"

Before I could finish, the Jeep door flew open and I tumbled toward the parking lot. A pair of arms, thick as logs, caught me in a tremendous bear hug and pulled me from the vehicle. Alex's surprise turned into shock.

"Smurf, here he is. Fucking hero is waiting for the valet. I told you he was going to get cocky."

"Alan." I struggled to free myself, but he was too strong. "Seriously?"

He said, "Duff, look at these flabby arms."

Duff waited on the other side of the Jeep to get the door for Alex. "Just keep him like that, Alan. I'm 'bout to buy this beautiful girl a drink."

Alan threw me into the Jeep's frame as I struggled to cover up my gasps. He said, "Heard about you and Dimple and all that. Big shot, huh?"

At least he'd said it with a smile.

"Good to see you. I'm doing fine. Thanks for asking," I said in between breaths. "Alex Ramsey, meet Alan Straight. This is what you wanted, right? Meet the guys? They just keep getting worse after him."

"Brother," Duff said, "when he saw you with this beautiful woman he knew you were doing fine." He picked his Yuengling up off of the gravel. Gray dust stuck to the condensation on the glass bottle. He led Alex toward the bar still dressed in his river shorts and Tevas, while Alex was dressed for New Year's Eve.

Some of the people sitting at the picnic tables turned at the commotion of our arrival. For the most part we never did anything quietly. These guys were my fraternity, my band of bros. We wore the same uniform—river shorts, sandals and ball caps—whether we were grabbing pizza or going down into Uniontown. I'd known them since I turned eighteen. They'd become more of a family to me than my own. I felt good being around them. I didn't have to hang my head and be solemn.

Smurf already had his arm around Alex's shoulder, even though she was three or four inches taller. Cigarette smoke and the smell of beer came through the flimsy screen door from the bar. From inside I could hear my name being called.

"Get your ass in here." Rich Kravnik yolped from over by the big TV. Like a dog could only bark, Rich could only yolp, otherwise you couldn't see his lips moving beneath his big handlebar mustache. When I started up here he was like a Mongol warrior, but he'd gotten progressively less scary the longer I worked here. He was wearing a Molly Hatchet t-shirt. As I came through the door he yelled for people to get the fuck out of my way. "Rewind it!" he said as I shook his hand.

A couple of lumber guys in the corner laughed when everybody got quiet. Like they wanted Rich to say something to them.

A Bong-Squadder patted me on the shoulder as I pulled a stool out for Alex. I tried to get the bartender's attention, but she was at the other end smoking a cigarette. The only drinks she knew how to make were PBRs and Jack and Cokes. But I guess the owner thought she was pretty.

"What's this?" Alex leaned up against me and the guys at the pool table became less of a priority.

Smurf plopped down on the stool next to her. The familiar hiss of whitewater met my ears as I recognized the tape from this morning's trip on the big screen. Rich cranked the volume on the TV.

"It's the video from the trip," I said, not sure if I wanted to see it. "I don't know what I was thinking."

Alex rested her hand on my knee.

My heart started to race and my breathing got faster, reliving it like this. "Like it'd really make up for Jane? It was stupid."

Rich turned to me and said, "Shut the fuck up or you can leave too, you big pussy."

Most everyone else hushed as the tape rolled. The screen door slammed as a few folks came in from the patio. The lumber guys continued to shoot pool. Duff's voice blasted out of the shitty speakers. For a second I felt pretty proud of the way I looked. My hand motions were fluid and confident. I even had a smile on my face. For a second, I must've loved my job.

My hands started to shake. I whispered into Alex's ear, "I don't know how I can go back on the river tomorrow."

When the first boat flipped I tensed up. Things kind of got blurry in my head, and I kept looking for the guy who got trapped. I found myself holding my breath. The applause from the geeks on the tape came out of the speakers like another type of static.

The only people in the whole place still talking were the lumber guys over by the pool table. I looked, and adrenaline shot through me. I instinctively moved to block Alex's view of that area, hoping to hide her from Darren Lewis, Billy's older brother. Darren and two guys wearing Lewis Lumber jackets harassed a couple of pretty girls who worked for the state park. The tall guy was Danny Eddings. I played baseball with him in high school. I didn't know the other guy.

"Here it is," Rich said.

Darren and his guys looked at the TV. My first instinct was to turn away, but I couldn't. Darren made eye contact with me and stood up a little straighter. He tipped his head back and finished his beer, an excuse to break eye contact.

I turned back to the TV in time to see me toss my hat to Alex. I looked scared, grabbing the rope tightly with both hands. Duff must've handed the camera off by this point, because the two of us were the only ones talking. The throw rope left me and ended at a disembodied point just off camera. When I shouted across the river my voice sounded angry, and it embarrassed me a little. One of the guys behind the camera kept saying, "No, no..."

Without warning I dropped into the river and immediately started feeling for the edge of the ledge. I yelled a few more times and the camera panned to Smurf. His face was white.

When the camera panned back I closed my eyes.

All I could think about was how, while I was down there, I felt like it would've been okay if I'd have died.

When it ended the room exploded with deafening applause and whistles and hoots. The screen door to the patio was propped open. People watched from outside. The noise embarrassed me.

"Rewind it!" Rich yelled.

This time the bar in front of me became carpeted with beer bottles and shot glasses. I did shots of Jack the whole time the scene played out again. My hands wouldn't stop shaking, so I kept putting more and more whiskey down. One way or another I'd learn that bravery and stupidity spoke vastly different languages. The noise died as some people moved back outside after the clip ended. At one point, Alex grabbed my wrist and guided the shot I was about to drink back down to the bar.

My face got hot with embarrassment. I called Duff and Smurf and Alan over to share in my prize. Rich, needing something new to entertain himself, pushed Smurf out of the way and sidled up to Alex. I invited Rich to partake in the booze too, but he claimed he was shunning alcohol in favor of herbal distractions.

And this was how it continued for the next half hour. The folks in the bar enjoying my recklessness over and over. I wondered if they'd like it as much if I told them part of me wanted to die down there. Probably not. Only Alex and Duff knew I buried my sister this winter. The tape replayed and the drinks kept coming.

Guides from later trips came in and folks filled them in on what happened. I needed to get outside, but couldn't salmon my way to the door. Rockin' Scott picked up an order of wings and said I was stupid to kill myself for eighty bucks a day. Gayle helped herself to a few bottles of beer, but didn't stay to watch the clip. Ace snuck up behind me and said, "I would've done a swan dive in."

Chaz came in wearing knee-high Natty Bumpo boots, army fatigues and a Native American choker. He didn't say anything at all.

"What happened to your hair?" I asked. I hadn't seen him since Monday. Chaz swiped a bottle from the bar.

"Got it cut for court. That you?" He pointed to the TV, relatively unimpressed. I nodded, gave him my stool, and made my way to the door.

Outside, I swam in the fresh air. At the edge of the patio, I stopped to breathe in as much as I could. All afternoon I had a headache from coughing. Now my head was spinning from whiskey. I never even got buzzed. I went straight to drunk. Alan said he'd ordered food to sober me up, and led me to a table. I rested my head on my hands.

At the bar, I could see Alex laughing and letting Smurf and Rich make a fuss over her. For a second I was going to ask Alan to have her come out here where I could keep an eye on her. Somehow I forgot she was a party-girl. She knew how to handle guys. Duff came through the door with a pint glass of something dark. Dreading a heavy stout, which he loved, I waved my hand to have him take it away.

"It's Coke, my man. You really think I'm going to let you pour any more alcohol into your body tonight?"

I laughed and peeked around him to see if Alex was okay. The waitress backing through the screen door blocked my view for a moment. When she went into the kitchen I saw Rich had his arm around Alex. She was laughing, telling a story, making letters in the air with her pointer finger. For a second her eyes caught mine. She smiled, then went on with her story. At that moment my heart got really heavy.

"Is this," Duff pointed at me, then back to Alex, "a thing? A young love in bloom?" "No, man." I shook my head.

"No way. Nope. Too much gray there. Like, every moment we ever shared replays in some shade of black and white in my head."

He shook off my defensiveness and said, "Sorry, man. Had me fooled. From now on I'll just never assume that a beautiful girl, one you can't stop looking at, who glows whenever she's within five feet of you, means something to you." He set his pipe and a pouch of tobacco on the table. Sometimes, when he smoked, he did this crazy accent and told, "So, there I was, in the jungle..." stories that cracked me the hell up.

"Man, do I really have to list the reasons why it wouldn't work? Some you know about, some would blow your mind."

"No, man. I know. And I'm sorry if I pushed too hard." Duff said. "Whatever. Anyway, I've been wanting to talk to you about something else."

I kept an eye on the door. More and more people made their way outside. Danny Eddings and the other Lewis Lumber guy came past and I nodded, but they didn't see me. Running into somebody from home was like sharing a secret.

"Go ahead." My eyes left Alex. I gulped my Coke. It tasted great with all the whiskey I already had in me.

Duff waved at the waitress for two more. He looked into his beer and swirled it in his glass. "I did it, man. I enlisted. Talked to a recruiter last night."

"Get the fuck out of here," I laughed. But I knew he was telling the truth, and the thought of working here without him made me sad. "Why?" That 'why' was the most heartfelt and sincere thing I'd ever said to him. "You aren't exactly a 'take orders' kind-of-guy."

Neither of us said anything. After a few minutes the waitress set her tray down on a picnic table and handed us our drinks. Duff held a ten between his fingertips, but I couldn't let him. "I got this."

"No way, brother. It's the least—" He turned around real fast and stood up.

I tried to see what he was reacting to and it wasn't until I heard a voice say, "Henry-fucking-Collins," that my eyes found what they were looking for. It was the guy who was at the pool table with Darren and Danny pushing his way through the crowd. He started unbuttoning his Lewis Lumber shirt.

I laughed, then said, "Lookie here, everybody. It's Charlie Lewis's guys. Nice fucking shirts. You know, Ed Abbey said grown men don't need leaders."

As he stepped up to me he said to Danny, "Do I have to take this horseshit from him?"

"Danny Eddings, what's up?" I held my hand out. It was more of a drunken 'what's up' than a real attempt to diffuse his buddy's anger.

Danny wouldn't even make eye contact with me. Totally ignoring me, he said, "Levi, you ain't a farmer. You don't have to take his shit."

"Seriously? Danny?" I said, still trying to catch up as Duff pulled me to my feet. All of a sudden it felt like we were the only four people left in the place.

"So she's with you now? Fuck that spoiled little bitch. I broke her in for you," Levi said. "But I'm feeling real good and I'm ready to fucking crack somebody wide open tonight. May as well be you."

"You're beyond drunk, buddy. And you're outnumbered." Duff went chest-to- chest with the smaller guy. I'd never seen him mad. He turned into a bear right before my eyes, getting bigger and everything. The people who had been sitting closest to us backed away.

Danny jabbed a finger at Duff. "This fight ain't between you and Levi. This is between Levi and Collins, all right?"

Duff turned to Danny and said, "Just makes me want to hit him harder."

Levi took a few steps toward Duff, but Duff didn't flinch. Levi said, Danny, tell me you got my back."

Danny, perhaps for the first time realizing there wasn't an easy way out of this, shook his head and said, "I got you," like his heart wasn't in it the way Levi's was.

"Do you?" Levi snapped.

"Yeah, I'm not going to let you get arrested out-of-state and on-the-job for some stupid shit like this." Danny put his beer down and rolled up his sleeves.

Levi poked Duff in the chest. "What if he hits me first?"

Duff exploded in a fit of contempt, grabbed his wrist and said, "I could slap you right down to the fucking dirt and not a single person here's going to say I took the first shot. Look around."

"Danny," I said, finally overwhelmed by the drama that'd been swirling around me all day, "just get him out of here."

Over my shoulder Rich yelled, "Take a shot, Henry. All these pussies want to do is dance and talk."

The screen door slammed and Levi's gaze shifted to something over my shoulder. I turned and saw Darren Lewis coming through the crowd. He had dark hair and dark little eyes and didn't look nearly as mean as he was trying to. "Back up or you'll be the next Collins they bury." He pulled his jacket aside to show me and Duff his gun.

The whiskey exploded in me like methane in a mine. I leapt at him, swinging, but Duff held me back. "Darren Lewis brought a gun! Fucking drop me then, motherfucker!"

I swung again, but Alan pushed me toward the edge of the patio.

I yelled, "Should've brought a dildo, you fucking pussy. If you're going to bring a gun at least pull that shit out."

Darren made like he was actually going to do it and ran his thumb along the butt. All the attention I threw his way made him pause.

_Not today_.

I figured he was about to call my bluff. Fear made my belly flop and my groin pull tight, like my nuts were trying to retreat to higher ground.

_I ain't going to dodge two bullets in one day_.

From out of nowhere Chaz wrapped Darren up with a pool cue and lifted him off the ground. Chaz's mouth curled into a snarl, and he said, "Is this your house? You think you're king of this fucking castle? Try again. You boys need to get your boss the fuck out of here."

Darren's feet shuffled on the flagstone, back pedaling just an inch or two above the ground. His eyes bulged and a stream of hisses and spit fell from his lips. He clutched at Chaz's ropy arms, arms that wouldn't let go of a kayak paddle in a flood, let alone a maggot like Darren Lewis.

Danny said, "C'mon, that's enough," with his palms raised in a plea.

Chaz said, "Was it enough when this mother fucker was about to start pumping rounds into my boy?" Chaz adjusted his grip on the cue and squeezed even harder.

At that moment, I thought for sure Darren was as good as dead. And I wouldn't have felt a thing. If I thought for a second Darren was innocent, I would've intervened.

Instead, I held my breath.

Danny said, "Let me have a chance to get him out of here."

As soon as Chaz let go, Darren dropped straight to the ground and didn't twitch a muscle.

Chaz poked Darren with his boot. "Don't come back. None of you. I even see one of his trucks up here I'm cutting tires and smashing windows."

Danny reached down to assist Darren, and Chaz poked him with the cue. "He can get up and walk out of here himself."

Danny looked at me. I didn't have anything for him.

Darren slid onto his knees and wobbled for a moment. His eyes were red, and his face looked really flush and swollen from all the blood rushing back in. When he finally got to his feet he stumbled back a few steps. Levi steadied Darren, and led him toward the parking lot. Once they were out of earshot of Chaz, Danny said, "Henry, it ain't going to be like this next time."

"I know it won't." I put my hands in my pocket. They were still trembling.

He pointed to the Lewis Lumber logo on his chest and shrugged. "Just doing my job. Designated driver. Public relations." He took out his keys and followed the others into the parking lot.

I was waiting for the music to start, or somebody to crack a joke or buy a round. But that night was over. Duff put his hand on my shoulder and pointed me toward the bar. Alex pushed the screen door open and wiped her eyes on her arm. She'd been crying.

"You all right?" I said, rushing over to her.

She put her head on my shoulder and started crying all over again. Tears warmed my sleeve. I rested my hand on her back, but wasn't sure what to do with the other. Finally, I put it around her waist and said, "Alex, what's going on?"

She squeezed me, fully letting herself embrace the little bit of shelter I offered. She sniffed, and said, "He had a gun, Henry. He held it up to my neck."

"Shit." I held her as tight as I could. "It's over. Didn't you see what just happened?" I pointed to Darren with his head resting against the truck's toolbox.

She said, "He told me that Charlie Lewis knows now. He said I didn't run far enough away."

"Okay," I said.

Tomorrow after the trip I had to call Katy, maybe have somebody run up and get Alex. My mind ran scenarios, but I never had to do anything like this before. I didn't know if I was right or wrong, and in the end decided that the river might be the safest place for her.

"He said when they get me home they're going to skin me." "That family is fucking poison."

"My family?"

I said, "You're not one of them."

"I am, and that's how I know it's not going to stop."

A cold wind from the river valley brought a fresh infusion of smells to our makeshift hideout. Smells I'd forever associate with Alex and this night. Pine and hay-scented fern, which smelled like peach much more than it smelled like hay. And the clear water running over boulders a thousand feet below us. For a second I closed my eyes and thought of being with her, forever, and I knew I was too young to be thinking about forever.

After the incident with Darren, the party moved into the parking lot then broke up altogether. I wanted it to last forever, because I was afraid of not being able to protect Alex on my own. So I drove her back up past Baughman Rock overlook to where we'd camped last night. Adrenaline and fear had us pretty wired.

The wet air became heavier with dew as we ascended Sugarloaf Mountain. I parked, gathered some things from the Jeep, and led Alex into the dark. The short, rocky trail from the parking lot to the overlook was difficult to negotiate by starlight alone, but somehow we managed. After a few minutes of walking we stepped onto the big rock ledge. The wide-open view was stunning. I spread out a foam backpacking pad and my sleeping bag.

A swarm of stars blistered the dark sky. Crickets and cicadas sang, raising a chorus that pushed tomorrow morning away even further. There were no headlights on the road behind us, no trains on the tracks below. Only the rock, the stars and us. And way up above, like a white road straight to heaven, was the Milky Way.

Alex rested her head on my shoulder. I wanted to kiss her. "You saved that man," Alex whispered.

"I guess I did." The incident at Dimple Rock felt like a thousand years ago. "It's a sign," she looked up at me.

"A sign of what?" I asked, not really wanting an answer. "It's a sign you were meant to protect me."

I shook my head.

She said, "My mom said nobody could hurt me with you because y'all are protected."

I didn't want to say anything to her, because the day seemed to be ending on an upswing. Hiding out here behind a wall of trees on a fortress of rocks felt like a retreat, but not a loss. My mind could plan instead of just react. But I couldn't think about tomorrow or a way out, and one thought ran through my head over and over— _If we're so well-protected, how the fuck did Jane end up dead?_

THREE

Birdsong filled the morning air. The night had been far too short. My senses were still partially deadened by alcohol. Despite my best efforts to block it out, sunlight streamed through my closed eyelids. Already awake, Alex waited for me in a fleece and shorts, barefoot and cross-legged on the edge of the rock. She spied me peeking from beneath the covers.

"Morning," she said. And before I could even get a sense of where I was or what I was doing here, she added, "Bluebirds."

I rubbed my eyes and tried to see where she was pointing.

"Daddy called me Little Bluebird because I did a report on them in third grade and became obsessed. Like, I would only drink blueberry Slushies and eat blueberry pancakes. There really aren't that many blue foods, you know, so I gave it up pretty fast." She suddenly got very earnest, and said, "We going for pancakes?"

I sat up. My back hurt from sleeping on the rock. I thought we could share the sleeping pad, but Alex, apparently, needed many more square feet than I did. "The perfect cure for a hangover," I said, mostly to myself.

But it wasn't the booze, or the rock or the emotional strain of yesterday that made my head spin half as much as the Lewises and the real threat they posed. Yesterday I thought I could hide forever. This morning, I now knew, they were going to force a fight. I had to call Katy as soon as I got off the river.

Back down the mountain, I parked on Grant Street near the outfitter but far from the playground where the rest of the guides parked, so I could take Alex to the state park change house to freshen up. There were showers in there, sinks, mirrors— everything a girl needed to be civilized. I sat in the back of the Jeep and waited. The persistent sun, halfway between rising and noon, stole last night's coolness little by little. It was going to be a beautiful day.

Town was much busier today than it was yesterday. Out-of-state plates clogged the side streets, ignoring NO PARKING signs. A big RV stopped at the intersection and refused to budge, like a cow on its way to a slaughterhouse. The sound of inflators at the put-in drowned out most of the other sounds. A group of kids from a church group played Frisbee on the big lawn between a row of outfitters and the put- in. Traffic backed up behind the RV, horns blared their disapproval. I kept hoping the Frisbee would end up on the road.

Alex came out looking much fresher, and kind of sad. She'd changed clothes, and carried my fleece jacket that she'd worn to sleep last night. I sat up in the back of the Jeep and smiled at her. She stopped and looked both ways before crossing Sugarloaf Road, even though nothing was coming. She saw me, and tried to smile back.

"All better?" I said.

She smelled my jacket before tossing it back to me. "What do you think?" "Don't know. Just trying to help, though." Her tone knocked me down a peg. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail and said, "I know. If you're getting tired

of me, Smurf said he'd treat me right." She crossed her arms.

"Alex, we're going to take care of you. As soon as we're done today I'll call my cousin and let her know what's up. I promise. Then we'll head down and get you settled in." I got to my feet and tried to touch her elbow. "I'm off tomorrow. Thought we could wait until then, but after last night with Darren..."

"So, you're just going to drop me off?"

"Alex..." I wasn't clever enough to talk my way out of the situation. I watched the RV surrender to the will of the majority and move along, then followed her around the Jeep. "You'll be safer down there. Trust me."

"And you're going to just go back to work? Right now you are the only person I trust." Alex slid into the driver's seat and commandeered the rear-view mirror for beautification purposes. I watched her reflection but couldn't see her expression. I hoped she was smiling. I knew she wasn't. Her blue eyes were a shade closer to the color of the river than they were this time yesterday.

She said, "My mom specifically said I had to stay with you."

"I thought 'you' was a collective 'you' meaning me or my family." I leaned against the roll bar.

"No, Henry, that's not at all what I meant." She pulled the door shut and locked it jokingly, then returned to the rear-view mirror.

"Alex, let me just say this..." In my mind I tried to think of all the things she'd want to hear in this situation and ran them against all the things I wanted to say—that this Lewis thing would've been better handled by the cops, that all this 'protection' stuff was bullshit. In the end, I decided to split the difference. "You know, this idea that we can somehow protect—"

"Henry." She froze, gripped by an unseen fear.

I tried to follow her eyes down the street but didn't see anything unusual.

"Hey asshole!" A quivering voice from behind me shouted like a puppy not yet ready to bark.

I turned around.

The smell of Billy Lewis hit me a second before Billy Lewis did. Fishing bait and body odor filled my nose, but the scent of the blood that followed washed it right away. My blood.

"Henry!" Alex yelled.

"Alex, start the Jeep." Blood dripped into my cupped hand as I regained my composure and faced him. Shaggy, copper hair stuck out from under his ball cap like hay from a loosely wrapped bale. Freckles made him look like he was twelve instead of twenty-three.

But he wouldn't look me in the eye. Even the reinforcement he'd brought didn't look entirely committed to Billy's ambush. The lanky kid lingered near the old pickup's cab. Must've been lower on the pay scale than Darren's guys.

"That's your backup?" I hit him with a quick jab that bloodied his lip before he could get another shot in. Ben always told me to go for the jaw.

After the follow-through, I knocked his hat to the ground and snatched him by the hair. I pushed him down, down, down to the pavement where he'd feel at home with the road kill and dog shit.

"Call my granddad," Billy yelled. His compadre backed into the old Lewis Lumber Chevy and shouted into the radio.

It took me a moment to realize what had just happened. "You just bait?" "Hold him, Billy," the other kid shouted from the cab. "They're coming."

I stood up, bringing Billy with me. Further down Grant Street two more trucks advanced—big red pickups with Lewis Lumber logos on the side.

"Go, Alex." I said, stepping backward, pulling Billy with me. "Time to split mud, girl."

Charlie ran up Sugarloaf Road toward Grant, grinding through gears and revving that big old engine. Billy's own truck blocked the road, forcing Charlie onto the shoulder.

Down on Nedly Street, Darren threaded his truck through all the rental rafters making their way to the put-in. The church group turned and watched the commotion. Joel from Ohiopyle Trading Post cussed Darren from his big porch. Darren never once let off the horn.

"Move it, you stupid motherfuckers!" Charlie Lewis waved for Billy's friend to move the truck. "Billy, you worthless shit! Hold 'em!"

"Move, Alex!" With Billy still in a headlock, I got in the passenger seat. "How fast can you run, Billy?"

Alex found first gear and we rolled toward the intersection with Nedly. Billy clawed at my arms, and right before Alex found second, I let him go. He rolled in the gravel on the berm.

"Where's your phone?" I said, still watching over my shoulder as the Lewises sorted themselves out on the street behind us.

"My phone's packed," Alex said. She pulled her seatbelt across her lap.

"Where?" I unzipped her smallest bag and started to poke through it. A case of beer bottles filled with old motor oil rattled as Alex hit a gigantic pothole.

"Suitcase, I think. I don't know. You said I wouldn't get a signal." Hair blew across her face. She swatted at it as she slowed for the stop sign at

Garfield.

"Why are you stopping? Go!"

"Don't yell at me!" She put the Jeep back in gear as she drifted through the intersection, still looking both ways.

"It's fine. I'm sorry. Put it in neutral and let me drive." I stood, like I was going to hop over the center console and switch her places.

"I can't stop now. Look." Squealing tires and a blaring horn made me jerk my head back around. A fourth truck, a brand new red Chevy with a Lewis Lumber logo on the side backed down Lincoln Street then pulled onto the road behind us.

"This is crazy." She sniffed away small tears.

Charlie Lewis passed Billy's pickup on the shoulder. Gravel flew into parked cars as he spun out. Lewis came after us without regard to tourists, kids on bikes, boaters carrying kayaks across the street.

"Shit. Just go then. Fast. Take a left up here." I buckled my seatbelt, unable to do much more than just hang on.

Alex slowed as we got to Falls Market. People were crossing to get coffee and Clif Bars. I reached over Alex's arm and jammed on our horn. "Fucking move!" "Henry?" Alex yelled over the wind rushing into the Jeep's open interior. Tree branches created alternating patches of shadow and sunlight that flashed on her face as she drove. "I'm scared."

"Faster. It's okay. You have to gun it." Doug, the ranger at the put-in looked over his glasses and reached for his radio as we sped past. When we crossed Meadow Run and I looked back over my shoulder. There was a big red pickup in each lane.

"Left!" I pointed and shook my finger. The RV was creeping toward the intersection with Dinner Bell Road. "Pass it."

"You can't yell at me anymore, okay?" She clung to steering wheel like stink to a skunk. "It's upsetting me and—"

"And you don't know where you're going!"

Alex hesitated, then swung the Jeep quickly to the left. I slammed into the passenger side door. She bit her lower lip and checked the rear-view. The driver of the RV flipped her off and gave us the horn. He drifted over the center line.

The rush of wind picked up as she accelerated down a straightaway. Past the booth where guests checked-in. Past farms where the smell of earthy manure mingled with the scent of newly cut hay in the fields. When we passed back through the forest there was only the clean breath of running water and respired oxygen. The laurels weren't yet ready to pop, but the streams and fresh green leaves welcomed them anyway. Now they were little more than a green blur.

The rush forbade us from slowing down. Our eyes met, and for an instant we laughed at the speed. Adrenaline gave us a good little buzz. The wind tugging at my cheeks even forced a little smile from me.

"They're gone," she yelled over the rush.

I turned around to look. The wind changed pitch as it went from one ear to the other. But it was true, I couldn't see them.

The engine let out a slight whir, an instantaneous pause as she dropped it from third into fourth. Too fast for windy old Dinner Bell Road.

"Do you want to take over?" she said.

"No, I don't want to stop until we get home. Keep going." I looked one last time, just to be sure.

"Who were all those people? They weren't all related, were they?"

"Hell no, probably Charlie's employees."

"My mother warned me they were dangerous."

Alex didn't trust the mirror and stole a glance over her shoulder.

"You have no idea." I watched the side-view.

A new world sped by. Hemlocks pushed out memories of February snow drifts. Turkey buzzards occupied the space in my mind that winter crows once did. Red-tailed hawks screeched as they took wing after field mice. Endless thermals would lift them into space if they would just let them. Ancient buildings—barns and homes—represented a human element, property to be protected or lost. I checked the mirror again, even though I wasn't sure why. The mirror, as honest as it was, would never tell me if we were speeding away from trouble, or toward it.

"Back up! Back!" I shouted. The roadblock sprung to view as we rounded a bend just past Bruceton Mills. "We shouldn't have come this way."

"I thought we lost them!"

Tires squealed. The smell of hot rubber rushed into my nose.

"They must've come down 381 through Gibbon Glade," I muttered, but it was too late. "Straight back. Go."

She had a hard time keeping the wheel straight in reverse. We dropped onto the shoulder.

I grabbed the wheel. "Gas," I said. "Hit the gas."

We managed to get the Jeep back onto the road and crossed the center line. Two pickups blocked the road ahead. A third slowed to a stop

just behind them. As we backed up, Lewis and some of his men scrambled into their cabs. Charlie's pickup was the first out.

"For being a fat bastard with a gimp, he sure can move." I ducked as some low branches scraped through the Jeep's open top. "Keep your eyes on the road. Doing good."

But the roadblock scared me too, jumping out at us like a raccoon from a trash can. Either this was overkill or something else, something bigger than Alex supposedly speaking ill of the Lewises. The red pickup came fast. The rumble of its engine preceded it down the road like wind ahead of a storm.

I pointed frantically. "Dirt road. Here."

Alex ground gears as she tried to find first.

"Shit." It was the first time I'd ever heard her swear. The Jeep lurched forward in a sickening gurgle.

Stalled.

"It's okay. Take your time." Trying to mask my panic with calm was like trying to catch fish without a worm. Or a hook.

The red truck accelerated as he came within a half mile. "He's going to ram us." The words came out louder than I had intended.

Alex wiped tears from her eyes then turned the key. The Jeep crawled forward as she eased it into gear. The look of sheer surprise on Charlie's face as he overshot us almost pushed the butterflies out of my belly.

"Nice and easy now."

The scrape of the oil pan against the road's shoulder had the same effect on me as fingernails on a chalkboard. "Alex, listen to me. At the bottom is the Big Sandy and a chance to lose them. You got to go, though. Be dangerous, okay?"

Mud splashed onto the windshield and into my hair. "Stay against the hillside. If he catches us you need to stay against the hill. That's the most important thing."

She nodded.

Over my shoulder the disorder began to reorganize. The old red Chevy, Billy's truck, slowed in time to follow us off-road instead of overshooting the turn like Charlie did. But the new red Lewis Lumber Ford was right on his tailgate and Charlie Lewis was shouting at his grandson to get the hell out of the way.

Lucky for us, Billy had nowhere to go. The convoy careened down the edge of the canyon. To our right a sheer face of Greenbrier Limestone kept us hemmed in. To the left was the long drop to the stream itself. The sound of rapids and waterfalls barely overcame the sound of engines struggling to stay in first, the most obvious sign that this once high-speed chase had taken a dramatically different pace.

"Watch out," Alex said as this road—goat path really— shoved the Jeep up into the branches of an old white oak. Young, green acorns fell into the seats. A shower of leaves filled our wake.

"You have to go a little faster. Sorry, I know you're nervous, but you have to go." I adjusted the side-view mirror.

But she misinterpreted my encouraging tone as criticism and shot back, "I'm going as fast as I can."

"No, Alex, you can go faster."

A tremendous scrape ripped through the trees. I watched the road behind us half expecting to see my axle laying there. Instead, Billy's old red Chevy rubbed paint onto limestone as Charlie passed on his left.

"Shit. New plan." I turned and sank into the seat.

"You have one this time?" Her voice dropped as we bounced over a muddy rut created by recent runoff. I hung on to the roll bar.

"Still working on it." I bit my lip and looked in the glove box for a can of snuff.

The red truck lurched forward in a more deliberate attempt to catch up.

"The only thing I can think of..." I said while trying not to get tossed from the bucking Jeep. "I'm going to have to get out—"

"No you're not," Alex said.

"I'm not abandoning you, but this here, it ain't working. Trust me. You keep on going."

"What are you planning?" Her quick glances searched for comfort in my expression. But I could only shrug.

In the back sat a case of beer bottles next to the emergency tow cable. My tool box had been buried beneath Alex's stuff. I placed the bottles on the seat next to me and said, "I'm going to change the pace again."

I picked up one of the warm beer bottles. Spent motor oil coated the sides like snot.

The Jeep fishtailed in the layer of old leaves that covered the slimy clay. I held onto the roll bar to keep my balance. "Doing good, Alex."

The red Ford sprayed mud onto the windshield of the truck behind it and Charlie Lewis closed in. His face was an exaggeration of twisted features. His thin lips pulled back tight across his teeth. His gin-blossomed nose and bulging eyes reminded me of a belsnickle's mask.

Alex slowed to round a sharp switchback, then hit the gas again. Inertia and centrifugal force knocked me onto the floor behind the passenger seat.

"Shit." A goose egg formed on the back of my head, just below the whorl on my scalp.

"Shit." I tried to rub the pain away then grabbed the heavy tow cable too. Twenty feet of half inch cable may not be enough to stop a truck, but there were a lot of other things I could do with it.

"You all right?" Alex asked. "Fine. Where are we at?"

Alex pulled away from Charlie at the bottom of the first of four switchbacks. I leaned out of the hairpin turn as the road doubled back on itself. These old logging roads ran around the canyon like contour lines on a topographic map, never gaining elevation, never falling. The sloped switchbacks were built to connect the parallel roads. We headed back upstream, back up the canyon.

"Slow down a sec." I grabbed a carton of nails from my toolbox, opened them and shook them all over the road behind us.

"What?" Alex let the Jeep drift.

"I'm going to get out here. Keep going. Whatever you do, don't stop 'til you get to the bottom. Meet you at the bridge."

"Be careful."

"I will. Now go, okay? Burn wind." I jumped onto the road with the tow cable over my shoulder. I reached back, grabbed the beer bottles and banged on the tailgate a few times. "See you at the bridge."

Alex stepped on the gas and bolted like a rabbit out of high grass before disappearing around a shallow corner. The Jeep's steady rumble faded into the trees.

Charlie Lewis's red Ford appeared from the hairpin. With a flick of a finger, I encouraged him to come closer. "Fucking mouth-breather."

He saw me and hit his gas. The truck spun a little in the mud. Charlie's passenger had a shotgun resting on the passenger side-view mirror.

I planted my feet. Then like a pitcher about to throw a shut-out, I fired the first beer bottle at the center of his windshield.

The bottle fell short. I busted my nut way too early. My hand shook with adrenaline.

"Aw fuck it." I stepped closer to the edge of the road and threw the next one. It hit the hood and bounced over the cab. "Shit!"

Charlie kept coming. My plan to stop him became an act of self-defense. Before throwing the third bottle I paused. Just for a second. I'd been trying too hard to get a batter to go down swinging. I needed to change tactics. I needed to throw a runner out at home.

Holding the bottle near the middle, so the oil wouldn't fly all over, I took a deep breath, wound up and let it loose.

The bottle exploded against the windshield with a sticky haze of brown sludge. Charlie Lewis swerved into the hillside on his left to avoid rolling into the canyon. I threw another one and connected with the windshield again.

His passenger lurched and the gun fell onto the shoulder before taking a bad hop over the edge. He tapped a tentative hand on his scalp to check for blood. It was Charlie's right-hand man, Eddie Tasso. Janie used to be best friends with his daughter, Lucinda.

Charlie pounded the hood with his pistol.

I threw another. But instead of aiming for the windshield I aimed for Charlie. It shattered against his open door. He wiped oil from his face. "Stop, you cocksucker. On your knees."

I picked the tow cable out of the mud. All around, cobbles of Greenbrier Limestone weathered out from the ledge along the road. Some were as small as golf balls, others big as softballs. At my feet I found a nice round one, smaller than a baseball, perfect for a slider.

Charlie yelled as the stone hit the windshield inches from his fat, fumbling paw.

"Motherfucker son of a bitch," he yelled. He fired two rounds at me.

Stepping into the trees, I yelled, "You're taking this too far. What's your fucking problem?" Trying to talk a black bear down from an empty beehive would've been easier.

Just then, I spotted Tasso reaching behind the seat. It was either for a first aid kit or a hunting rifle. I dropped down the slope before I could find out which.

"Stop," Charlie Lewis yelled. "I'll have your ass for property damage, then I'll shoot you for trespassing—"

The sound of my feet sliding through wet leaves muffled the rest of what he said. My breath left me nice and easy, even though I was running as fast as I could. My Jeep passed from left to right on the road fifty yards below. Alex had slowed down considerably.

As I half slid, half fell down the slope, I searched for something to push onto the road, a rock, a log, anything. But there was only one downed tree. It was too big for me to move by myself. From the hill above, gunfire rang through the trees.

My mistake—two guns. The hunting rifle and a pistol.

Soft mud broke my landing on the road. I looked to my right and saw Alex heading toward the next switchback. Her brake lights seemed so far away.

_Two to go_. I crossed the road. Climbing down the next ladder while Alex took the long away around.

I fought to keep my feet beneath me as rocks and logs slipped out from under me. Jaggers ripped at my shins. Scrambling down the slope brought me to a ledge. From where I stood it looked too high to jump. Panic prevented me from seeing an alternative. If the ledge was too high I was screwed. "Fuck, man. What'd you do?" I had to take a minute to catch my breath. My breathing came a little heavier this time.

Searching to the left and right didn't offer any escape routes, so I improvised. A young poplar, about as thick as my thigh, stood right next to me just waiting for a moment like this to make its life meaningful. I flipped one of the tow cable's hooks around the trunk. The easy part.

Rappelling was where my problems began.

The cable was too thin for me to easily grip. I kept slipping. Suddenly the ledge seemed like a cliff. An unrealized fear of heights surfaced, making me dizzy. I could hear the trucks coming on the road above, and got sloppy. Sweat formed on my palms. I paused above a section that went a little beyond vertical.

"Shit."

Taking a deep breath was all I could do to prepare myself. A small step backward was the only move I had left. In an instant that small step morphed into a giant misstep. The overhang rushed up to greet me. I slammed into the face. The impact knocked the wind from me. My left shoulder, left hip and thigh tingled with the feeling that real pain was on its way. I choked to catch my breath, and tentatively lifted my arm to see whether a larger fear had been realized. It rose slowly, sending pain in protest. But it wasn't dislocated.

The rest of my descent was barely more than a controlled fall. Young maples and hemlocks didn't stand a chance against my skidding feet. I coiled the cable as I went. All of the wildflowers and moss and mud in the world couldn't have stopped me. I hit the next section of road with a jarring thud. A few strong tugs with my right hand brought the rest of the cable falling after me.

Even as I hit the road I searched for my spot, jogging until I found what I was looking for—twin poplars straddling the road, probably some of the first to sprout after this area had been clear-cut.

I reckoned a couple of things could happen after I set my trap. Charlie would either stop and take the cable down or try to run through it. If he tried to run it, the cable would give at the weakest part, probably the hooks. If I was lucky, it would hold and cut his head off. Either way I'd have to place it at windshield height to make sure he saw it.

I knotted the first end around the tree as well as a half inch cable could be knotted. I tucked the loose cable back into the loop over and over until only a few inches and the tow hook remained.

Wanting the line to give a little, I left slack in it as I crossed the road. I wrapped the other end around the poplar. A thousand reasons why this wouldn't work materialized. All I wanted was one reason why it would.

I wrapped it around the tree and left it loose so I could drop the hook through a few times. Three times. Four times. Fives times until it pulled tight like a guitar string. I hung on it and bounced to tighten it the best I could.

Waiting around to see what happened wasn't part of my plan, so I scurried down the last embankment. Thankfully, this one sloped gently, and soft grasses eased my plunge. Jogging through the ferns and scrubby laurel felt a little like running around my pap's farm playing hide-and-seek with Katy and Ben and Janie. Sometimes I'd go in and get ice cream from my grandma when I was supposed to be hiding. I tried to shake off the pain in my arm as Alex skidded around the last switchback.

"Your turn to drive." She drifted to a stop. It wasn't an option. She applied the parking brake and climbed into the passenger seat.

The snap of a gunshot from the hill above got me moving. Best I could tell, Charlie slammed on his brakes when he saw the cable. The truck behind Charlie followed too closely, and nearly rear-ended him. Charlie's clan made quick work of the roadblock, probably untying it as easily as I tied it. Some of the guys fired at us as I made my way to the bridge. Over my shoulder I heard truck engines revving back to life. The chase was back on.

With a little space to breathe, I drove to elude rather than to outrun. But I could still hear their pursuit when I pushed the clutch. At the Big Sandy, the road became a bridge, crudely constructed of steel trestles and wooden planks. The smell of the stream wafted up from below.

"Is it safe?" Alex said.

"Safer than the alternative?" I looked back at the gang coming down the hill. We crept forward carefully. I held my breath. Alex grabbed my knee. Then, as I hit mud again on the other side, an idea came to me.

"We're going to Jenkinsburg," I said. "Can we get help there?"

"No, Jenkinsburg's abandoned. Used to be a logging town. Now it's more a place than a town, really. Pisgah is closest. Or Masontown. But we're still a long way from help."

"What is so important at Jenkinsburg then?" "A chance to end this. At least for today."

We plowed through puddles that got progressively deeper as we got closer to the Cheat River. After crossing the Big Sandy, the trail plunged at a much faster rate. At the bottom of each drop the water collected in massive, pond-like puddles. Because Alex was on the outside, she managed to stay fairly dry. But as I sped through the water it splashed off the cliff on my left. Leaning away from the splash was futile. Some of Alex's bag got dirty, and I felt real bad about it. Her pretty little things covered in mud. It wasn't until then I considered the toll this was taking on her. I put my hand on her knee. "We got this, okay? I promise I won't let anything happen to you."

She nodded, grabbed my hand, and didn't let go even when I had to shift.

When the road turned into gravel, I gunned it. The rafting outfitters maintained it because it led to the Cheat Canyon take-out. After a half-mile, most of this spring's gravel got washed out, replaced again by pocked bedrock and mud.

Alex didn't say anything until I pulled up to the old Jenkinsburg Bridge. This was much higher than the bridge over the Big Sandy. The old steel trestle spanned the V-shaped Cheat Canyon quite dramatically. Big pines buttressed each end and a rocky rapid flowed below. Occasional rock outcroppings punctuated the steep, green slopes.

"Are we crossing?"

"That was the plan," I said. "You said you wanted a plan, right?"

"This one doesn't look as sturdy." She sank toward the center of the Jeep and got real low in the seat.

She was right. The planks hadn't seen anything other than foot traffic in years.

I said, "You never heard that you shouldn't look down if you're afraid of heights?"

She just stared silently at the river, some eighty feet below.

"Alex," I said. "There's no other way." I let the Jeep creep forward instead of waiting for her approval.

After a pause she tried to negotiate. "Just go slowly, okay?"

I pushed the clutch in and said, "I was thinking faster is better. That way our momentum is forward instead of... You know." I pointed down to the river.

"Can I walk?" She asked.

"Alex..." I said, drifting toward the bridge. The sound of trucks coming down the take-out road made my decision for me.

"No time." I put the Jeep in gear and let out the clutch. "When I get to the other side I want you to drive up the hill a ways. Then that'll be it. I promise."

Butterflies rushed into my stomach as the security of ground fell away on both sides. I'd only stood on this bridge once. And it was at night. And I was high. The rest of the time I was content to paddle beneath it.

Old wood groaned and the Jeep sank, like we were rolling over a sponge. Seeing the river so far below made me dizzy. The clank of wood against metal followed us across, plank after plank straining then releasing beneath the weight of the Jeep. "I've been under this bridge and there ain't a troll beneath it, okay?"

Each clack forced my heart rate higher. Each clank made Alex's grip on the roll bar tighten. In a moment of silent transition the squish of mud replaced the clank as we reached the safety of the other side.

"Pull up a little," I pulled the parking brake, hopped out and grabbed the hammer and pry bar from my tool box. Would've been a hell of a lot easier just to split Charlie's head open. "Drive on ahead now. I'm right here," I said, and ran toward the bridge.

Looking for the rushing water through the slots between planks let me find one of the steel girders that spanned the river. I scurried across like a squirrel on a power line. Then, about a third of the way across I dropped to the planking and rapped the dry rotted wood a few times with the hammer. Instead of ringing with the thunk of solid wood, it made a soft crunch. I forced the pry bar between the planks and went to work on the area around the bolts which held wood to steel.

My sweat dripped onto the bridge. The sound of the trucks increased from around the bend. Splinters and chunks fell into the river below as I hacked away at the board. Some of the wood was so soft the pry bar pulled right through. When the wood was firmer I pushed onto the pry bar with both hands, like doing a push-up.

"Faster, man."

The huff of the engines grew. I could see brake lights through the trees.

Prying felt like the first real chance I stood of being able to lose Charlie, so I focused on that and tried to ignore his proximity. I just leaned back with the full weight of my body. Within seconds the board had split down the center. I kicked it a few times, and when it came loose I let it fall into the river.

A small victory. Twelve inches worth to be exact. "You need more than a foot." The rumble of their downshifts on the other side said pretty much the same thing, so I went to work on the next one. Prying and pulling with all my weight. Another twelve-inch plank split up the middle. I let the halves fall into the gap I created.

A flash of light caught my eye. Sunlight reflected off of the windshield of Charlie's pickup. I got clumsy and nervous. Sweat made my grip weak and slippy. They were about to round the last bend and come into the rafting outfitters' parking lot.

"Just two more. Two more." They splashed through the big ruts made by the outfitters' trailers. Springs squeaked as the trucks rocked from side-to-side. My time was up.

On the other side of the bridge Charlie Lewis lined up his truck. He backed up then straightened it out so he'd be able to cross without pinballing from rail to rail. I pulled and pulled on the plank. Even though the wood gave way easily, the gap didn't seem nearly wide enough. I kicked the board away.

He hit the gas, a sad bluff I was too smart to fall for. The truck was too heavy. Charlie knew it. With nothing better to do, Tasso jammed the barrel of his rifle through the open passenger-side window. A woman got out of the Billy's truck and watched. She had black hair pulled into a bun on top of her head, and wore a long denim skirt. I expected somebody old and fat, but her face was fair. It could only be Odelia Lewis, Charlie's sister.

Falling back onto my ass as another plank split allowed me a second to strategize. A thirty-six inch gap separated me from the truck, more than enough room, but I got suddenly lightheaded thinking about it. When Charlie saw my handiwork he yelled at Tasso to start shooting. But the trestles were too close to the side of the truck. Tasso couldn't open the door the whole way. Cursing and shouting, Charlie backed up while Eddie still had a foot on the bridge.

Billy fired a warning shot as I ran. The bullet pinged off the steel trestle with a loud whine like from an old Western. He fired again, a small puff of dirt flew up just ahead of me.

A second gun fired. Buckshot ripped through the leaves above my head. I put my head down and made for the road.

The overwhelming scent of cucumber slowed me. My dizziness grew and I scanned the ground for copperheads. For a second, I thought I might throw up. The smell came out of nowhere. Like it showed up when Charlie did. But I couldn't see Charlie anymore, and I couldn't see Eddie either. Only Odelia was visible, pointing at me through the trestles from the other side of the river. She picked up a handful of dirt, spit in it and rubbed it between her hands until her palms and fingers were bright red. When I saw the anger in her expression I backed away. Odelia twisted a piece of cloth with her long, reddened fingers. I could've sworn she was trying to strangle it.

While she hissed words I couldn't hear, the smell grew stronger. I coughed on them. I didn't know how else to explain it. She shouted, and something more than words came out, like feathers from an old down sleeping bag blowing at me from across the gorge. I could make out a fluttering in the distance between us and knew it was the old magic.

Alex screamed, snapping me out of the spell. I stumbled toward her. She climbed out of the Jeep and moved to the side of the road. From here I could see the problem. A dead bluebird had fallen onto the hood. From the other side of the river came a few gunshots, but they were nowhere near us.

"You okay? Alex?" I ran to her. "It's fine. We can go now."

She held a hand over her mouth. With the other she pointed into the Jeep. Another bluebird landed in the passenger seat. She shook her head. "No, no... Henry, no..."

She screamed again and backed all the way to the edge of the road.

"Hey," I grabbed her wrist. But there wasn't a thing I could say. She was shaking, and so was I.

Just then, another bluebird tumbled to the ground next to the back tire. She cried; tears fell down her cheeks.

I pulled Alex to me to shield her from the sight of another one dropping from the sky. It hit the soft mud in front of us with nary a thud.

We followed a long row of Lewis Lumber pin flags out of the canyon. "Who the fuck is Charlie Lewis to mark this as his territory? Like a dog. I spent a hundred Saturdays and Sundays down here. It's not his canyon."

I killed the engine.

"Are we stopping?" Alex said.

"I want to show you something." I walked around the back of the Jeep, stopping only to pluck a pair of pin flags from the rocky soil.

"I just want to get out of here," Alex said, her little words could barely find my ears.

"We're good, I promise. It'd take them an hour to get here, at least. Only place to cross is down in Albright." I put my arm around her, but my intent was more brotherly than romantic.

She rested her head on my shoulder. "Okay."

I led her to the canyon rim through a Lewis Lumber staging area. Charlie had a pair of temporary trailers and a bunch of heavy equipment near a cliff edge that protruded into the void over the Cheat River.

I said, "So what did your mom say, exactly, about this situation?"

She put her hands into her back pockets and bit her lower lip. "My grandma said they were fit to be tied. Anybody—like you guys—who's able to get them so riled up must have some power over them, otherwise the Lewises would just dominate them. Business rivals, property owners. How do you think they're able to get timber rights so cheap? Grandma says you all have a history, and if the fighting's still going on, then you all must be a pretty even match."

The breeze carried turkey vultures and Cooper's hawks thousands of feet over the riverbed. The view was a hundred square miles large. The river shrank beneath the canyon walls. In the background, the rest of the Appalachian Plateau waited, flattop ridges standing back-to-back like an army of box turtles. Humble mountains that hid more secrets than the Rockies' jagged peaks and the Sierras' thrusting heights combined. The Appalachians were, after all, the product of a hundred million years of erosion.

"Charlie Lewis is fixing to take all this." I threw one of his pin flags into the canyon and knelt next to a trailer with a log loader in the bed.

I took my Leatherman's Tool from my pocket and flipped out the long knife blade. I eyeballed the tires and hydraulic cables and brake lines and fuel lines I had easy access to. I jumped onto the bed, grabbed the pair of hydraulic cables that lead to the loader's mechanical arm. I couldn't cut his throat, but I could cut a lifeline.

The drive to Davis took us east on US Route 50, up from the Cheat River at Rowlesburg. But before we even got there, I took 7 through Kingwood and got a sudden urge for buckwheats. We dropped along Deckers Creek back down to Morgantown and went down 79 all the way to Elkins where we stopped for cherry-glazed chocolate donuts at a Sheetz, then finally 119 up to 50. It was a long day, but I didn't know of any other way to lose Charlie Lewis and his guys. The bleached windmills dotting Backbone Mountain like antlers on a rutting buck let me know I was home. The white eyesores were like a picket fence around my front yard.

My very spacious front yard.

Alex said, "The other side of the windmills." "What's that mean?" I said, mildly offended.

"Nothing." She smiled. "Well, that's a lie. When I was little, my dad would say he'd send me to live on the other side of the windmills if I didn't stop acting up."

"And here you are."

"Here I am." She watched the giant blades spin as we passed beneath them. "Punishment catching up to me fifteen years after the fact."

"Oh, yeah? What'd you do to deserve such harsh punishment?"

Realizing it was a joke, she smiled, but quickly looked away. "A lot of things, I guess."

I slowed as we came through the village of Thomas. Old company stores hemmed us in on one side, the Blackwater River on the other. The Miners and Merchants Bank was the only non-tourism-related business left on the whole street. Exiting town took us up still higher, through white pines and past the ball field where I played Little League. A pair of doe ate at the clover in left field. Canaan Mountain loomed high in the background; the spruce trees along the top were visible even from here. We passed the entrance to Blackwater Falls State Park and a chill fell upon us. It was so cold Alex dug for my fleece in the back of the Jeep.

"Hungry?" I asked. But her reply didn't matter. I was starving, and drifted to a stop in front of Sirianni's. Almost like I'd followed the smell of garlic right to the front door.

The old pizza place was exactly like I'd left it. Cherubs stared from the thin screen door—the angels of Parmesan, patron saints of pizza, floating in hand- painted clouds and swirls, implying this food was heavenly nourishment. Tonight the windows were cracked open to the insectless May evening, a reminder that up here frost was still a possibility. Old bluegrass played on the jukebox. The smell of baking pizza crusts pulled us inside.

The low light kept visibility at a minimum, but there wasn't much to see. A hodge-podge of memorabilia crowded the wooden walls: old ski team photos, the wooden plank with a donkey saying 'No le hace' in bold blue letters. There were whiskey ads, ski race posters, flyers for live music at the bars and resorts. An old heavy curtain was pulled shut across the other part of the dining room.

A girl came out of the kitchen, flipped her phone shut and grabbed two menus from the counter. "Two?" she asked without even looking.

"What the hell, Chloe?" I said.

My cousin shoved her phone into her back pocket and her face scrunched up a little. "Henry? Oh, my." She dropped the menus on the counter and hugged me.

"You guys know each other?" Alex said with a tone just shy of rejection.

I led the way to the corner booth in the very back. "What? Don't you remember her from the funeral? Katy's sister. Rachael's their mom."

Alex nodded. As we sat down she said, "Sorry."

Chloe was a few steps behind us with menus and silverware. "You know, everybody was mad you just left like that. Don't even get Pap started. Him and Jamie were fixing to come looking for you, but Katy said you needed time to simmer. You heard about Katy, and Preston and all that, right? You missed a bunch of stuff. I mean, what would've happened if Gram got sick or something, or your dad needed you. He's been in all kinds of trouble and everybody else has been bailing him out. And Ben really misses you. He just gets back from his deployment, then Jane...then you disappear."

"Yeah, I get it, Chloe, I do. I just couldn't be here after the funeral. Everybody should understand." I flipped open my menu even though I knew what we were having.

"Does Mom even know you're back?" She flipped open her cell phone like she'd find her answer faster there.

"No. Nobody does yet. I'm trying to keep it low-key." Just then I scanned the room, like maybe I should still be hiding. "And I'm not staying long. I'm bolting out of here tomorrow so you don't need to tell Rachael."

Alex raised her eyebrow, like the comment hurt a bit.

"Yeah, right. Like that's going to happen. Do you want something to drink, or what?" She gave me a little glare. Probably a sign that she wasn't entirely committed to laying on the same kind of guilt trip that Katy would've. "Henry." She put her palms flat on the table and leaned over. "Why did you leave? Pap was afraid you were going to end up just like Janie."

I looked at her and all of a sudden it was January again.

"Pitcher of iced tea. Make it half lemonade." I flipped the menu shut.

"Wet iced tea. Okay." She put the pen behind her ear. Her green _Make pizza, not war_ t-shirt was way too small. Her pants were so tight you could almost make out the individual numbers on the buttons of her cell phone.

As she walked behind the counter that separated the kitchen from the dining room, I looked at Alex. She wouldn't return my look so I didn't say anything until Chloe came back. She plopped the pitcher on the table between us. "I suppose you want to eat?"

"Spinach salad, tomato for egg, extra garlic dressing on the side." My usual order. "Do you want a pizza, Alex?"

She ignored me. Speaking directly to Chloe, she said, "Let's try feta and roasted peppers, artichoke hearts on half, please." Alex addressed her very politely. Maybe more delicately than politely.

"I was thinking pepperoni and onion." I dreamt about this pizza for three months. Duff didn't believe you could get a good pizza this far south. We spent many a night arguing about it.

Alex wouldn't budge.

"Make it two smalls then. We'll have pizza for breakfast." Problem solved.

"Disgusting," Chloe said before turning to Alex. "It was very nice to meet you. You're too pretty for him."

Chloe left to put our order in. The jukebox went through a pair of Loretta Lynn songs and Alex knew every word and quietly sang along. Chloe returned with our salad and set the bowl on the table as she finished a text with her free hand. Her other customers glared when she pulled up a chair and chatted while we ate. She filled Alex in on how she was the Winterfest Princess in Elkins in February and how she was probably going to be Homecoming Queen, too, how her friends were jealous at first, but now they weren't. Then she casually mentioned her scholarship from Davis and Elkins, but she didn't know if she'd take it or not because our Uncle Jamie, Ben's dad, taught there. Besides, she said, she wanted to live in Morgantown.

When Chloe returned to the kitchen, Alex said, "I think somebody really missed you."

"No. She had a crush on Ben. Everybody did. I was the dopey sidekick. But we were always on the same team. Katy, Chloe and me versus Ben and Janie. Boy, girl, boy, girl, plus it separated us by age. My aunt came up with it." I took a bite of spinach, really just a charade to get more of the creamy garlic dressing into my system. "Hide and seek. Stuff like that. We never had enough people for kickball or anything. Ben taught Janie how to cheat."

"Will I have a crush on Ben, too?" Alex tried to get back at me for my rudeness earlier.

"Better not," I half-demanded, distracted by nostalgia. "But he falls in love real easy. Look here."

I pointed to hundreds of initials scratched into the painted surface of the wooden table, now covered by Plexiglas. "There's Jane and an old boyfriend. Steven. What an asshole. He started all the shit with Lucinda and Jane. He's the reason they had a falling out. There's me."

"HR loves HC?" Alex traced the initials with her fingertip.

"Yeah, high school."

"Here's another one. HC plus LT."

"Unpleasant," I said before taking another bite. "But not me. Harry Clark plus Lucinda Tasso. We met Lucinda's dad today with Charlie. She was Jane's best friend all through school. She used to stay over and everything. Then she got a crush on Steven who really liked Jane and that was it. Janie and my dad did an awful lot for that girl. My dad even got Eddie Tasso extra shifts at the mine, like at Christmas and stuff. Lucinda used to come up on Fridays after a football game and stay until Monday morning because she hated her homelife so much."

The reminder of today's events knocked the smile right off Alex's face. She forced it for a second, but it didn't take long for it to disappear altogether.

"Sorry." I tried to take her hand. "See if you can find me on this picture. Hey."

But she wasn't falling for my cheap distraction tactics.

"HC + SD." She turned her attention back to the table.

"Ironically, that one isn't mine, either." I lied.

"To quote Chloe, 'Whatever.'" She poured herself more tea, then said, "Now, what did you want me to see?"

"I'm in this picture. Jane is, too." I reached behind her and tapped the glass in a frame that hung behind her head.

"Canaan Valley Ski Team. I see Jane in the bottom row. But I don't see you." She twisted her brow.

"Look again."

"This kid here?" She feigned scrutiny.

"Yeah, that's me, and that's Ben next to me." I tapped the glass with the handle of my fork.

"That is not a great picture. You can't even see your faces." Alex laughed, then returned to her salad.

"Yeah, Ben kept poking fun at the photographer's accent. She was Finnish or something. We kept singing 'Norwegian Wood.'"

Chloe snuck up on us and interrupted, "That's not you."

"Is too. And besides, how would you know? You were like, five or something."

"Whatever. Here's your food." She pushed our salad bowls out of the way with all the grace of a drunken raccoon. "Is there anything else you need?"

But before I could reply she said, "I called Mom and told her you guys were here. She was pissed you didn't call anybody, but said it didn't matter. Just don't make any plans for tomorrow night."

"Don't make plans? Is that an order?" I crossed my arms.

Chloe cut my snicker short. With her hands on her hips she said, "Seriously, you have to ask? Yeah, everyone's coming over. And she said since I'm eighteen, I can drink a little. So don't screw it up by running off again or anything."

"Thanks for the warning. And the compassion."

"I'm serious. I'm bringing my boyfriend and if something happens I won't be able to see him until next weekend." She pulled her pad out of her back pocket and flipped to our order. "Alex, would you like anything else?"

"I'm fine, thank you." Alex smiled.

With that Chloe softened a little and returned Alex's smile. I asked, "Can I get some napkins?"

She rolled her eyes, stuck her pen behind her ear then left us. As the jukebox changed CDs—Weezer, "Say It Ain't So'—I could hear Chloe talking on her phone, "I told him he should've called... I told him... No, he's with a girl... And you said that Scott could stay over... You promised... Okay... Okay... Love you, too... Bye-bye."

Chloe bounded back up to the booth and dropped off the check. "No family discount?" I pushed the check back toward her.

"That's it. I just added in what I thought you were going to tip me." She pushed it back and set my cup on it.

"A little generous, don't you think?" I picked it off the table and pretended to check the prices.

"I gave you the table you wanted, didn't I? Even though it's way out of my way." She lowered her voice, then added, "And I lied when that girl over yonder asked if it was you she heard back here."

"What girl?" I tried to peek around her.

"That Tasso girl. She's paying now. With Darren Lewis." "This is bad," Alex said bluntly.

Darren Lewis had his shirt buttoned up to the top button. Purple bruises stuck out above his collar. He had his hat pulled low, but in the mirror over the counter I could see his black eye. He looked worse than when he left the bar last night. Like Charlie beat him with his pistol or something.

Auburn hair fell in a pair of braids down Lucinda's back. When I saw her face reflected in the mirror behind the counter my blood boiled. Lucinda wasn't just some girl. My family had treated her like one of our own. With all the charm of a November wind, she told Darren to go get the truck.

"Hey," I hollered across the room. "What's the fucking deal—"

She took a step toward us and mouthed a few words, mumbling syllables that meant nothing to me. I maintained eye contact. No part of me was ever going to back down from her again. When she spoke, her eyes fell shut, like she was in a trance. The room got hot. I started to sweat and the lights dimmed. I thought I was blacking out and grabbed for the edge of the table. Cicadas rushed through the open screen door and windows, buzzing and pulsing like speakers in a Walnut Street club back in Morgantown. When my head dipped, I caught a whiff of the rest of the food on the table. Acrid fumes that made me gag as the food blackened in accelerated decomposition.

Lucinda broke her trance and glared. Those brown eyes burned with a hatred I never thought possible in a person. Before vanishing into the glow of streetlights, she said, "You'll either sink or float. We'll find out. You want a witch hunt? We'll give you a witch hunt."

In my head I prepared an explanation for Alex, but wasn't even sure what I saw, or if Alex even saw the same thing. When I looked at Alex, she was turning blue.

"Alex!" I leapt to her side of the table. Her hands flew to her purple lips.

I lifted her from her seat and clasped my fists below her sternum, preparing to squeeze breath back into her.

"That won't help." Chloe ran to my side and broke my hold on Alex's chest. "Sit down."

"Chloe! I know CPR—"

"Sit down. If you want to do something, hold her hand." Chloe ran to the cooler and grabbed a pint of blueberries. I held Alex's hand, helpless to do anything else. Her face reddened, her eyes begged for relief, but I could only sit there. "Chloe!"

"Yelling isn't going to make me move any faster, you know." She grabbed a pitcher of water on her way back to the table.

"Call 911."

"Henry! Chill. I got this." With a spoon she smashed the blueberries against the side of the glass until only a purple paste remained. The sickly sugary fragrance of sunlight-induced sweetness, of ice cream stands making blueberry shakes on hot July nights nearly knocked me back into my seat. From the pitcher Chloe poured water and continued to stir.

"Just a second, kitten." Chloe plucked a hair from Alex's sweaty brow. "What are you doing?" I said.

"Shhh." She wrapped the hair around her middle finger and made three crosses over Alex's lips. Inaudible words flowed from Chloe's mouth to Alex's ear. Chloe pulled a silver coin out of her pocket, dropped it into the cup and tipped the purple liquid toward Alex's gasping mouth. "Put the coin in your mouth, but don't swallow it."

With a gentle brush of her pinky, Chloe wiped a bit of the juice that dribbled down Alex's chin.

Chloe's whispers became more frantic as Alex emptied the glass. Her breathing hadn't returned, so Chloe poured a little more water into the glass, swirled it then gave it to Alex to finish.

With a scream and a rush of tears, Alex's exhalation flooded the room. She spit the coin back into the glass. One of the guys from the kitchen came around the counter and stared. Chloe let Alex rest her head on her shoulder and calmed her with a quiet lullaby. It didn't take long for Alex's tears to wet Chloe's shirt.

"What was it, food poisoning?" I said.

"No, it wasn't food poisoning. Hush up, Henry." She handed Alex her tea.

Alex finally calmed down and began to drink without help. She sat back in the booth, still trembling.

"Was it allergies?" I said.

"For crying out loud. Keep your voice down." Chloe snatched a fresh linen from an adjacent table and wiped Alex's brow. "There, there. You're all right now."

"Did somebody call an ambulance?"

Chloe shook the coin from the glass and wiped it on her jeans before slipping it back into her pocket. "Men are so stupid. She isn't sick, Henry."

Alex's hand fell onto the table and I grabbed it. She smiled faintly with my touch. "What's wrong with her then?" I said.

With a clank, Chloe threw the spoon into the glass and cleaned up the scraps of paper, empty sugar packets and straw wrappers that littered the table. She stood up, sighed dramatically, then whispered softly in my ear. "What's wrong is Janie's old BFF put a drowning spell on her."

Chloe began to leave, turned as if there was something else, then said, "Guess you all don't need a box."

FOUR

When I woke up to shut the window, I realized I hadn't really been sleeping all that well to begin with. Maybe it was just being back in the house for the first time. Maybe I'd been dreaming old dreams. It didn't help that my dad hadn't cleaned a lick since I left in January. First thing I had to do was put away the chairs and planks Katy and Rachael used for the Sitting Up with Janie. Three days and nights taking turns staying awake so the body was never alone. So evil spirits couldn't drag it down to hell, or whatever. Guess that was why I had to flip all the mirrors back around too.

I wrapped a quilt around my shoulders and ventured onto the porch. Sunlight was just beginning to crack Cabin Mountain. A shivering Alex, drawn either by the draft or by my absence, joined me on the creaking porch swing. She wore my baseball cap and one of my old hoodies.

"Couldn't sleep?" I said. "Bad dreams."

"About what?" I lifted my arm, an invitation to climb beneath the quilt with me. "I don't want to talk about it." Golden light in her hair made her look immortal. I knew she was anything but.

"Okay. But we're safe here. Didn't you see the SATOR squares beneath the window?" I tried to hide my sarcasm.

"Yeah. What's that about?"

"Protection. Magic. Rachael must've put them up after I left this winter. They're meant to keep the devil away."

She began to cry. I pulled her closer. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay."

I held her for some time. She finally said, "The air smells sweet. Makes it easier to breath." She shuffled beneath the heavy quilt, a butterfly net for all the smells that drifted about my old home.

"Smells are better than photo albums," I said, grateful to the subject change. "Like when I'm up in the Sods and I smell spruce I remember all the Yule trees we dragged down the mountain. Anytime I smell maple syrup I think of mom and Janie making buckwheats. Wood smoke—whatever. Dried wildflowers make me think of when my mom was still around."

Alex picked her feet up from the cold porch and tucked them beneath the quilt. "To me, it smells like nobody can hurt us here."

I wanted to tell her that wasn't something I'd ever experienced. That, the smell of total security was one I wouldn't ever recognize. I lied. "They can't. Not here."

"I believe you."

Chirps from early morning birds out in the wide, rocky fields trickled into our conversation. Unlike Dolly Sods on the green mountain above, which were mainly spruce and aspen, this land's forest was a mixture of many trees. White pine, hemlock, white oak, maple, laurel, and rhododendron filled the gaps between pasture and hay fields. Stone walls, perhaps built by the first set of hands ever to work this land, mingled with wooden split-rail fences built by my grandpap and his sons long ago. I pointed out old barns and springs to Alex, places that shook memories loose. Here, reminiscences were more plentiful than field stone, more abundant than the blackberry blossoms that fell over the walls in waves come summer. _A sure sign of an upcoming bad winter_ , my dad used to say.

For a while I thought she'd drifted off while I was talking. So I shut up. After a few minutes, Alex said, "You talked to your mom lately?"

"No. It's been ten years. Why?" I tried not to sound too overly emotional. Alex sat up and tried to say something, but I stopped her.

"Why would you ask that?" I got off the swing and walked to the edge of the porch. She sank into the swing and tried to hide beneath the quilt. "Janie and her talked all the time. I just assumed—"

"About what? Where is she?"

"I don't know. Sorry. I thought..."

I held up my hand. "It's fine. If she wanted to talk she would've found me. I need to grow up and get over it."

Off to the west a puff of dust rose above the trees. I heard the crunch of tires on gravel. No matter who it was, it was somebody I didn't want to see. "Alex, just wait up here for a second."

My feet got wet from all the dew on the long grass. I walked to the edge of the driveway, stuck my hands in my pockets and waited. When I saw my pap's old pickup coming up the hill I relaxed a little.

My Uncle Jamie drove, and they had a big load of firewood. My pap's old revival tent hung over the tailgate. When they slowed to a stop I could see that my pap had a hard time hiding his surprise. I said, "You didn't have to go through all this trouble for me." Guilt made me want to run back into the house.

Jamie said, "Well, hello there, stranger. You're just in time to help us unload firewood. Why don't you follow us on over?"

"You didn't bring breakfast, did you?" I yawned.

He didn't hear me. Instead, he put the truck in gear and crept toward the center of the field. I waved Alex over to join me.

She took off the hat and patted down her hair as she tip-toed through the grass. I said, "It's all good in the hood," and she smiled.

"Just take your time," my pap yelled and he got out of the cab and stretched. "Wood ain't going to jump out of the truck itself."

We walked from the house Jamie and my dad built when my parents got married, toward the one Jamie and my dad built when Jamie got married many years earlier. They both had large porches with pillars that tapered to stone bases, and large eaves with gable trusses. In a way, the houses were like a testament to the relationship between my dad and his big brother. Jamie had maintained his, built a sunroom and a greenhouse for his wife. My dad's had cardboard over the busted kitchen window and needed a new roof. And no reason to be maintained. In a way, our house, in the condition it was in, reminded me that my dad had been an honest worker at one time—a mine supervisor, in fact. He didn't really become a drunk until the doctors found the spot on his lung. By then my mom was already gone. He must've figured there wasn't much worth staying sober for.

Champ, my grandfather's old collie dog, meandered over to Alex and me, then led us back over to his truck. He was too old and too tired to chase the farm cats that came across the field from the big barn. My pap nodded toward Alex, then took off his ball cap, revealing a full head of hair that was still more slate than gray. He waited a long moment, coughed, then finally said, "Well, well."

He smiled at Alex. "At least you had good reason to stay away."

Jamie grabbed my hand and shook it until it was nearly numb. "I'll be damned. When Rachael called I almost didn't believe it, but here you are." The soft rasp of his voice reminded me so much of my dad's, even though they looked nothing alike. Wire-rimmed glasses and an oxford shirt gave him the stereotypical academic look. His bristly mustache was almost completely gray.

"Alex, I'd like you to meet my pap, John Henry Collins, carpenter, farmer. Not a bad guy, once you get to know him." I laughed even though the familiarity I'd assumed wasn't totally appropriate.

He held her hand like it was an apple blossom. She gave him a soft kiss on the cheek. He kissed her back.

My pap said, "Henry left some out, but I can fill you in later."

"What did I leave out?" I said. "Drunkard. Nuisance—"

"Oh, stop it, Dad," Jamie said.

"And I'd like you to meet my Uncle Jamie. Ben's dad. You remember Ben from the funeral, right?"

Jamie gave her a business-like handshake and a nod. It was only at times like these I realized how shy he was.

"Where's Ben?" I asked.

"He'll be up. Had to run to Parsons." His soft voice unspooled slowly, like an old ballad sung around a campfire. He sang his well-annunciated words, rather than just spoke them.

"Parsons?" I asked. "What the hell's he doing in Parsons?" Jamie said, "We'll talk later."

My pap let him finish, and said, "Went to pick up your old man. That's what he's doing in Parsons. You see," he turned to Alex, "men in this family have real bad allergies." I knew what was coming, and got real mad. Even Jamie seemed to wince.

Before my pap could finish his joke I cut him off. "Allergic to whiskey. You ever hear that joke? It's an old one. He's going to say every time my old man drinks it he breaks out in handcuffs. Apparently, shit like that's still funny up here."

"C'mon, Henry," my pap said, clasping my shoulder and shaking it a few times. "It ain't like that. Just having a little fun."

"Whatever. I'd like you guys to meet Alex. Ramsey." I said her last name to hide my own fears that they'd discover her relationship to the Lewises.

My pap, still gripping my shoulder, said, "So, you leave without saying 'dog' and now here you are again like you never left. What do we have to do to keep you coming and going like this?" Pap released me and started pulling wood out of the back of the truck. "Would've done a pig if we had known you were coming."

"You got the tent though, huh?" I said.

My pap said, "We're having some family over. A big to-do for the holiday, so don't get it in your head it's all for you. Can I expect to see you there tonight?"

"Is that an invitation?"

"Henry! Of course we'll be there. Should we bring anything?" Alex said. She'd been half-listening, half playing with a trio of kittens that wandered out from the weeds at the edge of the field.

"No, sugar. Just be there. And bring him." My pap tilted his head toward me. "So where've you been?"

"Maybe later," I said. "After I've had a drink or two."

Alex, in an attempt to feel like she was contributing, said, "You should tell them about Ohiopyle. About Darren and Billy?"

I tried to cut her off, but my tongue wasn't fast enough. "No. Not now."

"Billy Lewis?" Pap said. "Odelia's kid? Tell me that son of a bitch has been sniffing around."

"No," Jamie said. "You're a bit addled. I believe Odelia's their aunt. She just raised those boys up as her own." Jamie had said 'I believe,' but I knew that he knew exactly who she was. He just did that to cover up for my pap's forgetfulness.

"Odelia can't help being ugly, but she could just stay home. Don't get involved with them," Pap said. "Things have been quiet. After twenty years of bickering and pettiness..."

"What do you mean? Like, until recently they hadn't been?"

"Well," Pap went on, "Jamie caught one of them poaching black bear down the lane at the end of March. Son of a bitch had a buddy in Natural Resources who knew where they were denning. Curtis Lewis, I think it was. A cousin. He made a killing selling the gall bladders on the black market. How the hell should I know? Took a lot of bear this spring, though. I'll tell you that. God put the good stuff where the lazy people can't have any, I guess."

He paused to put in a chew. The smell was a good smell, reminding me of bailing hay with my dad. My old man always had a pouch of Levi Garrett on him. My pap offered the pouch to Jamie with a laugh. Jamie pulled a peppermint from his shirt pocket. His way of resisting temptation for so many years. Then Pap waved it my way. My mouth watered with anticipation, but I'd given that up.

"Anyway, I told Lewis I wouldn't call the state if he compensated me and that son of a bitch put up one hell of a fuss. He said that lot wasn't mine anyway, then went into some bullshit story about old deeds. So the next week their lawyer called. He said he found an agreement that negated my deed."

The old man spit into the fire ring. "Charlie Lewis is a Blow George and a pen hooker Johnny Bull, nothing more. After a few weeks in Parsons we got it lawyered out. It was a surveyor's error. The surveyor my grandfather hired was off his datum by a few yards. Threw the whole property line off by a hair in my favor. Charlie was nosing around trying to get something that didn't belong to him, but he got his fingers burnt and I ended up with another thirty acres." Pap didn't hide his smug smile.

"And that was that?" I said, thinking I'd knocked a hornet's nest out of the rafters all by myself.

"There was mischief. Their young ones threw stones at the house. I filled one of them with rock salt. Then just after Easter that Tasso girl came here with Darren demanding something she said belonged to her. That was the end."

"Lucinda? Eddie Tasso's daughter? You sure?"

"What the hell does that mean? Yes I'm sure," he said, indignantly.

I said, "Well, I had to rip apart the Jenkinsburg Bridge to keep them from filling us with buckshot."

After a few seconds Jamie said, "Odelia thinks it's going to turn up maybe?" "Oh, stop it, Jamie," Pap said. "That's your mother talking."

"What'll turn up?" I asked.

"Nothing to worry about." My pap stared into the distant ridges. His eyes studied the miles. "Superstition. Family history."

When neither Jamie nor my pap said anything, I quietly told them about Darren and about last night at Sirianni's.

My pap said, "That boy's wild enough to shoot at. Seventy years this shit's been going on. Seventy years. That old woman sure poisoned those kids against us. Four generations of Johnny Bull Lewises and nothing but poison. Mary ruined Charlie and his brothers and Odelia, and Odelia went and ruined those boys. All for something I ain't seen since..." He shut himself up real fast. "I was stupider than sled tracks to think it was finally over."

I jumped into the back of the truck and started tossing logs over the side. "I'm sorry if I—"

Jamie said, "Hell, Henry. I can understand it if you can't follow. It ain't your fault. You got caught in the middle of something that's been going on since Mason Collins got on that god-damned boat. Us Iron-horse Irish never stood a chance. There isn't a family on this side of the Blackwater who hasn't heard about Mary Lewis's obsession. You'd be surprised at the tales some of them old-timers spin. Some of them are pretty near nasty. Nasty enough not to be surprised by anything they do."

Pap said, "Charlie and the whole lot of them feel we owe them something. They've been spreading blame around since my grandpap moved up here from Lewisburg. They said he stole something belonged to them."

"Like what?" I said, coughing on sawdust.

"Nothing. That family's nothing but trouble," Jamie said.

My pap added, "Stay away from them. Most of them have moved to Parsons or Elkins. A few are up in Garrett County. The rat likes to be close to his hole, you know."

"I don't want you to think I—"

"Just stay away from him. It'll blow over." The way Pap said it told me it was final.

Jamie took a bundle of kindling from me and said, "I have to run to Elkins to pick up a few instruments. Want to ride down with me, Dad?"

"Sure, I'll ride down with you. Out of Jameson and I'm thirsty. Need to grab a pint of panther's breath. Alex, it was a pleasure meeting you. Tonight you can tell me about yourself and what it is you do." He stepped close for a hug from Alex.

"I look forward to it." She released him, then gave the old man a smile that nearly melted him.

"Henry, it was good seeing you. Ben will be pleased to hear you're back," Jamie said, slapping my back a few times. "Your timing is perfect. You meet Preston yet?"

I shook my head. Didn't know who he was talking about.

We watched Pap get into Jamie's truck. It took a while. Maybe he had gotten older and I just didn't want to see it. As they backed out of the driveway we walked over to the house.

Alex stopped me from going through the front door. "This Lewis thing. I feel like I caused some kind of trouble."

I stood in the doorway with her and looked south over the valley for a second. "You heard them, Alex. It's not your fault."

I pulled her into the house with me and shut the door. I set my hat on the old newel post, worn smooth by four pairs of hands that'd never hold each other again. She sat on a bench next to the front door. A pair of my boots sat on the floor beneath the bench. Next to a pair of my dad's work boots. I sat on the stairs, facing her. "There'll always be ghosts in here."

She stood, then led me up the stairs. I listened to the familiar creaks, remembering which steps I had to skip if I came home past curfew. We returned to my old room and lay down in the bed together and just looked at each other for a while. For a second I thought we might kiss and my heart sped up. My mouth got dry when I thought I might tell her how much I missed her and how sorry I was for leaving her. But she just smiled, rolled over and fell asleep.

After a few long hours of sleeping and not sleeping, I slipped out of bed and snuck out of the room to look for something. I left the bedroom door ajar. The sight of a closed door bothered me. Except for the door to Jane's room. I left it shut. I certainly didn't have any business there. It'd sat untouched since the day she left. Not that there was anything in it anyway. Not a picture. Not a thread of clothing. No old toys. No pillows or bedding. No curtains over the windows. No yearbooks or old cassette tapes. It was never used for storage. It never housed overnight guests. It was just four walls and a window and the memory of an argument I'd never forget as long as I lived.

Jane's words were some of the most hurtful ever uttered in this corner of the Mountain State. She blamed my dad for whatever happened to my mother. She said that it was his fault we never got to see her again. She said he deserved all the loneliness he'd get. I should've intervened.

I backed away from the door. Like the room was on fire. I kept on going down the hall.

My dad's room sat in a half-square of glass, windows overseeing a view that stretched from Cabin Mountain to Davis. The large, wrought-iron bed sat alone in the dark. One by one I opened the wood shutters that my dad and Jamie built. One by one I opened the old, stiff windows and let in a breeze that took that dust back to the earth from which it came. The breeze, at times a wind, blew through the room unimpeded. I breathed deep the scent of random blossoms mixing with the smell of stained oak and maple.

On the floor of the closet I found a box of photo albums and other stuff, which I placed on the floor next to the bed. Not what I was looking for, but worth keeping out for all the things I found in it. Things like baby shoes. Programs from my high school baseball games—I pitched two no-hitters my senior year. A bunch of VHS tapes in an old shoebox. The stickers were labeled 'Jane's birthday 1995,' 'Little League,' 'Clifftop 1999.' Audio tapes of my performances with Jamie and Katy at fairs and Heritage Weeks filled another.

I set aside the tape from Clifftop. I wanted Alex to see it. There were other things: projects that we'd done in school, a Thanksgiving turkey made out of my tiny paw print and feathers, pine needles glued to construction paper for a Christmas tree. A long set of rattlesnake beads my dad collected on the train tracks in Rowlesburg. I slid those into my pocket.

Below a stack of blankets I found another box, a wooden one that I'd never seen before. I carried it back with the rest of my loot. The lid came off with a huff of cedar and old photographs revealing sights that were brand new to my eyes. There were baby pictures and childhood photos of my mom. There were love letters that my dad had written her. Her rosary beads were in there, too. She was just starting to show in their prom picture, but the cut of her dress hid it pretty well. I recognized my grandparents and their parents in more than a few. There were photos of Rachael and Jamie holding my dad, a toddler barely able to stand.

In that box was a family history, my history, and all I wanted to do was forget about all of it. In that box was the story of where I came from and who I was. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't erase the proof before my eyes. In those old photos was the image of a mother and a family I never really knew.

All I had were memories—and fading ones, at that. I laughed when I saw my dad in his football uniform with my mother, the cheerleader, smiling by his side. The back of the photo said 'Homecoming 1989.' They were in love even that far back. I nearly crumpled when I saw their wedding pictures. College acceptance letters that neither of them could use because they had me to take care of. Prayer cards from my pap's little girl's funeral. _On this mountain the LORD of hosts will provide for all his peoples. On this mountain he will destroy the veil that veils all peoples, the web that is woven over all nations; he will quell death forever._

At the very bottom of the box something silver flashed. Twin hands clasped a heart wearing a crown. My mother received the claddagh ring on her wedding day, or so I was told. It had been a gift from my pap's mother. The metal was as soft as a flower petal.

Still not what I was looking for, but enough to call today a victory.

Through the window, a smoky breeze carried the sound of the cars traveling up the lane. In the yard below, Rachael and Fenton tended to a growing fire and a big stack of folding chairs. I debated with myself whether it'd be easier to deal with the family one at a time, or as a whole. I crept back down the hall to my room.

"You awake?" I said gently.

Alex pulled the sheet over her head, then stretched away the sleepiness from her feet and toes, then from her calves and thighs. Now tangled in the sheets she squinted to find me.

"Is it time?" Her voice was barely louder than the breeze.

"Yeah, I should probably go down now. Let's not talk about the Lewises and all that. Okay?" I picked my Tucker County High School baseball cap up from the floor.

Before stepping into the hallway she said, "Did you find what you were looking for?"

"What was I looking for?" I put the cap on and looked in the mirror.

"I don't know. I heard you in that other bedroom." She tapped the floor, like a cat testing new snow from a porch step.

"Oh. No, but I found something I wasn't looking for, so in the end I'm, even-steven." I barely recognized myself in the mirror. The hat, the house, none of it seemed like me anymore. If this was supposed to be some kind of metamorphosis or life lesson, I didn't like it. Had enough life lessons.

"Are you going to tell me?" She leaned her head against the bedroom door's frame and made big eyes at me.

"Later."

She disappeared into the bathroom as I got ready, then returned wearing her cowboy boots and that stupid old blue fleece of mine she found in the Jeep last night. I bought that with my first rafting paycheck. Twin braids fell over her shoulders, reminding me of that day in Jane's apartment. She smiled, grabbed my hand and pulled me down the stairs.

We strode down the stone steps and into the soft, cool grass. Pap's dog waited. We scratched Champ's head as the old man crossed the lane. For a second I remembered the way he was out there the day we buried Janie. With a wave, he called us to meet him at the intersection, then quickened his pace to join us.

"Out for a walk?" I called to him. "Where's Grandma?"

"She's still baking. Be here in a bit. And I plan on being away with the fairies tonight, and want to get an early start. I'm walking because I don't want to put my truck in the creek. My brother's bringing cider. And how's this pretty little thing doing?" He offered his cheek for a kiss.

"Just fine, Mr. Collins. And how are you?"

"Isn't that a sweet accent? You watch those girls from down the mountain, Henry. Sometimes they taste sweet long after they've gone bad." He shifted his jacket to his other arm to greet Alex.

"Pap."

He ignored me. "Call me John Henry, sweetheart." He grabbed her free hand and walked her over to the fire. He didn't get very far before pulling the old flask out of his jacket and taking a big swig. "Rachael, come on over here."

My aunt had dark auburn hair and green eyes, high cheekbones and a round face, just like Janie. Katy looked more like her dad, a truck driver who left on a haul to Arkansas before Chloe was born and somehow never found his way back east. Rachael really took to my sister after my mom left. Her skin was as fair as ever, like a cherry blossom. She could barely contain her crooked smile. She let my pap speak first.

"I want you to meet my future grand-daughter-in-law. Watch out though, she's from over the mountain. But I think she's all right."

My face got hot and I shook my head, trying to apologize to Alex for the presumption.

Alex received a warm hug from Rachael. My aunt released her, then discreetly pulled a stray blond hair from Alex's shoulder. Rachael caught me looking and tucked the hair into her back pocket. Fenton gave a bashful wave. But before either could speak, Pap went on.

"I don't know if you remember this one." He jabbed a thumb at me.

Rachael grabbed me by the shoulders then kissed my cheeks. She wouldn't let Fenton get close enough to shake hands, so he slapped my back a few times. A little more gray had crept into Fenton's temples and into his droopy mustache than when I saw him last. Maybe it was just because his hair had been shorter. Maybe I really wasn't away as long as I'd thought I was.

"Hey there, old buddy. Where you been?" Fenton said, his words restrained by the weight of the emotion he felt. Even though Fenton and Rachael had never gotten hitched, he was as much an uncle to me as Jamie. I suppose I didn't realize, until now, that when I left, they lost me, too.

I said, "Looks like the farm's doing well. You guys are legit now, huh? Selling stinky cheese and booze to all them city folks coming up on the weekends. I saw the truck out front last night."

Fenton said, "That's it, buddy. Making them D.C. folks pay us back for all them taxes. Got to fight capitalism with capitalism, right?" He exaggerated the sarcasm in his voice with a big smile.

"New barn, too? Congratulations, you guys. I mean it. You deserve it." Times had always been tough for Rachael and Fenton. Chloe always wore hand-me-down jeans that Jane had been handed down from Katy.

Fenton swelled a little, then said, "Thanks a lot, buddy. Can't complain. Sure beats railroading, although we work a little harder for our money. You ain't ever off the clock."

Rachael skipped tact and went right for the kill. "You didn't have to leave like that." She gave my sweatshirt the same treatment she gave Alex's. She didn't find any loose hairs on me, though. She'd trained us well. "I knew you were back. The last time any cows gave bloody milk was the night you left."

_Jesus_. I shook my head and hoped Alex didn't think any of what Rachael said was batshit crazy, but she was off to the side playing with the kittens. "Word gets around," was all that I could say.

"Well, next time you let us know what's going on, all right?" It wasn't a question as much as a demand. "You meet Preston yet?"

A blue pickup truck pulled into the lane, denying me a chance to respond. My pap's brother gave a wave.

Fenton waved back as the pickup slowed to a stop. He said, "Excuse me while I give him a hand."

Rachael said, "Alex, are you all right after last night?" Rachael put a delicate hand on Alex's shoulder. Instead of letting her hand drop back to her side, Rachael brushed another hair from Alex's sleeve.

"Last night?" Alex was a bit surprised. "Oh, the restaurant. I'm fine. I think it was a panic attack. I used to have them all the time when I was in high school." "What happened?" my pap said, annoyed at being out of the loop.

"Lucinda Tasso and Darren Lewis. Chloe can fill you in when she gets here."

"Stop it. You are not to bring that nonsense here tonight," my pap said. "These kids are shaken up. You all act like blinking milk is the work of the devil himself. Save it for tomorrow. Or wait until I pass out. I didn't walk up here to listen to this horse shit."

Rachael bit her lip. The look she'd given Alex troubled me. And with that, everybody went back to work. I turned to Alex and quietly said, "Yep. You can see why I left? Sorry about that."

Alex didn't care. She shrugged and picked up one of the kittens.

In the next twenty minutes the gathering became an assembly, became a party. Alex adopted the kittens as a way to avoid interacting with anybody else. My grandma showed up and gave me one heck of a guilt trip. She drafted Alex to help her out. Jamie arrived with some college kids bearing musical instruments.

Katy whooshed in with her boyfriend in a scream of car stereo and everybody dropped what they were doing to run over and see them. They pulled the new silver VW onto the grass in-between the fire and Jamie's house. Katy looked more polished than I'd ever seen her. Like she went from a fern to a Pink Lady's Slipper in just a season. Her hair had been lightened and styled and she wasn't dressed like a thirteen-year-old girl. Her little floral patterned dress, unbuttoned way too low, made her look like some kind of revivalist rebel. She walked proud and smiled like she was posing for Redneck Vogue. Alex stood next to me, holding a kitten, and asked, "Who's that?"

"That would be Katy Stefanic. My cousin. Bookworm. Recluse."

"You sure?" Alex set the kitten in the grass and it squeaked to be picked up again.

"No. C'mon and I'll introduce you."

We walked over with Jamie. I stuck my hands in my pockets and waited for somebody to notice us. The guy Katy rolled up with hugged my grandma and Rach and Jamie's wife, Isabelle, like he was a long-lost cousin or some shit. He smiled, standing there with his stupid flannel shirt and perfectly-groomed stubble like some kind of displaced hipster dipshit.

I got mad. "Who's this guy?"

Jamie turned to me and said, "Now, now. This is Preston. Talk about a story to tell... C'mon." He put his arm around me and led me over. Katy spotted me right away and hugged me. "Hey, cous, how you been?"

I shook my head. "Not good."

She whispered, "That's what I hear. We'll talk tonight, okay?" She let me go, except for my hand, which she used to pull me over to meet her guy. "Hey, Pres."

He stood up straight and stuck out his hand. Katy said, "This is my cousin, Henry Collins."

He smiled real big, and I couldn't tell if it was sincere or not. When I accepted his hand he immediately wrapped it up with his other. "Man, I heard a lot about you."

Trying not to be a dick, I said, "Wish I could say the same." But I knew the words didn't have the effect I intended. To divert attention from my behavior, I said, "This is Alex."

Katy, perhaps remembering her from the funeral, hugged her, too. Then she whispered something in Alex's ear, and Alex nodded. Whatever it was went on for a long time, with Alex saying "...uh huh, yeah..." and finally smiling at Katy after she finished.

Katy said, "Sure?"

And Alex, her face looking happy and relaxed for the first time in days, said, "Thank you so much." She looked like she could cry.

Katy grabbed Alex's hand and headed toward the tent. "Henry, you and Pres get us drinks and seats, okay?"

Preston stood there for an awkward second, before finally saying, "She really worried about you, man. I heard about all the stuff that happened. About your sister. I'm really sorry, man."

I got mad. I swore if I was a different person I would've fucking clocked him right there for assuming he knew anything about me. Instead I just clenched my fists.

But he wouldn't shut up. "Katy wants me to make time to talk to you, so I'm kind of...I don't know. I guess I'm just making myself available. She kept saying she knew we'd get on and all that. So, you know...I'm happy to finally meet you. Or whatever."

I appreciated the effort he was making and finally eased up a little. Keeping track of who knew what wore me out. My mind needed somebody else to take over for a bit. And Preston seemed like the type of guy who'd make it easy to not have to think about anything. "Sure thing, man. I appreciate it."

"Bueno," he said, switching direction like a bird hitting a window. He wandered toward the tent. "Drinks and a seat. Which one you want?"

"I'll grab a table."

He turned a half-circle, then grabbed my arm. "Hey, man. Rachael is standing by the hooch, and I kind of told her I was going to slow my consumption down, if you know what I mean. Mind if I get the table instead?"

I nodded. Watching him try to keep his brand new Vans clean made me smile.

I grabbed drinks and led the girls back to Preston. Chloe and her boyfriend joined us, then Fenton came over. Neither me nor Preston had to worry about getting drinks after that. Soon I had a nice buzz going and the smile never left my face, except for one moment of clarity when I realized how my drinking had changed since Jane died. How I only drank in large crowds of people.

I'd been too afraid to touch a drop alone. Afraid that, if I let my vigilance slip for just a second, they'd get me, too.

Cousins and great-uncles continued to trickle in, turning the driveway, then the lane, into a parking lot. They brought food and folding chairs and some of them had guitar or banjo cases tucked under their arms. All this happened as the sun slid across the sky and dipped toward Canaan Mountain on the other side of the valley, four or five miles away. It was a circus of pink and gold that lingered the way that only a summer-bound sunset can.

Lines had formed on both sides of long tables without any formal announcement to start eating. Katy looped her arms through Alex's and Preston's and pulled them into the long line, saying something about making sure we got pie.

But the food went on for miles, all things I hadn't tasted in so long. Rachael and some cousins had arranged the multitude of platters, trays and crocks. There were fiddleheads and morels that had been sautéed in butter. Berry and haw preserves and apple butter waiting next to warm loaves of bread and cornbread.

The table bowed with the weight of venison roasted with cranberries and walnuts, rabbit stuffed with a piccalilli of leeks, rhubarb and ramp. I hadn't seen a meal like this in a really long time, not since I was young. Back before things got so sad.

As soon as we sat back down, Alex's kitten found her and begged from the grass by her ankles. Jamie joined us with a big plate of food once his students began to play. Old Irish fiddle tunes drifted into the tent.

"That's a nice touch," I said.

"Yeah, I said there'd be free food if they came up and played for an hour or two." Jamie winked, letting me in on his little secret. "Most of them would've been happy just to hear Katy and Preston play. But I'll give them each a few bucks later."

"Isn't that a little like buying their affection?"

"They didn't know I was going to buy it," he added with a laugh.

"So," I said, leaning in real close to Jamie, "What did you mean when you asked if I'd heard about Katy and Preston?"

I looked at them—Katy had changed, no doubt about it. She wore a lot of silver jewelry, bracelets and a bunch of rings. Her new man had a silver fiddle string around his left wrist. As a pair, they looked like they were trying really hard to pull off the whole, 'new Americana' thing. Like, they were reinventing Johnny and June.

"You really don't know?" Jamie said, then let me right off the hook. "Long story. Preston is a good guy. Let's just say he's really lucky Katy found him. They started playing together this spring. They got themselves a nice little record deal."

"Get out."

"From God's ear, they did."

"So, they're legit? This is real?"

"Yep. Nashville, recording time with amazing producers, Gibson guitars and the whole deal. Didn't come easy. Preston fought tooth and nail for it." Jamie glowed when he talked about their success. He gave a little wave to his wife, Isabelle, and told her to bring over a few more chairs. "Things happen for a reason, Henry."

"Jamie," I said. "Now probably isn't the time, but when you get a chance I'd like to know what the hell's going on. Nobody tells me anything."

"We'll talk tomorrow, but a lot of this Lewis stuff is just conjecture. The rest has been distorted to the point where it's more folk-tale than family history." He peeked over his shoulder, I suspect to see where Pap was. "Supposedly Mary Lewis poisoned her sister thinking she'd take her place by old Mason Collin's side when the time came for him to remarry. Charlie and Odelia's mom. But it's just conjecture, Henry."

When my pap came over Jamie hushed up and raised his bottle to him. My pap said, "Why do I get the feeling I'm interrupting?"

"You're not, Pap. Just trying to get Henry caught up."

Pap said, "This'll get you caught up," and gathered a pair of plastic cups from down the table. "Jamie, you joining us?"

"Sure. Why not?"

My pap tapped at a third cup. I leaned over to grab it, and saw that it had somebody's pop in it. My pap gestured for it anyway, and after I passed it to him he dumped the soda out and filled each of the cups with a few fingers of his alley bourbon. He said, "Drink up before Benjamin gets over here."

I looked where he'd pointed, and saw my cousin creeping along the food table, chewing and putting stuff directly into his mouth and wiping his hands on his shorts. I turned, raised my glass along with my pap and Jamie.

We drank, and Jamie said, "A bird with one wing can't fly." My pap laughed and refilled our cups again real quick.

The second one burned the top of my esophagus and I fought to suppress a cough. I put my cup on the table and stood up as soon as Ben came around. "Where you been?" I knew my eyes were red.

He wrapped me up in a big hug. His breath smelled like Miller Lite. "Levon wanted to go straight to the bag store to pick up a pint. Then I dropped him off at Muttley's."

Jamie said, "You left to pick him up at ten."

In a smart-ass kind of way, Ben replied, "Yeah, and I dropped him off at noon." Jamie admitted defeat by rubbing his eyes. My pap said, "Where's he at now?" "Over at the house. Wasn't going to let him walk home from Mutt's. You get married while you were gone, there pal?" Ben stood behind Alex, awaiting an introduction. "Sorry, man. This is Alex. You might remember her from January."

"I don't," he said. "Ain't she cuter than a bug's ear? Con mucho gusto." He took her hand, then kissed her on the cheek.

I said, "A 'nice to meet you' will do."

Before long, chairs were pulled from rows and people spread into the field, like the tent had erupted. The hum of drinking and laughing grew louder than the music. Soon enough everything was spinning. The cider went down so much easier than beer. When I complimented my pap's brother on the recipe he smiled, "You must be one of them connoisseurs then. People think it's as simple as mixing rubbing alcohol and apple juice, but it ain't."

Capitalizing on the mood, Fenton rapped his green bottle on the table then raised it in a toast. "May your glass always be full, may there always be a roof over your head, and may you dirty sinners be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows you're dead."

Everybody laughed when Preston said, "Just so you all know, some of us don't find that very funny."

I didn't get the joke. But I was happy to drink with them.

When Jamie noticed the music stopped he went to inquire. With a laugh he released his students to eat and returned. "They've run out of songs. But we'll run out of shine before we run out of music. Give us a few minutes to get ready while we set up."

"You don't play, John Henry?" Alex asked my pap.

He said, "I was only good at two things growing up. Playing an instrument wasn't one of them."

"Bullshit," Ben said with a laugh.

"I used to, sweetheart. Me and my youngest sister would sit on the porch for hours."

"Sarah?" I said.

"That's right. She died when I was away at school."

Champ rested his head upon my pap's knee. Pap scratched his dog's neck with hands that looked older than they did when I shook them this morning. He said, "Odelia Lewis wondered why I hadn't asked her to marry me yet. She figured a lack of available suitors made her the obvious choice. She's ugly, but she means no harm by it. I told her I planned to marry Alice when I graduated. Odelia took it hard. Kept threatening to kill herself or somebody else. Then just before winter break them girls put Sarah in a barrel and rolled her into the river."

Alex gently placed a hand on his wrist. Preston whispered, "Man, that's harsh."

My pap looked away. In a voice almost too low to hear, said, "And they cried the dreadful wind and rain."

He took a second, then went on, "Of course I can't prove it. Like I said, family curse."

All around, the party went on. But for Alex and me, and Katy and Preston and Ben, it'd seemingly come to an abrupt, sad, end.

My pap held out his left hand. With a forced smile he said, "Got this caught in a skidder down on the Greenbrier, up a ways from Cass. Thought I was going to lose a few fingers. That's why I don't play." Faint, white scars trailed across his hand like petroglyphs.

I heard my name from over my shoulder, Jamie calling me and Katy up to play. But I waved him off. Pap's stump-hole whiskey made it easier to brood. As happy as I was to be back in my pap's favor, I hated the view from the dance floor. It pissed me off that I couldn't find the one thing I wanted from that house.

"Go on up there, Henry. What're you waiting for?" My pap gave me a weak smile. "Show this girl what you got."

I stood. "Sorry, Jamie. I thought the fiddle was in my closet."

He cut me off with a smile and a wink, then gave me an introduction that left me little choice. "We're here today to welcome back an old friend and to say hello to a new one." The smattering of applause made me blush. I was about to speak before he cut me off again, "And by now you all know my niece Miss Katy had a bit of fortune this spring."

The crowd erupted into a thunderous outburst that dwarfed the smidgen I'd received. Preston came up and stood next to us and I wondered what he was doing here.

As the family settled down Jamie said, "Don't worry, son, I knew you'd be looking for it." He waited until he could be heard, then said, "So let's celebrate, and make darn sure the sun hears us when it decides to come back around tomorrow morning."

Jamie began to sing:

"C'mon boozefighters, I want you all to hear, All about the booze that we serve 'em up here,

_It's made all over these hollers and hills, Where we got a plenty of moonshine stills._ "

Preston harmonized with Jamie on every other line. " _We hain't ever heard of the Volstead Law,_

And for prohibition bulls we don't care a straw, We make it out of buckwheat, rye, and corn,

And bottle it up in the early morn'.

_And the fawn will lay down with the lion, after drinking this old moonshine._ "

Somebody let out a yell. I finally relented and joined Jamie in the next verse, trying to sing over Preston.

"Tip your head back and take a little drink, Then for a week you won't be able to think

First thing you know you'll be getting kind of tired, after church trying to raise a fight.

So tip up your head and take a little more, then for a month you'll be feeling mighty sore.

Then you'll swear you won't drink it anymore, but you said that a thousand times before.

_And the fawn will lay down with the lion, after drinking this old moonshine._ "

Alex was watching with Ben and my pap. She suppressed a giggle. I blushed when Jamie let me take the last verse by myself. This kind of thing wouldn't have been acceptable in Ohiopyle. Preston continued to harmonize.

"One drop'll make a possum whip a bulldog,

One drop will make a kitten chase a wild hog,

Make a field mouse spit in a blacksnake's face,

Make a hard-shelled preacher fall from grace.

And the fawn will lay down with the lion,

_After drinking this old moonshine._ "

I raised my drink to the people gathered there. Alex laughed and clapped. Jamie brought Katy into our little circle, smiling an ornery grin. Standing next to them reminded me of all those festivals, hundreds at least, where I played like a boy possessed. Jamie handed me a small black instrument case that stopped me in my tracks. "No way."

"Yeah, I'm sorry. I've been playing it at the school, there's something sublime about the way it feels."

I lifted the clasps and inhaled the rock candy-like scent of resin that mingled with the fiddle's spruce to make a one-of-a-kind smell that, sadly, some people died without ever smelling. It had been Ben's, but he wasn't musically inclined. Thus I inherited it.

I reached into my pocket.

"What're you looking for?" Katy said.

I showed her the long set of rattles I found in my dad's closet. Jamie watched with keen interest, then said, "To keep the devil away, huh?"

"Think I need it?" I gave him a half smile, which he didn't reciprocate. I dropped the rattles into an f-hole, then gave it a shake.

Preston said, "Those don't always work, you know."

"You hush up now, Preston." Jamie looked at me, "'Hell Up Coal Holler,' on three?"

Jamie, Katy and I drew our bows like archers about to fire. When we released, sad triads floated into the valley. The syrupy notes that sprang from my f-hole stunned even my own ears. That unmistakable sound couldn't be produced where Kentucky's bluegrass sprouted. They were too busy with horses and basketball. And that sound couldn't be produced in Tennessee's Smoky hollows. They were too worried about Country and Western. That sad squeal was pure West Virginia. As I played I could feel the devil riding my bow.

I had a real hard time keeping up with Jamie and Katy, who played these notes with well-practiced flourishes. These twelve notes that journeyed with my pap's grandfather over the gray North Atlantic, when famine forced him from Ireland's stony-green shore. These twelve notes that sustained my grandfather's father when food couldn't, when his trail led over frosty ridges into territory still haunted by ghosts of the first people. These few measures that I played to announce my gratitude, to announce that my blood flowed for those who made me what I was, and for those who would speak of me when I was dead.

My aunts and their aunts danced reels and jigs while my uncles and their sons, by law, sipped rather than gulped the family recipe. Alex, who was not yet familiar with this type of throw down, just stared. Ben pulled her to her feet to dance with him.

When we finished the number the dancers clapped and asked for more. Rachael brought up jugs of wine and we drank while we caught our breath, then we drank a little more. As long as we played the libations flowed, so I let my brain work in the melodic languages that I had all but forgotten. Song after song about life and hardship. Logging. Deception. Love. Song after song in twos and threes, American and Irish and German and Mountaineer.

Preston couldn't keep up. When he returned to the table I felt like I'd won something. Katy sang a few songs. Her voice, prettier than that of any instrument, rang high and soft like the glow of stars on a cloudless January night. Rachael watched admiringly as her baby girl sang.

Pap heckled his brothers and Jamie, shouting out any song he thought they wouldn't know. "'Ducks on the Millpond'" he said, then "'Little Pink.'"

But his brothers didn't miss a beat. They told the old bastard to shut up, then brought forth songs so obscure that even Jamie, the ethnologist, was at a loss. We did our best to play along, but were out of our league. I filled my cup with wine before leaving the rest of them to their thing, embarrassed that I'd only lasted a little longer than Preston did. Alex was spinning circles with Ben, so I went back to sit with my pap.

My dad sat a few chairs down from my pap, but our eyes hadn't met yet. I was too embarrassed to look at him. He thought playing a fiddle was an impractical waste of time. Dark hair with a touch of gray stuck out from beneath an old grease- stained engineer's cap he had from his railroading days. He wore a real thick beard, like shaving cut too much into his drinking time. Seeing him took a little of the spring out of my step. I sat across from him. The Collins family either produced loud drunks or sad drunks, and my dad looked sad. Even though I had a thousand things to say, my mouth wouldn't let me spit any one of them out.

My pap finally broke the ice. "This is a good thing, this here," he waved a few fingers back and forth between my dad and me.

I nodded. "How you been?"

I waited, but he just stared into his drink.

Finally, he nodded and I got mad and went on. "Been good. Three days ago a girl shows up out of nowhere and says I'm supposed to protect her from Charlie Lewis. Saved a guy's life two days ago. Jumped into the river and pulled him out from under a rock. That night, Darren Lewis comes up to Ohiopyle and starts waving a gun around. Let's see—"

"Sorry to hear that, Henry. I suppose I should've asked." He tried to make eye contact, but I wouldn't let him.

"Yeah, well, you didn't. And I haven't even gotten to the best part. So yesterday morning—first thing—Charlie Lewis brings four trucks up into PA to ambush me."

"Jesus, Henry. I get it. Straighten up and act like you have some sense." His voice rasped liked a hound dog on a short leash. "What do you want me to say?"

"I don't know, I don't care and it doesn't make any difference. There's not a fucking thing I want you to say." I stood up. "So how you been? How's life treating you?"

"Now don't go acting above your raising. We're all impressed by you, Henry. Can't finish a semester of school because he's too busy playing around in boats."

"Here comes the loud drunk. I love it."

"C'mon, now, Henry," my pap said, "Sit back down."

I was already walking away. I heard my dad say, "That boy don't have a lick of sense in his head."

"Want to get some air?" I waved to Chloe to take over as Ben's dance partner and I grabbed Alex's hand. The music had kind of died down anyway. Jamie had begun to talk about Katy and Preston, and as much as I wanted to listen, I couldn't be around people. Preston strummed an old acoustic guitar, a Gibson, and sang. He sounded real good.

Alex and I walked past the fire, past where Fenton and some of my pap's brothers talked about ginseng and hidden trout pools, about coyotes and copperheads, and into the glow of a waxing moon over Canaan Mountain. The golden orb crowded the stars, brightening the night.

"Sorry about my family," I said, mostly to myself. I tried to smile. "Suppose you just needed time to recover from everything."

"It's perfect. Everybody's wonderful and so kind to me." We sat on an old picnic table bench. "You don't have to apologize."

"I guess you didn't meet my dad, so yeah, you're right."

"How bad was it?" She put her hand on my knee. "I saw."

"I don't know. Could've been worse. But after all the shit this week I just wanted somebody else to be the adult. Like I needed to come back here and worry about him, too. Wondering is he mad or is he going to do something stupid? I just don't need this. He's the reason I left in January."

Alex said, "I'll go wherever you go." She rested her head on my arm.

Time stopped for a moment. I was able to see the moon set into the western hills, the morning and all that came after. My heart warmed with the thought of all the days and nights Alex and I still had to spend together.

I kissed her. She relaxed into me, sliding a hand up to my neck and through my hair.

"I won't let you down, I promise," I said, running a finger down her cheek. We held each other for a while. I wished that there were fireflies in this part of the valley this time of year.

She picked up a mewing kitten and said, "Maybe we should get back to the party? Maybe, um...we should dance?"

"Sure," I said, and we slowly wound our way back through the dark side of the big tent, almost hidden by the music coming from Katy and Preston. _They're good_ , I thought. Seeing Katy so happy made me smile.

Making it a point to avoid my dad forced me to go the long way around, but when I saw that he'd left, I cut through the middle. My pap stood up and gave me a big old bear hug.

"Go ahead, Alex. I'll catch up." To my pap I said, "What's going on?"

He spoke softly into my ear. "You're back. Tell me you're back for good."

"I am," was all that I could say. He was drunk now, too. I could tell by the way his eyes never quite found me.

He took a deep breath, held it, then said, "I'm sorry that your old man can't give you what you want. It's my fault you know."

"Hey," I said, "I'm sure—"

But he squeezed my arm, making damn certain I was listening. "I made him the way he is. I'm the one that ran your mother off."

I tried to pull myself away, to look at his face, but he buried it on my shoulder, and said, "Alice begged me to let this curse be buried with our little girl when she died. But I didn't."

He trembled. "I couldn't. I believed running your mother off was the only way to save her life."

With that, he released me, sat back at the table and returned to his drink.

FIVE

Wood smoke from the dying fire tricked me into thinking breakfast was cooking somewhere, teasing me with thoughts of thickly sliced bacon and buckwheats. And our plans for the day had included breakfast. But a lot of time passed between talking about breakfast and getting our asses in gear. Thus, our drive to Spruce Knob for an impromptu overnighter was punctuated with stops in Davis for salads and ice cream since 11 a.m. was officially no longer breakfast in the Mountain State.

We left town in a burst of speed along the flat, straight stretch of highway through Canaan Valley. Ben laughed while he drove, ice cream dripping down his hand as it jabbed the air to add extra oomph to punch lines and anecdotes and army jokes.

Alex was crammed in the seat behind Ben, feet up, knees pulled to her chest. Her blond hair flew about in the chaos of the open windows. She playfully sucked the white plastic spoon between bites. Whenever Katy insisted Ben slow down, we all laughed. Ben got to her by riding on the shoulder and across the center line.

I hung out the window, half into the party beside me, half into the blue sky, clear as glass over the wide valley. The dry air magnified a crispness that made the sights sharper, made distant objects seem like they were just inches from my fingertips. With my left hand I could pull pebbles from the rocky crest of Cabin Mountain. With my right, I gently stroked the velvety green expanse of Canaan Mountain.

"Was it worth it?" Ben asked, seemingly out of nowhere. "You could've died, you know. Does Katy know what you did?"

Ben looked in his mirror and said, "Miss Katy, you know you stole Henry's thunder last night, right? He pulled a guy out from under a rock. Guy would've drowned."

"Henry, really?" She stuck her head between the seats, effectively cutting Preston and Alex off from the conversation.

"Does a rocking horse have a wooden dick?" I said, taking one of Ben's best lines.

"Colorful, Henry. You kiss grandma with that mouth?" She sighed, and said, "You're going to get killed one of these days. Even a cat's only got nine lives."

"Yeah, but a hellbender never dies. You ever see a dead one?" I answered Katy's question. "I'd take Dimple Rock a thousand times to make up for not being able to do anything about Jane."

And the second I said her name all conversation stopped.

We left Canaan and followed the Dry Fork up to Harmon, the only noise came from the hole in Ben's tailpipe. There we went east, up and over the Continental Divide. To our right the steep face of the Spruce Knob National Recreation Area slumbered. The smell of smoking brakes and hot rubber led us to the bottom. Busloads of tourists guaranteed that we wouldn't be stopping at Seneca Rocks today. Instead we drove south, between the Allegheny Front and North Fork Mountain. A land of giants. Peaks over four thousand feet were as common here as bluets. Even in my dreams the streams weren't as clear, the mountains as tall, or the valleys as deep as they were for real.

North Fork Mountain kept people out of this part of the world; it was the first ridge in a series that ended at the Shenandoah in Virginia. Where Spruce Knob was capped with its namesake vegetation, North Fork Mountain had rocky fins of Tuscarora Sandstone crenellating its long, narrow expanse. Wanderers and outcasts gave in to the pull of West Virginia's secret border, a place the rest of the country ignored. But the exposed rock nestled in a bed of white pine finally forced me to smile.

We stopped to pee and to get more alcohol at a little country store that resided in an old post office. Preston said, mostly to Katy, "Currences lived back that way."

At Circleville we left the highway to begin the slow climb up the backside of Spruce Knob. I barely noticed Ben's busted tailpipe. The quiet meadows along the road were about to erupt with the greens of wild bleeding hearts and tiger lilies. Some dark pocket on the backside of the ridge probably hid the last painted trillium of the year.

The pavement turned into a gravel fire road that clung to the side of the mountain like wings to a June bug. When the trees parted, valleys and streams less than twenty people knew the names of were revealed. Alex pointed out buzzards and raptors floating in the open sky far below. Behind us a cloud of white dust grew. For a second the Jeep seemed more like a rocket, leaving Earth to visit worlds not yet explored.

As the fire road turned north to follow the Continental Divide, Alex continued to gape at the thousand-foot drop-off to her right. Now, North Fork was in our shadow. The farms and homes sprinkled throughout the New Germany Valley looked tiny, uninhabitable.

The vegetation changed once more as we neared the summit, becoming a moonscape of azaleas and blueberry bushes. We left behind the oak-hickory forest a long time ago. The maples of the higher elevations diminished with every mile we drove. Now spruce and mountain ash dominated, with laurels sitting in the dark hollows to confuse and confound trespassers. Tongues of gray conglomerate rock flowed in the contours like streams. Broken by the frosts that hit so hard up here, the tongues of rock were notorious for twisting ankles and scraping exposed skin.

We bounced along the rough roads for another forty minutes before finally stopping at a wide meadow. Birds chirped with gusto as the sun dipped toward late afternoon. The air was so clear we could've seen the Pacific if the earth were just a little less round.

Preston had his guitar out as soon as the Jeep stopped rolling. He laid on his back and strummed made up chords and lyrics. I brought the only tent, which Katy claimed for the girls, should it get too cold. "Listen here," I said. "Not sure who put you in charge, but in that thirty-two square feet..." I pointed at my little blue tent. "I'm the king."

Preston laughed.

"Don't be a douche," she said.

"You learn that on the road?" Ben asked. He carried the cooler over to the fire ring, dropped it into the dirt then turned around and sat on it. "From your little hipster hillbilly wannabes?"

"Nope. Learned that from Preston." She circled three times, just like a cat, before plopping down in the grass next to her man. "Isn't that right, honey?"

He responded by busting out a John Lennon song.

We drank wine in between gathering firewood and picking at the food Ben had stolen from his old man. Cheese and bread mostly, not that Carlo Rossi was necessarily a bread and cheese type of wine. We heckled Preston, shouting out stuff like "Freebird" and "Blackbird" and other songs that may or may not have been about birds. To his credit, we had a real hard time stumping him. Ben finally said, "I guess you'll do just about anything to get out of getting firewood," and disappeared into the forest.

While he pouted, Katy asked Alex to get Jane's envelope. Alex went to the Jeep, and returned with a small overnight bag. Before she even opened her bag Katy was on her feet grabbing for Jane's envelope. They moved on the other side of the fire ring, away from me and Preston. Katy spread out a big old Mexican blanket, and plopped down in the middle. Alex looked over Katy's shoulder as she spread the scraps of paper out. Almost immediately she started sorting them into two piles.

"What are you doing?" I asked, moving to keep an eye on where she was putting everything.

"Separating the stuff you need from the stuff you don't." Katy crossed her legs and sipped her wine.

"Do you know what all of that is even? Jane had meant for me to have it, not you." I crossed my arms.

"Yes, Henry, that's probably true. But what are you going to do with it? Do you believe any of it? That you can call serpents or poison a spring? Part of me thinks there's a bunch of really good reasons for you to remain skeptical. Like, through all of this, your skepticism may serve a purpose. So this," she shook a fistful of papers at me, "this is something you can leave to me. Yes, the envelope had your name on it, but I'm almost certain that Janie expected you to do what was best with it. Which, in this case, meant getting it to me. So congrats."

"Whatever. You know...forget it." I started to walk away. I didn't want to fight with her.

"Henry, before you run off and pout, here's the deal. For, like, twenty years nobody on our side wanted to do anything. Those Johnny Bulls did everything they could to twist the knife in Pap's gut. And for what? They don't go to half as many funerals as we do. I guarantee it. This half," she waved her hand over the papers and scraps she'd set aside for me. "This is your case. This is your justification to get really pissed off and do something about it."

"Like what? What do you expect me to do?"

Ben appeared at the edge of the meadow dragging a pair of long branches.

"I expect you to end this. You were closest to Jane. It's your duty. Nothing else in the whole wide world matters as much as avenging your sister."

"So you want me to go on a rampage, take out Charlie and Odelia and Darren and go to jail for the rest of my life? So I can get raped and beaten while you all just go on with your little road show?"

Ben dropped the limbs near the fire ring and sat down. I looked at him for some kind of back-up.

He said, "Don't stop on my account. This sounds like it's about to get good."

Katy stood up, made a fist and held it against her hip. "First of all, I don't expect you to do anything without the rest of us there. You shouldn't be going off alone, ever. First rule of dealing with Lewises—never get caught alone."

I shook my head and tried to force a laugh. "What kind of future am I looking at? Running from the law?"

"What kind of future do you have now? Look at what they're doing to Alex. And she's blood."

Ben perked up. "Really? Alex, tell me it ain't true."

"Jesus, Ben." I turned on him like a copperhead in a corn crib. "Who do you think she's hiding from? This ain't some kind of summer camp, where people just drop in and dance around a fire because they feel like it. Charlie Lewis wants Alex's to be the next body in the ground. So you know what?" I didn't want to have to answer.

"You may be slicker than shit, but you can't slide on barbwire." But Ben had to push it. He said, "Tell me 'what?'"

"Back the fuck off. That's what." I poked his shoulder.

"Stop it. You guys just need to cool it. I love how Collins men get a little booze in them and all of a sudden everyone gets all Iron-horse Irish like nothing can hurt 'em. If that were the case we wouldn't be holed up where the internet doesn't even reach waiting for the other shoe to drop."

"So what're you saying, Katydid?" Ben started breaking limbs over his knee.

"What I'm saying, and I want you boys to listen— you too, Preston—cause you may as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb." Katy sat back down and began tucking everything neatly back into the envelope. "What I'm saying, is that Darren and Billy and Curtis don't have kids."

Ben continued to snap branches. I found the sound to be kind of jarring, which, I supposed, was probably the reason he kept on doing it.

"Henry," Katy said, "that's how you get rid of fleas. You keep them from laying eggs. You go to war with them."

I picked up the limbs Ben had been breaking and started tossing them into the fire ring. He stuffed newspaper into the heap, lit it and watched it burn. We finished the first jug of wine in total silence. Preston held his guitar, but did not play it.

Finally, Preston put his guitar back in its case and grabbed the next jug of wine from the cooler. He went from person to person, filling our cups even if we didn't want any. After a minute he said, "I don't expect yinz to all hold hands and start singing, but we didn't come up here for this shit, right? So fill me in. What is the deal with the Lewises? I know I'm a little late to the game, but...I just thought, like, I should know or something."

Ben had been waiting for an invitation to resume control. I could tell by the way he jumped in. He gulped down his wine and said, "My dad said he found records in the courthouse that show our right to the land was contested as far back as 1890. Mary Lewis says we stole a family heirloom and that's the only reason any Collins ever amounted to anything. Said it was all about the thing, whatever that thing was."

"What's that have to do with Pap?"

"I don't know. Can't remember." He gestured for more wine.

Alex listened nervously. Like part of his story would indict her somehow. I said, "But that doesn't explain why they'd chase me across the border and shoot at us."

Katy didn't seem to agree with the way Ben was telling the story and took over. "You all need to pay attention. A guy named Seamus Hamilton married Ruth Gaddis in the late 1800s when West Virginia was booming. Everybody was getting rich. Anyway, they had three children—Mary, Emma and Michael. Then Mason Collins, a wood hick from Petersburg, takes a liking to Emma and eventually asks for her hand. Seamus was pleased, and gave them the land we all live on today."

I interrupted, "Just gave him the land? Wasn't that a bit generous?"

"Don't do that. If you're going to listen, listen. Okay?" Katy sat with her legs crossed at the ankles. Beneath the new hair and jewelry it was still the same old Katy.

"He figured it was a way to increase his own holdings. It wasn't an un-selfish act."

"Sorry." I made the mistake of looking at Ben. He rolled his eyes.

Katy said, "The land wasn't worth much. It wasn't easy to get to, the winters were bad, and Seamus had taken most of the timber off of it." Katy paused, almost like she was testing me not to say something else. "Emma lost a few children before finally entering into a heavenly realm herself. Some say being so far from her family killed her. A lot of people, including Mason Collins, suspected her sister, Mary, had poisoned her because she—the oldest—wasn't married first."

"Go on," I said. I think it sounded condescending, even though I hadn't meant it that way.

"Mary was ready to take care of Mason after her sister died. She'd been waiting for Mason to propose, but he remarried outside the family instead. A lady named Margaret Walsh. They had a son, Grandpap's dad, Jameson Henry. Mason sold off the rest of the timber but was able to keep most of the mineral rights."

Ben interpreted Katy's pause as a chance to jump in. "This was during a time when big coal was stealing rights all over southern West Virginia.

"Anyway," Katy said, "Margaret passed while she was still young. See a pattern? Mary took a job cleaning houses in Thomas to be close to Mason. But Mason wasn't interested. He never remarried. Mary got tired of waiting and married a guy from Elkins. Peter Lewis. Mary wanted a daughter. They had themselves some sons, Charlie and his brothers."

Alex listened, half-turned away from the fire so nobody could see her face.

"Jameson stayed on the farm after his dad died. He eventually married a Tuckahoe. That was our great-grandmother, Charlotte. I don't know if you remember her or not?"

I shook my head. "No. I was too young when she died."

"Anyway, here comes the good part. Jameson and Charlotte had five kids, Grandpap and his brothers and sisters. Sarah died before I was born. So this brings Mary back into the picture. After Peter Lewis dies quite mysteriously, she still feels like she's owed something from a Collins. So she gets her daughter—Charlie's sister, Odelia, who came as a surprise after Mary should've been too old to even have kids—fixated on Grandpap. Mary even sends Odelia to Morgantown when Pap goes away to school, gets her a job waiting tables. But Grandpap meets Grandma. That's where we get that little bit of hunky blood in us. Her family strip mined for coal up in PA. I guess they hit it off pretty well. One day they went to eat lunch in the wrong diner. Odelia was livid. I guess she cursed them out into the street. Of course that gets her fired. That's when Odelia moved back up here and...you know."

"No, I don't. I hadn't seen my mom since I was nine, and haven't spoken to my dad since I graduated from high school. How the hell am I supposed to hear this kind of stuff?"

Ben and Katy both looked a little guilty. I shouldn't have had to remind them about something as monumental as not having either parent for the good part of my life. The best thing for both me and Katy would've been for her to go on like I'd never said what I said. But instead, I apologized. "I'm sorry. Just forget about it."

"It's okay, douche runs in the family, too," Katy said, capitalizing on my change of mood. "Anyway, the week Odelia leaves Morgantown, Oscar Wilson finds a barrel half-floating in the millpond by the bridge. The sheriff investigates and of course Odelia is the main suspect. But she has an alibi. Mary Lewis said they'd been with cousins in Charleston. They had train tickets even though nobody could place them on the train."

"How convenient," Ben said.

"I know, right?" Katy said, putting her own little finishing touch on it. "Pap said they hid out for days in the woods. I heard Odelia got frostbit real bad. Took her fingertips."

"Get the fuck out," Ben said.

"Ben, shut up. I heard the tips are black, and the bones stick out the end of her fingers."

"I call bullshit," Ben said, unable to let it go. "Continue, but I call bullshit."

Katy said, "I'm fixing to punch you right in the eye. When you're trying to pick up city girls you'll have a cute story about how a girl popped you."

"So here's my next question," I said, still a bit confused. "Why do you know all this?"

"It's my duty to know all this, and if you ever have a little girl, it'll be her duty to know it, too. I'll tell her everything, not just what she needs to know." Katy folded her arms. "More than you need to know."

"Damn those bastards. I swear if I ever saw any of them getting attacked by a bear I'd toss Fluffernutter sandwiches their way." Ben said, "Some people can hold a grudge."

"But not for a hundred years. That shit's insane," Preston said. I replied, "You're preaching to the choir."

"Hey man, I shouldn't have even brought it up. Let's forget it, okay? You're not drinking enough anyway. Give me your cup." Preston poured from the large glass jug, going well beyond halfway even though I motioned for him to stop. I took a few gulps to encourage the forgetting.

I made eye contact with Ben. He gave me a little smile in return.

When the fire burned down to coals Ben got the rest of the food out. We'd eaten all the bread, so we cut up the sausage and cooked it over the fire like hot dogs. Preston and Katy played a little, private songs that sounded soft and special. Katy and me sang a couple of old ones, stuff like "The Two Sisters" that you never hear anymore. In between songs I rambled on about the Milky Way, how it was like a white road from earth to heaven and about where in the universe you would end up if you stayed on it long enough. My words became more incoherent the more I drank. Alex seemed to know what I meant though.

She rested her head in my lap and watched for shooting stars. Together we took in the full scope of the cosmos, seeing the things that no telescope, no matter how powerful, could reveal. Mars crept through the spruces on the ridge like a rabbit along a stream. The ecliptic stretched out before it like an empty page awaiting a haiku of reflected light.

When the fire had burned all the way down, right before we all went to sleep, Katy said, "I love you guys," and came over and sat down next to me.

"I don't want to bury anybody else." She put her head on my shoulder, sniffled, and said, "I want kids. I don't want to go to bed every night checking windows, and I don't want to run any more. I want to come home."

I put my arm around her.

She said, "That's why you guys have to finish this."

SIX

The starlight had ignited crazy dreams all night long. They weren't memory dreams though. I knew because the dream-forest was more climactic than any I'd ever seen. Spruce trees, three hundred feet tall and ten feet across at the base, rested on a bed of humus so thick I nearly sank. Laurels dense enough to confound a team of trackers kept intruders at arm's length. The laurel hell went off in all directions, like a green quilt. When I opened my eyes, I expected to be in the center of a large, primeval forest, the kind of place that died long before I was born, but the old green was gone.

_Killed by axes and steam trains_.

We quickly broke camp, then descended the mountain to finally have our breakfast of buckwheat cakes and sausage at the 4-U restaurant with real Formica counters and real waitresses. Katy and Preston spent a lot of time posing for pictures with some backpackers who recognized them from a show in Asheville. But the rest of the day was a blank slate. As we paid, Ben asked Alex what she wanted to do.

"Can we go up to the top of the big rock thingy?" Alex said as we got back in the Jeep.

Ben said, "Seneca Rocks? Sure thing. I need to pick up a paycheck anyway."

"You back to guiding?" I said, thinking Ben had been trying to hide something from me.

"Hell, no. Some freelancing stuff. Taking pictures for the website. Even got me a few magazine shoots. My lens is in demand and my days of fishing for tips from city folk are over."

Katy said, "So, that means you'll finally be moving out of Jamie's basement?"

I smiled. He was getting cocky again and was glad Katy knocked him down a peg.

Ben put his arm around Katy's shoulder and squeezed her in a big hug. "Heck no. Why should I?"

Katy tried to push him away. "Yeah, I guess you'd still have to grow up first."

"Stop it, Katy," I said. "If you don't have to grow up why should he?"

"Ouch," Ben said. "He knows us too well."

By the time we hit Seneca Rocks the sun was halfway into its trip to noon. Shadows stretched out from the mountains, hiding coolness in their breeches. At the climbing school, guides sipped coffee and stretched their ropes. Ben pulled right up to the porch. Tourists lingered by their cars, as far from the guides as was proper. The stoners were slack-lining, their gear littered picnic tables. One had dreadlocks and a shaggy beard. The smell of weed hit me as soon as I got out of the Jeep. Say what you will about raft guides, but at least they got wet once a day.

"B.C.!" A pair of trustafarians shouted in unison as Ben emerged from his truck.

"B.C.?" I said.

Without a hint of shame, Ben replied, "Yeah, B.C. Before Collins, referring to a time when I was here, and then I wasn't. You know, the good old days before my PTSD and raging temper."

"That doesn't even make a little sense," Alex said.

"I know, but the kids like it. And I like to keep the gang happy."

A couple of his protégés eyeballed me. I did my best to show them that B.C. didn't impress me half as much as he did them.

Katy and Alex drifted over toward the little store, while Preston and me were left to look up at the big rock and talk about music and whatever. In a way I was kind of glad Ben came back to work here. Like, a return to normalcy could only be a good thing for him. When he got back from Afghanistan it took a long time for him to rebound. I thought he was going to end up in jail. Or worse.

One of the stoners yelled from the porch, "B.C., you got a message."

He walked over to a bulletin board littered with classifieds and party invites. He went straight to a canary yellow Post-it, which only had four words on it.

_Ben, get home. Urgent_.

"Katy! We have to go!" He tore the note from the wall and sprinted back to the truck. The girls turned and quickly got back in. The old Jeep drifted forward even as he turned the key, leaving a dusty cloud in our wake. We left the parking lot and ripped up the mountain like a bobcat into a bird's nest.

"Katy, call your mom," Ben said as he pushed the truck through gears it hadn't fully used in a long time.

She said, "No phone."

I said, "We left everything back at the house. Alex?"

"No."

"Shit."

Nobody said anything else—speculation was almost as bad as a lie in times like these. But we were all thinking it was Pap, or an accident, one of the kids got hurt, Fenton flipped the tractor on the steep hill behind the barn, Chloe ran off with her boyfriend. The purpose of this line of thinking was to prepare me for the worst, to show me that no matter what happened I would have thought of it already. Besides, it's never as bad as you think.

We dropped down the backside of the Continental Divide like water falling from a cliff then followed the Dry Fork back downstream to its confluence with Red Creek. From the east, Roaring and Flatrock Plains watched without saying a word. Like they already knew.

By the time we started our descent into Davis, Ben was racing an unseen opponent, maybe the devil himself. Whether it was illness, death, or some other unforeseen tragedy I couldn't be certain. I knew I'd be there to support my family, a feeling I wasn't capable of a few months ago. I'd wait at the hospital. I'd help with the farm or chores, whatever it took to get through this.

We crossed the Blackwater and made a right onto our family's crushed gravel lane. When Ben saw there were no vehicles at Pap's house he kept going.

Katy I said, "I hope it's not Chloe." Preston held her.

I tried to look through the brush to their house and told Ben to slow down when I saw Fenton and Rachael coming up the driveway. When Fenton waved at us to keep going Katy relaxed just a pinch. She squeezed Ben's shoulder. Ben's expression darkened. Jamie and Isabelle and my dad were the only ones left, the last houses on the lane. I squeezed my eyes shut, angry at whoever I could be angry at for the unfairness of this situation.

Every part of me wanted to tell Ben it would be fine, but I didn't believe it. Ben rubbed his eyes. I felt his pain. I couldn't stand to see my friend like this.

As we approached the turn-off I could smell wood smoke and found it hard to believe the party was just the night before last. A fierce guilt swept over me as I thought about the clean-up and how we'd left instead of helping out.

Ben pulled up to his porch and jumped out of the truck. I followed him up the steps right up to the front door. Preston turned the truck off while the rest followed.

"Dad," he said. "Dad!"

But Alex, not Jamie, replied. "Henry!"

I ran onto the porch, and followed her finger across the field, past the tent and my pap's truck, past my angry aunt and her consoling husband, past Chloe's sad, tear-stained face. Behind them, where my front porch and bedroom window should've been, lay the collapsed, burnt structure that used to be my house.

We ran toward it, but slowed when we realized there was nothing left to see. Too stunned to speak, I could only stare. Alex crumpled to the ground. I knelt beside her. Blue jays carried on in the sugar maples as if nothing bad had happened here.

"Oh my. Oh my," she cried. "It's gone and it's my fault. I'm so sorry. There's nothing." Warm tears streamed down her cheek and onto my arm. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve.

"Henry," Jamie said, "I'm sorry. I was coming back from campus when I saw the flames. But it was already too far gone. Isabelle called for help, but nobody came. Davis and Canaan were out on other calls down the mountain."

Slate clouds rolled in from the west. They were high and narrow, an indication that the weather was about to change. "My dad?"

My pap said, "He left and didn't say 'dog.'" Jamie said, "Nobody's seen him since."

I unclenched my fists and walked over to the smoky ruins. "It's not your fault. It was Billy Lewis. This is exactly the kind of shit he pulled in high school. He burned that medical center in Elkins. He went beyond the law. I will too when I find him—"

"Billy Lewis doesn't know his ass from a burnt biscuit. And he has an alibi," my pap said. "He was in PA last night. Fishing in Ohiopyle. He showed the cops receipts and everything." Pap watched his old dog sniff out groundhogs at the edge of the yard. "Besides, this wasn't arson, it was a robbery."

"How could you know that?" Jamie asked. "There's no evidence—"

"The witch's hat knocked clean off the chimley." The triangular cut stone that used to cap the chimney was lying in the grass. "That's how they got in."

"I'll bet he has an alibi. But I don't care. This is it. I'm fixing to end this." Blood rushed into my head. The adrenaline of rage made me dizzy. I walked over to my Jeep while massaging the pressure from my temples with my thumb and forefinger.

But I could see that he'd taken care of my ride, too. The console was smashed. Somebody had pounded nails into the dashboard. All of its fluids had been bled onto the ground. Lifting the hood revealed slashed cables and a bottle of corn syrup, the contents of which, no doubt, were gestating in the head.

Fenton said, "I took a look at your Jeep already. Probably need a new engine."

I shook my head. _No shit_.

"The police were here, but they still want to talk to you. You're supposed to see the sheriff sometime this afternoon." Rachael tried to deliver the news delicately, but even with a spoonful of honey it would've been a hard pill to swallow. "If it helps to know there's good news, we found this."

"What is it?"

She held up a small plastic bag. "Hair."

"Wouldn't that have been put to better use as evidence?" My temper made me almost yell it.

Katy, trying to prevent an all-out fight, said, "I'll drive you to Parsons. I want to hear what they're going to do about this."

"Now, Katy," Jamie said, "Don't stir the pot. Henry needs our support, not reasons to place blame before we have all the evidence we need."

Katy said, "Jamie, Henry needs somebody to stand beside him, not behind him." Even though she didn't raise her voice when she said it, her tone was clear. Preston looked away, a quiet voicing of his disapproval.

"Katy's right," Rachael said. "This is the time to fight back. We need to change the way they see us. They don't think we're a threat."

"No, Rachael. That's what you and Katy and Dad need. But this won't change anything." I'd never heard Jamie raise his voice before. "Between his hotheadedness and your bullheadedness somebody's going to get killed."

My pap said, "You're out of line, son."

Jamie let out a breath that he'd been holding. "No, Dad. You know what happens. You all need to listen to me." His hands shook when he spoke.

To avoid further confrontation with Jamie, Rachael asked me, "What did you have in there? That they could have taken?"

"Just our stuff, I guess." Things from growing up. Things I wanted to show Alex. Pictures of my mom and dad. Tapes to listen to. Old yearbooks. "Our clothes and whatever was in our suitcases. Our phones."

"What about pictures? Did you have pictures of each other?" Rachael asked, sounding like she was already afraid of the answer.

"On my laptop. And on my cell." Alex's voice sounded like it came from a thousand miles away. She stood by the old porch, looking for the kittens, I presumed.

Rachael crossed her arms. "Alex, listen to me. Did you have a hairbrush in one of your bags?"

"Yes, I had a brush," she said, apologetically.

"Henry, you should've known better. How could you be so careless?" She put her hand over her mouth and continued to stare into the smoldering foundation.

"God damn it. Hair magic? I'm looking at a pile of ashes and you're worried about hair magic?"

"Henry, you need to focus on what's real here," Rachael said. "The Lewises are looking for something. Something old, that may have belonged to grandma. You need to think, really think, about what else was in there."

I stuck my hand into my pocket and hooked my mom's old ring with my pinkie. I showed her. "Found it in my dad's closet. It was mom's. Pap's mom gave it to her when they got married, right?"

"There it is," Rachael said. "That's what they're looking for, right? What Lucinda Tasso and Odelia have been going on about?"

Jamie said, "Yup. I'd say that's it. If you don't mind, Henry, you might want to let Rachael hang onto that. At least for now."

I looked at my pap, and he nodded.

Alex watched me walk it over and drop it in Rachael's hand.

For a few minutes nobody said anything. Jamie finally broke the silence. "I spoke with the fire marshal. He assured me this matter would receive his attention. Let's give him a week, okay?"

Jamie spoke with his hands. His palms were turned toward the sky as a gesture of his peaceful intentions. "He'll have a report by the end of the week."

My pap said. "Well, I already made a few calls to Elkins. The fire marshal was dragging his feet. We'll get that son of a bitch."

"Please, Dad," Jamie said. "Let's not make assumptions. This is bad enough as is."

Fenton said, "I'll ret up here. Don't worry about any of this."

Alex put her head on my shoulder. Rachael brushed the hair back from her eyes. "I'm so sorry."

Ben put his arm around me and said, "What do you want me to do? Anything—just let me know."

"I don't know." My vocal cords seized up as I was about to suggest we find and kill Billy Lewis. "Me and Katy will go talk to the sheriff. Why don't you and Alex go to Ohiopyle. Check out Billy's alibi. Ask if anybody actually saw him up there."

Sleep came to me in fits, like light from a firefly. I was too tired to doze and staying angry took a lot of energy. And it was the first time in a while Alex hadn't been with me.

My rage had returned. A physical rage that penetrated my skin and consumed me like a virus. And we all know a virus feeds on blood.

Making this a blood feud.

I scolded myself for going down that path. It ended at a scary place I knew all too well. No need to plow up old graves.

But my physical rage had become a problem. It came when my fists were clenched, when my toes were curled, when my eyes were closed. This physical rage would explode in time. The only thing I could control was the size of the explosion.

Headlights crossed the window, illuminating the small droplets of rain that fell. A car door slammed shut. _Just one_. So I rolled over to face the door.

Somebody climbed the stairs.

"Henry," Ben whispered as he flipped the light switch. "Get up, man."

"Where's Alex?" I said, rubbing the drowsiness out of my eyes. "Left her with Katy. Put some clothes on."

All that I had left to wear was what I had with me yesterday. Pretty much everything else was ash and smoke. I buttoned an old flannel shirt and pulled my sweatshirt over top while looking for my shorts. I stretched as Ben pulled a pack from his closet and filled it with clothes.

"Where are we going?" I tried to adjust to the light.

"Jesus, Henry. Sometimes I think you couldn't pour piss out of a boot with instructions written on the bottom. We're going to get him. I know where he is. C'mon, I'll tell you in the truck." Ben spun, scanning his room's dark corners for I don't know what.

"Tell me now, Ben. I need something, anything." I found my old ball cap tangled in the sheets and pulled it on.

"He was in Ohiopyle last night. Your friend, Duff? He saw Billy at the gas station." Ben began pulling dresser drawers open and tossing clothes onto the floor.

"Shit. So you guys talked to Duff?"

"Yeah, Alex knew where to go. We went up to that bar. It didn't take much for her to get people talking." Ben dropped to the floor by the bed.

"And?"

"Yeah, Smurf saw him at breakfast today. I thought our goose was cooked. But just now I stopped to get gas in Thomas. Homer O'Dell was working there." He pulled out old shoeboxes, flipped the lids off and emptied their contents on the floor.

"Homer?" I said, not able to put a face with the protégé.

"We red-pointed October Sky at Judy Gap a few years back. Anyway, Billy came in late last night and bought a roll of snuff. He told Homer that he was going hunting for a few days and forgot to pick some up." Ben sat up on his knees and looked around the room.

"What are you saying?" I heard the words, but wasn't sure what they meant.

"He drove all night to set up his alibis." Ben looked me in the eyes, for the first time breaking away from his frenetic search. "It's all a scheme, man. He drives to Ohiopyle, gets his receipts and makes sure somebody sees him, then drives back down here and commits the crime. But the stupid fuck screwed up." Ben smiled when he said it.

"How do you know where to find him?"

"Homer told me they got a cabin on the other side of Shaver's Fork. We can take the train almost right to it."

"We should get the sheriff." I tried to be rational. But Ben wasn't making it easy.

"Screw that, man. Katy told us what Lucinda did. That bitch is so cold butter won't melt in her mouth."

"Word gets around."

"Yeah man, it does. Look, I finally got you back home. I'm going to do whatever it takes to keep you here. Alex is special. I feel like I've known her since I was five. So if I can't do this for you I'll do it for her." Ben went back into his closet and produced a shoebox which he set between his knees.

"When you say it like that...Ben, I can't afford any more weight on my conscience."

"That's why I'm here." He took an old pistol and a box of rounds out of a shoebox and threw them into the pack.

I had to look away. "Ben..."

"For snakes. Let's go." He tossed the old pack over his shoulder.

"We're not going to harm anybody. We just need a confession. Nobody gets hurt. Promise me." Weakness, just one of many character flaws, made me relent. But I was born flawed, and that—not weakness—made me follow Ben down the stairs.

Outside the cold rain drops penetrated my shirts like little bullets. My muscles took to shivering, but warmth was still too far away. Ben's Jeep was full of heat, though. When I sat down I almost felt Alex's touch on the cushion where she'd been sitting. The engine came alive and blew its hot breath into the cab, easing my shivering a little. When we pulled onto the dark lane I could only stare at the remains of my house and my Jeep. The top was still down. The only thing I ever owned was little more than a rain bucket now.

At the edge of town Ben pulled a fat joint from the ashtray and lit it. I watched the tip glow, then closed my eyes as the sweetness of escape burned in my nose. Ben held his hit in, then passed it my way. "Here."

Dim street lights barely penetrated the rain. The whole scene reminded me of a night back in high school when Ben drove me down to Parsons the first time the sheriff hauled my dad off to jail. I took a big hit, let the smoke deep into my lungs.

The stillness of town was broken only by the hole in Ben's tailpipe. But to the people still dreaming, the sound would be little more than a fading whisper. Most of them probably wouldn't think anything of it as they fell back asleep.

But to us—to me, it was the sound of regret. Doubt tried to push through my mind's weedy haze, but got lost in the smoke. Then I looked at Ben, his blue eyes illuminated in the faint patch of light cast off by the joint. He smiled.

I said, "You're doing this on purpose."

We drove through Thomas and crossed the Blackwater. The little truck struggled to climb Backbone Mountain, valves tapping, temperature gauge creeping into the red. When we hit the summit Ben turned left toward Olsen Tower.

"Aren't we going to Parsons?"

"No way. I want to hide the Jeep. Besides, we can catch the train here. It'll be a longer ride, but..."

"There ain't a train through Blackwater anymore," I said. "Right?" "Your memory's playing tricks."

For the next forty minutes we crept into the canyon. Our tires slid on patches of mud that had turned into small streams. Rocks as big as cantaloupes rose from the gravel to shake the cab and bounce me into the roof.

"Sorry," Ben would say, but they were unavoidable.

Massive trees, much larger than I remembered, lingered in the headlights briefly before passing back into the darkness behind us. Black pines that dripped needles and sap blocked out the outside world. They muffled sound— even the raindrops were muted in the dense forest. Much more dense than I remembered.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement.

I was about to tell Ben to stop when I turned and saw the trees we'd just passed basking in the red glow of brake lights. My buzz might've been melting, but I saw what I saw. I was high, not blind.

When I looked again, chills fell down my spine like moonshine from a still. _I'm sleepwalking. Please let me be asleep._

My arms and back broke out in goose bumps. I fought the urge to say something. When I cocked my head to watch out of the side-view mirror, the knobby limbs and gray-green needles followed the truck's passing like iron shavings followed a magnet.

"Henry."

I looked at Ben, but couldn't reply.

"Just look straight ahead. Nothing to see, man." "Yeah, but I saw something."

"No, man. You didn't. Keep your head on." He slowed to a stop at a gate.

Over the rain I could hear the Blackwater's rapids tumbling past boulders and over ledges. I turned my back to the trees. In the side-view mirror I could see them. They leaned toward me, like they were listening. But I wouldn't say a word. I didn't even move.

By the time the faintest sliver of light broke the eastern canyon rim I was dead-tired but wide-awake. Time had stood still, only the position of the earth had changed. For me this had been one long day that began when we woke up on Spruce Knob.

When I heard the train's whistle echo off the canyon walls, I realized that I still had far to go before it would end.

Click to read the rest of  HELLBENDER.

Read an excerpt from

THE REVELATIONS OF PRESTON BLACK

By Jason Jack Miller

The MURDER BALLADS AND WHISKEY SERIES

THE DEVIL AND PRESTON BLACK

HELLBENDER

THE REVELATIONS OF PRESTON BLACK

The Revelations of Preston Black copyright © 2013 by Jason Jack Miller

Published by Raw Dog Screaming Press

Bowie, MD

First Edition

Cover: Brad Vetter, www.BradVetterDesigns.com

Book Design: Jennifer Barnes

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-935738-48-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013940314

www.RawDogScreaming.com

This book is for my mom, Sandra.
HOLDING HANDS WITH THE DEVIL

Kill Every Sparrow, Friday, March 15, 7:30, The Orpheum Theater, Bardstown Road,

Louisville.

If you skipped Foster the People's show to sneak into the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival's 'That Tent' back in June, you know that Kill Every Sparrow is a raw new talent that combines musical intricacy with atom bomb fury. And you understand that their foray into the iTunes Top 100 this summer was no fluke, making some wonder if the whispered stories they've heard about West Virginia's Katy Stefanic and Preston Black are true.

Kill Every Sparrow arrives in Louisville hot off a series of summer festival appearances and a string of sold-out East Coast club shows. But most fans know their story really starts with the EP LIVE AT THE STINK released by Blacksnake Recordings back in May. That night saw a bar band guitarist musically reborn as one half of this indie/revivalist/punk duet during a show some eyewitnesses described as "surreal." The concert's pivotal moment appears on the EP's final track, the eponymous "The Sad Ballad of Preston Black," when the singer challenges the devil with the line, "If I don't have a soul to steal then we sure as hell don't have a deal."

It's a line he hasn't sung since.

From the moment she walks across that stage, you know Katy Stefanic is the kind of girl you could fall in love with. Though romantically involved, but not married, the pair play off each other like they have been attached at the hip for twenty years, instantaneously responding to frequent and impulsive key and tempo changes. Call me jaded, but watching Stefanic and Black work the aural space over the crowd mesmerizes me in a way only more seasoned acts have been able to do nowadays. Except for the random, "Marry me, Katy," (or "Preston, call me,") the crowd remained stone silent during ballads and soft instrumentals. Even more curious was the way the audience responded to the mix of old time throw-down melodies and punk-fast tempos with fists in the air and good old-fashioned foot stomping. And when the lights came up for the first encore the frenzied crowd responded like Joe Strummer himself had decided to join them for a song or two.

I had a chance to talk to Stefanic and Black after their show in D.C. last Saturday and asked them about their relationship and how it affected their musical development. Preston sat contentedly, letting his beloved do most of the talking.

With a wide smile, she folded her hands over her knee and explained, "Sharing music with somebody is a lot like sharing a bed. After a while you start to know when something's building, when things are going to sour, when the temperature's going to change with a look."

Preston added, "It's like yinz and y'all. Same language, just different ways of saying things. What the audience hears is where we meet in the middle."

When I ask Preston to talk about 'the song' he gets quiet. After a thoughtful moment, he says, "You ever hear that story about Zeppelin and the sharks? That supposedly didn't happen either. I think that night at The Stink served as a way—my way, at least—of being resurrected into music. Basically a way for me to make the statement, 'This is what we're going to do and this is how we're going to do it.' It's like that. Did I go down to the crossroads and make a deal with the devil?" He looks at Katy, then adds, "Did Robert Johnson?"

I remind Preston that a reporter from the Virginia Tech Collegiate Times quotes him as saying he, "...spent too much time down at the crossroads..." and, "...the devil tried to get to him by hurting his brother and killing his drummer, Stu..." in an interview from last October.

At that point Katy takes over. "Preston said a lot of things while swept up in that early hype. Some of us aren't used to having everything we say recorded for posterity."

When I mention that some of his fans have bought into the whole '...freed himself from the devil's clutches' mythos Preston regains his composure. He laughs and says, "The audience hears what it hears."

Tickets for Friday's show are available online or by calling The Orpheum Theater's

box office.

BODY OF MISSING NORTH CAROLINA HIKER FOUND IN TENNESSEE RIVER

Huntsville Times, Sunday, March 17

The search for a missing Asheville, North Carolina hiker ended tragically Saturday along the Tennessee River just north of Guntersville, Alabama.

Family members told the Marshall County Sheriff's Office that they had not heard from their daughter, Savannah Trucks, since she called from a Rite Aid in East Ellijay, Georgia, before beginning an Appalachian Trail through-hike from Springer Mountain in mid-February. Her mother, Shirley Trucks, said that Savannah had been harassed by a man and a woman in a white van while she waited for her ride to the trailhead. Authorities began searching for Savannah on March 13 after she missed a pre-arranged meeting with her family in Fontana Lake, North Carolina, to resupply.

A pair of Albertville fishermen notified authorities after spotting the victim in an arm of Guntersville Lake near Buck's Pocket State Park Saturday morning, where EMS personnel recovered her body. The Sheriff's Office spokesman said that an autopsy from the Marshall County Coroner's Office wouldn't be ready for a few days, but he believed that drowning did not cause her death, noting the presence of extensive bruising on her forearms and wrists, which are consistent with a more violent crime.

"This is going to be a very, very horrendous act. I am convinced of that after having observed the body. A young lady's death is always a terrible thing, but a young lady who dies under extreme violence is the absolute worst," he told reporters.

"She's a very outgoing and a kind individual," Bill Trucks said from North Carolina before his daughter was found. "She's got a heart of gold."

THE FIRST REVELATION OF PRESTON BLACK
CHAPTER ONE

Raindrops and fireflies, autumn lightning splashed across the sky,

While down here it's still July.

City's dark except for the cars, and high above I see the same stars

That we wished on twenty years ago.

The alarm clock is set, and even though it isn't tomorrow yet.

I see something I don't want to forget,

And stay up all night watching you.

"Anniversary Song" Music and Lyrics by Katy Stefanic and Preston Black

Nobody wants to fight. You're stupid if you do. Or an asshole.

When you pull yourself up out of the dirt the last thing you want to do is talk about it. You want to go home, clean yourself up and have a drink or five. The drinking isn't to loosen your lips. It's to knock you out, so you can go to bed without thinking about it.

If you're good, or smart, you can let weeks and months go by without ever discussing it. The people around you will always know you got your ass handed to you, and if they love you they don't ever bring it up. Eventually, it stings a little less each time you drive by the place where the ass-kicking happened. The blood stains come out of your shirt. Then a year goes by, and you're the only one who still remembers it. Which is fine. Ain't a thing wrong with it.

Then you're rolling out of a new town, feeling about as sad as rolling into a new town makes you happy. You come over a bridge or through a tunnel and catch that first glimpse of a new skyline or the first few notes of the local alt rock or college radio station and feel like all the TV dinners and frat house basements were worth it. You know a new city means possibilities, new food and new accents. Tamales in Austin and real Carolina barbeque in Lexington. You bump into some of the coolest people you'll ever meet in Boulder, Colorado, and laugh, because you'd never even heard of the place before July. Having a worldview shaped by one small town in north-central West Virginia makes seeing places like Charlotte and Tempe feel about as exciting as seeing Liverpool itself. You hadn't taken a single picture since that photography class back in high school and you just took that class because you heard you could get high in the dark room. But since last summer you've taken at least ten thousand because you don't want to forget a single second of this.

And coming into Louisville felt no different. All morning we talked about fried pickles and burgoo and ribs, and how good food could make you feel safe and warm, almost like being in your own bed. Getting to share it with your two best friends—the woman that I loved and my brother—made me wonder what I'd done to deserve it all. The only thing I could think about as we loaded our gear and got ready to roll out was all the stuff I wanted to see and do next time we came back.

And how that asshole reporter from that shitty little alternative newspaper crapped all over everything bringing that fucking devil thing back up.

Katy leaned over the steering wheel. "We got problems."

The protestors swarmed past the club's security guys to block the alley. The assorted men, women, and children looked like the kind of people who spent a lot of time oppressing pleasure. The type of people who'd protest a soldier's funeral because somewhere down the line a burning bush told them to. Mostly women wearing skirts down to their ankles and long hair piled high on top of their heads. Women with faces that never even wore smiles, let alone lipstick.

They shook their brightly colored hand-painted signs at us.

DEATH PENALTY FOR WITCHES.

NOT BLESSED JUST CURSED.

DEAL WITH THE DEVIL? BURN IN HELL.

Before Katy could react I reached over and locked her door. "Get ready to drive."

But she fixated on a sign that said GOD HATES WITCHES for a long moment. Her lips parted, like she'd try to reason with each and every one of them single-handedly given the chance. "Run them over, you mean?"

"Jesus, no, Katy. You want to end up in a Kentucky state pen?" Pauly climbed out of the van's sliding side door and stomped his cigarette into the concrete. He leaned against the passenger-side door and said, "Drive real slow and don't stop until you hit the street."

Four bikers wearing leather and club colors spread themselves across the alley, trying to make themselves look bigger in the van's headlights. Katy flicked the high beams, forcing their tall shadows onto the brick buildings on the other side of Bardstown Road. The chains they wore shined in the halogen lamps, sparkling like disco balls.

"Shit, Katy," I said. "Look."

Tattooed across the bikers' jawlines and shaved heads were vertical rows of small squiggles. They looked like words, disjointed verses in black ink. Warnings, curses, poetry... I couldn't make them out from this distance. The biker with his arms exposed had the same markings there too—all the way down to his wrist. Like somebody had drawn all over him with a black Sharpie.

I said, "You think I should call the police?"

"You can give it a shot," Pauly said, "Just don't leave me, okay?"

I said, "Where you going?"

"Roll your window up." He slammed the side door shut and disappeared into the darkness.

Katy drove her palm into the steering wheel. The horn echoed off both sides of the narrow alley.

I didn't even ask if they'd seen the needle tracks covering the women's hands. Tiny black and blue marks pocked the skin from their elbows to their wrists. Like my dad had on his arms. "Fucking hypocrite junkies," I said.

As the van drifted ahead the protestors screamed louder and shook their signs harder. Katy checked the door locks again to make sure.

Women and children shouted, "God hates witches. You hate God." They locked arms, forming a wall between us and the road. The chilly Kentucky air let their frosty breath hang over their heads for a moment before being eaten up by the streetlights.

"Preston...who are these people?" She rolled down her window like she wanted to have some kind of dialog with them. The brakes squealed as she brought the van to a halt.

I rolled down my window a few inches and yelled, "I don't know what kind of issues you all are dealing with—"

One of the bikers stepped out of formation and strode toward me like a cop at a traffic stop. He stood a head taller than me and wore a sleeveless denim vest over a black T-shirt. He ran his hand along his scalp. I half expected the black ink on his head to smudge. The other bikers followed a few steps behind him. They stopped right in front of the van and pounded the hood.

I jammed my hand under the seat and grabbed the only thing I could find. A long plastic window scraper with a brush along one side. I shook it at the biker and said, "What the fuck do you need?"

"Just a word, my friend," he said as he hooked a thumb into his belt. His other hand went to his back pocket. "Step on out of the van so we can talk."

"Well, send an email and get the hell out of the way."

"Hell is what I'm talking about." His Southern accent didn't sound like anything I'd heard in Kentucky. Sounded more like the kids in Austin. He took a small metal rod from his back pocket. "Jesus died for your sins, you know? Least you could do is cut the blasphemy."

"Last time I checked, I can believe whatever I want. You got something you want to say to me? That's your problem, not mine. Now why don't you move along?" Fear made my voice waver.

"Step out of the van." With a snap of his wrist the metal rod became a long metal bar. "Tell you what. Let's talk about the Lord for a spell and I'll spare your fingers."

"What are you doing, Katy? Just go," I yelled, waving her ahead. "I'm calling the cops because you got no right, man. No right at all."

Katy let the van drift forward as she laid on the horn. A chorus of shouts rang through the protestors. A woman screamed, "We got young ones here!"

I dug for my phone without ever once taking my eyes off him. But instead of making eye contact, I stared at the scrawl all over his bare skin, over his scalp and neck and cheeks and jaw.

Off to the left side of the van one of the women screamed so loud I thought she'd been run over. The biker spun to face the street, swinging the retractable baton out in front of him. The mob jerked out of their trance in unison and retreated to Bardstown Road as two, then three, then four of the women shielded their faces with their arms and signs. My first reaction was to push Katy to the floor, but I caught movement in the side view mirror and turned around.

Pauly emerged from the darkness behind the van grinning like a jack-o'-lantern, working a stream of cold water from a hose like a fireman putting out a house fire. Back and forth again and again, mercilessly dousing their faces and clothes. Pauly's very own Bible-thumper wet T-shirt contest.

"Come get some, bitches." Pauly laughed and held the hose between his legs like he was pissing on them. I hadn't seen him laugh so much since we left Philly. "This one's for Pipeline."

"Go, Katy. Take your foot off the brake and go." I leaned over and hit the horn.

Some of the protestors shielded themselves with their signs, wet poster board crumpled in their hands. The rest dispersed, their unified chants broke down into a loud murmur of personalized curses. The biker with the baton beat on the hood in an attempt to regain his ground, but Katy nosed the van ahead like an old pro. The rest banged on the side and tried rocking it, but we were already out on the street.

Pauly came around the back of the van and walked beside the sliding door, still dousing the protestors.

"He's going to get us killed," Katy said. "Get him in here."

"Katy, watch the road. How's it going to look if you take out a little kid?"

"Preston!"

I turned as the biker swung his baton. It hit the door with a loud crack that left a heavy dent. He'd meant to break my arm or jaw. Definitely not a love tap.

"You self-righteous prick." Pauly hit him in the face with a blast from his hose. "I'm a fucking kill you!"

I said, "C'mon, Pauly. Get in," as I reached back to open the door behind me. I felt bad for squashing his fun. Like I was the one who had to tell him he'd gotten too old for trick-or-treat or whatever.

"This might be a good fucking gig after all," Pauly climbed onto the bench seat and slid the door shut, smiling like he'd just won free Subway for a year. He turned to the crowd and flipped them off with both hands. He waggled his fingers back and forth and said, "Fuck off."

Once Katy got out of the alley she hit the gas. Two of the bikers followed on foot, banging the trailer with their batons.

I turned to watch them fall behind us. The women and kids huddled together, shivering in the chill. One man stood calmly apart from the crowd. A young guy with a full beard and close-cropped blond hair. He wore a fine grey jacket and vest with jeans and a white button-down. He maintained eye contact with me until we got to the end of the block. I'd seen him before, in Morgantown, from a distance. Like a ghost, or a face in the crowd. It wasn't only the way he looked. The way he dressed and carried himself struck a chord of familiarity with me. He knew me, too.

"What do you think, Pres?" Pauly tried to light a cigarette but his hands were shaking too bad. "Still got it?"

"Yeah, Pauly. You're not going to tell your sponsor about this, are you?" I watched the bearded guy until he faded into the darkness.

"No way. What happens in the van in a dark alley in Kentucky does not come back to the Mountain State with me."

"You're going to hell for that, you know?" Katy said with a smile. She made a right turn on red and we passed the front of the old theater. I watched it, trying to remember every single thing that happened behind those doors before Katy built up even more speed.

Pauly said, "I know," folded his hands behind his head and lay down in the back seat.

"Nobody on earth except for Katy Stefanic ever ate at a Waffle House because they wanted to." Pauly's anger came out a little at a time, like bees from a hive on a summer morning. "Don't act like this happened accidentally either. The way I see it, I'm driving, doing the sound, playing bass on a few songs, and playing security with those Westboro Baptist wannabes. How am I not getting more of a say in where we eat?"

"Don't act like you cast a tiebreaker with your one vote." Katy tossed him the keys and bounded around the van. She waited for me to slide out of the passenger seat. "And I drove tonight."

"Did we vote?" Pauly took a cigarette out of the pack and slid it behind his ear. "Pres, did you vote for this? Just because we're in the South don't mean we have to eat at every Waffle House we see. What about a pizza? We'll order when we get to our hotel."

I had my mouth open to say something, but Katy struck fast, like a cat. "Because it's going to be on the interstate and we're going to get stuck at a Krystal because you know there's no such thing as good pizza along an interstate."

"Better than white gravy," Pauly said.

I'd been asleep. Waking up in the Waffle House parking lot surprised me about as much as waking up on Mick's floor would've. Which was to say it didn't surprise me at all. My legs still weren't totally beneath me. I leaned against the van and yawned while Katy weaseled a hug and a kiss out of me. Even I-65 was quiet except for a stray semi here and there. In this part of the world people went to bed early. I said, "No, Pauly, I didn't vote. I wouldn't mind if we skipped all this and found a hotel to be totally honest. Don't put me in the middle."

"Driver votes twice anyway. You know the rules by now, Pallini. Took me two cheese steaks to figure out your system. You'll eat good in Nashville." She grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the yellow-and-black-checked interior of the only thing keeping me from getting a full seven hours tonight. "I promise."

"Hear that, Pallini?" As I held the door for him, I caught a whiff of bacon, maple syrup and floor cleaner. "Besides, you got a week off while we hit the studio. Then when we see you in Atlanta you're going to be hugging all over us, like, 'Man, I missed you guys so much... What would I ever do without you in my life?' So savor the moment, brother. Enjoy your waffles."

While Pauly followed Katy to an ice-cold, rock hard booth, the jukebox sucked me over like some kind of musical black hole. By now I knew to totally disregard the Waffle House songs in the first row, like Mary Welch Rogers's "Waffle House Thank You."

From the booth Katy asked if I wanted 'savory' or 'sweet.'

"Savory. Thanks, chicita," I said without thinking. I ran through the rows of songs, putting together a little playlist in my head. Most people didn't realize it, but song order played as important a role as song choice. "No Beatles?"

"Pres, give it a break, will you? There's a whole 'nother world of music out there waiting to be discovered." Pauly's head swiveled, looking for the young waitress while he mentally subtracted dimes off her potential tip for making him wait.

"Jackson" came through the shitty speakers first. I looked at Katy and smiled but she rolled her eyes. I said, "You're hotter than a pepper sprout, you know that, my love?"

She smiled an acknowledgement. "Haven't heard that one yet."

"Any requests?"

"Yeah," Pauly said. "Sit down so we can eat."

So I spent the rest of my quarters playing "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed," some Hank Williams, Kris Kristofferson, and Deana Carter. Then to throw everybody off I played two more from 'back in the day' for Katy—Reba's "The Night the Lights Went Out In Georgia" and No Doubt's version of "It's My Life."

I spun, looking for the restroom. The night manager pointed off to the right and I had to shuffle all the way to the end of the counter before I could see the door. The thing I loved most about Waffle Houses was how they crammed two thousand square feet of interior into a thousand square foot exterior. I knocked on the door twice then pushed it open with my foot.

The condom dispenser had Bible verses written on it. I read them while the hot water ran. When I saw steam I lowered my face to the sink and sucked up as much as I could. Going from the warm stage to the cold street played havoc with my sinuses.

I tried to blow mucus out of my throat and ears, then squirted soap onto my hands, lathered up real good and scrubbed my face. It felt so nice to get rid of the funk in my eyes and the little bit of old sweat that clung to my hairline.

I pulled a long strip of paper towels out of the dispenser and patted my skin and hair dry, then used it to pull the door open. Before stepping out of the bathroom I checked my phone. Nothing except Twitter updates and mentions.

As soon as I came around the corner I saw my Arnold Palmer waiting for me. Katy and Pauly had been fighting about something. Probably money.

Pauly pointed at my crotch and said, "Kennywood's open."

I checked my zipper and gave him the classic, "So funny I forgot to laugh," then sat down and said, "What's going on here?"

"Nothing," Pauly said. "Nothing at all."

Katy bit her lip. I knew a lie when I heard one.

I said, "Well, somebody had better start talking."

She said, "The theater had all kinds of returns when these Holy Roller nutjobs showed up in town this week. And they refunded a bunch of tickets today."

"Whatever," I said, disgusted. "What about merch?"

She shook her head.

"So we didn't sell anything? Stickers?"

"Preston, we're covering our expenses." I tried to say something else but she cut me off. Her worry fell away, like she finally remembered that she was Katy Stefanic and she sure as hell didn't get bothered by stuff like this. "Look, this is our first disappointing night. No big deal. Spring break happened last week and Easter's coming up. Plus it's the tournament and both Louisville and UK are still in it. You know how Morgantown gets when WVU is playing basketball this late in the season. I don't know, Preston, but it's no reason to panic. Because you're going to get Pauly all fired up and next thing I know I'm dealing with two crybabies the whole way to Nashville instead of one."

"So we're supposed to suck it up? Can the label help us out? With getting our money, I mean?"

Katy sipped her tea.

Pauly didn't say anything either, but he hadn't done much to hide the fact that this last leg of the tour had worn him out. The miles didn't hurt so much as the hours. I didn't ask him to burn vacation days to shuttle me and Katy around. He volunteered. Said we couldn't afford union labor. And he probably did save us thousands of dollars. But I felt like he regretted it. Or resented it. He still walked with a limp from the accident last winter, and I cringed whenever I saw him popping ibuprofen like Tic Tacs.

"Forget about it, okay?" Katy kissed me on the cheek.

"Yeah."

The waitress set my food on the table as I tried to let go of my anger. I patted Katy on the knee and smiled. "Okay."

My order never changed unless I wanted sweet instead of savory, and as the smell of smothered, covered, diced and topped hash browns hit my nose I found myself wishing I'd gotten waffles and bacon instead.

Pauly didn't say a word as the waitress set his plate down.

"T-bone?" She said the 'T' so it rhymed with 'hay.'

Pauly nodded.

I said, "Don't hear you complaining anymore."

"I'm not," Pauly said with a big smile.

They both dug in. Having just awoken, I wasn't as hungry, and took the opportunity to break down the show like we always did once we were back on the road. I believed the analysis made us play better, gave us a sense of what worked and what didn't. "What do you guys think about what went down tonight?"

"Preston..." Katy put her fork down. "Not now, okay? Don't talk like somebody who left the mountains just to climb more mountains."

Not the response I expected.

"These whack jobs show up and basically take money from our pockets. What else is there to discuss? Until tonight this had been a pretty fun trip." Pauly put a big bite of steak into his mouth and said, "Look where we're at, brother. Imagine somebody from New York down here. They'd want to know where to get their passport stamped. It ain't a big deal."

"That's not really what I meant. I hoped we could talk about the music," I said. "Besides, we didn't have any problems like this in Florida."

"Well, Florida ain't exactly the South. More like the biggest island in the Caribbean. Last July I got lost in Miami hauling a load of furniture and I had to find a translator before I could get directions. Got stuck at this bodega. Ate like seven ham sandwiches, no lie." Still chewing, Pauly said, "Heard the blond guy we saw back in Louisville grew up preaching. One of the guys hanging out by the soundboard said he got all kinds of videos on YouTube, speaking in front of big churches. Said he was on the Today Show with Katie Couric when he was six or seven."

Nobody talked while the jukebox skipped to the next song. Like we had to observe the silence too. As soon as "Strawberry Wine" came on Katy chimed in, saying, "The man's name is Elijah Clay Hicks. He's a nut."

When Katy said the name I flinched. I knew that I knew him, and until she said the name I couldn't figure out how.

"Jamie had me out on the festival circuit as a kid. Those things are like bug zappers for attracting the type of people that speak in tongues and blow up abortion clinics. Hicks's daddy had a big old revival tent where folks would writhe on the ground and handle serpents as part of a network of churches all over Appalachia. Supposedly they hid fugitives from the law, moving them from place to place like some kind of fundamentalist Underground Railroad. That's how they never arrested anybody for those bombings in Atlanta." She paused while she poured more honey into her tea. "The club manager said Hicks and his group showed up in town on Wednesday. They went to some of the student organizations and campus ministries at U of L and to a few of the big mega-churches spreading all this stuff about Preston and the devil. I figure they just cost us a lot of the last minute sales we might've gotten. It's not a big deal."

"What about Hicks? You know him?"

"Hicks believed proximity made us a likely couple. Like I should have been queen of his little road show. He pursued me so aggressively I stopped going to festivals with Jamie."

"So you have a history?"

"Preston. Don't. Hicks and I never shared a pop let alone a moment, although we could've made a nice life off those collection plates of his. Hicks is the only preacher I know whose mission work in New York City includes trips to Barneys. And I've told you everything you need to know about my past romantic endeavors. Which is everything. If I left anything out it's because I'd forgotten. That's it. "

"I'm sorry." I stood corrected and took a bite of my hash browns. To deflect attention from my insinuation, I said, "So they take that song literally? And that's why they were all up in our business? Don't tell me they've got nothing better to do."

"They think the earth was created in four thousand years, why wouldn't they believe you when you sing 'tried to make the devil a deal, but the devil said I didn't have a soul to steal?'" She set her knife and fork down like she couldn't eat with this kind of talk buzzing around the table like horseflies.

"Because it's a fucking song, that's why. There isn't a real stairway to heaven either. Sergeant Pepper isn't a real guy." I gulped down the rest of my tea. "You think it's over?"

"We'll see what happens tonight. Having next week off might make them lose interest. Unless they find out where we're recording. I don't know." She poured maple syrup onto her waffle and cut herself off a few more squares. "We have Nashville then Atlanta then we go home. We have lives to live—they don't. Those people are dying so slowly they don't even know they're dying. Like Tamagotchis. Remember those? They eat and go to the bathroom and die and we can do two more shows with or without them. Okay? It'll be Easter and we'll get to see everybody and Rachel will make you breakfast and you can drink all day long with my pap. I'm looking forward to that more than I would a week in Paris or a million dollars."

I shook my head.

"Preston...the only reason we're here is to do what we're meant to do."

"Yeah. Fine. But I have to say this and then I'll be done for the night—maybe this is what I meant when I told you guys the hellhounds are catching up to me."

"Preston, jeez—"

Pauly cut her off, "You got to stop with that shit. Move on, bro."

I said, "Berry Oakley told his wife he had hellhounds on his trail the week before he died. Tell me that ain't coincidence. Besides, how can I let it go? You walk with a limp you'll never get rid of. Stu's gone—"

"You think the devil did that?" Pauly's voice got real loud. He pounded the table so hard the silverware jumped. "Am I supposed to sit here and believe your situation caused my accident? I fell off the wagon, man. Stu'd just died. A freak accident. There ain't nothing mysterious about it at all. Katy said she never even saw the woman you're talking about and she played at The Stink with you that night. Get out of your head, man. Live in reality."

"You told Pauly you didn't see her?" My face burned.

Katy looked at Pauly like she would've stabbed him with her fork if she could've gotten away with it. She turned to me and said, "I told you I didn't want you opening with that song because you're perpetuating this whole thing in your head. Robert Johnson had hellhounds on his tail, not you."

"Trail," I corrected her.

"Whatever, Preston. You have to learn to separate who you are on stage from who you are with Pauly and me. I know you feel like you have an image to maintain, but trying to live up to it is stressing you out. You can't be two different people. Most of us have a hard enough time being one. Your drinking is borderline out of hand and the not being able to sleep is from the anxiety of touring and writing. Not hellhounds."

"You know," I said, pushing my plate away, "I had people tonight wanting to grab a drink with me after the show. And I wanted to join them. They paid money to see us and I feel like I let them down."

I raised my finger to let them know I had more to say because if I didn't either one of them would've jumped in. "And I've never been subjected to as much scrutiny and ridicule as I have been since last March. I never had people call me 'fraud' or 'carpetbagger' until the record came out. Accusing me of being disingenuous. Accusing me of 'riding my student's coattails' or 'appropriating Appalachian culture.' You know that all those statements are from reviewers, right?"

"Bloggers, Preston. Big difference. Remember that. And I told you to stay off Twitter, didn't I?"

"Doesn't matter. When we were playing Motley Crüe covers at Squares or The Stink we never got this kind of shit."

"No," Pauly said. "It sucked even worse. People fucked with us all the time. They threw shit and heckled us. Playing at China Palace #1 and having people tell us to shut-up because we were giving them indigestion. Playing down at the riverfront—remember that? You said, 'What do you want to hear for an encore?' and that guy yelled, 'You. Drowning.' It ain't all exactly how you remembered, Preston."

I held up my hands and tried to wave him off. "You can't compare because we weren't playing our own songs. My songs. Anymore I don't know if I can even trust what people are telling me. When the record came out I got a hundred phone calls from people wanting to buy me a drink and asking if I wanted to hear their demo. People from high school who wouldn't look at me twice if they saw me walking up Pleasant after leaving Mick's. So I understand that the hellhounds on my trail aren't really hellhounds. Believe it or not I'm not stupid. But when I sing that song I'm thinking about the fact that my life isn't my own and things are happening in a way I can't quite control. Can you give me that? Please."

"Preston, how much control do you think any of us have over our own lives?"

Katy took my hand and put it onto her lap. She ran her little fingers down mine, calming me while she talked. "I didn't start living until I gave up on the sure thing. Until I decided to dream this dream with you the world felt like a very dark place. Sometimes I feel like I'm flying. Sometimes I feel like I can look down on all those people who are too afraid to follow their dreams and I want to reach out to them. But I know if I reach out to too many, they'll just pull me right back into the darkness."

She rested her head on my shoulder. "It's been a phenomenal year and it's winding down. Think about how excited you got when you heard we could book studio time in Muscle Shoals or when you heard Hatch Show Print could print posters for the show tonight. You're here. We're doing it. And it's really hard right now because we're at the end of the first part of this long trip. People are going to talk and criticize. But fans are going to still come out and adore everything we do. I bet you could talk to a hundred people and thirty will hate The Beatles. So you can't worry about stuff like that."

"Yeah. I got you. No more 'Hellhounds on My Trail.'"

"Every time you close a door or burn a bridge you're pushing yourself toward something greater." She sat up, then faced me. "Besides, not everybody gets to fall in love with their best friend."

As a peace offering, Pauly said, "You guys should go back to opening with 'Strawberry Fields.'"

"Feels like it's time to move forward, doesn't it?" Katy stood up and kissed the top of my head. "You guys pay, and we'll leave when I get back."

I watched her walk to the bathroom. I could watch her walk just about anywhere.

Pauly said, "She's right. Your dreams are coming true, even if you don't totally see it. Muscle Shoals? Skynyrd and the Allmans? You kidding me?"

"You need to join us, man. I don't know why you won't. I used to stay up all night dreaming about this kind of stuff with you right there. This is for you too. You busted your hump as much as me or Stu or anybody."

"No, Pres. You booked the gigs and found money to advertise and buy strings and a new PA. You taught me the bass lines for all our new songs. You kept gas in the Jeep. Don't think for a second I feel like I'm missing out on something. You guys deserve this, and I'm more than happy doing what I'm doing now. Driving. Being on stage for three or four songs. I'm very happy and I'm very happy for you." He waved for more sweet tea and said, "I have to hit an A.A. meeting anyway. Then I'm going to see a buddy of mine near the Tennessee River in Versailles before heading home to take care of bills and wash clothes. We're going to fish for a day or two."

I said, "One song so you get an album credit?"

"My sponsor says I can't."

"How's that different than joining us onstage?"

"My sponsor says I can't get in the frame of mind that I can make a living doing this. Driving the truck pays the bills and keeps me insured. It's a real nice living."

"Yeah, I got you." I set my phone on the table and checked for texts again. But Pauly looked at me like he knew and I hurried up and put my phone right back in my pocket. My face must've gotten red because my cheeks felt warm.

"Still waiting for John Lennon to get back to you?" He didn't look at me when he said it. He swirled the ice around the bottom of his glass over and over again. "You and this devil shit. Look at where it's gotten you with these church people. Is this really what you want your career to be?"

"I don't believe you." My heart fell. I reeled to find a way to defend myself.

"Somebody ran you off the road and put you in the hospital. I remember that night like it was last night."

He threw his knife and fork onto his plate and pushed it all to the clean part of the table. "Yeah, and my BAC was twice the legal limit when it happened. I practically had more vodka in me than blood. And the car was covered in salt and ash. It could've been red under all that crud for all I know."

"What about how I paid for Mick's Caddy? You know I didn't have that kind of money." I tried to monitor my words while the waitress came over to clear the plates. I didn't want her knowing my business, and the fact that I didn't want her knowing planted a tiny seed of doubt into my head.

"Want me to call Mick and ask him? Let all that go. The devil? Hellhounds? Same shit, different year. Except this time you're going to bring Katy down with you. Checking your phone for texts from John Lennon and Joe Strummer? C'mon, man."

"I can't believe I ever told you any of that." And it was true. I felt like an asshole for opening up to him about those things. "I only told you because I've never kept anything from you. I thought it could make things right after everything that happened."

"Well, you need help. When you snap from all the shit in your head at least somebody will be able to tell the doctors what you had flowing through your brain before you went over the edge." He pulled thirty bucks out of his wallet and set it on the table. "I got dinner tonight."

I studied his face for a long time. Finally I smiled and said, "Fuck off, Pauly."
CHAPTER TWO

A thousand rocks to make a road, and still I go alone,

A thousand more to build a bridge, a union made of stone,

A thousand more to raise a dam, though the river wants to be free,

A thousand more has the mountain, and the mountain will always be.

"Small Stones" Music and Lyrics by Katy Stefanic and Preston Black

"Katy, you sure I'm not dead?"

Everywhere I looked there were guitars. Suspended above doorways. Painted onto buildings. Onto doors and windows. Instead of honking horns and grumbling busses I heard music. In the air I smelled bourbon and BBQ.

"What makes you think you'd end up in heaven, Preston Black?" The bright light streaming down from the robin's-egg-blue sky suited her. Her skin glowed prettier than it ever did beneath a spotlight.

It felt as if God created a town where people like Katy and me were queens and kings. Instead of a hardware store, Broadway had Gruhn Guitars where I could just pop in and buy a bottleneck slide any old time I felt like it. Instead of a pharmacy, there was Ernest Tubbs' Record Shop, a hole in the wall selling legacy and tradition as a cure-all to whatever ailed a weary soul. Where Morgantown had clubs with well drinks and wet T-shirts contests, Nashville had The Stage on Broadway and Layla's Bluegrass Inn and Tootsie's Orchid Lounge and Legends Corner, where folks could step up to a bar with real music and dreams on tap. Instead of churches they had the Ryman. If man had ever created a more suitable place for talking to God, I'd never seen it. I'm sure Nashville had more than a few real churches scattered around, but they were right to hide their faces from The Ryman.

And instead of a newspaper, they had Hatch Show Print to tell the folks all about the most important comings and goings in town. An honest-to-God letterpress where people spread ink onto rollers and pulled levers by hand. The walls were covered with the likes of Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Muse, Wilco, Bill Monroe and His Bluegrass Boys, Mumford and Sons, B. B. King, John Legend, and on and on and on. Posters hung everywhere—I couldn't see an inch of bare wall that hadn't been covered. Even the bit beneath a set of stairs that angled up to the ceiling had posters tacked to it. On the opposite side were shelves absolutely drooping with the weight of thousands of plates from artists long-forgotten to radio and TV. Posters hung to dry on clothes lines strung from shelf to shelf. No matter where I turned I saw The Avett Brothers or Willie Nelson from the corner of my eye. Every breath I took filled me with that magical air, and I knew that my voice would sound better than it ever had, if only for a show or two, from having breathed all this in.

"Doesn't it feel like we belong here?" I lifted the carton of posters off the floor and tucked it under my arm. Our posters. Posters that had been printed especially for little old Katy and me.

"The universe knows when you want something. And whether what you want is good or bad, the universe is going to give it to you." She carefully placed my Hatch Show Print stickers into the little Gruhn Guitar bag with my picks and new bottleneck slide. She bent over to scratch the belly of one of the shop cats—a chubby little orange guy with bright green eyes.

I held the door open for her and turned, hoping to catch Brad or Jim's eye just to give them one last little wave or a thank you, but they were back at the presses. Back to work.

Down the street I saw our shiny white rental van, our home for the last few weeks. My feet wouldn't move though. "Should I tell Pauly to come up and see?"

"We'll be back, Pres." She grabbed my hand and pulled me down the sidewalk.

As soon as Pauly looked up I let go of Katy's hand and slid a poster out to show him. He reached across to unlock the door, and I passed it over to him before setting the rest in the back.

While I got in, Pauly studied it and even sniffed the ink like when the teacher passed out fresh Dittos back in elementary school. He said, "Pretty good, I guess," and nothing more.

"Brad said they used the same type for that Johnny Cash." I pointed at the iconic poster displayed in the shop's window as I pulled the door shut. "But they use it in a bunch of others too, of course. Looks nice, huh?"

"Looks real nice, bro." He reached over and turned the radio off.

I felt like Pauly could've acted a little more excited even if he had to fake it. If I would've known he'd poop all over my parade I would've kept my mouth shut. So I bit my lip for a second, decided not to let him bring me down, and said, "We'll put some on the merch table and what we don't move tonight we'll sell online. You should've come in with us. Brad gave us a tour and showed us how to set type and everything."

"Wish I could've been there," Pauly said in a tone flatter than a buckwheat cake. He looked over his shoulder then studied his mirror before pulling onto the street. He got up a little speed, looked over to his right, and said, "So that's where Margaritaville's at? Thought Buffett lived in Key West."

Since I didn't know whether or not he was being serious, I ignored the comment. "How did the A.A. meeting go, anyway?"

"Pretty good, I guess."

And I'd always have that discussion as my parting memory of Broadway. A little part of me ached to stay and it pissed me off that I had to cater to Pauly's whims all because he was doing us a solid. I vowed right then and there to never have to owe anybody ever again. Maybe the road had worn me down a bit, but I decided if I couldn't afford somebody, I didn't need them. I'd drive the van, do our own sound. We could sell merch online for all I cared. The knot in my belly killed what remained of our morning in Nashville.

"I went and filled up too. Gas is outrageous anymore." Pauly drifted left, depriving me of a last good look at The Ryman. "Sometimes it's tough feeling good about going to meetings on the road because you don't know anybody. One of the old-timers talked about gratitude and how you express it through action. I never heard that before and kind of liked it."

"That's great, man." His apathy ate at me and I tried real hard not to say anything, especially after all that crap in Louisville.

He inhaled, like he had something else to say, then released his breath without saying anything. Riding in silence suited me just fine. I looked for the river and the stadium where the Titans played, but Pauly's driving disoriented me.

Once we hit the interstate, Pauly said, "There's something else I wanted to talk about more than anything." He cracked his window in anticipation of lighting a smoke. "I mentioned the incident at the show last night when I shared. They knew who I meant. It's not Westboro Baptist. They said this group's real militant, which we knew."

Pauly drove on, letting the news hang for a minute or two. "They call themselves Circuit Riders. The leader is a guy named Zebadiah Boggs. They are big in Tennessee. They mainly run in Alabama, Georgia and up through Kentucky to West Virginia. Boggs used to be a Texas lawman before he got reprimanded for using traffic stops as opportunities to witness. So he enlisted in the Army after the attack on the American embassy in Kenya in 1998, figuring he'd have a chance to kill Muslims. But he got into too much trouble and got something called a 'Big Chicken Dinner' for bad conduct. Bad conduct discharge? Guess that makes sense. Anyway, he's supposedly trying to convert or kill ten thousand heathens. Homeland Security calls them a legit domestic terror threat."

"Shit."

"Yeah, it ain't good, bro. His right-hand man rode with the Pagans for years before becoming a government snitch. Albert Gallatin Ashby—A.G. for short. He got busted up in Rocky Point for helping distribute coke and oxy. Got saved in prison. Boggs picks his guys based on tests of Biblical faith. Like how the Bloods and Crips have to shoot somebody in broad daylight or whatever? Boggs is into stoning big time. They have to murder a witch or an adulterer or some other kind of non-believer."

Katy spoke up for the first time. "Did he say witch specifically?"

Pauly nodded.

"Hypocrite," she said. "Doesn't he know that Leviticus specifically prohibits tattooing?"

"I don't know, Katy. Sorry." He looked in the rearview when he spoke to her. "You can ask him when you see him."

"Maybe we can get them to change a bunch of water into wine tonight?" I tried to blow off the severity of the threat by making light. But Pauly's words had heft.

"I'm just saying they're legit. They are the ones responsible for sending those nail bombs to all those abortion clinics a few years back. Then Hicks's church sheltered the fugitive on its property while the manhunt was on. Like Katy said, his old man has camps and farms and warehouses in all these old towns down here. The guy that told me this used to be a federal agent. Said they're very slippery."

"Well, they can protest and pray all they want because eventually that's going to be more publicity for us. Especially if the media paints us as an underdog. Just wait." I cracked my window and watched the rest of Nashville fly by. Cars and trucks filled with people that got to call this place home. I could see me and Katy living here one day. "Where we headed? I want to get back to the club and forget about this shit."

"Can't go back to the club yet. Going to take you guys to lunch. Prince's Hot Chicken. Saw it on the Food Network."

Katy piped up. "Oh, no. I can't eat anything hot and get phlegmy before tonight. What else is there?"

"You can get mild, your worship."

I smiled because Pauly did his best Han Solo impersonation. Trying to lighten the mood.

"Take me back to the club then and we'll order something," she said. "You wanted pizza, right? So bad you couldn't stop talking about it all night."

"We're already on this side of town so let me at least run by and pick up some for myself." Pauly stammered a bit when he said it, and that gave him away. And he knew that I knew.

I said, "What is it? No fucking around."

Pauly checked his mirrors, crossed an empty lane of traffic and rolled his window down. He raised his voice over the road noise and wind. "Can't go back to the venue. Not right now anyway."

Katy looked way more agitated than I felt, and said, "Why not?"

"When I dropped the trailer off the manager said they got a bomb threat." With an apologetic shrug he popped a cigarette into his mouth, lit it and inhaled deeply. "I guess technically you guys got the bomb threat."

He blew smoke out of the window and took another deep drag. He held it, exhaled it then threw the cigarette onto the highway. He rolled the window up, shook his head like he didn't really want to say more, and muttered, "The bomb squad has its dogs there now."

I hid my face in the clean white towel.

They were all still back there, no matter what I did. I could hear them. Over the faint hum of my in-ear monitor—IEM—I could hear people from the audience headed to the bar, out to the street to smoke. They were bored. And I felt like a coward for letting Katy hang out there by herself while I regrouped. Smoke from some real kind bud floated up to the stage. I closed my eyes and inhaled as much as I could.

Pauly's voice buzzed to life in my IEM. "You're getting slaughtered."

Laughing, I adjusted the earpiece to make like I couldn't hear him. I found him off in the back behind the mixing board and mouthed, "You want to join us."

He laughed into my IEM and turned his little desk lamp off.

So I shrugged, pointed at my amp, then my earpiece and pointed down. I twisted the old Fender Twin's volume up to about seven and a half to really juice the tubes. Hot static dripped onto the floor like melting wax. I let my Tele feedback for a second before stepping right back to the mic.

"A minor," I said to Katy, before busting out an angry pentatonic riff, rocking a steady chugging low G that I hammered onto A over and over again. Some of the guys in the crowd recognized "Whipping Post" immediately. "Hold back for a few measures though."

She didn't like the improv. And I knew I'd hear about it later. But we were losing these guys, fast. Probably all the extra security on the way in. The cops on horseback. People loved having their shit searched before a concert. Waiting in line for an extra forty minutes. Fuck those protesting pricks out front. I let the crowd talk for a minute, letting word get around.

Just wait, I thought, smiling, making eye contact with the fans right up front, I'm about to turn this motherfucker right on its ear.

I stepped up to the mic. In my head I rewrote "Rocky Top" for tonight's crowd. I sang the verse in a monotone that mirrored the staccato bursts of noise from my amp. For a second I could've sworn somebody tossed firecrackers into the room the way they got to their feet and smiled.

Katy raised the bow to her strings and I told her to hold, then gestured for the crowd to take the chorus. They belted out the lines just like they did for a Vols game, and ended with a burst of rapturous applause.

Katy took over with a wail from her fiddle that they could've heard all the way back into Kentucky. Maybe even all the way back to West Virginia. She wiggled her head as her little fingers arpeggiated along her fingerboard, working that black Mod mini dress she picked up at that vintage shop on Carson Street back in Pittsburgh. The silver bracelets dangling below her rolled-up sleeves reflected the light like a million little stars. Her purple nails danced across the fingerboard like butterflies hopping from flower to flower. She hacked at the strings with her little bow in long, swooping arcs.

I turned the guitar's volume down and flipped the switch to the neck pickup. Tearing through the rhythm like I singlehandedly bore responsibility for every heartbeat in the room. Like, the instant I stopped, every one of us would keel over and die. "One more time," I said.

Katy built her music brick-by-brick as I maintained that steady driving rhythm. One brick for the assholes after the show last night, and another for the same assholes standing out in front of the club today. One brick for the unkind words they said, another for their signs. A brick for their beliefs and their lies. A brick for all the fans who turned around and went home after seeing their sidewalk sideshow.

And in one giant swoop my little Katy kicked the wall right over. The crowd ate it up, swaying and dancing with their eyes closed and fists in the air.

I leaned right into the mic and sang my own version of "Whipping Post" as Katy mirrored my rhythm with the throaty drone of her fiddle. Some of the older fans sang the original lyrics. The one who didn't know the song watched and danced. For the last line in the verse I thought about the protestors out front and sang, "And there's the devil, right in there with them, she's just wearing a new disguise."

Katy smiled. This was fucking fun. I pulled my glass Coricidin bottle out of my back pocket and slid it over my ring finger, coaxing my Tele to squeal and scream an accent to Katy's rhythm throughout the next few lines. I couldn't play slide to save my life and supported the melody instead of trying to sound anything at all like what Duane Allman played. My noise sounded more like the slide on Lennon's "Number 9 Dream"—little droning glissandos to maintain the illusion of structure. I smiled and bobbed as I sang the rest of the verse, building a head of steam with each note I played. Jacking up the volume and intensity.

At the chorus, I stood on my toes and screamed the line, but didn't finish with my throat. I jammed my Tele's volume all the way back up and broke out a high note that came from way past my frets, almost past the neck pickup. The crowd kept singing so I ripped into the pentatonics thinking about Duane's last ride through those shady, winding Georgia hills. Past live oaks dripping with Spanish moss with warm wind in his hair like he knew he'd never see a tomorrow. I let the notes pile up in the amp, held them there for a second like holding a hit from a joint before releasing them into the room in giant bursts that shook dust from the rafters.

When I opened my eyes to take the next verse I looked for the smiles and nods of approval from the audience. Especially from the older guys, the ones who'd been to enough shows to know we were earning our cash money tonight. The ones who'd seen The Stones or Clapton in the seventies or Van Halen in the eighties. I wanted to make eye contact and let them know that I appreciated their approval. That I needed to make them happy, not the kids. But they weren't looking at me. None of them. Instead they all watched something in the back of the room.

In my earpiece Pauly kept saying, "We got trouble. We got trouble."

The bright lights of the lobby poured over the heads of the people in the last few rows. The house lights came up, and Katy stopped playing. As much as I didn't want to, I stopped too. Pauly got off his chair and ran down the aisle to the edge of the stage. I yanked my IEM out of my ear, reached out a hand, and pulled him onto the stage with us.

Pauly reacted to the sight of the four Circuit Riders pushing through the audience by grabbing the wooden stool I'd set my water bottles and capo on. He leveled that stool out in front of him like some kind of blue-collar lion tamer. It took another minute for my eyes to adjust to the light, but as soon as I saw all that black leather and ink pressing toward us I pulled the cord from my Tele and set it into its stand. Then I pushed Katy behind me and grabbed my mic stand. When the first Circuit Rider got to the stage I could see the words on his face and shaved head. As soon as he put his hand on the laminated wood floor I stomped his fingers with the heel of my boot.

He pulled his hand away like he'd touched a hot stove. He didn't make a sound as he shook his fingers out. Pauly swung the stool at him.

In the time it took to blink, Zebadiah Boggs jumped onto the stage and charged right at me. I lifted the mic stand and jabbed it at him, catching him right in the face with its weighted base. Blood spurted from his nose and he reeled into the crowd, knocking some fans onto their asses. The rest spread, giving him a wide berth.

Boggs struggled to his feet, shouting, "I want them both!"

His companion lunged for the stage again, but Pauly kept him back with the wooden stool. His face grew red and he kept shouting, "You fucking pussy. You ain't nothing."

A low whine of feedback built in my amp, and when I backed over to it to shut it off I pulled Katy right along with me. In the aisle a pair of cops squared off against one of the intruders. Being outnumbered at least two-to-one didn't stop the biker from reaching for his retractable baton. He was short and built like a fifty-gallon barrel. Had to be A.G. Ashby, Boggs's right-hand man. Both cops drew their weapons.

The fourth biker came from the cover of the crowd and got one of the cops in a headlock. Seeing the change in momentum, Boggs broke for the stage again. More police officers came in from the lobby, but I knew they wouldn't get down here in time to do anything. I pulled Katy toward the green room.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Pauly get Boggs's crony in the neck and shoulder with his wooden stool. Pauly smiled and whooped as the guy hit the hardwood floor. "Stay down, you son of a bitch."

The man didn't even twitch. I swear to God I thought Pauly killed him.

Boggs watched his guy go down and switched direction. He bore down on Pauly like the poor kid had slept with his mama or something. Blood dripped down Boggs's face and onto his chest. Both of his eyes had purpled a bit from where I'd hit him. I said, "Katy, stay right here," and went back onto the stage.

Pauly hit Boggs once in the jaw with the stool and retreated a few steps, and Boggs moved forward totally unfazed. Boggs took a swing and Pauly ducked, then ran at him with his head down, pushing Boggs right to me. I grabbed Katy's mic stand and pulled it tight around Boggs's neck.

He fell backward, landing on me, knocking the wind out of me. Pauly kicked him a few times. Boggs was wiry, the muscles in his arms felt like steel cables. He twisted and bucked but I knew if I let go of the mic stand, or even thought of it, I'd wake up in a hospital.

Katy yelled my name and I looked for her to try to tell her I felt fine, but couldn't angle my head back far enough. By then a few guys from the audience had joined us on stage and were doing their best to help Pauly and me out. They pulled Boggs off me and held him to the ground.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" I got to my knees and tried to get my head straight. Pauly helped me to my feet. But my hands shook and my knees wobbled, so I stood there for a second, using the mic stand for support. As soon as I got my breath I lifted it, held it right over the shiny part of Boggs's skull. Right over Romans 1:18, "They are full of every type of evil, greed and wickedness, full of jealousy, murder, discord, deceit and malice..."

I could barely keep my grip. The rage made me see spots. "Who are you to disrupt our little gig, man? We didn't do a thing to you."

"Sir," a voice behind me said. "Please put the weapon down."

I didn't respond, because I didn't consider the mic stand to be a weapon. A police officer stepped in front of me and twisted it right out of my hands. "Please step away."

Pauly put his arm around me and led me away from Boggs. I turned to find Katy and held her. She shook her head. I gave her a little kiss. The fans that had jumped onstage to help me and Pauly lingered around us protectively.

I whispered, "This is going to blow up all over YouTube and Twitter."

More cops came through the front of the house and from the fire exits. They swept through the room, down the aisles, full of purpose. Beams from their flashlights went row-by-row looking for stragglers, but from what I had seen, Boggs's guys weren't the type to hide. Having said that, it startled me just a bit when a pair of police officers came in through the stage door from the alley behind the club.

One of them said, "Who does the rental van belong to?"

Me and Katy and Pauly all raised our hands.

"Well, one of you is going to have to step outside with me."

It took a while to get everything sorted out. Most of the remaining audience lurked near the stage while the police took statements. Some sat in the first few rows, yawning, sleeping until they had to talk to the authorities. In the process Katy and me learned how stalking was a Class A Misdemeanor in Tennessee, unless the act occurred within seven years of a prior conviction, in which case it was a Class E Felony. The officer said that it might even turn out to be aggravated stalking, and warned us that anybody charged with stalking or aggravated stalking would be eligible to post bail and be released until the trial.

None of that made Katy very happy, even though the officer countered by saying any threat against an occupied building could ultimately be considered terrorism, but she didn't hear anything after he'd said 'released until the trial.'

While all this went down, Pauly tried to get a representative from the rental agency to come out and help deal with the damage to the van and trailer. During the ruckus somebody slashed the tires and smashed the windows and the agency wanted to wait until morning to sort it out. Pauly argued tenaciously and finally arranged for a rental car so me and Katy could head down to Alabama while he sorted out the stuff with the van before joining us in a day or two. A few fans helped us load as much as we could into the rental. Amps, instrument cases, and mic stands so we could record, suitcases, and some of the merch. I appreciated everything Pauly had done to help so far and didn't want to stick him with having to load everything back into the trailer by himself.

The transition left us with a quiet moment. I pulled Katy into a dark hallway backstage. The night had taken its toll on her. When I held her she slumped into me, like she could barely muster the energy to remain standing.

"Hey," I said, pulling her head to my shoulder, where I soaked in the scent of her Chanel Mademoiselle. "You're a star, right? I'm not talking about what you do on stage. I'm talking about what you do for me. You are the Sun. You give me the energy I need to live."

"When does a star rest?" I couldn't see her face in the dark. I could only feel her warm breath on my cheek. "It doesn't, Pres. It either fades out or explodes. There's no in-between."

"Well, if this isn't fun for you we'll make it fun. Or give it up."

"Do I get to choose?"

"We get to try." I pulled her back toward the dimly lit stage.

The police had left. The thirty or forty people still hanging around drifted toward the lobby or rested across rows of seats. Trying to make the best of a bad situation, I called them back down and told them to get comfortable, figuring we could thank them with a song or two. Most plopped down along the edge of the stage with their feet dangling down, so Katy and I placed ourselves on a pair of stools and faced the stage.

We kicked-off with a cover we hadn't touched since last spring—"(Nice Dream)." Hearing Katy singing Radiohead reminded me of being in Morgantown with her, and how those days ended up being some of the most important in my whole life. We followed up with "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding" and "In My Life."

We joked with the audience and told a few stories. I had Pauly tell them about how Stu hazed Delt pledges despite the fact he wasn't even a student, let alone a frat brother. I talked a little bit about my trip down to the Currence's farm with Jamie and then going down to Elkins with Katy and Jamie later that summer and they wanted to know all about Jamie. Katy gave me a little look like I'd opened up too much so I said Jamie was a real good friend and left it at that.

And I could see what Katy had meant, because then somebody asked about the devil and the song and if we'd play it. I remembered what the little old lady said about "The Sad Ballad of Preston Black" the morning I met Jamie. "That song hain't of no account and you can honor my hospitality by not asking no more about it."

Ignoring the request, we played them our version of Arcade Fire's "Suburban War" and finished the night with an abbreviated version of our set list. Harmonizing with Katy on an a cappella "If I Fell" as an encore became my personal highlight. We always practiced it in the car—Katy doing the Paul part and me doing the John part—but never sang it in public. The song had become our little secret, our way of telling each other that everything would be fine. And after tonight, we all needed a little assurance.

Nobody wanted to leave. After so much chaos we all felt safe in our little nest. But we'd played right up to the curfew and couldn't afford a fine. So we signed posters and took a few pictures as a way of thanking everybody and saying our goodbyes. One of the tapers recorded the whole thing, from beginning to end, and mentioned the possibility of making the recording available commercially. He asked if I wanted him to sit on it for a while and I told him to put it out there.

Saying goodbye to Pauly hurt the most. The last few weeks really changed things between us. Like, I felt like I really had a brother again. And over the last few days our relationship had been reinvented altogether. He'd become the friend I'd always wanted him to be. We dropped him off at his hotel, helped him with his bags, and left Nashville on a bit of a high. Like we'd squeaked by with a win after all was said and done.

But on the drive to Muscle Shoals a sense of defeat finally settled in. The first blow came when I saw a billboard that said IMAGINE NO RELIGION? SO DID HE.

"Look at that," I said, thinking it meant everything would be okay.

"That's Stalin," Katy replied. The tone of her voice confused me. She should've been more excited. "The man on the billboard is Joseph Stalin."

The name rang a bell, but I only knew that he was a historical figure.

"Depending on who's counting, he killed somewhere between five and fifty-five million people. It's not what you think, Preston." She shook her head. "I always wanted to believe. Now I'm tired of trying."

"I'm sorry." I cracked my window and let fresh air in. "I thought our trip to Alabama would be a little more like Smokey and the Bandit. So far it's been more like Children of the Corn."

With a deep breath, she forced a change of demeanor. She cheered herself right up and went to work on cheering me up too. "And after the Atlanta show when we're on our way home you won't be able to stop talking about it." She grabbed my hand and placed it on her lap.

I didn't want her to sleep and kept talking as a way to keep her awake, but eventually she stopped responding. The interstate felt lonely enough, so far from lights and anybody I knew. She happened to be my only friend at the moment.

When I saw a billboard that said WHOREMONGERS AND ALL LIARS SHALL HAVE THEIR PART IN THE LAKE OF FIRE. REVELATION: 2:18 I knew we'd never beat these people. Not when they had God on their side.

I could handle the billboards and the protestors. They were real because other people had seen them too. Reality never kept me up at night.

But everything changed at a little gas station just over the Alabama line. My head had grown heavier and I needed Mountain Dew so I didn't run us into a ditch before we got to the hotel. I filled the tank. The bright fluorescent lights only called attention to the fact that nobody else was around. Jerry Reed's "When You're Hot, You're Hot" trickled out of the tinny speakers above the gas pumps. Moths and gnats circled endlessly and Katy never once stirred, so I locked up the car and walked through the lonely parking lot.

I started peeing at the same time Little Feat's "Oh, Atlanta" ended. I washed my face, went out to stare at the beef jerky and Zapp's potato chips before deciding I didn't need the heartburn and bought my Mountain Dew. While paying, I watched Katy. And on the way back to the car I heard something that stopped me dead in my tracks. I really, really had to listen to make sure I heard what I thought I heard.

My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.

Young Johnny Cash.

My hands shook. "Katy!"

Not Rick Rubin's version of Johnny Cash.

I heard Sam Phillips's Johnny Cash.

"Katy!" I yelled. I needed her to hear it too.

I spun, trying to get a fix on a speaker.

Luther Perkins's Tele picked out a twangy run while Johnny sang, "...got them hellhounds on his trail. Preston Black got them hellhounds on his trail..."

"Katy!" I threw my pop at the car. It hit the window with a thud and bounced onto the concrete. She didn't move.

As I stepped on the trashcan next to the closest pump, I heard, "If you want to shake them hounds off your tail, the first stop's the crossroads, the second stop's hell. Preston Black got them hellhounds on his trail."

I went to the car and banged the hood. "Hey, get up."

I pulled my keys out, opened the driver's side door and gave Katy a shake. "You have to hear this. Get up."

When I heard Johnny's voice again I yelled one last time. "Katy!"

"What?" She stretched, but didn't open her eyes.

"Listen." I climbed onto the hood, balancing myself on my tiptoes to get my ears closer to the speakers, yet somehow I still couldn't hear. I stepped over the windshield and onto the roof.

"Preston! Get down."

"Quiet."

I craned my ear as high as I could in time to catch Johnny sing the last verse. "Preston Black, you got to be born again. Preston Black you got to be born again. Let the water wash your sins away, before you let the devil have his say, Preston Black, it's time to be born again."

The passenger side door opened. Katy stood and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She looked up at me, squinted at the bright lights, and said, "What is wrong with you, boy?"
CHAPTER THREE

Breathing just to breathe, when you're with me,

Swimming in your smile, while I watch you read,

Laughing for a while as we sip our tea,

You know it ain't my style just to let you sleep.

"Summer Sleep" Music and Lyrics by Katy Stefanic and Preston Black

Waking up in Alabama didn't come as easy as waking up in Tennessee had. I always preferred the noise of living in the city to wide open spaces. To my ears, the cars going by sounded like waves at the beach. The only other thing I heard last night was a train that took an hour to pass.

With Katy curled up next to me though, I could sleep anywhere. And I loved waking her up. She ripped blankets away from me, stole pillows in the middle of the night, kicked me, talked in her sleep and got up to pee every forty minutes.

But she made the nightmares stop.

She gave me a reason to count blessings when I closed my eyes.

And she gave off heat like a sleeping housecat.

I pushed her hair off her shoulder and leaned over her, watching the soft curve of her cheek catch the little bit of sunlight that streamed through the heavy drapes. Her sleeping eyes were like little quarter moons. I kissed her neck and ran my fingertips across the warm, soft skin between her hip and her belly. I loved waking her up.

She rolled toward me and nuzzled her head into the nook beneath my chin. I listened for her breathing to change, or some other sign that she might be awake. When I didn't hear anything I fell onto my back and figured I had no choice but to go back to sleep myself. But her hand, which had moved slowly from my thigh, to my waist, to my pajama bottoms' drawstring stirred, at least. She said, "You're mean, you know that?"

"I know," I said, as I kissed her neck and shoulder, just above the spot where she'd been shot last summer.

She kicked blankets away as I rolled onto her and slid a vintage Dead Letter Office T-shirt up over her belly and breasts, over her uplifted arms. The way she looked at me like I could never let her down or hurt her scared me to no end. Every single time. That look stripped me of my confidence, broke through the shell I wore to protect myself from the stones and arrows. Almost like I had to be a little self-conscious, like I had to remember my sad past, my quiet self, before she could kiss my lips.

She slid my bottoms over my thighs, past my knees and over my ankles while she kissed my collarbone and neck. The way her warm, soft skin felt against mine reminded me that the bright sunlight on the other side of the window could be taken as a sign things didn't have to always get worse before they got better. The way the soft skin on the inside of her thigh felt against my hips reminded me that I'd never have to be cold again.

In that moment everything changed, just like it always did, every single time. When we came together, I returned to a home I never knew, to a family I didn't grow up with. She turned her head and smiled, an invitation to kiss the soft skin behind her ear where tiny little hairs tickled my cheek. For one fleeting moment I caught a glimpse of who I'd been before we'd met and it reminded me that I am the man I am today because I don't ever want her eyes to see me as the broken person I used to be. I died and came back from the dead for her. Her touch, the way she whispered my name and laughed at my jokes, the way she held my hand and finished my sentences. The way she arched her back like she couldn't get close enough to me. The way she pulled me into her...

Her touch reminded me that the next time I died, would be forever.

I loved waking her up.

I finally figured out something was wrong at breakfast. Katy couldn't enjoy her pancakes, even with the butter pecan syrup, making me feel guilty for enjoying mine as much as I did. The way the butter coated my tongue as I rolled it against the roof of my mouth and the feeling of warmth and fullness they gave me, and how she—for the first time ever—didn't feel the same, worried me a little.

I'd finished reading all the little hand-painted signs that said stuff like, "Do unto others, and share a slice of pie!" and "Fresh Joe all day long!" Above the shelves of water glasses and coffee cups the walls had faded where the early morning sunlight hit day after day.

This morning she wore blue jeans and a little blue button-down shirt covered with tiny white birds beneath a fake leather jacket. I loved that she was beautiful, no matter what she wore, and that she used to smile whenever I looked at her. I'd spent the rest of the morning trying to get her to smile again.

After I'd finished eating she finally broke her silence with a sigh. She said, "I didn't go to school with anybody who interested me even a little bit. I had friends who never read books and never wanted to talk about anything meaningful. Except I couldn't ever grumble because I still wanted them all to like me. Always too smart for my own good." She took her little silver barrette out of her hair, set it on the counter, and said, "Do you know what that's like? Being smart enough to know something is wrong with you socially and not having the courage to fix it?"

Before I could come up with the answer she'd hoped to hear, she asked, "How did they know, Pres?" and I didn't have to wonder anymore. "Their posters were pretty specific, right? I never did a thing to any of them and they hate me."

I said, "I don't know," to buy a little time to think. When the guy at the counter next to me tore into his biscuits and cheesy grits my belly rumbled with hunger. "It's the song. It's a stupid thing to base a career on. And all the cops before the show didn't help, did they?"

I watched the pie spin in the carousel as I talked. Banana creams and key limes, topped with meringues and maraschino cherries. They looked so perfect in that glass case I figured they could only be plastic. But we were being cautious with our per diem so I tried to forget about dessert. I said, "I don't like cops on horseback anyway. It's like the horse is judging you too."

"No, Preston. It's not your song or the cops. The term 'witch' is pretty specific." She ripped open two more packets of sugar and shook them into her coffee. "Those memories are like knives. Pap said Curtis Lewis spent so much of his time on the witness stand blabbing about magic and witches that the judge almost bought the insanity plea his lawyer had pushed for."

"Well, the signs were nonspecific even though it may have seemed like they were directed at you. Like 'heathen' or 'heretic.' Just nonspecific terms they use to describe anybody who doesn't believe exactly what they do. John Lennon got death threats down here when he said The Beatles were bigger than God even though he spoke metaphorically, more or less." I gave her knee a squeeze. "It's the devil stuff, I'm telling you. Tipper Gore and the PMRC. This is ground zero for all that shit. Playing records backward and blaming Ozzy for your kid killing himself and doing drugs."

The old cook flipped sausage patties and hummed gospel tunes. His white shirt and apron and pants looked like they'd never seen a spot of grease.

"It's going to pass. Look at last night. Some of those people are going to talk about last night forever. And that's how we grow an audience. I know because I did it once back in Morgantown." I connected the dots in the flecks of mica in the countertop while I talked. "A small audience, but we did it the way we're doing it now. It's a skill and we can apply it where and whenever we like. Last night felt totally magical. You can't plan for stuff like that."

"Well, Morgantown's one of the few places I know where high BAC is more respectable than a high GPA. So from now on, don't start any more stories by telling me what the kids in Morgantown do."

I put my arm over her shoulder and pulled her over to me and kissed her on the forehead. "Okay, then. Pearl Jam at Penn State in 2003. Eddie decided that night they'd play the longest show they ever played. In the third encore Eddie said he was drinking the best bottle of wine he'd had all year and wasn't leaving until he'd polished it off. Magic. The people had no way of knowing that when they bought their tickets. And think of all the people who could've gotten tickets, or had tickets and didn't go. They talk."

She nodded.

"And look at Stevie Nicks. Being a witch hasn't hurt her."

She rolled her eyes.

"C'mon. We got this, chicita. The hardest part was finding each other." I grabbed her hand. "We need to have fun today."

"One last thing though," she took a deep breath. "That was supposed to be a secret—my secret. And nobody outside of my family was ever supposed to know."

"Well, you can keep a secret for so long. Then you're the only one who remembers it. Then you find out it's not a secret at all. It's something totally new. Like a resentment or regret." I stood and put my jacket on. "Look at it like this—what's crazier—what your family believes? Or what those people think your family believes? Nobody's taking these fanatics seriously. And you have your roots. Believe it or not, your family, and what they believe, means something."

"Roots are important, but they don't let you move on. Seeds are just as important, but nobody ever talks about seeds." She looped a thin blue scarf around her neck and gently knotted it.

"So, me and you are seeds?" I pulled her chair out for her.

"Kind of. You're a nut." Her smile told me everything was good for the moment.

We paid up and got back into our rental car and drove. The bright sun forced us to find our sunglasses at the bottom of our bags. And the warm air let us roll the windows down a bit. Redbuds bloomed everywhere and the smell reminded me of home. The scent of green grass instead of brown, of flowers blooming somewhere, made the air smell sweet in a way I couldn't fully grasp. I'd had a destination in mind when I started driving. A surprise for Katy. The sweetness in the air was a bonus.

And even though I thought I knew the way I still had to ask at a gas station after a few minutes of going in circles. As soon as I got myself oriented I ran back to the car, turned it around and went back the way we came. I scrolled through my iPod to look for a specific album, because this moment needed a soundtrack. "East Avalon," I said at the turn I'd missed.

"This is what you wanted to show me?" She didn't try to hide her lack of excitement.

I set the iPod on the dashboard and slowed down because I didn't know what side of the road to look on. As soon as I saw it I drifted onto the shoulder. "FAME Studios."

Katy didn't say anything. I knew she wouldn't be as excited as me, but I didn't expect her to be downright disappointed.

"This is where Duane Allman camped in the parking lot and taught Wilson Pickett 'Hey Jude' to break into the business. Music history. He knew the world needed him like he needed the world." Nothing I said would change her mind so I toned down my excitement. "I'm sorry. I really thought you'd be into this."

She shrugged.

"I guess you don't want to go to Muscle Shoals Sound and see where The Stones recorded 'Wild Horses' and 'Brown Sugar?'" I imagined us taking pictures and listening to music while we hung out, soaking up the magic before we hit the studio ourselves.

"It's my day off, Pres." She put her hand on my knee and looked me right in the eye. "No music. No songs. I don't want to have to think about anything. Not today."

"What do you want to do then?"

"Honestly, make a decision. Even a mall or something. I don't want to have to think about anything at all. I'll take over again tomorrow." She handed her coffee to me and said, "Drink the rest."

Gulping it down gave me an excuse to keep my mouth shut. I'd let her have this after all that had happened, but I couldn't help wondering if she'd feel this same way when we saw Abbey Road for the first time. I scrolled down to an Allman Brothers bootleg. The Warehouse, New Orleans, Louisiana, March 20, 1971. I hit the gas and said, "Skydog's guitar sounds just like a banshee tangled in barbed wire screaming to be set free."

The studio faded in my rearview mirror.

I drove without consulting her. Choosing random roads that spiraled out and away from the city, quietly trying to find Jackson Highway so I could see Muscle Shoals Sound even though I knew I couldn't do so without her catching on to my plan. When I got to the main drag I picked a direction and went, and once we weren't stopping at stoplights every thirty yards the world looked a lot different. The Alabama countryside put on her first shades of green. Pink and white blooms on the trees were a far cry from the grey we left in the northeast a week ago. Roadkill meant the critters were starting to stumble out of their holes. They didn't care that Punxsutawney Phil said we had six more weeks of winter left.

"Thanks for taking care of me," she finally said as we were totally free of suburbia. "Lately the road feels like home, the truck stops and hotels. But it's not home."

"Well, with you I'm never lost, never hungry. Never wanting. Maybe that's why you feel that way?" I put my arm around her. "But you deserve more."

"All you have to do is love me. That's the only thing I need."

After an awkward delay, I said, "Not really sure your mom would agree with you." I shook my head and went on, talking just to talk. Never knowing when to shut up. "I think I'm a bit of a letdown in her eyes."

"Preston, do you have any idea how hurt she'd be if she heard you ever say something like that?" She got angry and pulled away from me. "My mother never expected me—not for a second—to go out and find a man to take care of me. If you think that's who I am then we have so much more to discuss."

"That's not how I meant it, Katy. You know that, right?"

"Then you should've said what you meant."

"In my head I think about what Ben would've done to those people last night. Maybe I feel like I'm not aggressive enough. Just forget about it, okay?"

"No, it's in the air now. We can't roll the windows back up like it never happened. If we're going to take this to the next level we're going to have to get some things straight. You know why I never wanted a serious relationship? Because my dad was an asshole. My mom didn't need somebody to protect her and she certainly didn't sit around all day waiting for some guy to swoop in and save her." She crossed her arms and stared out the window. "One of the first guys I ever got close to was Dante Fiorelli—a forestry major from New Jersey. I told you about him. He thought he knew how to take care of me. Every week he'd drag me up to Dolly Sods to backpack—never mind that the mountain sat in my backyard. Or that we'd spent three or four nights at week down at Wamsley's talking to Jeremy or Chip about bikes. Henry and Ben antagonized him relentlessly because they didn't respect him. After I broke it off with Dante I went for a bookish guy. A quiet European Lit major who could only express emotion as a reference to a novel or character. Needless to say, it didn't last very long, and I knew I had to raise my standards higher if I was ever going to really fall in love. Then I met you."

She smiled, even though I didn't really get it.

"Well, we have an amazing thing here and I don't want to change any of it. I hope you feel the same way."

She sighed. "You know, boys are like singles—they just want to get to the point and move on. Like every situation is another problem to be solved. Girls are like albums, they want to spend time in your thoughts. They want you to see them as a whole, not as a collection of pieces." Her tone grew angry again and I couldn't quite figure out why. She closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the headrest. "We're not going to go steady forever, I hope."

"Look, in my thoughts I'm able to give you the house you deserve. Nice things. But what if this is temporary and we have to scrounge for money after this bubble bursts? That's what I'm afraid of. That one day I'll be back to a nine-to-five and all we'll have is the stories of our time on the road."

"Well, soon enough you'll see that what matters most is being together. Not the shows or the fans. Besides, do you think my opinion of you changes based on what you do for a living? Or that my mom's does? I know that you and Pauly had a hard time growing up, and I'm not sure I could ever walk in your shoes, but think about being up on the mountain at that farm. We have our fair share of alcohol and food and laughs but six months before all that I buried my kid cousin. Crops fail and animals get sick. It's a different way of life, but we don't change our opinions of somebody based on circumstances beyond their control. The river floods. Springs go bad or dry up. It's nobody's fault—everybody pitches in and makes it right. That's what you'd be a part of. A support group that extends far and wide. What would Jamie say if he heard you talking like this?"

"I know."

She knew that would get me. And she was right. "It scares me to think it isn't going to last forever. Your people can be pretty intimidating, you know that? They have all these memories and shared experiences. I never get the inside jokes."

"Preston. Are you worried about being an outsider? Because there's not an event on God's green earth any more inside than burying Odelia Lewis and Lucinda Tasso in a mine shaft above the Blackwater. Can you imagine coming into the family not being a part of that? Consider that your initiation and let it be. I have cousins and aunts who don't know what happened because they weren't there. My pap and grandma respect the fact that you would've died for me given a chance. And you pulled a trigger for me. What else is there? Really? You have their love and respect."

But she kept going like she never had any intention of letting me jump in. "Jamie came to our first show. You don't think Ben would've wanted to be there if he would've known? Or my mom and Chloey? They came out to Philly just to see us and followed us up to New York City. You think Jamie wouldn't have dropped everything to be there if he could've?"

"I get it, Katy. I know where you're coming from." After a long minute, I said, "Well, what about Pauly? I can't leave him all by himself."

"You know Pauly will be my brother as long as you love me." She put her hand on my shoulder. "But you know he's going to fall in love and get married too, right?"

Emotion made me say things I didn't want to say. Things I'd been afraid to say. Clichéd things. "Katy, I'm never going to let anything happen to you. You know that, right?"

"I appreciate that, Preston. I really do. But stuff happens and I know you'll do everything you can."

"No. No way." I got a little mad now. "I'm never going to let anything happen to you. I promise."

We stayed at Cloudland Canyon for as long as we were able to without making the long drive back to Muscle Shoals feel like some sort of overnight epic. After the last two days we didn't need any drama, and this little side trip suited us perfectly. We walked through the blooming dogwoods and talked about everything but music and I realized I had no idea how badly she needed a day off. As much as I hated to admit it, I needed time off too.

The mountains reminded Katy of West Virginia, except the dogwoods were blooming way too early and there were pines instead of hemlocks and the smell seemed a little off. "Earthier," she said. "This is rockier than Blackwater Canyon. And there's only a stream at the bottom instead of a river."

I smiled knowing I'd accidentally given her the one thing she needed the most. Her homesickness manifested itself as nonstop chatter about her mom and Chloey. Counting down the days until we could sleep in our own bed made us feel like little kids counting down the days until Christmas.

We stood at an overlook for a real long time watching clouds move in from the west and not saying anything. Lightning struck the rolling Alabama hills, and I worried a little about driving back through the rain. Fog rolled up from the stream on the valley floor as the temperature cooled. She shivered, so I took off my coat and wrapped her in it.

She laughed when I tied the ends of the sleeves together like a strait jacket. I kissed her neck then set her up on the railing while she struggled and laughed. She wrapped her legs around me and leaned back over the drop, saying, "Save me, Preston! My hero."

And I got a little embarrassed because I thought she might have been giving me a hard time about what I'd said in the car this morning, about not ever letting anything happen to her. But when I told her to be quiet she said, "You know how to shut me up."

I kissed her and she closed her eyes. She slid off the rail. I caught her and lowered her gently to the deck while she kissed me back. Her hand drifted up to my cheek and lingered there. I'll never forget the way she looked at me when she finally let me go. Like she tried to look past my skin and hair. Like she was testing me with her eyes, trying to figure out what I hid behind my smile. Like my name was a lie, and that I had to tell her the truth before we could go on.

The way she looked at me, a little scared and vulnerable filled me with words I'd never said before. Made me dizzy. And before I knew it my face got warm and I lowered my knee to the cold ground. I'd never planned this moment and worried a little about not having any kind of ring to give her, but I knew that whatever I said would be the right thing. I grabbed her hand and rested my cheek on her palm. "Katy Stefanic," I said. But before I could say anything else she pulled her hand away and walked toward the car.

Still on my knees, I leaned against the rail and watched the mist rise from the canyon. Lightning split the distance, and I couldn't hear the thunder.

When I stood, I saw her headed toward the bathroom and wondered how I could've fucked that up. It took a lot to convince myself that she hadn't rejected me. At least it didn't feel like a rejection. I knew the timing just could've been better, and figuring that out on my own without being reactionary or angry made me a little stronger. Meant I'd grown up. I knew she loved me.

The minute I got back to the car the rain fell in buckets. I drove toward the bathroom and got as close to the door as I could so she could stay dry. But she took her good old time coming back out. I remained patient, because in the past being hotheaded never worked out well for me. I turned on the radio—"I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" by Hank Williams. I turned the station and got Skynyrd. "Simple Man."

After hearing Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn's "Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man" and Alabama's "Feels So Right" she appeared in the doorway. She paused, looking a bit relieved that she didn't have to sprint across the parking lot. When she finally scooted her way over to the car I reached over and opened the door for her. She sat down but didn't shut the door and I panicked, like she'd try to escape or something. Only after she started talking did I realize she just wanted the interior light on so I could see her face.

"Yes," she said. "Definitely yes a thousand times. But I don't want this to be the moment. Not on the road when we're both worn out and not thinking straight, okay? Take your time and we'll make it count. But you know it's 'yes' or you wouldn't have ever asked." She rested her head on my shoulder and her hand on my thigh.

For the longest time we sat there without moving. Right in front of the bathrooms with the Door Ajar chime dinging into the night. When she finally sat up, she looked at me and said, "Preston, I love you."

"I know." I smiled. "I love you, Katy."

"How much?" she said as she pulled the door shut and clicked her seatbelt.

I circled out of the parking lot.

It took her finally saying, "I'm waiting," for me to realize she wasn't being rhetorical.

I laughed and said the first thing that popped into my mind. "More than words."

"No, Preston. Before we go to bed tonight I want something better than 'more than words.'" She changed the station. "I want the words."

So we left the park to return to the small hotel room, our home for the next week. The last room before the last room in Atlanta. The last bed before the last bed before heading back to the sleepy Morgantown apartment we shared. And I drove knowing her words meant something.

Just outside Huntsville, between Curley and Woodley, we stopped for dinner at a large truck diner. Just past the International Harvester hats and books on tape and windshield wash fluid we found a place making catfish sandwiches on white bread, with sides of greens and black-eyed peas and dirty rice. They had brisket on the menu and I had to assume it was for real because I could smell the hickory smoke coming from the back. I would've been happy with cornbread and a few sides, but ended up with country fried steak and white gravy with biscuits and green beans with ham hock and sweet potato casserole. More food than I could ever want or need.

Katy smiled as she ate her sweet potato casserole. Eating made her happy, and I totally understood it. Comfort. That feeling that your mom is going to pop around a corner any second now with juice and cookies.

"I owe you a dessert," I said, wanting to prolong the good feelings. I could've spent all night here, with her.

"Yeah. I think it's time for pecan pie. We've been in the South long enough, right? Long enough to build up immunity. Pecan pie and butter pecan ice cream. I wonder if that's even a thing? If not it should be." She stood up. "I have to pee. Order it so it's waiting for me when I get back."

With that, she sauntered over to the bathroom. Leaving wood-paneled romance for the bright lights of hand driers and liquid soap.

I ordered her pie and played with the silver barrette she'd left on the table. Out of curiosity, I picked up her phone and saw that we hadn't texted each other since October. Meaning that since last fall, we'd spent almost every waking minute together.

While I waited I thought of the words she'd challenged me to come up with earlier. I tried to think poetically and lyrically. Romantically at first, then more straightforward. In metaphor and scientifically. I approached it as John Lennon would, with a bit of clever wit, then as Paul, all gooey and straightforward. I thought about it in terms of Southern symbolism—warm nights and magnolias and peanuts. I thought about it as a Mountaineer, imagining my love for her in terms of wide mountains and deep, dark forests.

"I love you more than..."

It didn't matter that I seemed lost before I'd met her, or that my heart only beat half as strong, or my days were all nights until she came into my life.

"I love you like..."

And the funny thing was it didn't matter. And I knew exactly what I'd say as soon as she sat back down and dug into her pecan pie with butter pecan ice cream. I knew that I loved her like only I could. Like only Preston Black could. A love greater than my love for The Beatles or The Clash. Greater than my love for Pink Floyd's Dogs or Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. I loved her more than my Tele. More than music, which she knew was like air and blood to me. That my life was just quarter notes and tempos without sound until I met her.

Her ice cream melted as I waited, excited that I finally had something to tell her. I laid her fork and napkin on the paper placemat next to her phone and purse. The texture of the ice cream scoop softened as it melted, ridges turned into soft curves that caught the light and dribbled over the sharp edges of the pie and onto the plate where it pooled.

While I watched, the puddle deepened one drop at a time. Bits of pecan emerged from the ice cream on top of the pie as it melted. Eventually it overflowed, and a tiny drip fell onto the table without making a sound.

I knew she wasn't coming back.

I interrupted our waitress as she counted out her tips and asked her if she'd seen the girl who'd been sitting with me. When she explained that she hadn't, I asked if she could go into the bathroom and look. She hesitated and I knew that the seconds mattered. And I dialed 911 before I even heard the bathroom door open back up.

"Brown hair just past her shoulders, blue eyes. Fair skin. Wearing a white short sleeve shirt with a pattern of little navy blue birds and tiny buttons. I mean blue with white birds. I always had a hard time getting the buttons with my clumsy fingers. Um, a few silver bracelets on her left wrist, and a silver band on her right ring finger. And jeans and brown heels. Like, light brown. Brown like a baseball glove. And she had on a little fake brown leather jacket with a green army-looking jacket over top of it because she was cold."

The dispatcher asked me to clarify.

"My jacket, because of the cold air. And I had toothpicks in the right pocket and a receipt from a Waffle House in Warren, Kentucky."

The dispatcher asked about medical conditions.

"None. Like, sometimes her blood sugar gets low when she's hungry and gets a little irritable, but nothing serious."

And even when I hung up I kept describing her. I wanted to call back and tell them all the things I'd thought of since I'd gotten off the phone.

I'd been in the parking lot and in the women's restroom and all through the trucks in the lot. Talked to the drivers and attendants and they were all helpful but nobody saw her. I called the cops back and told them I talked to everybody here and they said they were still sending somebody out and I told them to start looking for motorcycles. When the highway patrol showed up I told them everything I told the lady on the phone. I went on and on about the Circuit Riders and Boggs and the attack in the venue. I told them all about Elijah Clay Hicks and how he came to The Met the night I talked to Mikey Kovachick about the show at The Stink, and how Hicks went by 'Clay' back then. I sent them pictures of Katy from my phone and let them look through her purse and I told them about the canyon and the rain and the hotel back in Muscle Shoals. When they left they told me I needed to get back to my hotel and sleep and to call Missing Persons in the morning, but I called as soon as the police left and told them everything I told the cops and the 911 dispatcher. But I didn't leave. Not when a chance remained that she could be here.

Then I called Pauly and he told me I had to call Katy's mom. But I couldn't. So I called Jamie to see what he'd say but he didn't answer.

So I called Katy's cousin, Ben. He was in Florida and said he'd be here in the morning. He'd call Rachel, he said.

"No, man. I have to do it."

And when I called her I cried and kept waiting for her to be angry. I told her I did everything I could, and she thanked me. I told her Ben left Florida to help as soon as I called.

Then I posted it to Twitter and Facebook. Ten minutes later I posted it again and begged for RTs and shares.

When I'd finally run out of options, I could only sit there. The waitress brought me coffee until she went home, then another waitress kept bringing me coffee until me and the waitress and the other employees were the only ones left. The new waitress's shift had begun after it all went down and she wasn't as sympathetic to my situation.

And the new waitress finally stopped bringing me coffee in the small hours of the night. Between two and four. Around the time I saw Barry Oakley paying for a fill-up and Ronnie Van Zant and Steve Gaines buying six packs. At three June Carter went into the ladies room and I didn't see her come out either. When old Sylvester Weaver himself sat down at the counter and ordered a few scoops of orange pineapple ice cream to go with his coffee I knew it was time to leave the diner and walk the lot. All the trucks were sleeping. I went back into the truck stop side and wandered through the aisles of maps and Advil. The bright lights were the only things keeping me from breaking down and losing it altogether. Somewhere amongst the pork rinds and sunflower seeds I finally said, "She's gone."

I returned to the diner and laid myself down in the booth, but did not sleep. Not with the sound of steel guitars and two-part harmony dripping down from the overhead speakers. I tried pulling my shirt over my face and lying with my head on the table. It felt empty, like a sky with no stars. I didn't know whether I felt sad, or some new thing I'd never experienced before.

The wooden booth creaked and I knew I wasn't alone. I jerked myself into a sitting position. Duane Allman sat across from me, sipping iced tea. He shook the sugar dispenser, but the humidity made the sugar clump. When he smiled his sideburns rose like they'd just seen a snake. He said, "What're you going to do to shake them hounds?"

"I don't know."

"Well, what did Johnny tell you to do?"

It took a while to catch on, but I knew who he meant even if I didn't want to say it out loud. "He said to go to the crossroads."

"Sounds like a plan." Duane smiled. "You're going to need some kind of help finding her, baybrah," before standing and disappearing into the glare of the grocery lights, with his iced tea still in hand.
CHAPTER FOUR

At the end of the hall is the room where you used to live,

And now the door's wide open.

The voices coming out make no sense to my ears,

I think they just might be echoes.

"Landlord" Music and Lyrics by Preston Black and Katy Stefanic

The knocking went on forever. I heard it first in my dream. I remembered being a little surprised when the noise continued long after I opened my eyes. Too bad I couldn't keep them open.

"Let me in, man."

When I tried to get up I rolled onto a large wet spot where the rest of my Woodford Reserve had spilled onto the bed. That I drank Woodford and not Jim Beam somehow made my binge classier, even if the smell made me sick. "Yeah," I said, my voice little more than a rumble in my throat, "...like it's the fucking smell making me sick."

Splinters of dull pain rippled through my skull when I moved. I could only sit on the edge of the bed. I knew if I wanted Pauly to stop knocking I had to make it all the way to the door. "Coming," I said, but I knew he couldn't hear.

I slid into a standing position and shuffled over as the wall fell toward me. As soon as I turned the handle Pauly stepped in and ripped the drapes aside and filled the little water glasses with apple juice he picked up at a gas station. "Drink them," he said, then went into the bathroom and ran the hot water.

I shook my head and tried to say something to explain what'd happened last night. But the words got caught in my throat like wet leaves in a storm drain.

"No, Preston. Get your ass moving and clean yourself off. C'mon, man. Get your shit together." He grabbed my wrist and pulled me up from the edge of the bed. "Take your clothes off."

"I'll take my clothes off, but I ain't dancing for you."

I started to unbutton my shirt and he shoved the apple juice at me and said, "You need to hydrate, man. Preston, I'm not fucking around here. Get your shit together."

"I know, Pauly. I know." My head swam in the pool of bourbon that continued to slosh even after I'd stopped. I tripped on my pant leg and stumbled into Pauly. "I'm going to get her back, man. Watch me. I'll cut my way through the fucking South if I have to. Just sitting along the interstate with a gun shooting every motorcycle I see."

"You have got to sober the fuck up. I have shit to tell you and I can't tell you when you're like this. So drink the fucking juice, get in the fucking shower and get that fucking stink off you. You got all kinds of missed calls and I'm going to take care of those while you get your shit together."

"Tell me first. What you heard."

He shook his head.

"Fucking tell me."

"Drink this and I'll tell you." He handed me a glass. "It ain't the Circuit Riders."

Pauly sat down in the chair at the little desk.

I took off my shirt and dropped it onto the floor and he went on.

"Heard over the radio the Circuit Riders escaped custody this morning. So they didn't do it. Boggs spent yesterday in jail." He poured himself some juice and sipped while he talked. "They suspect the guy Katy mentioned—Elijah Clay Hicks. He has this cult over where Alabama and Georgia meet Tennessee. Like she said, this guy had been preaching since he was two or three. There's videos of him on YouTube shouting into the microphone, faith healing and all that. He's the leader of the group. All the protestors at the shows were with him."

"You think he did it?"

"That's who the cops are looking at according to the chatter I heard over the radio. But if the cops get a warrant and show up they're never going to find anything. I guess this group's property holdings are pretty extensive. They're like gypsies. They have all these camps and stuff. Old farms. People let them live on their property. Going to take a miracle to find her. Hicks got word out that you're a false prophet because you claim to have freed yourself from the devil's grasp. They see the people who show up at your shows as your flock."

"What about Katy?"

"They never said anything about her. But they stone adulterers. What do you think they're going to do to a supposed witch? The guy I got most of this from has a sister in-law who had a third cousin disappear with these people a few years back. His wife is always checking message boards for her whereabouts. That's how he knew so much. He recognized your name as soon as I said it."

"Do you know where he lives? Like, if he's close could that be a place to start looking?"

"He's from South Carolina. Sorry, bro."

I let my pants fall to the floor and kicked them onto my shirt. "This is what I meant by hellhounds, Pauly. This bad luck that's never going to leave me be. Just like my fucking shadow—following me around forever."

"You need to shake this stupid devil supernatural bullshit. I'm tired of you using all this as a source of your woes."

I finished my last glass of apple juice. "You have to admit, shit is fucked-up despite all the good stuff's been happening. Like every dollar I earn costs me a pint of blood. You can say what you want, but my life wasn't like this before Dani and the record. Don't tell me it was, like that shit the other night about being heckled by fans. You know that for as bad as things got they never got this bad. Black cats and broken mirrors bad."

I talked as I looked for more juice to drink. "Katy's gone like I drug her into all this blackness with me. Like she's paying a price now too. We would've been better off winning the lottery because it's all luck anyway. It'd be some other band on that stage if it wasn't us. I'm stupid to think hard work had anything to do with it. Stupid to think I'd change as a person just because more people knew my name. Stupid to think all the things that made me a shitty person before would go away once I got a record out there."

"Get all this out of your system now. A little purge every now and then is good for the soul. When you get out of the shower your head's going to hurt, but it had better be in a healthier place. We got work to do."

I stepped into the bathroom and shut the door. Steam filled the space and coated the mirror and window. It filled my lungs and throat, which had grown a little scratchy from all the booze. When I started to sweat I could smell the bourbon coming out of my pores. The hot water turned my skin pink. I folded my arms against the cold tile and rested my head on them.

Johnny Cash said I had to let the water wash my sins away, but so far it'd only made me wet. But I continued to let it run over me and down the drain for a long time. Pulling me out of the alcoholic haze that got me through the rest of last night. I kept telling myself that Katy wasn't gone. That I'd find her. I said it so many times that it ran through my mind like a chord long after it had been struck.

I wanted to punch the wall but didn't need a broken wrist.

I wanted to hang my head and continue feeling bad for myself, but Pauly was right. We had work to do. I shut the water off, stepped onto the cold tile.

Pauly was talking to somebody, so I crept out of the bathroom cautiously.

"You remember to wash both your faces?" Katy's cousin, Ben Collins, put his hand on my neck and pulled me toward him until our foreheads touched. His hair was still Army short but he'd been letting his beard grow. "We'll get her, Pres. Pauly's been on the phone since I got here. And I'm already making calls. Got a buddy in the Bureau. We're all over this shit."

"Sorry for not being out here to meet you and introduce you guys." Seeing Ben made me really happy. He'd shed a lot of the anger he usually carried with him, which meant the PTSD meds from the VA were working. His change in demeanor would've made Katy really happy.

"You mean my brother from another mother? It's all good. Right now you don't know whether to shit or go blind. At least Pauly wasn't naked as a jay bird when I met him."

I wrapped a towel around my waist and stepped into the room. The air conditioning gave me an immediate chill. As I got dry clothes out of my suitcase I noticed all Katy's things sitting there exactly as they were when we left for breakfast yesterday morning.

"Over here, Pres," Pauly said, snapping me out of the moment. "We've been on the phone with Missing Persons and we put that shit all over Facebook and Twitter.

Ellie at the label is going to contact the media down here and over in Atlanta, and back in Pittsburgh, D.C. and Charleston. Ben's going to meet with his guy from the FBI and see if ATF can get involved and I'm going to talk to lawyers and see if we can start the process of getting some kind of warrant for those religious fucks and their little freak show so we can move as soon as we find them. Got three numbers already, one of these suits had dealings with the church before. Civil lawsuit for a lady who'd escaped. Said they'd brainwashed her and everything."

So I asked again, "What can I do?"

"You're a little too sorry to work right now. Rest up." Ben had been trying to plug his laptop in, but couldn't get his arm behind the desk. His face grew redder. In a fit of anger he jerked the desk away from the wall, spilling deodorant and phone chargers and cups and Katy's makeup all over the place. He tried to regain his composure as his computer booted. "Just keep your head. Let us do what we can. If we can't get anywhere today legally we're going to find this place and go up ourselves tomorrow."

When I woke up Pauly and Ben were gone. Pauly'd taken the keys to my rental and I searched all over for the key to the van. But they didn't even leave me a room key. I picked up my phone and called Pauly. As it rang I saw the note he left. Meeting with lawyer in Huntsville. Back by 5. The call went to voicemail anyway.

I shook with rage and kept telling myself to stop with the pointless anger. No need to go through all that again. The time for being mad had passed. I needed to act. Sitting around waiting for the phone to ring wasn't going to get Katy back. I needed to know that even after we covered the entire planet there was always going to be one more place left for me to look, one more plan of action to take.

Maybe he had good intentions, leaving me here like this. But he'd made a mistake by not including me. I had to be involved, doing something instead of sitting on my hands. My skill set was limited, and I could only think of one thing I could do that they couldn't.

When Katy disappeared, the hellhounds became as real as radio. I tried to remember what Johnny Cash told me that night at the gas station. I closed my eyes but the words weren't coming. I fought to push all the other songs and emotions away. I had to stop thinking about Katy. After a long moment it came to me.

First stop's the crossroads, the second stop's hell. I got dressed, even if I didn't know where to start looking.

"Have to see what Robert Johnson saw."

Zeppelin and the Stones had left me some pretty good clues. They didn't exactly mark the spot with a big red X, but they got me close. I was headed to Mississippi. Rosedale or Clarksdale. Somewhere near Highway 49. I pulled my boots on and put on my jacket and dropped my phone in one pocket and dropped Katy's into the other. Right before I left I wrote a note for Pauly on the back of the note he left me. Mississippi. Back tomorrow.

In the hotel lobby I found Clarksdale on a map easy enough. But there were a hundred possible crossroads along Highway 49. I wanted to ask the girl at the desk if she knew anything about this, but she was studying psychology out of a book that contained more highlighted pink squiggles than words. I asked if I could take the map and she said, "Yup."

In the shelter of the carport I studied it. Looking for clues. A warm breeze made it difficult to hold the map still.

Another Zeppelin tune? "No."

Johnny Cash? Allmans? Beatles? "No."

Then I saw it on the map right outside Clarksdale.

"Highway 61." Running into Highway 49, plain as day. "Dylan."

Shoving the map into my pocket, I ran across the parking lot and slowly picked my way across the four-lane divided highway. I hopped a Jersey barrier while dodging cars, then ran through a Krystal parking lot and down an embankment, over old shopping buggies, rusted trash cans and broken bottles to a set of railroad tracks. A muddy wind blew from the west, bringing dense, moist air with it, like a breath from the Mississippi itself. I turned toward the setting sun and oncoming rain and started walking. Gravel cobbles and creosote-soaked rail ties made the going slow. Then an eastbound train rounded the bend and I stepped off to the side to wait while its whistle reminded me I wasn't supposed to be here. I ignored it, pulled my collar up, and kept going.

Ten minutes later another eastbound train came and I wondered if I'd been following the wrong set of tracks and took a moment to get my head together. All around me, the city gave way to an old industrial park. The rotting steel buildings reminded me of home, which I took as a positive sign. With the red dog and coal ash crunching beneath my feet and my eyes closed, it felt just like walking along the tracks after school, hoping somebody would save me before I actually had to set foot in the front door. Jeff for a guitar lesson. Therese for a quick walk around the baseball fields, which meant making out and a hand job usually. Stu with a J and an idea for a new song.

The old steel skeletons rattled in the wind, loose metal banged against unseen support railings, bird cries echoed through their wasted frames. And as soon as I got used to seeing them, they were gone, devoured by suburban neighborhoods and middle schools. Not exactly the kind of place to begin an adventure. Even the pre-fab plastic churches lacked the magical feelings the big brick churches back home radiated.

Another eastbound train cleared me off the tracks, activating a new wave of doubt. I started accepting the idea that I'd based this whole plan on the assumption that I wasn't kidding myself. That I had been operating under the influence of total sanity for the last few days. As far as I could tell, nobody ever considered me totally sane after everything that happened last year. The sky grew darker and I started to think maybe I wasn't even fit to be with a woman like her.

I knew my mood would make it easier for me to make dangerous decisions. I wasn't John Lennon or Joe Strummer. I was Preston-fucking-Black and sometimes I thought dumb thoughts. There were a hundred million people out there who could tell you that I could've done a lot better than ask Robert Johnson for help getting my girl back.

I wasn't one of them.

With the city a few miles behind me the houses all started to look the same. Like the same cookie cutter had been used row after row. The rails split from two to four, to eight lines and behind me the steady chug of a locomotive grew. I stepped over the tracks, trying to anticipate which ones this train would take. Red lights mounted on a scaffold high above cast a hellish glow onto me. Puffs of steam from air brakes always came from the wrong direction and I reminded myself that the hotel only sat a few miles away. I kept telling myself that I was wrong, and that I just made the wrong decision because I wasn't quite ready to lead yet. Being a follower was my best bet. And if I just called Ben I could sleep back at the hotel and let them work on getting Katy back. I'd crossed through the gates of misunderstanding a long time ago—before the Currence farm, before kicking the shit out of my old man in front of the Evansdale Towers, before the record.

And nobody believed any of that either.

As I kicked a hunk of limestone along the tracks, a westbound train, the first of the night, came into the rail yard. It slowed and rested on the tracks ahead, breathing heavily like a napping bulldog. Guys with flashlights inspected the undercarriage, and as soon as they passed I knew I could board one of the empties. The smell reminded me of the county fair and the grease they used for the rides. The double Ferris wheel spinning through the night, glowing like a fortress made of stars. When you're little, that's the pinnacle. Your mom watches you on the carousel but you're watching the double Ferris wheel. Then you have a strip of tickets to share with your brother and you're talking him out of the bumper cars and into the Round-Up. Then you get a girlfriend and you're on the double Ferris wheel trying to spit on people or harass the flunkies pulling the levers. You start going to the fair to score weed or girls. To drink in the parking lot. Then it's your band on the small stage playing Stone Temple Pilots wondering how you get back onto the carousel.

And that's why I hopped on the fucking train. Not because I thought Ben or Pauly were right. But because I knew I was. For once, I knew my plan was the plan. She was my girl, the only girl I ever truly loved and I'd bleed all over Alabama and Mississippi to get her back.

The engine released a sharp whistle blast and drifted forward. The cars inched ahead until each one caught the next car's connection with a bang. Bang after bang until the last one, faintly banging at the end of the line. I knew we'd be moving.

The sky turned green with the eastbound storm. Lightning flashed at the extreme edge of flat cotton fields. The sky never looked blue or black—it was always green with scattered bits of slate floating down like broken butterfly wings. The color of an old bruise. When lightning flashed, black clouds jumped out of the sky and returned just as fast. Thunder followed, rattling the cars, shaking the very rails themselves. The sky didn't look like the kind of sky that forgave.

It looked like the kind of sky that pushed rivers into basements. The kind of sky that carried away cars and mothers coming home from work. The kind of sky that gave newscasters something to talk about the next day when they rolled through your neighborhood in their news vans, talking about how this used to be the school and that was the church. My ears popped as the pressure dropped. All across the flat countryside dogs barked at the sky. The cars bucked and jumped along the tracks.

I didn't see any lights from houses or cars or grocery stores or hotels. Just the light from the sky, the green light that let me see a thousand miles before fading back into the clouds. And I couldn't compose songs or apologies or even think of what I'd say if I ever saw Katy again because the lightning stole my words from my throat. I knew this was one of those times to sit and watch and stay out of the way.

When the rain came it didn't come from the sky. It came from across the fields in horizontal bands that got me wet from the bottom up. I shivered in the green light and decided I'd made a mistake. That I wanted off the train and I'd call Pauly to come pick me up as soon as I figured out the name of the town I ended up in. That I'd gotten in over my head again. That all my words about being sad and mopey were just words that I couldn't control as much as I controlled breathing or my heartbeat.

And I supposed that was why I was doing this. Knowing she was gone left me with few options. I had to go to Mississippi. I knew Johnny Cash wouldn't steer me wrong.

Under flashes of white and green light the landscape opened up into vast muddy cotton fields waiting to be planted. Shotgun shacks shook in the violent wind. The flooded lowlands reflected the white and green lightshow like an old black and white TV shut off before going to bed. That was how I knew I was in Mississippi, a landscape described by Led Zeppelin and Johnny Cash and Elvis. Like, my bones knew even if my head didn't. I couldn't think of a better place, or better night, to seek the help from another plane. The way I felt on that train, alone, like no part of me touched any other living thing was a feeling I carried until I met Katy—the one voice out of thousands that connected with me. And when I responded, she acknowledged.

Last summer, while her shoulder healed after that shit with the Lewises, she led me into the mountains above her pap's house with a blanket and a packed lunch.

We took our time strolling through ferns that smelled like peaches and fields where butterflies were too fat and lazy to even fly away when we passed by. Clumps of trees broke up the wide meadows. The wind blew warm air from the valleys on the other side. I spent a lot of time worrying we'd get lost, but never said anything because I trusted Katy. Tree trunks got thicker and farther apart. The little plants that grew between them slowly disappeared into deep beds of pine needles and dry leaves. The limbs were so dense I thought we'd need a flashlight to get back. And just when I felt like I needed to say something the sunlight streamed in on golden ribbons, and we were standing on a ledge of white rocks looking over hundreds of square miles.

When the sun set I said we needed to get home before it got dark and she said we weren't going back. That the show hadn't started. And when the first stars appeared I got scared. Venus cut through the darkness. I kept hearing animal noises from the trees behind us. But her reassuring demeanor calmed me. And I knew I could never be scared or lonely with her. I knew she'd do everything in her power to get me through.

Tonight I was scared. I had to get myself through to get her back.

The train slowed and I got off the first time I saw streetlights. I sloshed across the muddy fields toward a truck stop. My Docs were covered in heavy clay but the rain fell so hard it barely mattered. I took shelter beneath the awning that covered the gas pumps and let the water drip off me. An old man filled up his tank and I asked if Lula was nearby. He took off his Mississippi State Bulldogs cap, and in a slow voice, said it took about an hour to get there. I asked if he had plans to head out that way and he shook his head.

And I asked every person that came through. An hour wasted on truck drivers and young married couples trying to wrangle their kids into car seats. I finally went inside and asked the attendant if he knew anybody who could help me. But he said he could help customers only, so I bought some boiled peanuts and he said he didn't know anybody heading out that way.

Now angry, I went back outside. He didn't realize that Katy could die and that I didn't have time to fuck around.

An old maroon Ford Taurus driven by a pair of teenage boys pulled in next. The driver had on a Master of Puppets T-shirt. The other had on a red flannel and an Atlanta Braves cap. Pantera blasted out of their car speakers. I went over and said, "You guys think you can give me a lift?"

The one in the Braves cap spit a brown stream of snuff spit into a Mountain Dew bottle and said, "No, man. Give yourself a lift."

Before his partner could get a word in, I said, "I'll fill up your tank and buy you booze."

They didn't even have to discuss it.

And that was how I made my way from that gas station in Oxford to the intersection of Highway 49 and Highway 61 near the Barbee Cemetery, just outside Lula.

Ray and Vance were more than content to wait in the car once they found out what I meant to get into. Besides, they had booze now. They backed onto a gravel road that ended a few yards into a fallow field and shut out their headlights. To make sure they didn't split I took the keys and told them to start drinking. Didn't make me much of a role model, but they weren't exactly brain surgeon candidates and I figured they knew their way around a case of Coors Light. Way I saw it I was keeping an eye on them. Keeping them out of trouble. Or my version of trouble. The air had warmed since the rain stopped so I left my jacket in the car. As soon as I shut the car door and started walking, Ray yelled, "Stay away from the burial mound."

I could almost hear the blues floating across these old fields. Sounded like pain and dying and suffering to me. But I didn't know what to do at this point. I had no ritual, no routine and no idea of what was supposed to happen, so I waited in the center of the crossroads. The only light came from the traffic signals where Highway 61 met Highway 49, but there were no cars and trucks coming and going this time of night. The signals changed from green to yellow to red despite the lack of traffic, throwing faint shadows through the fields. Painting me in red and green, over and over again. In a way, each red light felt like a sunset, each green like another thunderstorm, and each yellow like a new day to suffer through, because I felt that way without Katy at my side. Every time the light changed it felt like another twenty-four hours had passed since I'd let her down. Since nothing seemed to be happening, I walked north a ways, shuffling my feet, venturing farther into the darkness. Off in the fields the ground moved. I could hear it. A shhh, like a finger to lips. I continued to pace as the light went from green to yellow to red.

Fingers of mist rose from the flooded fields and warm asphalt. Something halfway between steam and fog. The Barbee Cemetery sat on a small rise, one of the only ones around for as far as I could see, which made it feel kind of unnatural. Like a burial mound. Like the one Ray said to stay away from. Tall tombstones stuck out like broken teeth and one old tree grew behind a wrought iron sign. A small dead tree waited a little farther up the hill. Faded Confederate flags popped out of the ground here and there and all around orbs of faint yellow light rose from the swamp. Not fireflies—this light shone much duller, more like the impression of light than anything else. The orbs hung in the air like day-old balloons. I'd never seen foxfire before.

I heard music and turned to look for the car and the crossroads. Both waited nearly a half-mile back. Too far to be the source of the guitar I heard. Peepers called from new puddles. Far away lightning arched across the green sky, turning black clouds white then a lingering gray. It reflected off the vast pools that formed in the low fields. Like the lights that flash in your head when you get punched. There was never any thunder anymore, making the storm seem real far away. But it felt close. Close enough to keep me away from trees and that wrought iron. Close enough that I could smell ozone.

The peepers peeped so loud I couldn't focus on much else. I turned to make sure I had the traffic signal in my sight. "Green means go."

My feet sank into the wet turf as I walked. It didn't feel like earth beneath the roots because it took a long time springing back after I lifted my foot. Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement. A warm breeze tried to blow the weeds at the edge of the mud, but the heavy wind contained more water than air. Toads crawled through the long grass to escape the flood. I went to the top of the hill to escape them.

Blue and green bottles of all shapes and sizes had been jammed over the limbs of the small dead tree at all kinds of angles. Whiskey bottles and beer bottles and pill bottles reflected the distant traffic lights like sad little galaxies. The yellow lights rising from the swamp circled individual bottles for a second, like water around a drain, before rising into the night.

Out in the forest I heard a twang, a scratchy whine, an untuned guitar spitting out talkin' blues. I followed the sounds over an old wrought iron fence, jagged like broken glass, along a raised ridge to an old barn. Like the road that had been built to always sit above the flood. In the night's half-light I saw part of the barn's roof had collapsed. At the far end of a scrubby field a row of white columns held up nothing. Behind them sat the remnants of an old mansion. Dead kudzu covered everything.

A voice in the dark said, "Surprise, surprise."

My knees buckled and I tripped backward. I heard movement. Steps working their way toward me.

"Another guitar player looking for Robert Johnson's ghost."

My heart sped up like when I tasted Jack Daniels for the first time. I steadied myself on the fence.

"If that ain't the most unoriginal thing I ever seen."

A man walked out of the trees carrying an old Gibson arch-top by its neck. He wore a faded denim jacket and a Houston Astros ball cap. One with the old logo, like the one Nolan Ryan wore back in the day. He smelled like cologne from a five-and dime. I had to say something to convince myself I wasn't terrified, but could only come up with, "You him?"

"You him?" he said, mocking me. He had a long and narrow face, not like any pic of Robert Johnson I ever saw. "You must not know shit. Don't even matter which him you're referring to. Ask another stupid-ass question and see what kind of fool answer you get."

"Sorry, man. Just thought..." I tried to shrink back into the darkness. Tried to disappear completely.

"There's your problem—you just thought. I know why you're here, though. You got woes, right? Yeah, I'm sure times is real hard for y'all. God bless you, son. I didn't know."

"Man..." His tone left me a little too stunned to reply. I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand. "I hoped we could talk."

"We all got them hard times right? Some of us even got it so bad we step on down to the crossroads to see if Old Scratch is really going to show up and make everything better for a little song and dance. I know all about it. That's why I'm here." He shook his head and licked his lower lip as he stared into the fields. I almost thought he'd finished, but he said, "He stole that story from me, you know. Look it up. Robert Johnson don't know shit about no crossroads hoodoo. Far as I know, Robert Johnson wouldn't know that li'l ole funny boy from a bullfrog."

"Well, how could I know?" I crossed my arms and took a step back. "I'm real sorry."

"All everybody ever talks about is Robert Johnson." He stabbed the air with his finger when he talked. "But I'm the only one you see hanging 'round here tonight. Yes sir, Tommy Johnson's here for all eternity because Tommy Johnson did the dirt. Meanwhile old Robert Johnson gets to walk away with all them stories about him."

"Well, Robert died at twenty-seven, right?" I said, trying to throw a little optimism on the subject. "Poisoned, or something?"

"Don't matter. Everlasting life wasn't part of the deal, no sir. Not for this son of man anyhow. But then again, that li'l ole funny boy ain't one to play fair."

"I said I was sorry, man." This felt like one of those moments when I had an opportunity to be proactive as long as I stayed smart about it and kept control of the conversation's tone. For the most part trying to change fate hadn't worked out well for me so far. Pauly ended up with a limp and Stu ended up in a grave because I figured nobody'd notice me trying to manipulate the future. But I knew of no cosmic law written anywhere saying I couldn't try again. After all, I survived. Adopting a more forceful voice, I said, "I'm not here because my car won't start. My girl disappeared last night. Some fucking Bible-thumpers nabbed her at a truck stop and I know I don't have a lot of time to get her back. Like, I know these first few days are crucial."

My attitude pulled him out of his faraway gaze.

"Ooh. So you do got it bad, then? How you know she didn't up and leave you?" he said without sarcasm. He set his guitar on his knee and started to pick. "Coming home at midnight and your girl's home at one. Yeah, you creepin' in at midnight, and you're girl's home at one. You getting ready for some loving, and your girl, she just got done."

"Look—"

He cut me off, practically spitting out the words he said, "You want to know about chains? Then you got to be chained. You got to feel that cold steel cut into your wrists and you got to know how hope looks when it's nothing but a tiny little light in the very pit of your ever-loving soul. You want to sing about hounds? Then you got to know how it feels when them hounds are breathing down your neck, and how a hound'd rather die than beg off a trail. Ain't a man on earth can call them dogs off."

I turned and clenched a fist. Didn't know what else to do with my anger.

Resting his guitar on his toe, he said, "You going to sing about loss? You got to lose something."

"Lose something?" I exploded. "I lost everything."

He maintained his demeanor, which frustrated me even more. "No. You ain't never had nothing. No mama. No family. Big difference between losing and never had. If you ain't never had to pick a sack of cotton then you ain't ever going to know how many pounds it takes to keep food in your baby brother's belly. You may have been to hell and back, but you ain't been to hell and done stayed put there. Trust me, you sit down there long enough, hurting and thinking on all those woes, thinking about the deal you made with that li'l ole funny boy, then you come back knowing all about them blues."

I tried to find the whites of his eyes, but he kept them shut. I wanted to see if he was taking a piss at my expense or if he meant it. "How the fuck do you know what I got going on with me?"

"I don't know shit. But this son of a man knows the blues. It's like a spell on you and your heart hurts and your head spins like a whirlybird falling from a tree." He put his hand on my shoulder. A peace offering. "I know if you don't do something about it, you going to fall down a path you never come back up from."

"So what am I supposed to do? Give up?"

"They say the good Lord sent sunshine and the devil, well, he sent the rain. But that ain't always the case. Back in them olden days, relations between gods and folks like me and you was simple." He pulled me close and started talking real low, like he didn't want anybody else to hear. "But the church wants to control how you talk to the gods. Folks forget that we didn't need a priest for rituals. The church wanted us to forget that we had the ways and means to communicate with them all by ourselves. Some of my people though, they still doing things the old way. Same as some of your people. Using methods that involve a little less church and a lot more getting your hands dirty. My momma had an altar in the kitchen right next to the old potbelly stove. She put on her hat and went to church every Sunday from the day they baptized her to the day she died. But she didn't need church to talk to God. She talked whenever she'd make johnny cakes or cook up a pot of beans. Sometime He even talk back."

He took his hand from my shoulder and stepped back. "You need help from the other side, all you got to do is ask."

While he talked I found that little light of hope that had been buried down deep in my soul. Like finding Katy had just been a matter of asking the right questions, and I itched to get looking. "I appreciate your time."

By now I only half-listened. My mind ran about a half-hour ahead of the rest of me. Had me in the car on my way back to Alabama.

"Son," he said, taking my wrist in his dry hand. His skin felt smooth and warm. "You stopped listening right when I'm about to get to telling you what you need to hear."

I forced my attention back to him. At this point everything distracted me.

"You talk to them gods yourself. You didn't have to ride all the way out here to learn that. Understand this, next time you come out here, part of you ain't coming back. And that's why I'm here. You got to know that playing with this kind of fire burns you every time. Talking to Old Scratch in a bar or in bed's a lot different than talking out here. You come out here to do business—real business—and you got to understand that, son. You stand out there on them crossroads like you was tonight and that li'l ole funny boy's going to take something you can't live without. Then you know a whole new kind of blues and it ain't them talkin' blues or them travellin' riverside blues. Them are the blues you don't come back from. You're going to feel them chains and you're going to feel them dogs breathing on your neck."

"Like those hellhounds I got on my trail now?"

"Ain't no hellhounds. It's a gimmick, son. That's it. The li'l ole funny boy don't work like that. Everybody's got to die a little sometime." He sat against the fence, propped the guitar on his knee and strummed. "The lucky ones die all at once. Don't forget that. Some of us die more than once. Some of us die a little every day. What's left over is who we really are. You're going to have to die a little to get her back, you know that, right? But you have to die before you can be born again anyway. We can't all be butterflies, you know. Picking and choosing our time."

"Can I ask you something?" I shook his hand and held it, trying to feel for a pulse. That his skin felt warmer than my own confused me. "Please don't be offended."

"Just get on with it."

"Well, are you real?" I took a deep breath. "I mean you're not dead, like John Lennon and Joe Strummer when they talk to me."

He laughed. "Ain't no real or dead. There's alive or dead, then there's real or imagined. You knew somebody exactly like me though, a woman neither dead nor imagined. I can smell that fallen angel all over you."

"I understand." I knew exactly who he meant.

"Look it. You got something bigger than a soul. You got potential and you got love. Keep your soul and give it what it really wants." He said, "And make sure you write it all down—everything you hear and see, especially any visions you may have. That's what a prophet does."

"Thank you." I backed toward the cemetery trying to remember as much of what he said as I possibly could. "I mean it."

"You got a lot of miles between you and your girl. You better get moving along now. Don't you come back without that git box."

Behind him I could see the sky getting lighter to the east. A greyness where there had been a violet blackness earlier. Like the wide South was flat enough to let a little early light creep in from the Atlantic.

He said, "Don't you stop 'til you get back in that car, then get the hell out of here. Don't linger out there on the crossroads none either."

Nodding, I turned and left. A chorus of peepers and the lonely sound of a single untuned guitar played me out. In the slight farther off, birds shook sleep out of their feathers with soft songs. Waking up songs. Like being born again after a long night alone.

In the distance the traffic signal flashed red to green to yellow over and over again. Counting out an excruciatingly slow 4/4 tempo to help me pick my way through the tombstones.

The blue and green bottles on the branches of the old graveyard tree shivered as the waxy morning light grew. Trembling, as if an earthquake shook the whole thing.

I stopped to look.

They reflected the tiniest bit of dawn, making it seem like each contained a small sphere of distilled morning. I tapped one of the bottles. A faint globe of light bounced against the glass like a fly against a dirty window.

In the grass all around me toads hopped over each other, an exodus of amphibians pushing their way down the hill. I stepped carefully, picking my way to the road, not wanting to step on any. Faded Confederate flags drooped in fog.

The concrete strip that lead back to the crossroads didn't reflect any light at all. Like it'd been covered with velvet since I last came through. The toads crawled and half-hopped toward the road with great urgency.

"Holy shit." I pulled my foot back like I'd almost stepped in lava.

The surface crawled with a carpet of tiny red spiders, each about the size of a dime. They swirled and moved like snowflakes blown by the wind, oblivious to the feasting toads. I stopped, and tried to look for another way back to the car without cutting through the swamp. Better the scary you can see than the one you can't, I thought.

As soon as my toe touched the asphalt a loud crack blasted through the air. A wave of successive echoes split the morning as a multitude of crows took to the sky. They squawked and chirped and flew tightening circles above me. I took another step forward, the birds landing on the road one-by-one to feast on the spiders. Hundreds settling in a black, hopping, bobbing mass.

More toads poured out of the tall grass bordering the swamp and fell upon the road like garbage from a toppled trash-can. They flung themselves onto any vacant bit of roadway. Now annoyed, the crows pecked and jabbed the amphibians with their beaks, but the toads ignored them. They croaked and gorged themselves, their skin reddening as I watched. The smell, something like swamp mud mixed with chicken shit, made me gag.

I took another step, careful not to get anything beneath my heel. Birds took wing as I neared and settled down just as fast behind me.

I thought about what Tommy said about lingering on the crossroad and started running.

Another boom rang through the sky. I refused to even turn around and ran with my head down, careful not to slip, ignoring the occasional squish beneath my heel.

Ray watched me through his window. He yelled, "Where's the fucking fire, dude?"

He was on the verge of cracking open another beer but couldn't focus with me blazing down the highway like Jerry Reed.

Vance stared at me like I'd sprouted another eye in the center of my forehead. He popped open a new beer, tried to chug it real fast, and ended up spilling a good bit of it down his shirt. "You came running out of there faster than a bird dog after a limp chicken."

"Put the rest in the trunk," I said, careful not to look over my shoulder. "And I'm driving. All I need tonight is to get pulled over with two semi-intoxicated minors and a half a case of beer at six in the morning."

While I got settled and adjusted the mirrors and fooled with the radio they chugged. Then they each cracked open another beer. "C'mon. Finish it and let's go."

They finished and tossed their empties into the field, then pissed into the mud. As soon as they got settled we drifted into the dark Mississippi morning, windows down to blackbirds singing. Barns and homes and shacks emerged from the murky black horizon. I kept my foot on the pedal and an eye out for cops. The kids fell asleep and the bulk of the Mississippi miles—up to Senatobia, over to Holly Springs, at least—went by fast.

Just outside Corinth, Mississippi, we hit a truck stop to freshen up. While I waited for the boys to join me back at the car I got my first text of the day. Ben telling me how Jamie and Rachael were headed down.

Right before I could text him back "I'm Only Sleeping" streamed out of the shitty aluminum speakers hanging over each of the pumps. And I didn't think it was weird because it was the first Beatles song I'd heard in a long time. It felt weird because it was a weird Beatles song to hear anywhere. It was one of the songs I worked on with a voice coach right before we first went into the studio. My favorite part of the song was when John yawns right before the reprisal of the first verse. Like a little bit of the real John slipped through George Martin's creative grasp. Whispering in my ear. And right then and there I decided to do something I hadn't done in almost a year.

I texted him.

<Any advice?>

For a long time I stood there waiting for the phone to buzz to life in my hand. It almost scared me that it didn't. Like, if I waited long enough I'd have my answer one way or another, and once I knew, I could never go back to not knowing. I'd learn that Pauly'd been right and all the shit that happened last year happened in my head. Like all that shit in Pink Floyd – The Wall. So when the boys came back with a fistful of beef jerky and a few Red Bulls, I didn't make a big fuss. I just got in the car and drove as fast as I could while they goofed off. I decided I didn't want to know if it all existed in my head. I decided it was okay if I'd been a little off my rocker, because I felt a whole lot better now.

Once we hit the Alabama border the day got warmer, the sun higher. The radio stations grew more distant except for the ones with the 24/7 preachers squawking. Almost as soon as I put it out of my mind the phone vibrated. I hated to admit it, but the validation gave me a little rush of adrenaline. With an eye on the road I scrolled through my messages. My heart pounded in anticipation. I knew I'd been vindicated, and I knew not to tell Pauly or anybody this time. I'd never make that mistake again.

Except it was Ben. <Rachael knows how to find Katy, but you ain't going to like it. Get your ass back here.>

I nodded, grateful for the reality check, but didn't text him back. Grateful I had guys like Pauly and Ben to keep me grounded, especially since Katy let me fly as high as I wanted. When the sun fully hit my eyes the tears finally flowed. The weight of her disappearance hit me all at once. I couldn't bear the thought of losing her. But I pulled the visor down and cupped a hand above my eyebrows to let the boys think it the bright light made me tear up. My reality is an ugly reality.

I didn't know what I'd do without her. When I met her last winter I thought I'd started living the life I'd been meant to live. I thought I could finally grow up. But she loved me exactly as I was. She didn't expect me to change.

My phone buzzed again and I knew it was Ben scolding me for taking too long getting back to him. Without really looking, I hit reply and started to type.

But the number wasn't his.

The text came from John.

<Better the devil you know> was all that it said.
CHAPTER FIVE

Road shoulder sidewalk, drinking water from a jar.

Clothes in a trash bag, his knees are both scarred,

From the roadside prayers that get him through the day.

But while he looks for answers, more problems roll his way.

"Asphalt" Music and Lyrics by Preston Black

As soon as I got to the hotel I panicked about all the things that I still had to take care of, like calling the label and the studio and explaining everything that had happened with Katy. Meant to hold off calling the venue in Atlanta until the last possible moment because knowing that we had a gig was the only thing keeping my head right. But Pauly'd already taken care of all that stuff. Basically, he acted as our manager and followed up on the missing person reports and contacted newspapers and news media outlets in Huntsville, Birmingham, Atlanta and Nashville. He showed me all the notes from the lawyer he and Ben had talked with and where he'd been vigilantly updating Facebook and Twitter. I hugged him and for a second he just stood there, not totally sure what to do. After a pause, he put his keys into his pocket and held me.

"We'll find her, brother."

I took a quick shower and changed clothes since mine were muddy and smelled like swamp. So I pulled the dry cleaning bag out of the closet and tossed everything in. Pauly and Ben had packed everything else, including Katy's stuff, even though I liked seeing her things, which made it seem like she wasn't gone. But I could still smell her in the room. Before I shut the door I thought of my last morning in bed with her and the way she looked in the gauzy sunlight.

Pauly tooted the horn from the other side of the lot. He leaned out of the door of a new white rental van, squinting into the bright sunlight. He gave me a, "c'mon," and stamped out a cigarette with his boot. The redbuds and magnolias that ran along the highway had begun to bloom. The air didn't smell so much like winter this morning. I wondered if the change meant anything.

"Where's Ben?" I asked as I got into the van.

As soon as I shut the door he pulled forward.

"On his way to Versailles. My buddy lives there. A guy from driving school. I see him whenever I'm down this way." Pauly waited for traffic to clear. "There's breakfast."

A grease-spotted brown paper bag sat in the center console. "Chicken and biscuits?"

"Yeah, but don't be looking at them all pie-eyed like that. One of them's mine." He reached for it as he pulled onto the street. "Andre's going to set us up for a while. Said we can use his house as a base of operations."

"How well do you know this guy? Like, can we totally trust him?"

"You tell me, Preston. He's a pastor at a neighborhood church and he's been to more A.A. meetings with me than you. I spent last Christmas down here with him and his family. When you were up in West Virginia running them mountains Andre and his old man took me fishing with them down in Mobile." He jammed on the gas mercilessly. "We can trust him, man. Don't you worry."

"Sorry, I didn't know."

"It's fine. Shouldn't have barked like that. But you need to accept that we're doing our best. Ain't me or Ben ever dealt with anything like this, but Ben has a plan. Sat up all night talking with Rachael and writing everything down. Said you could explain it to me if you felt like it. And I know you haven't dealt with anything like this either and I know it's hard to share control of a situation like this. But Andre's all right. Lives with his wife and her mom."

So I didn't ask him about it anymore. I ate my sandwich then tried to nap, but had no luck falling asleep. Staring out the window took a lot less energy anyway. Nothing to see but low Alabama hills covered with scattered pines that occasionally parted to give glimpses of the wide Tennessee River. Pauly gave me control of the radio, which let me know it was okay not to talk about it anymore. When the hills started to look like miniature versions of the mountains back home, I asked, "What did Ben say, exactly?"

"That Rachael said you had to talk to somebody who'd know, but finding her was only going to be a little easier than finding Katy." He took a deep breath, held it, then slowly let it out. "Said it would be scary and you weren't going to like it. Said it would hurt. Ben asked if he could be the one, and Rachael said it had to be you."

I tried to take everything in. I knew Rachael hadn't been as cryptic with Ben as Ben had been with Pauly. It seemed like the only piece of the puzzle missing was who exactly she wanted me to talk to, so I asked.

Pauly shrugged. "Somebody named Jane. Henry's sister."

I dozed off right before we hit Versailles and a change in speed and direction woke me up just as fast. I stretched as the mountains speeding past my grimy window got a little taller. As farms gave way to a small town. Strip malls and stoplights and churches. Methodist churches. Baptist churches. A.M.E. churches. A Piggly Wiggly instead of a Kroger's. Pauly navigated side streets until the tiny town turned into rows of houses in too much disarray to be called neighborhoods. Everything looked like it had been built in the forties and renovated in the seventies. Shotgun shacks rubbed elbows in the shade of old sycamore trees, and every corner had its own bar. The sidewalk had been heaved up in many places where the trees decided to crack their knuckles. Kids shot hoops into rims with no nets. Old tennis shoes had been slung over power lines by their laces. Dogs sat next to the trees they'd been tied to, their upended bowls the only things emptier than their bellies. Old Ford Thunderbirds and Lincoln Continentals as long as railcars sat on blocks in front of boarded-up storefronts.

I saw Ben's Jeep in front of a small double-barrel shotgun shack wearing a coat of fresh white paint, which made it stand out a little from all the other houses on the street. In the front yard there stood a dead tree, about chest high, that had all its branches trimmed down to nubs. Each nub held an upturned glass bottle—blue or green—just like the tree at the cemetery last night. Ben was nowhere to be seen.

Right next door a man with skin the color of coffee with too much cream stood on a patch of mud between a juke joint called "Creole Royale" and the sidewalk. He lathered sauce onto random chicken parts cooking on a big steel drum that had been split right down the middle. The juke joint behind him, that looked a little like an old service station, had a corrugated steel roof, whitewashed wooden siding which had faded to grey long ago, and neon beer ads in the windows. A pair of little white signs hanging next to the door said "Beer and Soda for Sale" and "All sandwiches served with Coke and fry" in bright red letters.

"Pres, there's the blues guy I told you about."

"You never said nothing about a blues guy. I would've remembered."

"That's right. Meant to tell you about it last night, but you already done run-off into the wilds of Mississippi." Pauly got out of the van and waved. "Simoneaux. How you doing?"

Simoneaux raised a pair of tongs into the grey sky and waggled them. "You eating?"

"No, Nadhima's making lunch. Maybe tonight?"

"Who you got there with you?" He sounded like the Cajun folks we heard in NOLA when we passed through last fall.

I turned and waved. He cupped a hand over his dark eyes like somehow that'd help him see me more clearly.

Pauly said, "My brother. The guitar player."

"Tell him I'm a father of five, can drink a six-pack by seven. That my mama gave birth to me and raised me in crawdad heaven, but all this red clay up in here didn't make me no redneck." He swatted smoke away from his face as he said it.

Pauly looked at me. "You get all that?"

I smiled and gave him a big wave.

"I don't see no git box. Tell him come over tonight and listen to some real good music." He continued talking like I'd stayed in the van. "Elmore James played here in 1955. Lots of magic still left up in this joint."

"You giving him a free pass because he's my brother?" Pauly came around the van and hopped onto the sidewalk.

"No. He gets a pass because he's a guitar player."

I laughed to put him at ease.

Pauly pointed at the house. A gesture meant to get me inside before things could drag on. His friend waited for us on the porch. Pauly said, "Andre, this is my brother, Preston."

I shook his hand as he said, "Andre Betters."

"Nice to meet you," I said. "Appreciate your hospitality. Don't want to put you out."

"Ain't the first time we played host to invaders from the North, probably ain't going to be the last. I'm sure we'll survive." With a smile, he stuck his hand into the pocket of his blue coveralls. The little bit of grey at his temples indicated he had more years on him than Pauly and me.

"Let's meet the rest of them," he said, gesturing for us to step on inside.

His pad looked only a little bigger than the first apartment Pauly and I had shared back in Morgantown. It smelled of new paint and incense. A flat-screen TV stood against the wall where a fireplace should've been. The comfortable little living room gave way to a long hallway filled with the rich smells of a cooking lunch. A little bit of fat, a little bit of spice and a few things that made me hungry without needing to know what they were. Before everybody got settled I meant to ask Pauly if it'd be impolite to get a hotel room. I didn't like inconveniencing these people any more than I liked not being able to be alone with my feelings about this whole fucked-up situation.

Andre drifted toward the hallway and introduced me before I could get Pauly away. "Preston, I'd love for you to meet my wife, Sabra."

She looked like Jasmine from Aladdin, with skin a few shades paler than Andre's and wide, dark eyes. She wore jeans and a pale blue button-down shirt accessorized with a stethoscope like she'd just gotten home from work at the hospital. I smiled, and started to introduce myself, when she cut me off with a quiet, "I'm sorry," and anything else I would've said after suddenly sounded ridiculous. She hugged me, then led me by the hand. "Pauly's always talking about his brother. Figured it was high time we met you."

I said, "Wish it'd been under better circumstances."

Before I even got all the way into the kitchen, Sabra said, "Mom, this is Preston. Pauly's brother."

The thin woman washing dishes at the sink looked a few years older—but not many—than Sabra. She had smooth skin and bright eyes, and her hair was pulled back into a bright red scarf. She wore a long white dress with tight sleeves that went down to her wrist. "Nice to meet you," she said with an accent more Caribbean than Southern, and held her wet palms up apologetically. "Don't be a manouche. Sit."

"Thank you all for your hospitality. Sorry to inconvenience you like this." I took a seat at the small table next to the black-eyed peas and fried okra, and couldn't help focusing on a tiny, makeshift altar between the stove and the fridge. A Jesus statue stood on a swatch of sparkly purple cloth, about to ascend into heaven. Next to him sat a Mason jar filled with brown seeds or spice and a wooden cross that had several strings of beads draped over it. A bowl of fresh cut redbud blooms and a bowl of cherries rested at the Son of God's feet.

When Sabra kissed Pauly's cheek, she caught me looking at the altar. I turned my head.

Pauly set a box of chocolates on the counter near the altar. "Thanks for cooking, Nadhima. Really appreciate it."

"Can I help?" I said.

"Just enjoy lunch, because something tells me you may not like dessert so much." Nadhima turned to Sabra and said, "Go get the boys. Tell them it's ready."

Nadhima wiped her hands on a towel and sat at the table across from Pauly and me. "Preston," she said, taking my hand into her own. "You the kind of man who makes it rain by screaming for rain?"

I didn't know what she meant, whether she spoke metaphorically or not. Far as I could tell I had no control over anything. I looked away to avoid answering.

"For this to work, you're going to have to be. Hate to see anything happen to that poor girl." She set a plate of cornbread in front of me and tsked as an expression of pity. As she spooned okra onto my plate, she went on, "Leviticus says 'a woman that hath a familiar spirit shall surely be put to death,' so don't expect them to suffer a witch to live. Not for a second. Those folks don't play."

I pushed my plate away from me. Not as a sign of protest or rudeness, but I couldn't eat. Not now.

"Put food into your belly to clear your head." Nadhima laced her fingers together, permitting me to see the remains of a fading henna tattoo on her wrist. She said, "I know you don't have an appetite. If it makes you feel better, none of us do."

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.

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.

"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.

"Jane, please. You have to help me."

She turned. Green and red from the traffic signals cast her pale skin in otherworldly hues. "It's too late. You waited too long."

"Don't say that, please." I panicked.

"Aunt Rachael told you exactly what to do. This is her little girl we're talking about. My cousin!"

People waiting for the bus turned around and watched the commotion.

"Don't be like that. She's tough—"

"And do you know why she's tough? Because she never let herself fall for guys like you. Guys who didn't care she graduated at the top of her class." She put her hand on her hip and came at me. "Everywhere Katy goes, she's either climbing a mountain or coming down off one and the minute her dad left she knew she'd never rely on anybody ever again. So consider yourself lucky to be loved by her. She doesn't play loose with her affection. You must have earned it somehow."

"So help me find her." I tried to take her hand, but she backed toward the curb.

"I can help you find her." She watched me process. Like she knew what I thought.

"But you're going to have to make the call. Katy doesn't have much time."

"I will. Call who?"

"You know who. You don't want to say it and I don't want to say it." She cupped her hand to her ear. In the distance a great bell chimed louder and faster. "Hear it? Big Ben?"

She stood in the small sphere of light created by a dim street lamp, but cast no shadow. She shivered a little in her short skirt and high black boots.

All around windows rattled as waves of sound rolled through the streets. Lampposts swayed from the growing energy of the bell's thunder.

"Call your fallen angel. It's going to hurt, and you're going to have to give something up. But she is the only one who can help you get Katy before they kill her."

"That'll make things so much worse." It scared me to think about it. I tried everything to forget about her, but every day she found a way into my thoughts.

Jane shouted over the ringing. "Katy won't be mad if you tell her, 'Every girl needs a boy like she needs candy and an extra hole in the head.' Katy'll know what that means."

Jane pushed in front of a middle-aged couple waiting for a cab. They cursed as she shut the door. The black cab pulled into traffic and disappeared into the dark. The last thing I saw was the plate number—3485.

"Calling her is a mistake!" I yelled and the people laughed, even though I couldn't hear them over the deafening noise from Big Ben.

I turned back to the theater's main door, but it was locked. I kicked it, but the chains had already been pulled tight. I kicked again. Behind me people shouted stuff like, "asshole" and "tosser" but I kept kicking the wooden doors. The last place I remembered having a friend was inside.

The door splintered.

At this point I didn't even care if I got in. I grew angry. And I released it the only way I knew how. I wanted blood, but I knew that wouldn't fly in the real world. I wanted heads on spits and hearts beneath my boot.

I wanted a river of tears.

A universe of blood for my Katy.

I kicked until I felt certain I'd broken the bones in my foot. I wanted Katy in my arms. I wanted to feel her warm, soft cheek against mine. I kicked the door off its hinges. Wooden shards disappeared beneath my boot.

My Katy deserved better than the superficial beliefs these fuckers were dishing out.

My Katy deserved a bed of violets and a halo of cherry blossoms and a warm breeze and people speaking in the kindest of tones.

My Katy deserved a thousand years without pain, a thousand songs in her honor. A thousand kind words in every breath. I kicked for her, because my love had been taken. Because my love was cold and hungry and alone. I kicked because somewhere, out there, my girl needed me.

Hands reached through a crack in the door and pulled my jacket. My face hit the wood and warmed with the flush of blood rushing to the bruise. I twisted and jerked, but couldn't get away from the door. They grasped at my face and elbows. I tried to bite whatever I could.

Hands pulled me onto cold, dry earth. Sound hit my eardrums and died in muffled whispers that needed deciphering, half words I struggled to hear. And above me I saw a light. A grey light. An uncommitted sphere of hope.

Somewhere behind me Joe and the guys started into "Clampdown."

Somewhere behind me John worked on "Tomorrow Never Knows."

Somewhere over my shoulder Johnny invited June onto the stage for the first time.

I coughed and an ocean of water splashed forth onto the earth. I tried to turn, but a thousand hands held me fast to the ground. I tried to sit up, but the army above had other ideas. They covered my face and a cold wind blew through me. Shivers crept through my body. They held my head to the ground as I got pummeled with the hurricane, the cold breath of a god I thought I knew.

I heard my name. I looked for the man who'd spoken it.

Maybe it was John or Joe.

I knew the voice though, and I looked, but could only see the dull light of the real world. The muddy sunlight of northern Alabama.

"Preston..."

Water rushed into my throat. My first instinct was to inhale and let the air fill my lungs, but there wasn't room for air. My eyes rolled back and I coughed. My chest got tight as my lungs exploded with violent contractions meant to force the water out. I tried to roll over, but they were holding me down. I wanted to tell them to let me go, but couldn't get the words into my throat. I arched my back and kicked again.

"Pres..." It was Pauly.

I tried to find him with my eyes. I wanted to see his face. I knew as soon as he looked into my eyes he'd know it was okay to let me go. I struggled for air.

Somebody pushed me onto my knees. My view went from dull light to dark shapes. Silhouettes of trees. Outlines of faces. A splintered door. I spit water out of my mouth. Water that tasted like garden hose.

"Push him forward."

When I coughed water trickled out of my mouth and down my chin. I wanted to wipe it away but could only choke and gasp. Like drowning on dry land was my punishment for taking so long. I pushed myself forward and tried to get to my feet.

Ben and Pauly helped, but my balance faded and I fell. An ice cream headache raged through my skull like spiders with black needle feet. I pushed my hands against my eyes.

Pauly caught me. "Got you, man. You're good."

I looked for faces. Ben and Pauly. Pauly's friend and his family. I held up my hand. "Good," I whispered. "I'm good."

Sabra wrapped a blanket around me. George rubbed his chin in disbelief.

But nobody said anything while I tried to get my legs beneath me. Nobody said anything while I fought to get my words. They were waiting. They needed something from me. "Jane..." I said.

"What'd she say?" Ben asked. For the first time since he showed up here he looked hopeful. "About Katy?"

And I couldn't remember the words. I couldn't remember the conversation or her face. I couldn't recall the circumstances or the players. I had a feeling, and nothing else. I had a sense that something happened, but nothing concrete. I had ideas, but no words. I didn't want to have to apologize again. I didn't want to be the one who ultimately failed Katy, the girl I loved. If I couldn't prove it by helping to find her, I couldn't prove it at all. Words didn't come. Only an apology. Something Ben didn't want—or need—to hear.

"She said..." I could only see the cab disappearing into the darkness.

I fell back onto the blanket and put my hand over my eyes. My breath, which should've been so sweet, burned my lungs. My breath...

I'd rather it had been a noose.

"She said..."

Lies came to me. Possibilities. Half-truths. I knew they wouldn't know. I knew I'd die with the secret of what really happened.

"She said that Katy—"

My phone rang. Katy's beeped immediately after. Pauly picked it up and read the texts. I tried to reach for it. To slap it out of his hand.

He stared at the screen. "No message. Just a phone number. Maybe from like another country or something. Look."

I looked at Katy's phone and tried to make sense of what I saw on the display. But the numbers looked random. Meaningless. Definitely not a phone number. <34.924610, -85.675317>

Ben took the phone. He studied the message for a few long moments. Then he smiled and showed Andre and George.

"This'll work." Ben smiled.

George said, "That's real close."

"What?" I asked. I tried to sit up.

"Map coordinates." George held up the phone and smiled. "This is where we're going to find her."

Once George saw the spot on the map, he suggested we travel up the Tennessee River by boat, and into a mile-long backwater known as Long Island Cove. He felt we could make our way up the seven-hundred foot high bluff and if we got into trouble, there'd be no fast way for anyone to pursue us by water. But Ben wanted to keep his own mode of transportation at hand, so Pauly and Andre worked out a compromise to have the boat on the river, with Andre and George engaging in a little overnight fishing expedition while we went in from the road.

We all exchanged phone numbers. Last thing George said was, "If things go to crap meet us under the Hogjaw Valley Road Bridge, tout suite." He repeated it so many times that all I could think of as I climbed into the car was, Hogjaw Valley Road Bridge. Hogjaw Valley Road Bridge...

My hair was still wet when we split. I let Pauly sit up front and navigate because he knew roads a heck of a lot better than I did. Nadhima and Sabra had packed us a lunch—cornbread and sliced ham and a few cans of Grapico.

As soon as we got on the highway I got a text from Joe. <sorry for the cold shoulder mate but you wasn't bloody getting it>

We followed the Tennessee River north out of Versailles. The low hills never let us see much more than some sad, lonely farms and the river, which looked more like a long, mud-filled lake. We finally crossed over it on a tiny steel bridge. Just two little lanes and a lot of water below. I said, "You think Andre will be there? This is a long trip by boat."

"Preston... What're you thinking? Have some faith."

"Yeah. I know."

"We're fine," Ben said. "This is going to be a quick in and out. Like fucking a prostitute."

As soon as we hit dry land on the other side I knew we were getting closer. The highway crept through the trees and up the bluff on the river's eastern side. The same hill George showed us on the map. The steep terrain dissolved my expectations about what kind of operation this would end up being. Thick woods and a steep hillside were a far cry from the flat South I'd seen yesterday and this morning. And as much as I knew I should've kept my mouth shut, I knew I couldn't keep my mouth shut. "You scared?"

Neither of them spoke up. Like they were playing some kind of game to see who had the biggest balls. "Whatever."

"Yeah, man. I'm scared. That what you want to hear? You want to spend the next twenty minutes peeing our pants and blowing our noses? She's my cousin, man." Ben punched the dashboard when he said it. "Course I got the butterflies in my belly, but talking about being scared ain't going to get Katy Bear back. So you got to learn to control that fear, Preston Black, or I'll slap you to sleep and dare you to snore."

Anger made my face hot, but I bit my lip even though it didn't make me feel any better. "Well, I never learned to control my fear. I don't know what you know and I didn't see the shit you saw and I know you buried friends. And I'm scared shitless. I'm afraid of closing my eyes for too long for fear they'll forget what she looks like. So if you think I'm a pussy, or whatever, sorry to disappoint you. I just want her back."

I had more to say, but knew better than to say it. Instead I watched northern Alabama roll by, trying to figure out a way to make the impossible happen.

Ben reached behind the seat and put his hand on my knee. He patted it a few times.

The gesture fell way short of putting my mind at ease, but that simple act of consideration calmed me down. Made me feel secure. Let me know I could trust him. "It's all good, man."

"What the fuck're you talking about?" Ben said, flipping his palm up and beckoning with his fingers. "I want food. Can't take my meds on an empty belly."

"Get the fuck out." I gave Pauly the bag and Ben laughed. I said, "You know what? I'd appreciate a little respect for the way I feel."

"I know you would. That's why I ain't going to give it to you." Ben shoved his hand into the bag and pulled out a can of pop. "This is a lesson for you. That you can't dwell on this shit. You have to trust me."

I nodded.

"What's that?" Ben said, trying to find me in the rearview mirror.

I kept my mouth shut while Pauly pointed out our left onto County Road 97. Ben's hazing routine got old fast. As soon as we picked up a little speed, I said, "Yup."

"Look, Pres. Rachael knows we're bringing her back. Bet you twenty bucks we're back at Andre's before Rachael and Chloey and my old man come rolling in to check on their Miss Katy. And I bet you another twenty Katy's going to be ready to play in the ATL on Friday."

"He's right bro," Pauly said. "Be positive. I barely know this guy and I'd follow him just about anywhere."

"You barely know him and that's the problem," I said. "So what's the plan?"

"Plan?" Ben jammed the rest of a big slice of cornbread into his mouth. "Shoot first, that's always step one. We'll figure out the rest when we get there."

"Is that official Army protocol?"

"You ain't going to find that in the Army FM 21-50. That's in my field manual. The Ben Collins 01-01." He held his breath like he intended to riff on the theme a little longer, but I cut him off.

"What if shooting first isn't the way to go with this? What if—"

"Jesus, Preston. We got to take a look first. You think I'm making this up as I go? Have to know what we're dealing with, man. Then we'll make a plan—"

Pauly cut Ben off. "Yinz both need to shut the fuck up. Bitching like a pair of nanas with their babushkas in a bundle ain't doing squat right now. You want to know how it's going to go down today? There's your sign."

Along the side of the road a small white cross had been planted next to a row of rusted-out mailboxes. None of us had anything to say as we passed by.

Ben said, "Tell me we ain't dealing with the same Westboro Baptist fucks that protested at X and Kenny's funerals."

All around, kudzu grew up into the trees and around old fences. But the cross had been cleared recently.

"No, man," I said. "Different fucks."

Written across its white face were four words in large black letters—JESUS WON THE BATTLE.

"Shit just got real," Ben said, rolling down his window. "Stay sharp."

About a quarter mile ahead we saw the next sign on the left—a junked car wrapped in barbed wire, the word REPENT written on the side. A large white cross made of two-by-sixes with Hypocrite you will DIE! painted in large black letters sprung from a rusted-out hole in the roof. Across the hood they wrote SEX. READ REV. 21-8.

"You shitting me?" My face got hot and I made a fist. "Tell me this ain't the first place cops should've looked."

I almost kept going, but we rounded the bend to the sight of thousands of crosses of various size, constructed of different material, planted on both sides of the road for as far as any of us could see. Ben slowed and shook his head. Barbed wire had been strung throughout, draped over some of the crosses like a never-ending crown of thorns. In some places they wound new galvanized wire over top of rusted wire. Crosses went up and over red clay mounds and on rocky alcoves that looked like they'd been bulldozed out of the hills for the very purpose of displaying crosses. A large cross at the top had NO ICE WATER IN HELL FIRE painted across it. The one next to it said Everyone in Hell from SEX USED WRONG WAY!

Ben laughed as he read some of his favorites out loud to us.

The crosses popped up in groups of three and four. Big ones crowned hilltops like cross shepherds watching over flocks of white baby crosses. Ancient washing machines and refrigerators and cars had been incorporated into the setting. One rusty dryer sported the message You will DIE! in hand-painted block letters. An old burn barrel next to a natural gas well had been painted white so the artist could write Hell is HOT HOT HOT!

And nobody said anything because none of us knew quite what to say.

Ben said, "Look here—The devil will put your soul in hell, burn it forever."

"Well..." I said. "Better the devil you know."

Ben laughed even though he couldn't ever have known why I found this so ironic.

Pauly said, "In a hundred years I could never come up with something like this in my head."

"Look!" Ben said, totally cutting Pauly off. He pointed to a small square sign propped against a pair of whitewashed cinder blocks that read All FOR SALE! Five million CASH or best offer!

"What the fuck?"

"'What the fuck' is right." He slowed down as we approached a big gate made out of chain-link fence and barbed wire. Hand-painted signs—one on each gate—said, DON'T BRING THE DEVIL IN THIS HOUSE and LEAVE THE DEVIL OUTSIDE.

Without warning he sped up. The crosses disappeared behind us. Trees crowded the road, casting us once again in shadow. After a few minutes we were back in unspoiled woodlands. Ben spotted a small turnoff littered with beer cans and rubbers.

"Listen," Ben said as he turned the key. Without the engine noise we could hear birds in the trees and wind washing through the leaves. He rolled his window down. "I'm going to turkey peek around and find a way in."

"Why'd you drag us out here if you're just going to go in yourself?"

"Calm down and listen. I'm going to get the lay of the land. The three of us are going to be too slow. C'mon back here." He got out of the Jeep and stretched.

"Yeah." I got out, stretched and followed him around back.

Ben had the hatch up and his Army duffle sitting on the bumper. "I know this ain't easy for you, but you got to trust me. This is going to go one of two ways. Either how we planned it, or to shit. I'm trying to make sure this don't go to shit. Here..."

He lifted a tarp and showed me a big pile of heavy chains. "When I need you in there you to have to pull that gate off. Keep it in the granny gear and get it clean off its hinges the second I say 'go.' I'm going to call every fifteen or twenty minutes with updates. I'll let you all know how the road looks and what to expect once we get in. I'm not excluding you, man. And I know you love her and I know she loves you. This is the best way to get her back." He put his hand on my shoulder. "We can't all be bogged down together in there if things get bad."

"I know." I rubbed my forehead. "You're totally right. I'm a guitar player. Just had visions of my face being the first one she saw, I guess."

"Yeah," he said, like I should prepare myself for some sort of big speech or something. But that was it. All he said.

Stripping the cellophane off a new pack of Newport Lights, Pauly said, "So just wait for you to call? That's it?"

"Well, that's the dynamic truth," Ben said. "I'll keep you updated. Let you know what's going on. And the second I see that she's okay I'll call and let you know. I promise. Grab me one of those Klonopins out of the glove box, please."

I sat in the driver's seat and found the bottle, then tapped one of the little blue pills into my hand. While I waited he jammed his pistol into a shoulder holster. He slid his compound bow and a quiver of arrows out from beneath the tarp. He put his phone into his front pocket, tucked a Bowie knife into his belt, and shut the hatch.

"Every fifteen minutes, right?" I said and dropped his Klonopin into his upturned palm.

"Or twenty." He popped the pill into his mouth then squeezed my shoulder a few times. "Don't get too agitated if I ain't checking in like I'm taking your baby girl out on a first date. Okay?"

"Yeah, I get it."

He put a pair of ammunition clips into his front pocket, a Leatherman multi-tool into his back, then bent over to tighten his bootlaces. "You'll be sharing a bed tonight. Maybe even eating a little barbeque or whatever the hell the neighbor's got cooking."

Ben banged on the hood with his fist and gave Pauly a wave. When Pauly nodded back, Ben blew him a little kiss. "Marsalama, boys."

He looked both ways, crossed the road, then disappeared over a small knuckle into the forest. I stood by the door and stretched. Pauly opened his door, spit into the sandy earth, and lit a cigarette.

"What do you think, bro?" I asked.

"It's all good. That's what I think. Have faith." Pauly stood up and walked out to the road. "Look at what you've been doing for the last seven months—getting paid to make music. I'll admit, shit like this with Katy ain't typical, and it's probably a result of your music that we're even out here right now. Like, maybe being in the spotlight put a target on your back?"

He took a long drag on his cigarette and held it. "But don't go thinking the universe is out to get you. There are guys we went to school with digging coal right now. Collecting disability because their backs are shot. This ain't the universe out to get you. This is people. Maybe it ain't even personal, I don't know. But they don't represent Christians everywhere. They don't represent the South and they sure as hell don't represent what I believe."

"I'll let you in on a little secret. What if I said it was personal?" I scratched the stubble on my chin. "I know Hicks too. Saw him in Morgantown twice. The first time was the night Mikey asked me to play the show at The Stink on Valentine's Day. He was at The Met with her. The second time was at The Stink. She brought him with her."

"Her?" Pauly just watched me from the road.

"Yep." I took my phone out of my pocket, made sure to turn the ringer on, and set it on the dashboard.

Pauly turned his back while he finished his cigarette. He widened his stance like he was on a surfboard, and stuck his hands into his back pockets. Every so often a small cloud of white smoke rose over his head. He calmly crushed his first cigarette out and lit another.

The phone rang. Pauly turned as soon as he heard it.

"Hello?" I answered. I put it on speaker so Pauly could hear. He leaned into the Jeep's open window.

"Told you I'd call, right? Real quick," Ben said, "The whole place is surrounded by electric fence—barbed wire and chain-link. Had to crawl up a stream bed to get under it. Lots of buildings—like an old church camp. Two rows of little white cabins facing a big building. Showers and shitters I'm guessing. Then there's a huge tent like a mess tent in the middle of a field. A bunch of guys packing it up now. Lots of pickup trucks. Long buildings with shit painted on the sides just like those crosses out front. Wooden shutters over all the windows. No motorcycles. Don't see any guns yet either. So far so good."

"Yeah."

"Check this out—they got this altar at the end of a field. A low mound with three big—tall—crosses on it. Like, crucifixion crosses or some shit. These are some sick bastards. Lots of natural cover, though, natural gas wells all over. Somebody's getting rich off this little patch of ground. The road is rutted out real bad. Your best bet is going to be to stay high in the right side and plow through the weeds. The road ends right at the field. They got pickup trucks and a bunch of vans out front. I'm going to try to slash tires."

"You saying we should head on down?" Adrenaline pumped through my arms and legs. I got real jumpy all of a sudden.

"No, you hold tight for a while."

"So, no sign of Katy?"

"Not yet. I'll call back in a few."

I hung up and set the phone back on the dash. I looked over at Pauly and shook my head. He turned to get back into the Jeep, but his eyes spotted something down the lane. "Shit," he said, and stood up real straight.

My phone vibrated again. I had a text.

From John Lennon.

<Heads up, boys.>

"No shit," I said.

A dingy white police cruiser with black doors and bald tires crept through the little patches of sunlight like a snake toward a birdhouse. An outline of the old department's emblem remained on the door. Black stick-on letters like the ones you put on mailboxes spelled out New Zion Tabernacle on the front quarter panel. The cruiser's light bar flashed at almost the exact moment the voice came through the PA. "Step out of the car. Place your hands on the hood."

Pauly looked at me, his eyes opened wide with disbelief. "Have to be shitting me."

I stepped out, jumpier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. The air suddenly got hot. I reached for my ID.

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."

Click to read the rest of  THE REVELATIONS OF PRESTON BLACK

