Elegant Black

by M. L. Bullock

  Elegant Black

  Book One

  The Vampires of Rock and Roll Series

  By M.L. Bullock

  Text copyright © 2018 M.L. Bullock

  All rights reserved

  Dedication

  To Jill, Sabrina and Kelly.

  I’m still waiting on that phone call, Charlie.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One—Levi Wallace

  Chapter Two—Levi

  Chapter Three—Levi

  Chapter Four—Levi

  Chapter Five—Levi

  Chapter Six—Levi

  Chapter Seven—Levi

  Chapter Eight—Levi

  Chapter Nine—Levi

  Chapter Ten—Levi

  Chapter Eleven—Charles Coleman

  Chapter Twelve—Levi

  Chapter Thirteen—Levi

  Chapter Fourteen—Levi

  Chapter Fifteen—Charles

  Chapter Sixteen—Levi

  Chapter Seventeen—Charles

  Chapter Eighteen—Levi

  Chapter Nineteen—Charles

  Chapter Twenty—Levi

  Chapter Twenty-One—Charles

  Epilogue—Levi

  At night, by the fire,

  The colors of the bushes

  And of the fallen leaves,

  Repeating themselves,

  Turned in the room,

  Like the leaves themselves

  Turning in the wind.

  Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks

  Came striding.

  And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

  The colors of their tails

  Were like the leaves themselves

  Turning in the wind,

  In the twilight wind.

  They swept over the room,

  Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks

  Down to the ground.

  I heard them cry—the peacocks.

  Was it a cry against the twilight

  Or against the leaves themselves

  Turning in the wind,

  Turning as the flames

  Turned in the fire,

  Turning as the tails of the peacocks

  Turned in the loud fire,

  Loud as the hemlocks

  Full of the cry of the peacocks?

  Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?

  Out of the window,

  I saw how the planets gathered

  Like the leaves themselves

  Turning in the wind.

  I saw how the night came,

  Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks.

  I felt afraid.

  And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

  Wallace Stevens, 1916

  Domination of Black

  Chapter One—Levi Wallace

  1977

  Sitting inside the smelly, sweaty Chevy Vega, I beat my hands against the steering wheel. It was an act of frustration that didn’t provide me with the relief I hoped for. Nope. Not even close. What I needed to do was deliver an ass-whipping to someone who deserved it, but who? The obvious candidate would be my dad, but since he’d split, that wasn’t an option. There was a reckoning coming his way, though. Yeah, punching him in the face just might do the trick. Another day, perhaps.

  No way was I going to cry today. I let my hands and words fly. “Sonofabitch! Dammit!”

  The fuzzy dice hanging from my rearview mirror bounced as the car shook. Unlike most guys my age, I didn’t swear all the time and I wasn’t great at it, but today had been exceptionally disappointing. No amount of swearing was going to erase this day or its disappointing events. And it wasn’t just one thing—it was all the things.

  First, I worked for an asshole. Second, there wasn’t any food in the house except cereal and dry bread. And to top it all off, I’d just received word that I had been rejected by the Eureka Springs Community College. A damn community college wouldn’t accept me! Not rejected by a prestigious New York university but a backwards-ass community college. ESCC cited some ridiculous missing requirement, something about a credit, which I didn’t understand at all. I’d been out of high school for three years and as far as I knew had done everything I needed to. I mean, if I missed something, I wouldn’t have graduated. Right? I could read between the lines. People like me weren’t good enough for college. I was a nobody and always would be. For some reason, I could hear Coach Denton’s raspy voice in my ear.

  You aren’t cut out for football, Wallace. You can’t run, you can’t catch. Just look at yourself! You’re off the team, Wallace. Get your gear and get out.

  To add to the pressure, my hunk of junk needed major repairs and I was sure Junior, my neighbor and shade tree mechanic, was going to rip me off if I was too eager. You couldn’t appear desperate with guys like Junior. There was a recession on and everyone needed money. Including Junior and his growing brood of children. I hoped the fix would cost me less than two hundred bucks because I’d blown the rest of my savings on Lisa’s ring. I resisted the urge to take it out of my jacket pocket and stare at it. It was a simple band with an even simpler diamond, but I was pretty sure she would love it. If I gave it to her.

  Come on, Levi. Don’t be a cheap sonofabitch. What else are you going to do? Return it and get your money back?

  Well, Lisa would never know it if I did because she had no idea I was going to pop the question. I wasn’t sure I should do that now. Could I reasonably take care of one more person?

  With the Old Man gone Splitsville—he took off like he didn’t have a wife and two kids—it was a daily struggle. Personally, I never liked the guy and it didn’t hurt my feelings one way or another, but to leave Debbie? My little sister idolized our parents even though neither one of them was worthy of her adoration. I’d been the one to attend her dopey school plays. I drove her to the homecoming dance and kept an eye on David, her boyfriend. Rotten little bastard. Yeah, I’d scared the hell out of that kid, but I had to give him credit. He still called Debbie every night and, as far as I knew, treated her like the Virgin Mary.

  And I’d been the one to take her to the emergency room when she had the bike accident that drove her tooth through her bottom lip. Me. Yet she still fantasized that Virgil and Naomi Wallace were good people, that our parents loved her, and I didn’t have the heart to remind her otherwise. At least one of us was happy.

  Since Dad was such a screw-up, I felt good about blaming him for my shit-filled day. Yeah, when the Old Man walked out, he did more than take his overnight bag and coin collection with him. It wasn’t that I missed seeing him sleeping in his easy chair every evening or hearing him gripe about his beer stash getting raided. When Virgil Wallace walked out on his family, he took my dreams with him because now everything was on me. Everything. We hadn’t gotten one red cent from him and he’d been gone for two months now. Naomi couldn’t or wouldn’t find a job, and she wasn’t one you could talk to at all. She hated it when I called her by her first name, but she’d stopped being “Mom” to me when I was ten and she took one too many pills and forgot to pick me up from soccer practice. I had to walk home. Imagine being ten and walking five miles home. And nobody even knew I was missing, except Debbie.

  All I ever wanted to do was leave this godforsaken town, leave Eugene Springs behind, watch it disappear in the rearview mirror and never be seen again, but now that was impossible. I felt like I was stuck in one of those old Twilight Zone episodes where the guy can’t get out of a building. Or a town. Damn weird show.

  No, I couldn’t leave Deb. Or Naomi, even though she didn’t seem to notice that Deb and I were around most of the time. She’d handled the Old Man’s departure like she handled most things—with the help of her bottle of little white pills. Naomi’s goal in li
fe was to avoid feeling anything at all. For some strange reason, I thought of that stupid television jingle about laundry detergent. Only instead of hearing, “The fresh-smelling scoop that cleans it all,” my mind replaced the lyrics with, “The little white pill that numbs it all.” Maybe that’s what I needed, some of my mother’s pills. Maybe I would take all of her pills, just swallow them down and go to sleep. Never wake up. That would be awesome. But Deb’s face sprang up into my mind and I shook the thought away. Did I really want that? Hell no, not really. I had Lisa to think about too. Still. It was just too much. Too much of everything. I was only twenty-two for Chrissakes. I was a guy with a part-time job, not an accountant like the Old Man. He made good money, but what he did with it I didn’t know. He must have another woman on the side. That has to be where all that dough is going ’cause it sure isn’t coming here, rotten bastard.

  The little white pill that numbs it all…

  Hey, that’s proof that I’m perfect for writing jingles. If only I could get songwriting down. Nah, screw it. I’m not cut out for it. Can’t even get into a community college. I’ll be at Crazy Sanja’s Electronics Store for the rest of my life.

  In that moment I made up my mind that tonight I would burn every one of my songbooks and all those old journals of sappy poems and stupid lyrics. Yeah, I was gonna set them all on fire and be done with it. Maybe I’d throw my guitar in the fire for good measure.

  Burn up those dreams, buddy, because you know where your future is taking you. Might as well walk up to the meat processing plant and apply now. At least you know Uncle Mitchell can get you a job there. You could take care of Deb and Lisa with that gig.

  Lisa Dance was the only thing good happening for me right now. In my opinion, and in the opinion of a hundred other guys in Eugene Springs, she was the most beautiful girl in the world. Nobody said it to my face, but I could interpret their stares. Why was Lisa Dance, hot cheerleader, talented dancer and sexiest girl in Eugene Springs, with me? I would never forget the night we kissed at the bonfire. That had been the only good thing about my senior year. Lisa never wanted to leave Eugene Springs, but I had the feeling that she would be content wherever she was. If I wanted to go, she’d be down with that too. I felt the ring box in my jacket but still didn’t take it out. No, I couldn’t think about popping the question right now. I had to figure all this out, and I wasn’t leaving this car until I did.

  Suddenly, the car door opened and my skinny little sister climbed in beside me. She was all long hair and long legs and had a mouth full of braces. Her strawberry blond hair was sweaty, and I could tell she’d been crying. She had haunted eyes, our late Aunt Gina used to say. I think all that really meant was she had perpetual dark circles, a condition that made her look old and wise, like an owl. Owls were supposed to be wise, right?

  “You’re leaving me, aren’t you?” she said in an accusatory tone as she drew her legs up and sat cross-legged on the sticky seat.

  “No, Deb. I’m not leaving you. I’m just sitting here, you know, thinking.”

  “Thinking about leaving. I’m not stupid, Levi Wallace. I saw the envelope. I know you got the letter and you’re gonna be leaving me. Just like everyone always does.” My seventeen-year-old sister had a knack for embellishing the truth, and it was in her nature to be negative if given a choice. Not everyone had left us. Not physically anyway. The only people we’d lost were Aunt Gina and the Old Man. Except he wasn’t dead, not yet, and according to him, he still wanted to “be in our lives.” Whatever the hell that meant. I guess technically we lost Naomi to her Valium, but we hadn’t lost anyone else. We just didn’t have a lot of people who cared about us to begin with. Except each other.

  “I’m not going anywhere, Deb. Aren’t you supposed to be at band practice?” I adjusted the mirrors and avoided looking into her haunted eyes.

  Her voice dropped, and she slung her hair over her shoulders. “I don’t have band anymore. I swapped it for chorus, remember? Geesh, I’m beginning to feel like nobody hears a word I say.”

  “Yeah, I remember. I was just kidding. I picked up some hot dogs and put them in the fridge. Thought we’d have them for dinner. You always liked hot dogs.”

  “I like hot dogs from the ballpark. Not from the grocery store.” She scratched the seat with her fingernail and looked up at me. “When do you leave, Levi? Are you going to stay on campus?”

  I shook my head and rolled the window down. It was getting hot as hell in this garage. “It’s not that kind of college, Deb. They don’t have dorms. And besides, I’m not going. They don’t want me.”

  She offered me a sad half-smile. “I’m kinda sorry and I’m kinda not. I’m sorry you aren’t getting what it is you want, but I’m glad you’re still gonna be here. Do you hate me, Levi? Do you blame me?” She was choking up. This wasn’t just her teenage hormones. This was a very real fear and a legitimate question. Did I hate her? No. Never. She couldn’t help this situation any more than I could. I loved her more than anyone, even Lisa.

  “I could never hate you, Chipmunk Cheeks. You didn’t make the college reject me. And you’re not the reason why Dad left. I could never hate you, Deb.”

  My sister punched my arm playfully and hugged me briefly. All sadness had vanished as she wiped her tears away and laughed. “I do not have chipmunk cheeks. Don’t call me that!”

  “Okay, Chipmunk Cheeks.”

  She tapped my arm again, and I scooped her up and hugged her tight. Just for that moment, everything was good. Everything was right, and she was happy. Having gotten my pledge to never leave her, to always stay, she was satisfied. Deb was one of the few people in this world who believed me completely and without question. I couldn’t—no, I wouldn’t—let her down. She got out and I tried to crank the car again, but to no avail. The battery was dead. I guessed I’d be taking the bus to work in the morning.

  Deb came back to the car and scared the crap out of me. She tapped on the half-open window and waved an envelope at me. “Hey, you dropped this one. It has your name on it. Should I open it?” she asked, flashing her braces at me.

  “Give it here, sis. Why don’t you put those hot dogs on for supper? The band is coming over and I’m starving. Got to eat before we jam,” I lied with a confident smile. I wasn’t hungry at all, but for her I’d eat a hot dog or two.

  “Sure. See you inside.” She walked in the house, and I turned the envelope over in my hand. I didn’t remember seeing this before, but I’d been so excited about getting that letter from the college that it was quite possible I had dropped it. There was no return address, just my name and address neatly printed on the front. Nice penmanship. Wish I could write like that. I tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter, which contained two tickets. I stared at them, hardly believing my eyes. This must be some kind of joke. How else would I end up with two tickets to the Black Knights? With shaking hands, I read the letter.

  Dear Levi Wallace,

  Congratulations! WJAX is happy to inform you that you have won two tickets to see the Black Knights in concert at the New Field Arena this Saturday. Along with tickets, you and your guest have been given special backstage access. You’ll get the chance to go backstage to meet the Black Knights after the concert! Lucky you!

  Your name was added to the ticket drawing at last year’s blood drive. Thank you for so generously donating blood and changing someone’s life. See you there, Levi.

  The letter was signed by Hillbilly John, and there was a phone number at the bottom of the page. I knew Hillbilly John, or at least I knew of him; he was my favorite disc jockey. Lisa thought it was hilarious when he ended his shifts with one of his favorite sayings: “Let’s get naked!” or “Hey, baby, why don’t you twist my knobs?” I wondered who she’d be more excited to see, Hillbilly John or the Black Knights? For me, the answer was the Black Knights, hands down. Was it really possible that I would get the chance to meet Rex Teaser?

  Damn it! This better not be a joke!

  I immediately for
got about my car problems and raced inside to call the station. I had to know if this was someone’s idea of a prank; I mean, there were pranksters out there who did this kind of thing professionally. They liked messing with your head. Man, this would be one bad way of messing with someone’s head. Debbie gave me a puzzled look but didn’t say anything as I impatiently dialed the number on the rotary phone.

  “Hey, I’m trying to reach Hillbilly John. My name is Levi Wallace. I got this letter in the mail with these tickets, and I’m… So, this isn’t a joke? Man! I guess I’m just one lucky guy. Thanks so much. Do I need to do anything?”

  The voice on the other end belonged to none other than the disc jockey. I tried to focus on what he was saying—this was so damn amazing! No, there was nothing to do but show up. I hung up the phone and practically jumped up and down.

  “What is it? You won tickets? To what, Donnie Osmond?” Deb asked with a smirk. I held the tickets up to her, and she screamed as Naomi entered the kitchen, promptly covered her ears and reached for a glass of water. It must have been pill time.

  “This is unreal! Totally unreal! You have tickets to the Black Knights? Oh my God! This is their Elegant Black tour—everyone says this will be their last one too! I swear, you must be the luckiest guy on the planet. No doubt you’ll be taking Lisa with you,” she said in a slightly petulant tone.

  “No concert for you, little girl,” Naomi said as she chugged her water and left the kitchen. Neither one of us said anything to her. We never listened to her anyway. Deb shrugged as she turned up the burner. The flame leaped up, and the smell of cooking hot dogs almost instantly filled the kitchen.

  “It’s this weekend. Saturday night.”

  “Oh, shoot. Well, you’ll have to take Lisa then. I have a chorus concert,” Deb said good-naturedly as if there had ever really been a question.

  I felt a touch of disappointment. Not because I was ever going to take Deb over Lisa, not to a Black Knights concert, but because I would miss her school event. I never missed those.