THE DEVIL AND PRESTON BLACK
BY JASON JACK MILLER
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
Kindle Edition published by Union City Publishing.
Copyright 2011 by Jason Jack Miller
Cover design elements and typography by Hatch Show Print, Nashville, Tennessee, a division of the Country Music Foundation, Inc.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted by the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, stored in any database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
http://unioncitypublishing.blogspot.com
Copyright © 2011 Jason Jack Miller
All rights reserved.
HEIDI,
Thank you for the words, for the lines, for the sweet notes that I sing. Without you, I am silent.
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 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 quality that made me believe that 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. So 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 Bruce Springsteen helping me down the path of lyrics and music. 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. From Robert Hunter I learned the devil's friend sure ain't a friend of mine.
In hindsight, I should've listened to Hunter. Call it irony, but the morning I found the old LP that had me standing on the Westover Bridge thinking about taking the final jump, I'd been browsing near Ozzy, a friend of the devil if the devil ever had one. Before that LP 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 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. 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 sitting across the street in front of Black Bear Burritos. "Yeah, I see you."
"I don't know." David set his guitar case on the sidewalk and blew his nose into his sleeve. The wind off of 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 got 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 said, 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. Week after week he turned me on to new guitarists—Kirk Hammett, Randy Rhoads, Jimmy Page, Joe Satriani. "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 for 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. Being 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 5am 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 all too 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. A time before things got bad. And before I could stop I found myself saying the kind of shit old people say. "Things were a lot different back then. No cell phones. No iPods." 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 the Uncle Mason out of the 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. I'm not sure, 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.
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. "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. Sometimes 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 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 Big Sister 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 ro
lled 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 going to 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 fell 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 up tonight?"
The Devil and Preston Black (Murder Ballads and Whiskey) Page 1
