The Revelations of Preston Black (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page A

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