Karen G. Berry - Mayhem 01 - Love and Mayhem by Karen G. Berry Page A

decided she wanted to learn to play the guitar. Raven refused to have anything to do with the idea, so the task of instruction had fallen to Tender. Three months later, when Rhondalee abandoned her studies, the only song she’d learned was Kumbaya.
    But the truth was, Tender loved this song. He played, his bare feet working the pedals, and she sang as he added a soft harmony.
    Someone’s crying, Lord, Kumbaya
Someone’s crying, Lord, Kumbaya
Oh Lord, Kumbaya
    They sat side-by-side in the reverential hush that follows a beautiful song. In that stillness, the sound of the Clubhouse door closing was loud as a gunshot.
    “Pa? Who was that?”
    “Someone quiet.”
    He would break her heart. “I’m going up to the bar. You wanna come? I’ll buy you a seltzer and lime. Might be Bone Pilers playing. It’s early yet. Lots of time before Mother comes and hunts you down.”
    “I believe I’ll play a little more.” Tender lay a hand on her shoulder. “Be careful tonight, daughter. The ghosts are howling.”
    “You change your mind, I’ll be up there.”
    She left him with his soul in his hands, playing it out on a keyboard. Raven LaCour walked up Sweetly Dreaming Lane, past her parents’ home, through the glow cast by Asa Strug’s reader board, between the cement lions at the gate, and across the highway to the neon-lit oasis of noise, beer, and music that was the Blue Moon Tap Room.

    THE BLUE MOON Tap Room was actually an arrangement of old mobile homes with the walls removed and floors joined together with pieces of nailed-down tin, giving the interior a crazy quilt effect. A battered walnut bar trucked in from a ghost town stretched for fourteen feet, flanked by the standard issue bar tables and chairs of no particular provenance. Free beer advertising pieces in tin and neon crowded walls lined with pinball machines old enough bring a mint at auction. The pool tables were antique and perfectly balanced, but the stage was the main attraction.
    You never knew who you’d find onstage at the Blue Moon. Maybe a group of slick country pros on Social Security getting together on the weekends to stun audiences with their polish and professionalism. Maybe one of the shifting groups of Bone Pile men who could tear up a stage and tear out your heart with how well they played. Tonight, she’d settle for some Park kids hammering out Van Halen covers. She just wanted to hear someone make some noise. Someone who wasn’t her beloved and miserable father.
    Neon tubes lit the gravel in the parking lot and lent Raven’s hat a pinkish glow. A man stepped out the door just as she stepped up to it. He stood back to hold it open, his rings glittering in the road house light. “A blessed evening to you, Sister.” His words were Christian, but the look he gave her was far from brotherly. “Well, I’ll be. You’re Rowena Gail LaCour. I’d recognize that scar anywhere. I guess the Littlest Angel for Christ is all grown up.”
    She drew up straight as a radio antennae and just as likely to whip. “My name’s Raven.” She remembered Hank Heaven, the manager of a group called the Cowboys for Christ, his creased suit and absurdly large hat. He was always staring at her scar. He’d actually tried to touch it. “You’re Hank Heaven.”
    “I go by the Right Reverend Henry Heaven, now.”
    “Reverend? So you’re a preacher, now? I thought you were a Jack Mormon.”
    He smiled a bit. “Yes, I was raised Mormon, but I got the Call. I’ve got a ministry here in the Park. Your mother didn’t tell you?” Raven blinked. As far as her mother went, Raven blanked out most of what was said in her direction. Clearly, she should have been listening more. He smiled that fishy smile of his. “You ought to come to services.”
    As a child, she’d stomped on his feet when he got too close. As an adult, she decided if he got too close, she’d just knife him. “I don’t really care who you are or what you’re preaching, I just want you out