Man, I hate tellin' this story. Flat out gives me nightmares most of the time. Makes me kinda sad at the same time, though, and to be honest, I don't know which is worse. Hell, ain't gonna hurt to tell it again, I guess. Probably won't dream at all tonight anyway after I smoke myself into a coma with some of that good old...well, just never you mind with what. Your concern is with this story, right? The Legend of Bulletface. That name always makes me laugh, 'cause to me, he was always plain ol' Ronál DuPlante, my best friend since third grade. We were in a band together, y'know, called Now, his story is a legend. Just lemme light up this cigarette, I'll tell you all about it.
Nobody in Athens knew where his family came from. That's the one in East Tennessee, not Georgia, and definitely not Greece. They just kinda...appeared, y'know? The way that old house down the Anystreet USA folks thought was empty suddenly has people livin' in it. No realtors in and out, nobody ever scoutin' it out, just BAM, a family lives there. My mom said they could've been Creole, but who knows. All the years I knew him, I never bothered to ask. I figured it was more important to be his friend and accept him as I met him; thick black hair that hung in long ringlets, sort of a caramel tint to his skin, and dark green eyes, just like his mom's. What we did know was that Ron had a genuine talent for playin' guitar. He had this old beater that used to be a Jackson Kelly and a brand-new Marshall mini-stack. Weird? Yeah. I didn't ask questions, man. I was nine, watchin' this other nine year old dude play like I thought only grown-ups could play. He made it bark and growl, scream and wail, and weep as mournfully as a new widow. Six years later I still wasn't on the level he was back then. Needless to say, when high school came around, Ron had no trouble callin' female attention to himself. You'd think it would all go to his head, but he handled it better than most teenage boys are capable of. Hell, definitely better than I would've if all those tight little honies had been fawnin' over me like that. I was the bassist, so they seldom did. Even my sister Estelle couldn't help herself around him, and she came up with him same as I had. 'Course, now, she had always been a little bit.......off, so to speak.
So...bet you're wonderin' how a pretty-boy guitar slinger like Ron got a name like Bulletface. That's the second most intriguin' part of the story, my friend. Now, when I say Ron played a mean guitar, that's no exaggeration. By 19, he had put together one monster rig, man, and it was nothin' short of a weapon. He had given up the Kelly for a '76 Gibson SG he found in a dumpster and resurrected with Dimebuckers, a new neck, and a flat black finish. I can't recall for the life of me where he got that bridge, but it was almost the same design as the factory bridge, but twice as heavy, bolted right to the body. Dude would top-wrap the strings, always the heaviest shit he could find. Sustain for days, baby. This monstrosity was pumped through an original Ibanez TubeScreamer he found in a pawn shop and a Crate Blue Voodoo half-stack his dad found.....somewhere....and I have to tell you, I've never heard anything like the tone he built. He spent hours turnin' knobs, adjustin' levels, tryin' shit out, scribblin' it all down in this comp notebook. None of this would've been anything without talent, mind you, but luckily he was loaded with it. I was barely able to keep up sometimes, but hey, I was havin' a blast, right? Now that he was content with his sound, at least for the time bein', he began to turn a little more attention to the fine young women gathered around the stage at every gig we played. His tunes were heavy, not metal heavy, but definitely harder and grittier than his obvious blues influence, and it attracted some wild, smoky-eyed, tattooed lovelies to those tiny clubs.
One black-clad beauty in particular, a pale little imp with a voodoo doll tattooed on the right side of her neck and the longest purple hair I had ever seen, sort of neglected to mention her marriage to one men son-of-a-bitch who packed a nine at all times. When he found out the hard way, high in the saddle and just gettin' into his short strokes when ol' Husband came home unexpectedly after gettin' fired, he bolted out the back door in nothin' but his boots and his ZZ Top shirt wrapped around his junk. He barely got to the next block when he heard chick screamin' over Husband's yellin' and cursin', Gun or no, he wasn't about to let him hurt the little lady, so he wheels around to see what the deal is. What it was just happened to be ol' Husband drawin' a bead on his ass. Ron started to run back. The wife was swinging on his gun arm, beggin' him to stop. He fired anyway. Somethin' about the way she was hangin' there, the old man tryin' to aim, the way Ron turned, ducked, tried to dodge, one of those things or all of 'em, who knows why, caused that bullet to slam into Ron's cheekbone and lodge there. Doc said it was best to leave it there, that was that. Word got around quick, as it will in a small town, and before long, the meanest guitar player in all East Tennessee had a new nickname and a pretty damned cool backstory. We even changed the name of the band to Bulletface, and shit was great. Great for a while, anyway.
The force of that bullet smackin' his face like that must've jarred somethin' in his brain. After that, his music got a little darker, a little harder; swampy, sloshy and downright scary...and people loved it. The lyrics were brilliant tales of terror, voodoo and spirits runnin' amok. He started diggin' into the occult again, see. As kids, we'd been into horror movies, books about magic and shit, but we kinda let all that fall by the wayside as we got deeper into writin' and playin'. Once he said it was part of his bloodline, his heritage. Strange shit, man. At the time, though, I figured I was pretty lucky to be friends, let alone bandmates, with a kid as talented as Ron, so I didn't rock the boat. Besides, it wasn't as if I wasn't fascinated by all that mess myself. I didn't even see it as a negative when he dropped all the women in his life to start seein' Estelle, and she ended up eyeballs deep in it too. Bad news, man, bad news. Like I said before, she had some stuff goin' on upstairs that went unchecked. Guess I chose to turn a blind eye, it bein' my sister and my best friend. Sometimes, though, I feel like that was no damned excuse.
Bearin' all that in mind, it might not surprise you to hear that somethin' changed in her, too, bein' involved with that stuff. One thing didn't change, that's for sure. Estelle loved Ron more than anything this world could offer, and I mean anything. Thing is, when she was just goin' to the gigs and hangin' out with the band sometimes, she never really realized how much work he put into his playin'. Wasn't long before she started gettin' annoyed at how much time he spent playin' that old SG. He was always tryin' to better himself. Get a little faster, more articulate phrasin', dig a little deeper into his soul for that perfect bend, squeal or slide. In his words, "Takes a lotta time, cigarettes and whiskey to stay on top!" Believe me, he spent many a pack of Camels keepin' sharp, much to the chagrin of Estelle. Speakin' of smokes, it's about time for another one.
So, as I was sayin', Estelle wasn't terribly pleased with feelin' like second place to a guitar. Man, she hated that thing. I've never seen such animosity toward an inanimate object in my life. I mean she despised it, spewin' hateful shit at it when Ron wasn't around, spittin' on it. Crazy shit. She'd been into his music from the beginnin', too, but that was before she knew how much time he dedicated to it. Damned shame. Even stopped goin' to the gigs. That's about the time she got lost in that occult mess, lookin' for solace, somethin' to fill that void, if there ever really was one. Nothin' helped, though. Not black magic, not the pills her friends gave her, not the alcohol, none of it. For her, it was a never-endin' horror story of lonliness and agony, and Ronál Duplante wrote the soundtrack every time he picked up his guitar.
Loss is...uuh...never easy. Never. It ain't easy to endure, ain't easy to recall, and damned sure ain't easy to talk about. All the same, I said I'd tell the story, right? Then I have to tell you this is where days got darker and deeper than they had ever been. The band was booked solid for six months; Knoxville, Chattanooga, Atlanta, as far as Chicago and a lot of little shithole dives in between, and people were just eatin' the new material up. Ron had perfected the "black magic" tone, as he called it, and it drove folks mad. He liked to paraphrase Tony Iommi's idea about scary music whenever we talked about it. People started bringin' voodoo dolls, skulls, all kinds of strange stuff like that, and leavin' it all at the edge of the stage, like a sacrificial mound. We would haul it all home and put it on display in the rehearsal room. By then, the whole band had moved in, so that was about the only place there was any room. Between all that stuff and the things Ron and Estelle had started bringin' in, the whole house took on this legit dark power. At the time, it was cool, y'know? Skulls of all sizes and colors, spellbooks out on the end tables, horror movie posters. It was...well, it was rock n roll, man. It was pure Bulletface.
Lookin' back, I'm not so sure it was a good environment for my sister. Wait, lemme clarify: the environment wasn't objectionable. Perhaps it wasn't a place for someone with her...problems. She had stopped sittin' beside Ron while he was experimentin' or across from him while he was composin' or workin' on his tone and lookin' on in admiration. By that time, she'd taken to sittin' on the other side of the room, eyes all welled up, just waitin' for him to put that guitar down. A few weeks later, that stopped, too. I tried to tell her there wasn't any reason he couldn't love her and music, 'cause that's exactly how it was, but she was havin' none of it. We all saw the signs, but denial is a powerful drug, a hallucinogen that distorts reality into what you're comfortable knowin', and we were all high as fuck on it. Reality, on the other hand, is a cold, concrete, soberin' agent that purges that bullshit from your system like nothin' else can. Reality was the note Ron found in Estelle's cold hand the mornin' after another all-nighter at this studio up in Knoxville. Reality was the heat of his tears when he handed it to me. Reality was the chill that possessed me when I realized my one sibling was gone forever. The note? Read it yourself.......
Ronál my love,
Please, please don't cry. I haven't left you. God, no, I could never leave you. Now we can be closer than we have ever been. Remember the book we ordered
from Haiti? The Book of Embers? I found the one way we can be together, the one way I can be happy again. For so long I was lost, wonderin' how to make
you love me as much as I love you. Now you can love me and your music the same, and I'll never have to long for your touch again. I love you, Ronál, now and forever.
I'll be with you soon.
Estelle
After the funeral, Ron and I sat on the couch, passin' a bottle back and forth in the dim light of the afternoon. Pretty sure we didn't even look at each other at all, just sat in the comfort of each other's company. I didn't blame him, but I know he thought I did. He had just been the guy he always was, nothin' more or less. Still, I could see it in his eyes. About 7:00 I was hammered enough to ask about the book. He hauled himself up off the couch and disappeared down the hall. I heard his bedroom door open and shut. When he came out, I heard him pause in the hallway a moment, tryin' to pull his shit back together, I guess. Felt like forever before he came back into the livin' room and laid the book on my lap. A paper skeleton arm jutted out from the next-to-last pages, the pages where I figured I would find my answers. The more I read, the clearer my head and the situation became. The autopsy found no lethal amounts of dope, no organ failures. She wasn't cut or shot. It was like she had just voluntarily left her body and moved on.
Now, when I had started readin', I wasn't real sure exactly what I was readin'. I'd like to think it was the tequila, but I'm pretty sure it was just disbelief. It was a ritual for sendin' a human soul into an inanimate object, with a second part that would return the soul to the body. See, otherwise, the connection between the body and the soul breaks after a while and the body dies. After that, there's no goin' back. There were stories in the book about warriors who had their souls moved into weapons so they could fight for eternity, stories of people who used the ritual for spyin' on enemies, all kinds of crazy stuff.
Bullshit.
My exact first thought. Superstitious bullshit. My sister is dead, and I'm no closer to knowin' why. It just caused more questions. How could this have had anything to do with it? Why would she wanna possess anything? All she wanted was more attention than she was gettin', right? She just wanted Ron to love her as much as he loved...his....
no...
That damned guitar. I think I started hatin' it myself at that moment. Estelle believed she could finally be loved by becomin' part of Ron's SG. My mind went a little haywire, and I felt a rage start to well up inside me. I had to leave the room. That wasn't enough. I left the the house. Still no good, so I left the city, no goodbyes, no nothin'. For seven months I fought to forgive my sister, to forgive Ron, and to forgive myself. When I came back into town, the first thing I did was stop by Ron's house. I felt like I had some explainin' to do. I was wrong, leavin' like I did instead of facin' that grief head-on, and he needed to know I knew it. When the door swung open, I barely recognized the man who opened it. Dude was rail-thin, man, and his expression was the same one he had on his face the day I left. He asked me in, and we sat on the couch talkin' for a long time, mostly about his 'real job' and what I'd been up to while I was out of town, artfully dodgin' the subject of the Book of Embers and Estelle's death. Music came up, as it will when old bandmates find each other again. Turns out he hadn't touched his guitar since I left that day, but had been thinkin' about gettin' back on that horse lately. The rest of the band had moved out of the house and gotten on with their lives, but none of 'em were actually playin' with anyone, so the possibility was there. We spent the next couple of weeks gettin' in touch with everyone and gettin' shit set up. Looked as though we were gonna see if we still had it.
Strange, watchin' Ron open his case and just stare at that flat-black beauty inside, afraid to even reach for it, let alone pick it up. He almost had his hand on it, then pulled it away and closed his eyes. One long, deep breath later, he lifted it out of its case like it was gonna break, hung it on his shoulder, and plugged in. Man, that sound...that velvet growl comin' outta that Crate amp just threw me back to before, and I felt alive again. Our first couple of attempts sounded just about like you imagine they would, but once we got the rust chipped away, it was like we never stopped. I think Ron might've even smiled once or twice. Seven months of absence is tough for a band to overcome these days. People forget about you quick, even if you're a signed act. It was still too soon to think about giggin', so we spent our time pickin' the best of the old catalog and writin' new shit. Ron was finally allowin' himself to enjoy playin' again, so I felt like we were on our way, man. I noticed he'd even been tweakin' his sound again. Couldn't quite put my finger on what he did, but I knew it was different, and that it struck somethin' inside me, deep down, y'know? Seemed to me the road back was gonna be shorter than I thought.
Rehearsals started to run longer. Pete, the drummer, moved back into the house, and I was even writin' some material, somethin' I never did back in the day. Shit was back on track, maybe even better than before. It had been three months since I came back, and Bulletface had a gig lined up. Never underestimate word of mouth or social media, 'cause between both, we ended up playin' our first show in almost a year to a packed house. Damn, we were lucky. The crowd sang along with the old songs, screamed for the new stuff, and danced and drank themselves into full party mode. Right here, though, came the moment of truth, the real test for Ron and me. He called for silence, and once everyone went quiet, he told 'em how the next song, Dragonfly, was dedicated to Estelle. All our old crowd knew about her, even if they didn't know the details, and they all cheered in support and crowded closer to the stage. If I said he was strugglin' to keep it together, that would be an understatement. It was when time for the solo came around that we heard it. In those very first notes it came to him crystal clear. That extra somethin' we'd heard durin' rehearsals, that sound I couldn't quite nail down.
Estelle's voice...like joyful singin', note for note with the guitar solo...
Ron broke. His eyes flooded. He almost fell to his knees, but he kept on playin'. Maybe he didn't stop 'cause he wanted to hear her voice again so badly all this time, and now here it was, loud as thunder. Me, I was too damned shocked to feel one way or another about it. I'll say it again; denial is a powerful drug. I looked around at the band, at the crowd. Nobody seemed to notice it. To me and Ron, it was as clear and loud as everything else, but we were the only ones who could hear it. The fact that I wasn't the only one who heard it was kinda comfortin', but didn't make it hurt less or scare me less. After that night, I heard it in everything Ron played. It was all we could do to finish the gig, man. We didn't talk about it afterward, just loaded the vans, drove home, unloaded, then went right into our bedrooms. It felt like I sat on the edge of my bed for hours. My head started to hurt a little, then a little more, but I just sat there. Wasn't long til it finally got past the point of ignorin', so I went into the bathroom to see if there was somethin' that'd knock it out. The clock on my nightstand said I'd only been in my room for about an hour. Damn. Anyway, I stopped a minute at Ron's door, wonderin' if I should knock, y'know, make sure he's cool in there. Then I heard him playin'. He had plugged into that mini-stack he had when we were kids and was just...playin'. Simple scales, short lead runs, anything to hear that sound we heard at the club. I decided I should probably take my medicine...with a shot or two of bourbon...and just go on to bed.
The next two or three weeks, we didn't see much of Ron between rehearsals. He spent almost all of his time in his room "workin' on his phrasin'". I knew better. I'd heard him in there, playin' random riffs and singin' softly back to 'em, like a conversation in song. That shit startin' weighin' on me, but Ron didn't seem to care. Her voice meant she was still here with him, but he didn't see what it was doin' to me or to him. He was slowly losin' his shit, man. It started showin' in our songs, too. Dude was slippin' away fast, and there was nothin' any of us could do about it. To us, it felt like he'd be content to lock himself up in his room with that SG and never come out again. This one night, he came into the kitchen while I was sittin' there havin' a beer. He got one for himself and sat down with me. I couldn't sleep, so I'd had three already, for medicinal purposes. We talked about the new guitar Gibson was rollin' out next year, the new strings I just put on, all the small talk musicians make, then he went quiet for a good five minutes. 'It's not enough,' he said. A tear broke loose from his eye. 'Just hearin' her voice ain't enough. If I could find a way, I'd hold her so tight and never let her go, man. Never.' He didn't even finish his beer, just left it on the table and went back to his room. I got up and poured it down the sink, thinkin' about what he'd just said and what it implied. So much for hopin' he was gettin' better. I'd have to keep a close eye on him from there on out.
Over the next few months, Ron made an odd kind of peace with what his guitar was doin'. I won't lie here, it was still pretty damned unsettlin', hearin' my sister's voice like that. Any comfort I felt about her presence had worn slap the fuck off. Ain't that what we all want when someone leaves us, though? Some kinda connection to 'em, even if they're on the Other Side? If it happens to you, I hope and pray you handle it better than Ronál Duplante. I watched my best friend waste away in front of his amp. All he wanted to do was play. He even started calling the guitar Estelle. That was it, man. I'd had enough. I didn't even put my bass away, just stuffed a bag full of clothes, grabbed the few things I had layin' around and out the door I went. It was late that fall before I saw Ron again; November 11th...the day of his funeral. None of the guys in the band were really surprised, considering the state he'd fallen into. Just like I said, he wasted away singin' along with Estelle's voice, ignorin' his health, his family and friends. The band and I decided to meet up back at Ron's house after the service and discuss his parents' offer to sign his house over to us. They didn't need the hassle of the taxes every year or maintaining the place, and they knew how much we had meant to each other. A few times Ron had mentioned us goin' on without him if anything ever happened to him. Right. Like it would even be music without him. Still, I felt a hole in...everything...like there was suddenly a deeper void that needed to be filled, and it called for music. Why not? I wasn't much of a guitarist, still ain't, but I wanted to at least try to write a tribute of some kind to the man I had loved like family for the biggest part of my life.
Back then I didn't have a guitar of my own. If I had an idea or a riff to bring in, I used Tommy's guitar so Ron could play along with his. I have to admit, the thought of playing Ron's guitar sounded good when I thought of it. I could feel close to my best friend again, and if my sister's voice was still there, maybe I could get some kind of comfort from that, too. Hell, she may even have something to tell me, who knows, right? I stood at Ron's bedroom door, my hand hovering over the knob. I took a long, deep breath and swung it open. Right there beside the bed was that familiar black case with the Ernie Ball stickers in each corner. Super Slinky, Extra Slinky, Nowhere Near Slinky, Not Even Close to Slinky. When his style evolved, so did his taste in strings, but always Ernie Ball. One more deep breath and I took the case by the handle and hauled it up onto the unmade bed. To say the least, I was hesitant when I put my finger under the first latch, but finally gave it a flick. A useless flick. I'm just nervous, I thought. Nervous, grieving and out of sorts. I flicked it again. Flicked the next one. None of them would open, even when I pried the shit out of 'em with the giant screwdriver from the junk drawer in the kitchen. My head started to hurt.
If I could find a way...never let her go...
It's not enough, hearing her voice...
Shit. He didn't.
Yeah, he did. Right there, on top of his mini-stack, laid the Book of Embers. Man, I broke big time. I couldn't help myself. I stood there and cried like a little girl, holding that guitar case as close to me as I could, so tight I heard it creak. He found a way, and I knew they were happy as they deserved to be. As much as I wanted to keep that case, I knew what I had to do. Ron's interment was the next day, and his guitar, in its case, just as he left it, laid right on top of his casket as the dirt went in to cover it. Sometimes I'd swear I can hear that old SG playing when I visit his grave. Must be Ron and Estelle letting me know they're alright from the Other Side. It ain't exactly a fairy tale-type happy ending, but hey, that's rock n roll, right?