If you don’t want know how this book, The Last Confession, ends before we get there, then don’t read any of these last chapters with “???” in the title page above.

Then WHY am I writing them now instead of later when the book reaches the end? That’s a good question. I guess because I feel that I have to. This muse is not only a seductive mistress, she’s also a devil . . . or is She a Holy Spirit?

Only time will tell, huh?

This chapter “[SPOILER ALERT]” won’t be in The Last Confession should this book ever make it off this blog and into a more traditional form of distribution, nor will The Last Confession have all the cool Johnny Cash songs attached to each chapter like this nascent blog gestation has. And I don’t even know if there are enough Johnny Cash songs for me to attach to each chapter, especially of the ones off the American Recordings albums Johnny did in his final decade of life with that hero saint Rick Rubin who deserves to go to Heaven just for doing what he did with Johnny who everyone else thought was spent and all washed up. That would be a shame if I run out of Cash before completing my book, huh, because it’s the best part!

I’m going to conclude this “???” chapter with a little treat for my faithful readers, the very first two songs that I can remember ever hearing on the radio when I was a boy. One of them is a Johnny Cash song, “Ring of Fire,” and the other is Gene Pitney’s great “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence.” I don’t know which I heard first or which I love most, but I do know that I grieve that Johnny didn’t cover “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence” when he was recording with Rick Rubin.