Elvissey (15 page)

There were eleven additional verses, and as they concluded the last those in attendance screamed and laughed as
drunks, intoxicated by spirit, besodden by the love of grim
thoughts. John smiled, hearing their words, as if even before he listened their spirit had found its way inside of him. My
fatigue overtook me; we lay down again, and after a short
time I fell asleep. As he'd foreseen, John remained wakeful
nightlong; he was lowvoicing as I drifted into my darkness,
humming the song's chorus to himself.

Through the next morning I read, all the way to Memphis.
Read The Growth of the American Republic:

Now this basic force, the secret of the sun, this
energy beyond comprehension has been found.
The atom has been split, and mankind stands at
the threshold of a future no one can foresee.

Attempted to decipher the Daily Mirror:

PUT ANOTHER ROSENBERGER ON THE GRILL
DOES REICH HAVE BOMB? NEIN, SAYS SPEER
IKE DENIES SAUCERS OURS; PHILLY BUZZED

Idly thumbing Knifelife, found a quote from Edmund Burke:

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its
powers of acting and reasoning as fear; for fear
being an apprehension of pain or death, it operates in a manner that resembles actual pain.
Whatever is terrible, therefore, is sublime, too.

"Memphis, five miles," John said, gleaning a towered directional outskirting another factory complex. The countryside west of Nashville was exclusively given over to industry,
contrarying what we'd been told we'd likely find. "Twenty
minutes, accounting for traffic."

"Mayhap we should verify their presence, prearrival?" I
asked. "It's Sunday, they could be churching."

"Best not to lessen surprise," John said. Though his face
was still flushed with new redness, his features had taken on
the oddest cast, perspiring sans sweat, as if his skin had been
waxed and polished. He'd medicated again that morning,
predeparture; again, I'd watched, to certify.

"Is anything troubling?" I asked.

"Not at all, Iz," he said. "Life's renewed."

Memphis skylined on the horizon. On our left, some kilometers south of town, I saw industrial chimneys several hundred meters high; the heavy black smoke issuing from their
spouts besmeared the clouds floating in from the west.
Within the city the highest building held only twenty floors;
suburban steeples jabbing up from all quadrants pricked the
sky. Some were crucifixed at their points, but most were
apexed with open circles such as the ones enscrawled above
the doors of those boxes back in the mountains.

"The address's mapped?" John asked as we unramped
from the interstate where it slashed into downtown. We
stopped alongside a Piggly Wiggly store; I was uncertain
what might have been sold at a place so named.

"We're directioned true," I said, examining the atlas. "Go
right, and eventually turn left. It's Alabama Avenue we
want."

For twelve blocks we drove up a treeless commercial strip
of one- and two-floor brickfaces storing groceries, laundries
and other small shops. The city's populace appeared as if
they'd been floured, showing almost so colorless as I did,
though the sun was hot enough to blister. Halfway along our
course we glided past a windowless beige building, recently
built; its grounds were fenced and guarded by men in blue
uniforms. An Army-green bus, its windows painted and rear
door soldered shut, was pulling out of its driveway as we sped
by. Along its side was stenciled the legend, Memphis Department of Rehabilitation.

"A correction facility, I'd hazard," John said.

Seeing the sign for Alabama Avenue, we lefted onto its rutted pavement; yellowed grass grew in the avenue's gutters. Neither sidewalks nor streetlamps lent civility's appearance; judging from the houses' condition, none in the
neighborhood had ever been monied. Junked cars were
parked in barren yards; children scrambled over their rusted
frames, staring at us as we rolled by. John parked our car
before number 462, a two-story frame with encircling veranda: paint eczemaed from its boards, curling away in long,
dry strips; an upper-floor window was patched with brown
paper. The gutters sagged away from the roof, overweighted
with wet leaves. No one evidenced as we exited and tramped
across the muddy yard; ascending the porch's rotting steps,
we sighted four battered mailboxes.

"Presley," I read. "Number two."

"On the side," said John, looking round. "After you." We
lightfooted as we stepped across the porch, hearing the slats
splinter and groan beneath our shoes. The unpaved driveway was emptied of cars; dogs were barking in the next street
over. The air was thick enough to pour. "Door's unlocked,"
he said, touching the knob. "I'll precede."

With his fingertips he widened our passage, pushing the
door open; wordlessly motioning that I should follow. The
Presleys' living-room walls were newspapered with sheets of
the Press-Scimitar, affording them as well the sole library
seen. The windows were open, and unscreened; flies beaded
every surface inside. A doorway led into a short hall stacked
with unopened cartons; the kitchen showed, beyond. I
glimpsed a white refrigerator streaked with gray and yellow
stains. When he came to the end of the hall John jumped
away from the kitchen, bumping into me as he raised his
hands over his head.

"Excuse," he said, to one unseen. "Harm's unmeant."

"Who're you?" I heard a young man say. "Who? Let me
see you.

I trailed my husband as he entered the kitchen, stepping over a woman who lay on the floor. Her appearance was that
of Gladys Presley; she seemed to be asleep, wearing what I
imagined at first to be a red apron over her white cotton
dress. Elvis had a gun.

He barely resembled the icon with which we were familiared.
If, while drunk and guided solely by a blurred snap, one
attempted to mold with one's hands the features of Elvis
onto a nongender-specific passerby, one could as easily have
reproduced the look of this world's E. His hair was flatbrushed, with strands snaking down with humidity's weight;
acne bubbled up from his face, poxing him with blisters. E's
pink and black blouson buttoned with bone-white metal
snaps, four on each cuff; its collar drooped from his craw as
if unwilling to abut his skin. His black baggy trousers were
sideseamed with yellow sequins. His hand shook as he leveled his gun at us; he bit his nails, I could see, and though
his weapon's size was moderate I couldn't guess its caliber.

"Who the hell're you people?" he asked, liplicking. A daft
anger inhered in his eyes, as if he readied to kill for having
sneezed on his shirt. "What're y'doin' in my house?"

Trailing as John led, I froze, and listened to my husband's
voice reveal nothing. "We overheard in passing," he said,
appearing as calm personified, feigning that confronting an armed adolescent didn't fear him. "An accident, we
thought. Then we looked."

E stepped nearer; his bath powder's scent sickened.
"Y'like what y'see? Huh?"

"Then it was an accident?" John asked, softspeaking, lulling me with verbal opiates if not E; he spoke as if to a baby
he wished to make unconscious without exertion.

"Yeah, a accident," E said, his voice upscaling into a
child's petulant whine, adding to his threat. "Might be another accident. Tell me who you are."

"You're threatening?" I asked, keeping minded such distraction techniques as I knew. "Why would you hurt us?"

"Why wouldn't l?" E's fabled charisma was absent from
his double; still, however disappointing his look and manner, there was no mistaking the voice. His wordsound iden-
ticalled with that of his counterpart, though E's drawl was
mud-thick. Hearing him speak, I noted anew the sensation
felt when I'd heard this world's Eisenhower; that of an awe
so encompassing as to terrify rather than astonish, as if I
tried standing in hurricane's midst. "What's that accent?
You're not Germans, are you?"

"Why Germans-?" I asked.

"Warum Deutsch?"John said, trolling for reactions.

"Sure's hell not police," E said. "Keep your hands up and
get up against that wall there. Go on."

My hands stuck to the wall, it was so grease-bespattered.
Flies bombarded me as I stood there with my husband,
restraining my shakes as I turned away from our host. In the
instant between our circling and his touching I anticipated
all the places where he might lay hands; then he pawed my
shoulder. "What'd your mother do, Elvis?" I asked, thinking
he must have stung himself as he jerked away his fingers.

"How'd you know my name?" he asked, recovering at
once enough to position his gun-barrel's tip behind my ear.
It uncertained, what my husband might be reading in E's
actions and stance; I feared overmuch that our quarry would, at any second, ex us sans qualm or reason, and so I
couldn't distance myself enough yet to judge. Seeing John's
lack of motion assured me but little; guaranteed that, as
circumstanced, there was naught to do but waitwatch.

"We're looking for you," I said.

"What for?" E asked, pressing his gun against my head,
pinching my scalp. "You all government?"

"You're hurting me," I said; simultaneously felt his free
hand pushing up my dress, and his fingers kneading my hip.

"Turn around here," he said; I spun, ready to slap. As he
gazed at me fullface I watched his features shift. I was older
than his mother, after all; however toned and tucked I'd
been, however bleached I showed, my age evidenced clear in
the corners that needed dusting: in the wrinkles around my
eyes, at my lipcorners, at my neck's root. E drew his hand
from under my clothing; took the gun far enough from my
head to allow air to circulate between them again. 'Just
checkin' to see if you're armed," he said, as if to apologize.
"Have to."

"Don't hurt me again," I said. "Or touch me as if I were
property."

"I'll do more'n that if I haveta," E said. "What're you
lookin' for me for if you're government? We're not commies
or niggers."

"We're not government. We came for you." E attempted
a sneer, but hadn't yet perfected its angle and pitch, and so
he appeared not so ominous as mentally challenged. "We
want you to hear our proposal," I said.

"Better hear mine first," he said. "I'm tireda this bullshit.
Hey!" E goosed John with his gun. "Face me but keep those
hands up. Who sent you?"

"Our employers," John said as he turned toward E, his
voice so untensed as before. E placed his gun-barrel at my
husband's lips, stilling them.

"Y'aIl gonna do what I say," E said. "Dig me?"

"Duggen," I said. "Don't do that."

E replaced the barrel against my lips, brushing its coldness against them as if to add color. "Y'all got a car?" he
asked.

"We do," I said as he took away his gun. "Why'd you kill
your mother?"

"That's none a your business, ma'am. Don't ask me why.
Just do it."

"Understood." Looking at John, steeling myself against
kneeshake, blinking stinging sweat from my eyes' lenses, I
saw his wink; grasped sans analysis that he would do nothing
until E threatened overmuch: how much threat might that
be, I wondered, if a gun at my head and a hand up my dress
didn't inload emergency into crisis? It occurred that mayhap
his medication had at last effected, doubling his coma, leaving him loboed.

"Let's take a ride," E said. "Tireda sittin' in here with
that."

"Your mother?" E frowned; fumbled through a drawer
with his free hand until he found a length of white cord.
"Might others have heard as we did?"

E untwisted the rope, straightening its coils. "Everbody
round here's at church. They're all Christians."

"What are you?" I asked.

"Hey, you a rough crawler, son?" E said, ignoring me save
to hand me the white rope; he slapped my husband's back
as if to judge ripeness. John said nothing; remained unmoving. "You tie'm up now. Go on. Tie'm tight with that
clothesline. Don't do no slip knot. I'm watchin' you."

"Why's it necessary to bind him?" I asked, holding the line
in my hands.

"I don't want no barrelhouse," said E. "Your friend here's
no spring chicken but he's solid. Go ahead, now. Tie his
wrists together. Loop the clothesline through his belt."

John nodded, allowing permission; he placed his hands at
the small of his back. I was no scout, and knew nothing of
knots; I attempted to secure my husband's arms tightly enough to satisfy E but not enough to prevent bloodflow. I
stood back, enabling E to examine my handiwork; as he
gripped the line he yanked it, almost unfooting my husband.

"Don't," John said, evidencing upset.

"Don't tell me what t'do." Reaching into the sink E extracted a rag from a dish-stack and threw it at me. "Gag'm."

"I won't-"

"Will," said E, placing his gun at my temple. I wound the
cloth round my husband's head, fitting it over his mouth
before knotting it. E readjusted the rag, stuffing its folds
between John's lips; then moved a step or two away, turning
him toward us. While he kept his gun on me E lefted John's
stomach, felling him. Once my husband floored he booted
his ribs, smiling all the time as if keening to hear the snap.