Elvis Takes a Back Seat (19 page)

“We know Baldy,” I say, hoping Baldy is the name he goes by rather than Matt and hoping it's the black man that Rae's conversing with.

“I see. I see. Well, glad to know you. Come back anytime.”

“Thank you,” I say, inching by him with Ben and Ivy in tow and moving toward the front of the crowd.

“That chicken smells good,” Ivy says.

I laugh and wrap an arm around her shoulders. “We'll get you some food soon.”

Stepping up beside Rae, I glance at the curtained windows along the back of the trailer and wonder if the preacher has disappeared inside.

Rae's saying, “… that time we sang in the bathroom.”

The black man rocks back on his heels and laughs. He has a big, toothy grin that splits his face into sunburst lines. “The acoustics were good though.”

“It was the police who didn't understand.” She laughs.

He rubs his jaw. “Well, there were some ladies who wanted their privacy, I expect.”

“Matt,” she says, “I want you to meet some friends of mine. This is Claudia, Ben, and Ivy.” With her hand still on Matt's shoulder, she adds, “This is Baldy.”

Smiling, he rubs his hand over his bare head. “Want me to tell your nickname, sugar?”

“Not today.” She matches his smile.

“You all come all the way from Texas?” he asks.

I grin and shake his hand. “All the way.”

Ben grips his hand then. “We heard you might know—”

“This is an amazing place,” Rae interrupts. “When did you start this congregation?”

I exchange glances with Ben, who shrugs and keeps his question to himself.

“Oh, well, 'bout five years ago. You'll probably be the talk of the day, seein' we don't often have visitors.”

“Is it supposed to be private?” Ivy asks, her eyes wide as if we crashed a funeral and didn't know the deceased.

“No, no. Don't you worry, miss. Ain't nobody but us interested in our ranting and raving way out here. We're a small group, but this is all some of us have for family. Don't like meetin' Sunday mornin'. Sometimes it's hard to get up after a Saturday night of fun, you know what I mean? So we meet out here toward evening every Sunday. Unless it's rainin'. What with the microphone and such, we don't want to set off those kinda sparks.”

“And the preacher?” I ask, curious about the man who looked too much like Elvis for my comfort.

“Oh, Aaron. Well, he comes when he's got something to say.”

“Where'd he go?”

“You's welcome anytime,” he nods to Ivy, ignoring my question, which makes me even more suspicious. “Anytime. You bring that baby of yours when it comes, and Aaron will baptize it for you.”

“Is he a real preacher?” I ask.

“Ordained by God,” he says.

But not by a school of divinity, I surmise.

Ivy stares at the man as if she's been struck dumb. “H-how did you …”

I wonder how he knows she's pregnant since she doesn't have a big tummy yet. I doubt Rae would have mentioned it to him before introducing us.

“Know?” Baldy finishes her question. “I knows things. Don't know why. Just do.”

“Always has.” Rae touches his arm. “You knew about me, about my … before I even knew.”

“That's right!” He slaps his leg. “I'd forgotten that. My momma said I had the sight. The vision. Some folks call me psychic, but I don't hold to that. Ain't spoken about well in the Good Book, you see? I just knows things sometimes. And then other times, I don't think I know much at all.” He rocks backward on his heels and laughs, like he's sharing a joke with the Almighty.

I don't know if this man can help us, but I like him. And I know now why Rae never forgot him. She slides her hand down Baldy's arm and clasps his hand. Neither seems aware of it, yet it seems like a natural gesture between the two.

“If I'd known you was comin' today,” he says, looking down at Rae, “I would have had you sing with me.”

“Oh, no. I haven't … not in a long while. I'm out of practice.”

But I remember her singing in the car, her hands covering the keyboard at Faithland.

“Some things,” he continues, “you can't forget.”

“That's true.” Rae shares a look with him, something that excludes the rest of us.

“So what brings you out here? You wantin' to talk to Aaron? He don't usually—”

“We came to see you,” Rae said. “I didn't know about Aaron. Is he okay?”

“Sure. He goes off after he's done preaching. Needs some peace. He's spent after he spills it all out like he does.”

“I'm glad you've remained friends all these years,” she says.

I stare at Rae. She knows the preacher, too? I can't wait to ask her a few questions when we're alone.

“Oh, you caught us on a good day. We must be mellowin'. We ain't had a fight in a year or two now. 'Course, now that you're here, we might fight over you.”

She laughs, then her smile fades.

“What's wrong?” he asks.

“Howie thought you might help us.”

“About the bust?”

My jaw drops. Did Howie call? No, he couldn't have known about the bust. “How'd you know?”

He shrugs, holds his hands out as if he's showing he has
no cards up his sleeves. “This the bust that disappeared … a while back?”

“Do you know who it belonged to?” Ben asks.

“Some things don't belong to nobody. They not of this world.”

I doubt that. The plaster is certainly of this world. Not from Mars. “My husband wanted me to return it to its owner. It was his last request.”

Baldy rolls his thick lips inward and contemplates the situation. “Not sure that's possible.”

“So it was him, wasn't it?” Rae asks.

“Some answers can't be known. It takes faith.” He looks at me then. “You's questioning, I know. But don't. Just believe.”

“What if I can't.”

He laughs a deep rumbling laugh. “Oh, sure you can. Everybody can. It's a choice. But you gotta
want
to believe. Then you'll see. Gotta take that first little step.”

I don't want to talk about me and my lack of faith. I want to clarify things. “You're saying my husband saw and met Elvis? The King? Elvis Aaron Presley?”

Remembering Elvis's full name, I glance at the trailer and feel a jolt deep inside me. Did they mean … ? Was the preacher Elvis? He went by Aaron, didn't he?

“Ah, well, who or what your husband saw ain't the important thing here.” Baldy rubs his jaw and glances at me sideways.

“Was he alive or dead?” Ben asks.

“Her husband?” Baldy asks.

I sense he's toying with us.

He cracks a smile which then fades into a long, somber look. “No, you's missing the point. Pay attention now.”

We all lean forward.

“Elvis ain't the king.”

“How so?” Ben asks.

“Just is. Ain't right. Aaron said last night …”

A movement of the curtain in the trailer's window grabs my attention. I lose track of what Baldy is saying. When he pauses, I ask, “So you think my husband helped a ghost?”

“You folks sure is hardheaded.” Baldy scratches his head. “I can't say for sure what your husband done or who he helped. But if you got that Faithland bust, then the best thing you can do is get rid of it. It's—” He glances over his shoulder, rolls his thick lips inward as if he's changed his mind about saying anything else.

“Is the bust haunted?” Ivy asks.

“Nah. But all the same, drop it in the river or take a hammer to it. Anything.”

“I have to return it.”

“Maybe it ain't meant to be returned to nobody. Maybe your husband wanted you to let it go. Let him go. Ain't it time?”

Shaken to my core, I climb back into the Cadillac, the hot seats searing my backside. I stare through the now dusty windshield at the silver trailer and the dispersing crowd. I roll down the side window to release the hot air trapped in the car.

Baldy struck a raw, exposed nerve that throbs with resentment. But he's right. I need to let Stu go. I've been hanging on, clinging to him, his memory, his things. My life can be divided into three parts—pre-Stu, Stu, and post-Stu. Before I met him, I felt as if I was waiting for something but wasn't sure what. With Stu, I came alive. Without him, I feel as if I've died.

But how can I sever the cord that binds us? I don't know anything to do but to keep moving forward, slowly, slowly, in the opposite direction from him. Which means living. I hope at some point the cord between us will snap in two.

How long will it take for that to happen? How will I respond? Will I have moved so far down the path into my own life that I won't even notice? Will I simply awaken one day, go about my business, and realize when I come upon an old picture of Stu that I haven't thought about him in minutes, hours, days?

“That was interesting.” Ben settles into the back seat beside Rae.

“Pimpin',” Ivy says, making me wonder again if that's good or bad. She slams the front passenger door shut. “Can we come back?”

Rae remains silent in the back. Is she lost in her own thoughts, her own past? Is she remembering her younger days, her friends in Memphis, Elvis?

I can't stop thinking of him. It's as if Elvis and Stu have merged into one being. The questions formed during the sermon rise within me as I stick the key in the ignition and crank up the air-conditioning. Hot air blasts me in the face.

“Aunt Rae,” I readjust the vents, “who was that Aaron?”

“A friend.”

“But—”

“I knew him back in my Memphis days.”

I figured that much. But his resemblance to Elvis, his mysterious behavior, and the strange references to a previous, affluent lifestyle fit together like puzzle pieces. Is he the King of Rock 'n' Roll? Not according to Baldy. But then he'd cover for his friend, wouldn't he? It's easier to believe that Elvis is still alive than to believe his ghost wanders around Memphis searching for a butt-ugly bust, as Ivy likes to call it. I swallow back any embarrassment and let the most obvious question fly.

“Is your friend Aaron really Elvis?”

When I turn around to look at Rae, she stares back as if trying to absorb the question and understand it. “Elvis?”

“Are you talking about the preacher?” Ivy asks. When I nod, she adds, “Kinda weird and freaky.”

“He looked a lot like Elvis. What Elvis might look like at the age of seventy. If he was still alive.” My gaze slants toward Rae. “Is he?”

“Definitely Elvis impersonator material,” Ben agrees. “Had his nose. Even the same mouth. And that awkward stutter.”

“Dad! You were staring at another guy's mouth?”

I laugh at Ben's comical expression.

“I was being observant,” Ben defends himself.

“Thank you. Thank you verra much,” I say in my best Elvis impression.

Ben snaps his fingers. “What was Elvis's brother's name? Didn't it start with an A?”

“His dead twin?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“Aaron? No, Aaron was Elvis's middle name, wasn't it? His twin had something similar. What was it? I saw something at Graceland about him. I remember Stu telling me there was some controversy over the spelling of the name, whether it was two
A
's or one. Which made some conspiracy fanatics believe Elvis took on his brother's persona rather than dying.”

Ben chuckles.

“So that was Elvis's dead brother?” Ivy asks. “Gross!”

“The preacher was not Jesse Garon Presley,” Rae says in a slow, methodical cadence as if to make clear to the slow-witted. She waves her arm and the tiny charms on her bracelet tinkle like bells. “Nor was he Elvis.”

“But he wouldn't talk to anybody. He just disappeared,” I argue. “And—”

“He talked about being rich. Highfalutin',” Ben adds, “before some life change.”

I laugh. “Highfalutin'? You've been in Memphis too long.”

Ben grins like a little boy. “His words, not mine.”

Rae sighs as if frustrated with us. “He's Aaron Wise.”

“Who?” Ben asks.

“The preacher.”

“Yeah,” I say, “but what was all that talk about him being a big shot way back when …”

“He was an attorney. He thought he was a big shot, better than anyone else. Like most attorneys. But then he had what you might call an attitude adjustment.”

“What happened?” Ivy asks.

Rae looks down at her lap, rubs a thumbnail along a line down her palm. “I wasn't here at the time. Happened in the early eighties, I think.”

“When all tragedies were known to occur,” Ben jokes.

“Fashion tragedies were in the seventies,” I say.

He laughs. “I remember some from the eighties. Remember
Flashdance
? Madonna … ?”

“Cindy Lauper, Boy George.” I make a face. “Robert Palmer—”

“Now, he was cool.”

Rae clears her throat.

I share a smirk with Ben, like we're in college once again. Then I feel guilty for interrupting my aunt. “I'm sorry, Rae. Please go on.”

“Aaron was hit by a bus. By the way, you forgot Calvin Klein jeans.”

“Nothing wrong with Brooke Shields in her Calvins,” Ben says.

“Dad, that's disgusting.”

“Okay,” Ben says like he's conducting a business meeting, “so Aaron met a Greyhound up close and personal, huh? I guess that would get your attention.”

“It did. He was in a coma for four months. Rehab for a year. Or so I'm told.”

“And now he gets messages from the Almighty?” I ask.

Rae shrugs. “That is open to interpretation.”

I glance out the windshield toward the hot-dog-shaped trailer, the silver shell glinting in the late afternoon sunlight. “Do you think we should talk to him? Think he might know about Stu's Elvis?”

“He doesn't see anyone. We should forget about the bust.”

Rae's words stun me. She's been adamant about following Stu's directive.

“Claudia,” she continues, “you should keep it if you want … or sell it. I don't think there is any place for you to leave it here in Memphis. Although you might get a fair price.”

I shake my head. “That's not true. I think it belongs to Myrtle and Guy over at Faithland.”

“But,” Ivy protests, “it'll destroy everything, all the mystique of the chapel.”

“Mystique? A church needs mystique?” I ask, then focus on Rae. “Or did Baldy tell you something before we caught up with you?”

“I don't know what you mean,” Rae says.

“You were talking to him alone. Had you already told him about the bust?”

“You're being paranoid.”

“I'm going to take it back. If it belongs to Myrtle and Guy, then they can put it in the attic or behind the altar or smash it. I don't care.” I want my life back. “They should have the choice of what to do with it.”

“I don't know,” Ben says. “You might be messing with more than you realize.”

I glance at Rae. Her features seem closed, as if she holds her own secrets. I shake my head. “This is crazy. It's a bust. Plaster and air. It's probably hollow on the inside.”

Ben whistles the theme to
The Twilight Zone
. I laugh. Ivy looks heavenward. Rae cocks her head and looks at Ben as if he's slipped off his rocker.

“Maybe there's something inside the bust.” He licks his lips, puckers again, and whistles the familiar refrain from
Raiders of the Lost Ark
. “Maybe we should crack it open and take a peek.”

“That's gross.” Ivy leans back against the seat and crosses her arms over her chest.

“It's not like an autopsy,” I say. “How would we do that without destroying it?”

“X-ray?” Ben grins at my exasperated look. “We'd simply—”

“We can't do that anyway,” I disagree before Ben can finish. “It would ruin it. And it's not ours. Remember?”

Ben whistles a strange eerie tune. “It's Elvis's. He'll come back for it. You wait. You'll see.”

With a snicker of laughter behind me, I shift gears into reverse. I'm more determined than ever to find an ending and move on with my life. Even if that means simply returning to the life I know in Dallas. Alone. Without Elvis.

* * *

I STARE AT the bust. Elvis sneers back at me. I want to take a hammer and bash in his head, see if there's some treasure inside, some reason for all this fuss.

Ben crosses in front of me and picks up the bust. Heavy as it is, he tilts it this way and that. Leaning close, he says, “I don't hear anything … no old coins jingling around … no rattling of diamonds.”

“What about heavy gold chains?”

He laughs and puts it down on the table with a satisfied
clunk
. “I think it's hollow. Or maybe completely solid.”

Shaking my head, I walk over to the big window, jerk open the curtain, and open the window. I wave my hand and say, “Just toss him over the side.”

He laughs.

“I'm serious.”

“You can't do that. Stu—”

“I don't care what Stu wrote, what he asked, what he wanted! He's not here anymore!” I stop myself, release my suddenly clenched hands, and draw in a deep, steadying breath. The smell of fried grease from some nearby fast-food establishment makes me cough. Feeling foolish for my outburst, I meet Ben's stare, know he's waiting for my decision. But I have none. I turn on my heel. “I'm going to bed.”

But sleep doesn't come. I lay in the dark for what seems like hours, questioning myself, questioning Stu. “Why would you send me on this journey?” I whisper in the night's quiet. “Why?”

Silence is his answer. Much like God's answers to my prayers.

I remember a time when Stu was sick, his head propped in my lap. I tried to soothe his brow, easing out the tiny lines with my fingertips. Chemo gobbled up his hair like a ravenous tiger. “Why is this happening?” I asked, not expecting an answer yet needing one. He didn't respond. In a moment or two, I realized he'd fallen asleep.

I slam the cabinet on that memory. I want to remember happier times, healthier times. But I can't get past remembering Stu ill, weak, waiting to die.

A college memory surfaces of two young men—one wiry, the other bulky—cutting up and laughing. Ben and Stu shared a friendship few men ever experience. They didn't just grab a basketball and hoop it up through the afternoon. They didn't just go fishing together. They also had long serious discussions about their faith, about God. And they'd prayed together.

“God isn't some distant being out there in space,” Stu had explained to me.

“That's right,” Ben said. “He's more than that. He wants more than that from you.”

“He wants to live right here,” Stu clapped a hand on his chest.

A chill seeps into my bones as I sit on the hotel bed. The beige sheets have been worn smooth by many washings. Had I believed because Stu wanted me to? Had I believed to be closer to Stu? Had I believed what they'd said at all? They seemed to understand so much more. They seemed to have an actual relationship with God.

Unable to dwell on those questions, I rifle through my thoughts, deliberately going back to an argument Stu and I had several months after I'd come home from the hospital
and found he'd taken down the baby bed and repainted the pink room a plain-Jane builder's beige. We hadn't spoken of our loss.

“I want a baby,” I said, tossing the topic we'd been avoiding out like a stone. It hit the water with a splash, and the waves undulated outward.

Stu looked at me over the toes of his sports socks. His green eyes narrowed. Slowly he sat up, put his drink on the coffee table.

I clicked off the television. “I want a baby.”

“I know,” he said quietly—too quietly.

Maybe that was the end of the discussion. Maybe it was going to be easier than I'd anticipated.

“But I don't anymore,” he said, his tone gentle, as if it could soften the blow.

I felt the air yanked out of my body. “But you did. Once.”

“That was before. But now I don't. I'm happy with just you and me. Let's not mess with it.”

“But we always planned to have a baby, maybe two. What about those plans?”

He wouldn't meet my gaze. “I can't watch you go through that again.”

I sat on the edge of the couch. Hot tears seared my eyes. I blinked, tried to think of a response, some argument that would sway him, blinked again. “But I want a baby.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. Because I do.”

“Because it's the thing to do?” He took a swig of his soda. “None of the guys at the office are happy parents. Look at the heartache. You give yourself to these kids, and
they grow up and bad-mouth you, back talk, and you get to foot the bill. You pay for all their activities. All their mistakes. Do you know how much hockey costs?”

“Hockey?” I asked, bewildered.

“Hockey. Or horses. Or dance or whatever the kid is interested in.”

No more than that stupid Cadillac he'd bought and was renovating.

“What if the kid gets sick … even dies? It happens. The cost is greater. And I don't mean monetary expenses.”

I knew then I'd lost. Our baby had turned into “the kid.”

“Then there's college. Do you know how much a good college costs? And then there's a wedding to pay for.”

When he stopped ranting and raving about money and the price of textbooks, I said, “But I want a baby.”

“I don't.”