Last Ride to Graceland (16 page)

“The cop came in with no regard for the fact it's a holiday,” Eddie is saying to Marilee, who nods soberly. “He asked me if I'd seen her and I said no, so now I've lied to an officer of the law.”

“Thank you,” I say to Eddie. “But don't take it to the post office. If that cop comes back, tell him you lost it.”

“Child,” Marilee says sharply. “You can't ask this boy to state a damning falsehood for you, and besides, it wouldn't matter a hill of beans if he did. If they brought this poster to the Wild Acre post office, then you can rest assured they've brought it to every post office in the South and you're likely on the news as well. Besides, you sang on this very deck all day yesterday and what? Maybe a hundred people saw you then?”

“At least,” I say miserably.

“You got a ball cap?” Eddie says. “Pull it down and hide your face.” He's being a champ, considering he doesn't even know where I'm going or why. But I get the sense he's enjoying the drama of the whole thing.

“I've got a ball cap,” I say. “But my face isn't the problem. The problem is that they've got a picture of the car.”

Marilee is chewing on her lip, deep in thought, and she doesn't even say anything to Lucy when he jumps off the chair
and wanders over to pee on the leg of a picnic table. It's not his fault. The clock over the bar said nine fifteen. Somebody needs to walk him.

“Where's the car now?”

“Parked somewhere under a tree. I think it's called Free­mason's Street.”

Eddie whistles. “That's no good.”

“What was I supposed to do with it?” I ask, rubbing my temples. I'm in for a headache today. One of the big ones.

“You had this car for thirty-eight years . . .” Eddie says.

“Who told you I'm thirty-eight?” I say. It's a stupid thing to be concerned about, in light of the bigger picture, the literally bigger picture, which is now sitting in my lap, but I've been assured I can pass for thirty-two. Repeatedly assured. Granted, most of these assurances have been made by drunk men looking to get laid, but even so . . .

“Nobody told me,” Eddie says levelly. But if it's a '73 Stutz Blackhawk, that car is better than forty years old. That's a long time to hold on to a valuable car. What made you decide to take it to Graceland now, after all this time?”

“I've already explained that,” I say, although maybe I explained it to Marilee. Or Fantasy Phil. It's getting hard to remember who I told what to. “I just found the car. Bradley sent me to look for his waders and I found the car.”

“Exactly where had they stashed it?” says Marilee. “And why do you keep rubbing the side of your head? Are you fixing to come down with one of those sick headaches like your mama used to get?”

“At the lake property Bradley's owned for years. If you want
to get there, first you turn off the paved road and then you turn off the dirt road. It's that far back. They kept the car in a shed by the marsh.”

“And you'd never once looked in that shed before?” Marilee's tone is skeptical. For the first time since I showed up yesterday, I can see she's doubting the story I'm telling her.

“No. Why would I? Bradley told me that shed was full of boat parts. And I'm not sure I would have gone in two days ago,” I said. “But Bradley—that's my daddy—”

“Why do you call your daddy Bradley?” Eddie asks.

I rub my temples. “Because that's his name, number one. And because maybe he's not my real daddy, number two. But he sent me to get his waders and he said they were in the shack, not the shed, and so I was to look in the shack, not the shed, and he said that about three times for emphasis . . .”

“Sounds to me,” Eddie says, “like a real good way to get a person to look in a shed.”

“Just what I'm thinking,” says Marilee, and they're right, of course they are. Bradley more or less left town and sent me to find the car. Why, I can't say. I guess he's done the math too. Maybe he's as sick of the lies as I am.

“But for Bradley to call the law and report me missing . . . that makes zero sense. Why would he send me to find the car and then turn me in for taking it?”

“I don't know,” says Marilee. “But I do know what you're going to do next, which is go in that back bedroom and pull the shades against this sun before you start throwing up your coffee all over this deck.”

“I'm not sick,” I say. “Not very. I can get rid of it with four
Extra Strength Ty—”

“You're sick and that's clear as glass,” Marilee says. “Go in there and lie down.”

“Even if you didn't have a sick headache,” says Eddie, still trying to fix things, “you wouldn't need to start out anywhere on Memorial Day. Every road near the coast will be swarming with cops. It'd be smarter to wait till tomorrow morning when the holiday weekend has passed and everybody's guard is down. In the meantime, we can move the car to behind my shop. Put a tarp over it.”

“Thank you,” I say, and for some reason my eyes fill with tears. Maybe it's the headache, maybe it's the poster with the pictures of me and Elvis and Mama and that big word
MISSING
right across the top, a statement that is accurate in more ways than I can begin to count. Maybe it's just that all these strangers are being so very kind. “I don't know why I'm acting foolish. It's just that I've made some mistakes in life, you know, cut some corners. But this is the first time I've ever been in trouble with the law.”

“You're not in trouble with the law,” Eddie points out. “You're just missing. And even if the cops do catch up with you, they're gonna give you the benefit of the doubt. You're a pretty white woman. Bad stuff doesn't happen to pretty white women.”

“Are you kidding me?” I say. “Pretty white women end up raped and strangled on the eleven o'clock news every night.”

“And that's why it's news. Because they're pretty white women. If something bad happens to an ugly black man, that ain't no news to anybody.”

He's got a point but I'm in no mood to admit it. I'm still too
upset thinking about my picture being on a missing poster. Bradley would never do such a thing. He couldn't stand the shame. In fact, if Bradley walks into the Clearwater PO and sees me and Mama and Elvis all hanging up there on the wall, he'll have a heart attack on the spot. “At least you got the eight-track fixed.”

“I wouldn't say fixed. I'd say—”

“We got to find something to play it on. Marilee, do you have an eight-track player?”

She shoots me an incredulous look.

“Then I have to get to Joe's Vintage and Salvage,” I say.

“Don't bother,” says Eddie. “I called over there before I came, and to the Goodwill too. There's not an eight-track player left in Fairhope. Anywhere in the world, most likely.”

“Forget that tape player,” Marilee says decisively. “We need to get some aspirin and eggs into you before that headache takes hold and, Eddie, you've got to walk this dog before he shits any more on my deck. And then we've got to move that car and cover it with a tarp and we've got to cover you with a tarp too, Miss Cory Beth Ainsworth, or at least put you to bed back in my room where nobody will see you. Tomorrow, first thing in the morning, while it's still dark and everybody's in bed sleeping off Memorial Day, you start out bright and early for Graceland. That's the plan.”

And it's a pretty good one, but I still hear myself talking. “I want to hear the eight-track,” I say.

Marilee nods. “And so do I. But we'll have to listen to it in the car.”

“That car is what chewed it up the first time.”

“The gears just jammed up from a lack of use,” Marilee says, and then she looks at Eddie. “You got oil?”

“Not with me.”

“We can use frying oil.”

“Wait a minute,” I say, even though my head is screaming. “We can't squirt a bunch of Mazola down the mouth of an eight-track player in a priceless car and put a priceless tape in and just hope it all comes out well. I'll take the tape to Graceland and turn it over to them scot-free before I do that. They've got somebody there who will know what to do, especially when I tell them it's got Elvis on it, Elvis singing some song nobody's ever heard.”

I look at Eddie. “We can at least get some WD-40 at a hardware store, right? Something that'll work better than cooking oil?”

Marilee has picked up the cartridge and she's turning it over and over in her hands, her fingertips grazing the edges. “When you get to Graceland with this tape,” she says softly, “you need to tell them what you have, not ask them what you have. You hear what I'm saying to you?”

I nod. “So they won't screw me on the money.”

“Among other things.”

“You think Phil's the one who told the cops I'm missing, don't you?”

“That's not what I said.”

“You didn't have to. But why would Fantasy Phil give me four hundred dollars and send me on my way and then decide he wanted me back? It doesn't make any sense.”

“Nothing about his name struck you as strange?”

“I don't know his name. Not the whole name. I saw his picture on a billboard but I was past it before I got much more than a glimpse of his eyes. I didn't even know the Fantasy Phil part until I got here and you told me.”

“I'll get the eggs going,” Marilee says, pushing to her feet. “If we don't get some food in you fast your knees are going to buckle right out from under you. Eddie, take that dog to do his business.”

“Why's his name Lucy if he's a boy?” says Eddie, unweaving Lucy's leash from the railing. He seems to be getting over his fear of dogs, or at least this particular dog, but I can't seem to pull my eyes from Marilee. Even though my head is pounding worse, and I think it may be too late for the eggs and Tylenol to save me. I know these headaches. I'm getting ready to lose a whole day of my life, possibly two. Eddie chuckles and snaps on the leash, then starts dragging Lucy down the deck. Even though the dog clearly needs a walk, he keeps pulling back toward me, enough so that Eddie has to put some muscle into getting him moving. I guess I really can't leave him here, no more than I could give him to Leary. He's my dog now. Probably has been since the moment he jumped over my lap in that rest area.

I wait until they're both out of earshot, then I say to Marilee, trying to keep my voice low and even. “What makes you think some politician from Macon, Georgia, is coming after me? Especially when we both know he paid good money just to get me out of his sight?”

“You showing up like that got him in a panic,” she says. “He paid you fast and maybe he started thinking about it later.”

“You weren't there. You don't know how it happened.”

“I know enough to know you scared the shit out of him.”

“I doubt that very seriously. He seemed more like the kind of person that keeps all his shit up inside of him his whole life.”

“Maybe so. But if I had to guess who's coming after you, I'd guess him.”

“And why would he do that?”

“Because that man's full name is Philip Cory,” Marilee says. “Now how do you take your eggs?”

HONEY

S
omething's wrong with our song. Bad wrong, but it's not what Marilee thinks it is. She says it's because we got a man to sing a woman's story, but the trouble goes way deeper than that.

Daughter and water. It's off, and not just because the words don't make a perfect rhyme.

Marilee wants me to throw the tape into the nearest Dumpster. I told her I would. Put my hand on an imaginary Bible and said, “I swear.”

But this tape . . . it was just the three of us in the jungle room and he kept putting his head back against the carpeted wall. He looked awful. Bloated and sweaty, and he was messing up the words. And Marilee said, “You need to go to sleep, baby. You need to do whatever it takes to get yourself to sleep.”

Three days later, after he'd truly done whatever it took to get himself to sleep, when Marilee and I were in the car and barreling south from Memphis, one of us pushed the tape in. We listened until the bitter end, to the part where Elvis stops
singing and Marilee says, so soft and gentle, that he needs to sleep. And she added, “Put yourself in the hands of Jesus. You and I know there's nothing down here worth sticking around for.”

When Marilee heard her own words coming back to her, she panicked. She slammed on the brakes and pulled off the road and started looking around her, all wild, even though we were just sitting on this nothing road in north Mississippi, without another car even in sight.

“I'll drive,” I said, but she shook her head.

“It sounds like I'm telling him to take his drugs,” she said. “Don't you understand? Sweet Jesus, on this tape it sounds like I'm telling the man he may as well go upstairs and kill himself.”

“That wasn't what you meant,” I said. “Everybody was always telling him to take his drugs.” And this was true. An unmedicated Elvis was like living with a bull, or with a 250-pound toddler, and there wasn't a person at Graceland who didn't at some time or another urge the man to dose himself and let us have some peace. “And everybody knows what you meant by putting it in the hands of Jesus. You've got a hundred people who'll swear that's nothing more than the prayer we used to say before showtime.”

But even while I was trying to reassure her, I knew why she was worried. Her words could be twisted so easily in a Tennessee courthouse. An angry mob was probably already assembling outside the gates of Graceland, demanding to know who among us had killed their King. We all felt guilty and, in a way, we were all guilty. I daresay as they were pushing him out of Graceland on the gurney with the sheet over his face, everybody lining the
halls was thinking back to what he or she might have said. Or what they didn't say, which is worse.

We might all have failed him in one way or another, but only Marilee's voice was on the tape. Clear as day, recognizable to anyone who'd ever met her, more or less urging Elvis to leave one world and go onto the next.

So it was natural she'd panic, but that was yesterday, the most awful day in the world, when we were driving through Mississippi. And today is a new day. We've made it to Fairhope. Marilee's home.

And she's safe here. I know she is. I saw within five minutes of pulling into town that no matter what condition Marilee Jones might scrape up in, the people of Fairhope will open their arms and take her back. This town won't ask her any questions, at least not the sort Beaufort is getting ready to ask me. By ten o'clock this morning she'd gotten back her old job, working in the kitchen at a place called Doozy's Barbecue. I'd sat on one of the swivel stools at the counter and watched her march straight toward the kitchen, pushing back the swinging doors like she owned the place. And when Mr. Doozer, the sort of man who looked like he'd been born unhappy, started giving her lip about running out on him six years earlier, she just tied on her apron, said, “Hush,” and fried up a bunch of eggs for her and me. Mr. Doozer gave me the fish eye and at first I thought it was because we were eating six of his eggs without payment, but later Marilee said it was because I was the first white person who'd ever sat at that counter.

“I didn't know you knew how to cook,” I told her.

“You've only seen a sliver of me,” she said with that little
half-snorting, half-laughing thing she does. “Just the part that came to Graceland. What you don't know about Marilee Jones could fill a Bible.” And I have no doubt that's true. We've lived shoulder to shoulder for the last fourteen months, touring and singing and eating and peeing together, playing cards and ­teaching each other dance steps and fixing our hair, but we don't know beans about what the other one was like before Graceland. BG, that's how I'm going to measure my life from now on, I guess. BG and AG. Before and after Graceland.

We go walking out to the pier after her shift and I swallow my pride and ask her if I can stay. She could teach me to cook, or at least I could waitress. I all but beg, and yet she just smiles and turns her back on me, and in a way I can't blame her. If fate and geography were different and I was the one who was already safe at home, then who knows? I might turn my back on her.

“Get going,” she says. “Hit the road.”

“You don't mind me taking the car?”

“He gave it to you, didn't he?”

I look down at the water swirling beneath us.
Water
and
daughter
. They don't rhyme, but they're all we seem to have.

“I'll be back someday,” I tell her.

“Let's hope not.” She hugs me and slaps my rump. “Now get. Go find that baby a daddy.”