Losing Graceland (11 page)

The old man stumbled in through the front door. His clothes were soaked with rain and hair stuck to his forehead. Black hair dye ran into his eyes; he kept wiping them even as he scanned the room.

“Been wasting our time.” The old man pitched forward and caught himself on the back of a booth. “God sent me for Nadine and look what we’re doing.”

Alex emerged from the bathroom and walked past the old man, staring warily at him as he shook a finger at Ben.

“Hank’s come back to reclaim what was his,” the old man said. “Can’t have me, so he’s gone for my granddaughter. No telling what that motherfucker will do. No time to spare. We have to get her.”

Ben looked at Alex. “Give me your number. Before he completely loses it.”

Alex smiled. “You were so much better when you played coy.”

“I wasn’t playing. I am coy.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I’m wounded.”

Alex smiled again. “Okay. But don’t use your wounded excuse for that waiting-three-days-to-call bullshit.”

hottest grl evr wanted 2 fuck and I said no

b/c u r gay

no b/c elvis freaked

what?

“Eyes on the road,” the old man said.

call u later
, Ben typed to Patrick then closed his cell. He’d asked the old man for a break—a few hours at a motel, a few hours at a rest stop, or even another sit-down at a diner so he could nap
in the booth. But the old man said they needed to get to a town called Eden before nightfall. Ben asked him what was in Eden. The old man wouldn’t answer. Instead he clutched the coffee-ring-stained manila envelope lying across his lap, set his mouth in a hard line, and closed his eyes, and Ben thought he was asleep until he tried to pull over. Then the old man’s eyes snapped open and he told Ben to keep going. All day if he had to, until they got to Eden.

They drove under sagging boughs of beech and white basswood, over pitted roads, past misty green forests dripping warm rain. The AC didn’t work and Ben’s shirt was soaked through. The old man’s face dripped sweat. His speech slurred and his eyes rolled in their sockets, and he grew restless, switching on the radio to a gospel station.

They drove past swollen streams where branches bent against the rushing water, the forests dark despite the sun bullying its way through storm clouds. The old man turned up the radio until the speakers buzzed, and he sang as loud as he had in forty years, bellowing his faith in the Lord and warning the devil to seek shelter elsewhere because his heart was filled with the love of God.

And then he stopped suddenly and looked at the address scrawled on the back of a restaurant napkin. He checked the map, then grabbed the wheel and jerked it, the Caddy swerving off the road, spitting muddied gravel that popped against the windshield. Ben cursed and pulled the wheel back, but he was already at the end of a narrow driveway that disappeared up ahead in a tangle of trees, their limbs choked with moss.

“What the fuck?” Ben yelled, but the old man held his finger to his lips and switched off the radio.

He wiped his face with the sleeve of his red sweatshirt and
fumbled for the bottle of water he’d wedged between the seat and door. He gulped the bottle dry and tossed it into the backseat.

“We’ll walk from here,” he said.

It sat hunched, a massive home with a caved roof and a hole in its side, rotting furniture and mounds of knickknacks leaking from its guts into the forest. Towering white pillars rose from a crooked front porch, the paint peeled atop graying wood with raised nap from centuries of rain and heat. The house looked to Ben as though it had never been new or clean or beautiful, but had been built as it now stood—a murdered ruin.

“What is this place?” Ben asked.

“An oracle,” the old man said. “Only one left I know of.”

The old man’s foot broke through the porch and he cursed, yanking it free. He knocked on the door twice and stepped back. They waited, bird cries hailing the end of rain.

The door creaked open, and something ancient whispered to them from the dark, “Who’s that?”

“An old friend.” The old man hitched up his sweatpants and wiped the sweat from his eyes. “I’m in need of information.”

“We no longer have information,” the voice said.

“I’ve come with payment.”

“Have you come here before?”

“When I was a young man.”

The ancient thing stepped into the light and Ben saw an elderly woman, face as wrinkled as sheets balled up at the end of a bed. Her eyes were the color of the winter sky at dusk. She lifted her chin and stared at nothing, reaching out for the old man’s face. He
took her hand and held it to his cheek, and her fingers crawled like a spider across his nose, dropping down to rest on his chin.

“I remember you,” she said. “Lots of cream and lots of sugar.”

The old man grinned and then she looked in the direction of Ben.

“And what about him?” She stared with blind eyes. “How does he like his coffee?”

The house was dark, reeking of mold and wet wood. They walked through a labyrinth of high ceilings and cavernous rooms, filled with ornate furniture covered in blossoms of mildew and liquid black trails of ants. The old woman led them past a grand staircase, through a dining room with place settings sitting on a giant table.

They walked through the kitchen and pushed open a heavy creaking door. Two men sat on a couch in a small room with green carpeting and floor-to-ceiling windows dark with grime, remains of old leaves pasted to the outside glass. The two men sat upright, straight and stiff as ship’s masts. Both held canes. Both stared blankly with cloud-white eyes.

“Two visitors,” the first man said. “Delilah, fetch them some coffee.”

“I’m working on it,” she said. “Don’t bark orders when I’m showing them in.”

“I’ll do what I want,” the first man said. “Get that coffee before I shove this cane up your old cunt.”

She muttered something and shuffled away, straining to push through the kitchen door. The old man drew himself up.

“I’m seeking information from another lifetime,” the old man said.

The first man patted the wispy white hairs on the side of his head and sniffed proudly. “Name your name.”

“Hank Rickey.”

The other man nodded and started to talk, but a wet coughing fit overtook him until he spat something thick and bloody onto the floor. “Hank has grown old like us,” he said finally. “Time chipped away at him like sand against the Sphinx.”

“Still a giant,” the first man said. “Heard he led a revival in Jackson some time ago. They said he had a voice that could move mountains.”

“True,” the other man said.

“Slaughters men like lambs,” the first man said. “Marks their blood on the doors of their homes.”

“I can’t say I believe that,” the other man said.

“Makes women throw their underwear,” the first man said. “Makes them swear off underwear rest of their lives.”

“True,” the other man said.

Ben saw tears in the old man’s eyes.

“Heard he got diabetes ten years ago,” the other man said. “They chopped off his leg at the thigh. No more singing.”

“No more singing,” the first man repeated.

The other man sniffed. “Heard he left Memphis for Shake. Retirement. Sunday golf, a maid, and a personal chef to help with his blood sugar problems. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“Sure would,” the first man said.

The other man nodded. “Took a child bride with him.”

“Too much work,” the first man said. “Child brides always bitching about one thing or the other.”

“They all bitch,” the other man said.

The old man asked, “Is the child bride Nadine?”

The first man shrugged. “A child bride is all we know.”

Ben looked at the walls. Stock photos in store-bought frames hung high. Cracks ran through the plaster. Cobwebs in the corners billowed gently.

“That all?” the first man said.

The old man rubbed his left pinky. “Last question. My daughter. Is she happy?”

“What daughter is this?” the first man said.

“Lisa Marie.”

“Lisa,” the other man said.

“Lisa
Marie,
” the old man said.

The first man sniffed. “Don’t know a Lisa Marie.”

The old man stared hard at the floor. He remembered holding her close as if it were yesterday. His baby with tiny clenched fists and eyes that broke his heart. He remembered a dark hotel room, curtains duct-taped with foil on the windows, watching shaky footage of his family emerging from Graceland, pale-faced with grief.
Nothing but bullshit if I stuck around
, he remembered screaming at the television, then he whipped out his snub-nose and popped three into the tube, exploding sparks and the tinkling rush of glass.

He’d read all the true-crime books. He knew what happened to American gods. They’d kidnapped the Lindbergh baby. Everyone clamoring for a piece of divine flesh. For a teaspoon of the muck.

“Lisa Marie is my daughter,” the old man insisted, and the first man shrugged and thumped his cane on the floor.

The kitchen door swung open and Delilah shambled in, holding a silver tray upon which sat a silver coffeepot and two chipped porcelain cups. The old man took his cup, nodding at Ben to do the same, and Ben mumbled, “Thank you, ma’am.”

The coffee was strong and bitter. The old man heaped a tablespoon of sugar into his and filled it to the top with cream.

“Delilah, bring the knife.” The first man moved his head in the direction of the old man. “Now, which one of you will it be?”

“Right here,” the old man said.

“What’s going on?” Ben asked.

The old man rolled up his sweatshirt sleeve. He exhaled sharply and laughed. He winked at Ben. He kissed his left pinky and Delilah handed him the silver coffee tray, along with a kitchen knife, as he placed his hand flat on the tray.

Ben raised his voice. “What the hell is going on?”

“Payment long overdue,” the old man said. “Charlie gave it up twice before, Red once. I never did—always had someone else to bleed for me. Not this time. Not now. Ben, look me in the eye.”

He did as the old man said.

“I’ll bleed for you,” Ben said.

“I know you would,” the old man said with a sad smile, and suddenly Ben saw blood pattering on the floor. He saw a pinky, small and silly, sitting all by itself on the silver coffee tray. He saw the knife with a crescent moon of blood clinging to the blade. He saw the two men sitting on the couch smile and thump their canes and the first man asked, “Is it done?” and the old man sighed and said, “Good Lord, yes it is,” and then Ben saw nothing.

en awoke in the back of the Caddy as the sun shot low through the forest, creamy orange washed over the pine needles and curled leaves. His shirt stuck to his skin. The back of his head itched, and when he touched it, pain blossomed.

The old man looked over the front seat. He wore his aviators with the missing arm. He grinned. “You fainted like a little girl. Nearly split your skull on the coffee table. But that’s okay, because it gave me some time to think.”

Ben sat up. He touched the back of his head again and scraped at the hairs, dark grains of blood flaking off. He looked out the window, at the forest. A bird swooped to the ground. It fluttered to a stop and pecked at the dirt.

“We don’t have the goods for what needs to be done.” The old man held up his bandaged left hand, gauze soaked through with dark red. “I need pain medication. And cash. Plenty of cash. Hank won’t give her up for nothing.”

Ben searched for something to say. Nothing came to mind except ridiculous questions. He felt displaced, as if half of his body was rooted in a former life—his apartment above Manchurian House, his nostalgia for Jessica, his crazy mom, his ghost of a dad—and here was a new life, a dizzying, dreamlike life, where a beautiful blonde with a scar above her lip had asked him to sleep with her. Where he ate, drank, and fought with bikers. Where blind old men gave prophecy in exchange for pinkies. Where Elvis had never died, but lived in a vinyl-sided box in a Polish suburban neighborhood ten minutes outside of Buffalo.

Ben thought back to the crying boy in the orange shorts. One minute sitting in the sprinkler, holding his knee, tears mixed with sprinkler water, lips trembling. The next minute, eyes still red but now he laughed, back arched, hands overhead. Fingers spread, wedges of blue sky between them. My entrance into this world, Ben thought. Tears to laughter. Pain to pleasure. Just like that. The old man like a light switch. Dark to light. Insane to wise. Just like that.

Ben leaned his head against the window and saw Delilah shuffling down the driveway toward them, carrying a pickling jar.

“The oracle doesn’t take money,” the old man began, staring out the windshield. “Offer a million and they’d laugh in your face. I’ve known men paid with their lives to find out why their kids are fucked up or whether their wife ever cheated on them.”

Ben laughed quietly. “The oracle. Are you listening to yourself?”

“Course I am.”

“You just chopped off your pinky. Doesn’t that, I don’t know—bother you?”

“If chopping off my pinky means I can find where that sonofabitch took my granddaughter, then I got the better of the deal. It’s
a pinky, for Christ’s sake. What the hell I need a pinky for, at my age?”