Losing Graceland (21 page)

“I’m ready and I’m tired,” Ben said.

The old man tossed the water bottle aside. “Then I’ll carry you.”

Florence sighed and gazed out the window. Ben sat near her, in the front of the bus, knees up against the seat-back in front of him.

“You’re too young to be wasting your time worrying about this Ginger,” Florence said. “She’s no good. She’s fickle, and a fickle woman will only disappoint. I know because I was a fickle woman. A
very
fickle woman. I’d date a boy for a few months and if I got bored—and I
always
got bored—I’d leave him without a care. Oh,
sure they would cry and carry on, and sometimes that was enough to keep me interested so I’d at least answer their letters. But eventually I’d forget them. Eventually we all forget.”

Industrial buildings spread along the highway, low and flat under a cloud-dotted sky. A cardboard-colored skyscraper sat in the distance. Power lines loped past. The old man sat somewhere in back, and Ben watched as the women made various excuses to walk past, glancing nervously, whispering to each other.

“I’ve lost two husbands,” Florence said. “And a child, and a grandchild. Every time I think it’s too hard. You know what? It
is
too hard. But we go on, don’t we?”

“We do,” Ben said. “Look at me. Sitting on a bus with you and Elvis, going to Graceland.”

Florence turned to him. “Honey, that’s why he put the grace in Graceland.”

“I know it’s you.”

The old man opened one eye. The lady with the plastic daisy in her hat had sat near him and the old man felt her staring even as he nodded off. She’d stared for an hour, silent as a monk, while her friends talked about the pastor’s wife and their three adorable kids, though one looked mixed race and they wondered if he was a foster child of some sort, rescued from God knows where.

The lady sat with her tiny hands folded in her lap. “The Lord told me one day the King would return home. Today is that day.”

“You’re a patient woman,” the old man said.

“All good things. What happened to your hand?”

“Lost my pinky. Chopped it off with a steak knife.”

“I’m sure you had your reasons. Would you like a candy?”

“What kind?”

“Sugar-free peppermint.”

“You got any Tootsie Rolls?”

She shook her head.

“Man, that’s too bad,” the old man said. “I love them Tootsie Rolls.”

massive blue sign stood behind a chain-link fence.
Graceland. Home of Elvis A. Presley
. Cars sped down the boulevard, the same boulevard where Elvis in bathrobe and slippers rode his ATV in those late nights of 1977, a bloated ghost zooming through the dark. Ben had read about it after his first coffee with the old man, that morning eons ago when he’d sat in the diner booth with the ‘65 wisteria-on-white Caddy waiting in the parking lot.

The old women poured out of the bus, cameras in hand, purses swinging from their forearms. Behind them stood a German couple, a short woman with chopped blond hair and her husband with dark horn-rim glasses, snapping photos of the oldest Elvis impersonator he’d ever seen. The old man stood and stared as the chattering group wandered down the driveway, lost in their conversations.

“You want to take a look?” Ben asked.

The old man shook his head.

“Aren’t you even a little curious? Maybe they’ve changed it around.”

“Nothing changed,” the old man said. “Same furniture, same pictures, same silverware. I walk in there and feel how old I am. I walk in there and feel like I got the worst fucking taste in the world. Priscilla should’ve fucking known better than to keep things the way they were. If I lived there now, I’d have one of those future kitchens—you know, from that Swedish store.”

“IKEA.”

“That’s right. I’d have one of those IKEA kitchens.”

The lady with the plastic daisy in her hat hung back from the group. She held a camera. “May I?”

The old man grabbed Ben around the shoulders and pulled him close.

“This one’s going on the mantel,” the old man said.

“Lord, yes,” the lady said, and she clicked.

Alina had given them the last-known address of Nadine Emma Brown. The old man and Ben walked all afternoon to a place called Orange Mount. They walked down quiet tree-lined streets, past buildings with hand-painted signs selling doughnuts and hair extensions and cell phone packages, rusted signs with their lights punched out and boarded buildings covered in graffiti. A black family stood on the corner, pointing at the old man limping along in his jumpsuit with the Aztec thunderbird on the back.

The old man held his pills and let them drop, one by one, blue and red discs bouncing on the sidewalk like that Greek myth he remembered with the maze and the minotaur. Or was it twine the hero used, or was it those two kids in the forest who find a house made of gingerbread and some old bitch tries to eat them. He
could never get his myths straight, but it didn’t matter because he realized myths are about two things—you get lost or you get found. Throw in some sword fights, half-naked chicks, and a few monsters, but it’s always the same story. Some poor son of a bitch can’t find his way; some lucky son of a bitch can.

They turned down a street with a brick-and-cement-block building on the corner.
James’s Lounge Memphis’s Party Spot
. Dead vines clawed up the side, a spindly bent tree stuck in the edge of the parking lot. At the end of the street stood a cedar-shingle home with a toppled grill on the front lawn and a hose lying like a dead snake,
N. Brown
printed on the mailbox. The old man stopped at the driveway. He smoothed back his hair and patted his jumpsuit. He straightened the papers in his manila folder. He took his aviators from his pocket and smoothed back his hair again.

“Give me a dab.”

“I don’t have anything to dab you with.”

“Goddammit, give me a
dab—
”

“All right. Just relax.” Ben pulled his shirtsleeve to his hand. He patted the old man’s forehead.

The old man stared at the house. “Do you believe I was the King?”

“Yes.”

“Come on, now. Don’t lie to me. Not here.”

“I’m not lying.”

The old man looked at him.

“Swear to God.”

“On a stack of Bibles,” Ben said.

“You an atheist?”

Ben smiled.

“Man, I’m serious. What happened to your daddy make any boy an atheist.”

“I’m not an atheist.”

The old man zipped his jumpsuit to his throat. “Never made any sense, those atheists. Think they have answers just like the religious folk. How do I look?”

“You look ready.”

“Good, ’cause I think I might throw up.” The old man put one hand to his stomach and limped with his chin held high, down the driveway and up the front steps. He put on his aviators and knocked on the door.

Ben watched the front door creak open. A short, thin woman stood in her bare feet, one foot resting atop the other. She wore pink nail polish and white terry-cloth shorts rolled at the top. Her black Jack Daniel’s T-shirt hung to her waist. She stood with one hand on her hip. Her forehead wrinkled in confusion as Ben heard the old man talking. She crossed her arms and tossed her hair back. The old man stepped closer. She held up her hand. He dropped his manila folder.

“Sorry,” Ben heard the old man say. The old man bent down and collected the papers and photos, still apologizing, and the woman looked toward the street. Ben wished he wasn’t there because it made it look more suspicious than it already was. An old Elvis impersonator with his black-eyed accomplice waiting on the sidewalk. He smiled as innocently as he could.

She backed away and started to close the door, but the old man grabbed the doorjamb and she yelled at him to let go. He kept talking. She yelled again.

“Get the fuck out of here.”

“Just hold on—”

“Didn’t you hear me? I said,
Get the fuck out of here.
”

The old man stopped. He looked down at his dossier, at the folded maps, newspaper clippings, and notes in red marker. The pages printed off the Internet and the copies of love letters. The yellowing photos with creases spread across everyone’s face.

She slammed the door shut but the old man stuck his shoe in the threshold. He raised his voice. “Nadine, this isn’t a good life for you. I got something better—”

The old man started to enter the house and Ben saw her arm jut from the dark. She held something at his face and he let out a choked cry, stumbling back, his folder falling once more and scattering papers. He fell down the steps, coughing and gagging into his hands. Ben sprinted. The door slammed shut.

“
Mace,
” the old man cried. He rolled onto his stomach. Ben saw the woman watching from her front window. The old man kicked his feet against the steps. Ben grabbed the hose, cranked it on, and blasted him in the face. The old man spit, sputtered, then lay on his back with his arms spread as if he were making snow angels.

Ben looked at the woman in the window. She raised her middle finger, then shut the curtains.

The old man stayed quiet as they walked through town, past spray-painted murals commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. parks and Frederick Douglass boulevards. Ben found a crinkled dollar in his back pocket so he bought a can of Pepsi and a Doritos snack pack. The old man stopped every few blocks, resting on a stoop or on the edge of a low wall, and Ben said he needed to see a doctor but the old man shook his head and said he was done being poked
and prodded. His face was swollen from the Mace. His eyes were red-rimmed, his lips bee-stung.

He stopped at a corner bus stop and collapsed onto the bench. He opened the manila folder across his lap. Ben sat near him. The sun lingered behind buildings and in the limbs of tall trees. The air smelled like heat.

“We need a plan,” Ben said.

“Eddie Fulsom.” The old man pulled out his wallet, thumbing through cards. “He lives a couple blocks from here. He’ll help us out.”

“Then what?”

“Home.” He picked up a photo of a young Nadine, standing on a patchy lawn, wearing a bathing suit and squinting into the camera. Ben thought the woman he saw in the cedar-shingle home looked a little like her, but he couldn’t tell because all kids in bathing suits looked the same to him.

“What did Nadine say to you?”

The old man shrugged. “Said her grandfather died when she was a little girl. She’s seen pictures and I don’t look like him.”

“Maybe she’s lying.”

The old man said nothing.

“Let me talk to her.”

The old man shook his head.

“Your approach was all wrong. You freaked her out. You were too intense. You were sweating like a horse—”

“Maybe ’cause I’m an old fat man and it’s a hundred fucking degrees.”

“Just let me talk to her. I’ll play it cool.”

“Cool, huh.”

“Give me a chance, Elvis. You got nothing to lose.”

“What’d you call me?”

“Elvis.”

“Boy, I ain’t Elvis.”

“Yes you are.”

The old man laughed bitterly. “Elvis is fucking dead. Died August 16, 1977, from heart failure. Ginger Alden found him a few feet from his toilet, pajama bottoms around his ankles, face stuck in a puddle of puke. Coroner found fourteen drugs in his system. Morphine, Demerol, and Chloropheniramine. Placidyl. Valium. Codeine and Ethinamate and Amytal. Nembutal. Carbrital. Sinutab. Elavil, Avental, and Valmid. I remember the day I heard about it. I was driving a truck to Birmingham. Load of vacuum cleaners. Married to my second wife, Beth Anne. Met her in Raleigh at a cousin’s wedding. Got a daughter with her—Shelly. Beth and I divorced in 1983. Love of my life, that woman; I think about her every day.”

“You’re lying.”

The old man turned to him.

“My dad is an accountant,” Ben said. “He doesn’t have to work because his father invented a new pressure seal for oil pumps and made a fortune. But my dad believes work develops character, so he’s at the office every morning at seven
A.M
. My mom volunteers at the local VA. She cooks for the older veterans. I’ve had a trust fund my whole life, and I feel guilty because all my friends have to scrape and I don’t. So I tell everyone my dad died in a horrible accident. People treat you better when they find out something bad happened.”

The old man sighed. “Man, you are a terrible liar.”

“So are you,” Ben said.

ddie Fulsom spit into his empty Folgers can and shook his head again. He looked to Ben like some famous blues musician, an old black guy with a cool nickname and a voice that sounded like gravel in a blender.