Strange Days: Fabulous Journeys With Gardner Dozois (26 page)

Touring

by Gardner Dozois, Jack Dann,
and Michael Swanwick

The four-seater Beechcraft Bonanza dropped from a grey sky to the cheerless winter runways of Fargo Airport. Tires touched pavement, screeched, and the single-engine plane taxied to a halt. It was seven o’clock in the morning, February 3, 1959.

Buddy Holly duckwalked down the wing and hopped to the ground. It had been a long and grueling flight; his bones ached, his eyes were gritty behind the large, plastic-framed glasses, and he felt stale and curiously depressed. Overnight bag in one hand, laundry sack in the other, he stood beside Ritchie Valens for a moment, looking for their contact. White steam curled from their nostrils. Brown grass poked out of an old layer of snow beside the runway. Somewhere a dog barked, flat and far away.

Behind the hurricane fence edging the field, a stocky man waved both hands overhead. Valens nodded, and Holly hefted his bags. Behind them, J. P. Richardson grunted as he leaped down from the plane.

They walked towards the man across the tarmac, their feet crunching over patches of dirty ice.

“Jack Blemings,” the man rasped as he came up to meet them. “I manage the dancehall and the hotel in Moorhead.” Thin mustache, thin lips, cheeks going to jowl—Holly had met this man a thousand times before: the stogie in his mouth was inevitable; the sporty plaid hat nearly so. Blemings stuck out a hand and Holly shuffled his bags awkwardly, trying to free his own hand. “Real pleased to meet you, Buddy,” Blemings said. His hand was soggy and boneless. “Real pleased to meet a real artist.”

He gestured them into a showroom-new ‘59 Cadillac. It dipped on its springs as Richardson gingerly collapsed into the back seat. Starting the engine, Blemings leaned over the seat for more introductions. Richardson was blowing his nose, but hastily transferred the silk handkerchief into his other hand so that they could shake. His delighted-to-meet-you expression lasted as long as the handshake, then the animation went out of him, and his face slumped back into lines of dull fatigue.

The Cadillac jerked into motion with an ostentatious squeal of rubber. Once across the Red River, which still ran steaming with gunmetal pre-dawn mist, they were out of North Dakota and into Moorhead, Minnesota. The streets of Moorhead were empty—not so much as a garbage truck out yet. “Sleepy little burg,” Valens commented. No one responded. They pulled up to an undistinguished six-story brick hotel in the heart of town.

The hotel lobby was cavernous and gloomy, inhabited only by a few tired-looking potted rubber plants. As they walked past a grouping of battered arm chairs and sagging sofas toward the shadowy information desk in the back, dust puffed at their feet from the faded grey carpet. An unmoving ceiling fan threw thin-armed shadows around the room, and everything smelled of old cigar butts and dead flies and trapped sunshine.

The front desk was as deserted as the rest of the lobby. Blemings slammed the bell angrily until a balding, bored-looking man appeared from the back, moving as though he were swimming through syrup. As the desk clerk doled out room keys, still moving like a somnambulist, Blemings took the cigar out of his mouth and said, “I spoke with your road manager, must’ve been right after you guys left the Surf Ballroom. Needed his okay for two acts I’m adding to the show.” He paused. “S’awright with you, hey?”

Holly shrugged. “It’s your show,” he said.

Holly unlaced one shoe, let it drop heavily to the floor. His back ached, and the long, sleepless flight had made his suit rumpled and sour-smelling. One last chore and he could sleep: he picked up the bedside telephone and dialed the hotel operator for an outside line, so that he could call his wife Maria in New York and tell her that he had arrived safely.

The phone was dead; the switchboard must be closed down. He sighed and bent over to pick up his shoe again.

Eight or nine men were standing around the lobby when Holly stepped out of the elevator, husky fellows, Southern boys by the look of them. Two were at the front desk, making demands of the clerk, who responded by spreading his arms wide and rolling his eyes upward.

Waiting his turn for service, Holly leaned back against the counter, glanced about. He froze in disbelief. Against all logic, all possibility, Elvis Presley himself was standing not six yards away on the grey carpet. For an instant Holly struggled with amazement. Then a second glance told him the truth.

Last year Elvis had been drafted into the army, depriving his fans of his presence, and creating a ready market for those who could imitate him. A legion of Presley impersonators had crowded into the welcoming spotlights of stages across the country, trying vainly to fill the gap left by the King of Rock and Roll.

This man, though—he stood out. At first glance, he
was
Elvis. An instant later you saw that he was twenty years too old and as much as forty pounds overweight. There were dissolute lines under his eyes, and a weary, dissipated expression on his face. The rigors of being on the road had undone his ducktail, so that his hair was an untidy mess, hanging down over his forehead, and curling over his ears. He wore a sequined shirt, now wrinkled and sweaty, and a suede jacket.

Holly went over to introduce himself. “Hi,” he said, “I guess you’re playing tonight’s show.”

The man ignored his outthrust hand. Dark, haunted eyes bored into Holly’s. “I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, son,” he said. A soft Tennessee accent underlaid his words. “But I’m packing a piece and I know how to use it.” His hand darted inside his jacket, emerged holding an ugly-looking .38.

Involuntarily Holly sucked in his breath. He slowly raised his hands shoulder-high, and backed away. “Hey, it’s okay,” he said. “I was just trying to be friendly.” The man’s eyes followed his retreat suspiciously, and he didn’t reholster the gun until Holly was back at the front desk.

The desk clerk was free now. Holly slid three bills across the counter, said, “Change please.” From the corner of his eye, he saw the imitation Elvis getting into the elevator, surrounded by his entourage. They were solicitous, almost subservient. One patted the man’s back as he shakily recounted his close call.
Poor old man,
Holly thought pityingly. The man was really cracking under the pressures of the road. He’d be lucky to last out the tour.

In the wooden booth across the lobby, Holly dumped his change on the ledge below the phone. He dialed the operator for long distance.

The earpiece buzzed, made clicking noises. Then it filled with harsh, actinic static, and the clicking grew faster and louder. Holly jiggled the receiver, racked the phone angrily.

Another flood of musicians and crew coursed through the lobby. Stepping from the booth, ruefully glancing back at the phone, he collided with a small woman in a full-length mink. “Oof,” she said, then reached out and gave him a squeeze to show there were no hard feelings. A mobile, hoydenish face grinned up at him.

“Hey, Sport,” she said brightly. “I
love
that bow-tie, and those glasses—! Jesus, you look just like Buddy Holly!”

“I know,” he said wryly. But she was gone. He trudged back to the elevators. Then something caught his eye, and he swung about, openly staring.

Was that a
man
she was talking to? My God, he had hair down to his shoulders!

Trying not to stare at his amazing apparition, he stepped into the elevator. Back in his room, he stopped only long enough to pick up his bag of laundry before heading out again. He was going to have to go outside the hotel to find a working phone anyway; he might as well fight down his weariness, hunt up a laundromat, and get his laundry done.

The lobby was empty when he returned through it, and he couldn’t even find the desk clerk to ask where the nearest laundromat was. Muttering under his breath, Holly trudged out of the hotel.

Outside, the sun was shining brilliantly but without warmth from out of a hard, high blue sky. There was still no traffic, no one about on the street, and Holly walked along through an early morning silence broken only by the squeaking of his sneakers, past closed-up shops and shuttered brownstone houses. He found a laundromat after a few more blocks, and although it was open, there was no one in there either, not even the inevitable elderly Negro attendant. The rows of unused washing machines glinted dully in the dim light cast by a flyspecked bulb. Shrugging, he dumped his clothes into a machine. The change machine didn’t work, of course, but you got used to dealing with things like that on the road, and he’d brought a handkerchief full of change with him. He got the machine going, and then went out to look for a phone.

The streets were still empty, and after a few more blocks it began to get on his nerves. He’d been in hick towns before—had grown up in one—but this was the sleepiest,
deadest
damn town he’d ever seen. There was still no traffic, although there were plenty of cars parked by the curbs, and he hadn’t seen another person since leaving the hotel. There weren’t even any
pigeons,
for goodness sake!

There was a five-and-dime on the corner, its doors standing open. Holly poked his head inside. The lights were on, but there were no customers, no floorwalkers, no salesgirls behind the counters. True, small-town people weren’t as suspicious as folk from the bigger cities—but still, this
was
a business, and it looked as if anyone could just walk in here and walk off with any of the unguarded merchandise. It was gloomy and close in the empty store, and the air was filled with dust. Holly backed out of the doorway, somehow not wanting to explore the depths of the store for the sales personnel who
must
be in there somewhere.

A slight wind had come up now, and it flicked grit against his face and blew bits of scrap paper down the empty street.

He found a phone on the next corner, hunted through his handkerchief for a dime while the wind snatched at the edges of the fabric. The phone buzzed and clicked at him again, and this time there was the faint high wailing of wind in the wires, an eerie, desolate sound that always made him think of ghosts wandering alone through the darkness. The next phone he found was also dead, and the next.

Uneasily, he picked up his laundry and headed back to the hotel.

The desk clerk was spreading his hands wide in a gesture of helpless abnegation of responsibility when the fat Southerner in the sequined shirt leaned forward, poked a hard finger into the clerk’s chest, and said softly, “You know who I am, son?”

“Why, of course I do, Mr. Presley,” the clerk said nervously. “Yessir, of course I do, sir.”

“You say you know who I am, son,” Elvis said in a cottony voice that slowly mounted in volume. “If you know who I am, then you
know
why I don’t have to stay in a goddamned flophouse like this! Isn’t that right? Would you give your mother a room like that, you know goddamned well you wouldn’t. Just what are you people thinking of? I’m
Elvis Presley,
and you’d give me a room like that!”

Elvis was bellowing now, his face grown red and mottled, his features assuming that look of sulky, sneering meanness that had thrilled millions. His eyes were hard and bright as glass. As the frightened clerk shrank back, his hands held up now as much in terror as in supplication, Elvis suddenly began to change. He looked at the clerk sadly, as if pitying him, and said, “Son, do you know who I am?”

“Yessir,” whispered the clerk.

“Then can’t you see it?” asked Elvis.

“See what, sir?”

“That I’m
chosen!
Are you an atheist, are you a goddamned atheist?” Elvis pounded on the desk and barked, “I’m the star, I’ve been given that, and you can’t soil it, you atheist bastard! You
sonovabitch!”
Now that was the worst thing he could call anyone, and he never, almost never used it, for his mother, may she rest in peace, was holy.
She
had believed in him, had told him that the Lord had chosen
him,
that as long as he sang and believed, the Lord would take care of him. Like this? Is this the way He was going to take care of me?

“I’m
the star, and I could
buy
this hotel out of my spare change! Buy it, you hear that?” And even as he spoke, the incongruity of the whole situation hit him, really hit him hard for the first time. It was as though his mind had suddenly cleared after a long, foggy daze, as if the scales had fallen from his eyes.

Elvis stopped shouting and stumbled back from the desk, frightened now, fears and suspicions flooding in on him like the sea. What was he doing
here?
Dammit, he was the King! He’d made his comeback, and he’d played to capacity crowds at the biggest concert halls in the country. And now he couldn’t even remember how he’d gotten here—he’d been at Graceland, and then everything had gotten all foggy and confused, and the next thing he knew he was climbing out of the bus in front of this hotel with the roadies and the rest of the band. Even if he’d agreed to play this one-horse town, it would have to have been for charity. That’s it, it had to be for charity. But then where were the reporters, the TV crews? His coming here would be the biggest damn thing that had ever happened in Moorhead, Minnesota. Why weren’t there any screaming crowds being held back by police?

“What in hell’s going on here?” Elvis shouted. He snatched out his revolver, and gestured to his two bodyguards to close up on either side of him. His gaze darted wildly about the lobby as he tried to look into every corner at once. “Keep your eyes open! There’s something funny—”

At that moment, Jack Blemings stepped out of his office, shut the door smoothly behind him, and sauntered across the musty old carpet toward them. “Something wrong here, Mr. Presley?” he drawled.

“Damn
right
there is,” Elvis raged, taking a couple of steps toward Blemings and brandishing his gun. “You know how many
years
it’s been since I played a tank town like this? I don’t know what in hell the Colonel was thinking of to send me down here. I—”

Smiling blandly and ignoring the gun, Blemings reached out and touched Elvis on the chest.