Elvis Takes a Back Seat (18 page)

Are you sure we're going in the right direction?” Ivy asks from the back seat. The uncertainty in her voice irritates me and ratchets the tension in me even tighter.

“So the directions say.” I turn down the volume on Elvis singing about Dixie but keep a firm grip on the wheel, which overcompensates at the slightest touch, much as I seem to be doing.

Earlier at the hotel, I put an arm around her and asked how she was doing. She said, “Okay,” but she's been quiet most of the day. My gaze darts from the winding road to the canopy of oaks.

“I guess if you wanted to do anything illegal, this would be a good place.”

“Illegal?” Ben asks. “What do you mean illegal?”

“Maybe we should go back?” Ivy's voice is shaky.

Howie had hinted in his office about black-market
peddling of Elvis stuff. I imagine Baldy as some mafia type with dark glasses and a swarthy complexion.

“Oh, it's nothing,” Rae says from the back seat. “Matt—”

“Otherwise known as Baldy,” I interject for Ben's benefit.

“—has many interests. He's a good man, trustworthy.”

“More than Howie?” I ask.

Rae laughs. “Certainly. I trust Howie as far as I can throw him. He's always been kind to me, but Baldy … I would trust him with my life.”

I note the deepening shadows around us.

“Believe me, whatever happened, whatever is being said, has been said, or whatnot,” Rae continues, “he will know.”

“In other words, he'll know if Elvis is alive. Or haunting Beale Street.” I drive under low-lying tree branches. One scrapes the Cadillac's canvas top. Stu wouldn't be happy about that. I wonder if this is the type of road he was on when he met Elvis, or whoever it was, on that long-ago night. Even though it's early afternoon, the heavy foliage blocks most of the sunlight that speckles the blacktop road.

Barely hearing Elvis's voice coming through the speakers as he sings “A Little Less Conversation,” I can't put my faith in a ghost any more than I've been able to put my faith in God. Most likely it's some impersonator giving that impression.

“How much longer?” Ivy asks, her tone whiney.

I glance sideways. She looks pale. “Are you sick?”

“Here,” Rae rummages in her purse. She pulls out a lemon drop. “This will help.”

“Let me know if you need me to pull over,” I add, hoping she won't throw up in the car.

Ivy plops the fat yellow candy in her mouth and nods.

Ben leans forward in his seat to get a better look at his daughter. “What's wrong?”

“I'm okay, Dad,” she says in that irritating teen tone every parent despises.

His mouth thins. “Myrtle and Guy could have hired someone to steal the bust.”

I toss a smile over my shoulder to show my gratitude for his solidarity with me on the anti-ghost issue. Encouraging this line of thought, I ask, “To give the chapel more of an aura?”

“Could be.”

“That's not true!” Ivy's outburst doesn't surprise me. For her sake I hope they haven't done anything shady. They seem like an honest, sincere couple. Hiring an impersonator to steal the bust and concoct some weird legend seems underhanded and undermines the good they're trying to do at Faithland.

Spotting a bent metal post with a street number attached leaning into the shadows, I slow the car to a crawl. Out of habit I turn on the left blinker even though there's no traffic. However, it alerts those in the car that we're almost there. Everyone seems to lean forward, anticipating I don't know what. We jounce over roots and ruts in what becomes a dirt road that rocks us from side to side.

“Are you sure about this?” Ben asks, bracing a hand against the side door.

“No.” I clutch the wheel as well. Ivy has to hang onto
the dash. We drive deeper into no-man's-land, or so it seems; I doubt any of our cell phones will work out here, much less be able to call the police if we need help. “Aunt Rae, you sure this … this guy … this place is safe?”

“Matt will help us. You'll see.”

The road veers left, then back to the right. I no longer know if we're driving north or south or in circles. I stop at a wide puddle, unsure of its depth. I worry the Cadillac will get stuck. No tow truck will ever find us out here.

“What do you think?” I peer over the steering wheel. The puddle takes up almost the entire road, which is bracketed by tall, leafy trees.

Ben shrugs. “See if you can pull to the side. You might make it around the left over there.”

I turn the steering wheel hard to the left and inch the car as close to a tree as I dare. “Stu would have a cow if he knew what I was doing to his car.”

“You're okay.” Ben's voice is calm as he leans forward to look out the windshield at the puddle. I wonder if he's anxious to get his hands on the wheel. “Keep going.”

The car dips to the right, toward the small lake in the middle of the road. Suddenly one tire rolls through the edge of muddy water, making a big splash that leaps above the side door. Before I brake or decide to back up, we're on the other side. I breathe easier, until I realize we'll have to pass it again on our way back to the hotel.

Up ahead, the road widens and the woods end. We drive out into a clearing, the sun almost blinding and making my eyes water. I'm shaky all over and want to get out and walk around.

“Looks like we're late,” Ben says.

We drive into what looks like a makeshift parking lot in the middle of an open field. A dozen or so cars are parked in orderly yet uneven rows.

“Maybe we're in the right place,” I maneuver the Cadillac around another major rut and pull alongside a pickup truck that looks almost as old as the Cadillac.

“We're in good company,” Ben comments.

I laugh, needing levity for my nerves.

Just beyond the parking lot sits an old metal trailer. Rounded on the ends, it looks like a silver hotdog with antennae sticking out in all directions like toothpicks.

Ben turns off the stereo, cutting off Elvis's “Viva Las Vegas” and rolls down his window an inch from the top. From the outside comes a booming voice over a crackling sound system and squawking microphone. I kill the engine but still can't make out the speaker's words.

“Are they having an auction, you think?” I imagine all sorts of Elvis paraphernalia set out and bidders poised and raising paddles to up their bids.

“An outdoors Christie's?” Rae asks.

“Only one way to find out,” Ben says.

Rae opens her car door. “Let's go.” Before I can blink, she's out of the car and walking through the field, lifting her knees high through the tall grass and brushing weeds away from her skirt.

“What do you think?” I hesitate.

“We can't let her go by herself.” Ivy opens her car door and follows.

“Okay.” I sigh. “Maybe we should have brought the bust. We could at least sell him to the highest bidder.”

Ben laughs. “Or maybe we can find it a matching twin.”

I groan.

In a long, scraggly line, we follow our fearless leader through the field and around the trailer. The booming voice pulls us in its direction, but I can't siphon out the static to hear what the man's saying for concentrating on not turning my ankle along the rocky ground. The voice sounds deep, with that Southern cadence that Elvis was famous for. Sticker burrs grab hold of my jeans and won't let go. One pricks my skin around my bare ankle. I feel a sharp jab and pause. Ben takes hold of my arm. I pause to brush off a sticker that has hitched a ride on my tennis shoe.

As I round the end of the trailer, I see a stage set up along its backside. Old, faded Christmas lights, several bulbs missing from their designated sockets, have been strung along the edges of the stage. The rest of the bulbs try their best to glow merrily; the colors are faded and give off a halo of light against the trailer's silver siding.

When I pass the stage, I notice a group of around fifty people from all walks of life, not all bunched together but spread out in little groups like patches on a patchwork quilt. A few gazes veer away from the speaker toward us, and they give polite nods of welcome before darting back to the man on stage. I pass a man in a wheelchair who listens in rapt attention. A young family in lawn chairs sits behind the wheelchair, the little ones crawling over each other.

I finally reach Rae, who's stopped walking and stands at the back of the crowd, her attention focused on the speaker. My breath comes in tiny huffs, and sweat dampens my forehead as I step beside her.

“What on earth is this?” I whisper.

But she only grabs my hand to silence me.

The man on stage has stark white hair, wide sideburns, and heavy jowls, but it's his speech that reminds me most of Elvis. I wonder why impersonators choose the older version of Elvis to imitate and not the younger, handsomer version.

Bits of what he is saying begin to pierce my thoughts. Before it had just been noise, loud and booming, but now his voice filters down through the open air, and I focus on what he's actually saying and not the crackles of the sound system.

“… and it's time. T-time, do you hear?” he sounds like an old-fashioned, Bible-thumping preacher. “Time for us to help others, not takin', takin', takin'.” He grabs at the air. “Who are you lookin' at, takin' from? When you should be givin' back?”

I glance at his audience. Most nod their heads up and down, in rhythm with his speech. A black woman walks along the perimeter of the group, pacing back and forth, her head bent as she listens.

“W-w-we got to bring folks together, not separate 'em. In my old life, my sin life, I was looked up to, admired even. Seein' me now, you probably c-c-can't believe that. But I was! I was a big shot. Now I'm just,” he pauses to pat his belly, “big.”

A murmur of laughter ripples through the crowd.

“But I kept trying to point folks to the higher one, to the only one that mattered.” He jabs a fat finger at the sky.

“A-a-and … I was just gettin' in the way. I was tearin' people apart.” He pauses, eyes the audience, and wipes his face with a handkerchief.

“The Good Book says a wise man builds his house. Builds it! But fools tear it down. They ain't really meanin' to tear down their house with their bare hands. No, the Lord is talkin' 'bout things we do and say, things that knock others down rather than building them up.

“What you say to your brother, your daddy, your mama, your sister lately? Good buildin' things? Or tearin'-down things?”

My eyes meet Ben's as he stands beside me. He arches an eyebrow. I'm not sure if he means we've entered the Twilight Zone or if he regrets the things he's said to Ivy. I know there are things I regret, things I wish I could change. Maybe I came to Memphis for more than Elvis and Stu's request. Maybe it's my way of asking Stu to forgive my thoughtless words or careless actions.

I focus on the speaker again. If he's Baldy, then where'd he get the name? He is, however, large, his girth hefty. He paces back and forth along the small stage. He wears a startling white three-piece suit that accents the albino hair. He yanks his red tie from around his throat, and it dangles loosely against his rounded belly. Sunlight glitters off the beads of perspiration dotting his hairline.

“That should give you a-a-a something to think about this week. A-a-and I'm gonna do some ponderin' myself. I-I-I'll be back when I got more to say. Thank you. Thank you very much.” He slurs the last words together into one, Elvis-like.

An equally large black man vaults onto the stage, claps the preacher on his back, and takes the microphone. The white-haired man all but collapses in a nearby folding chair and covers his face with his handkerchief. Unaccompanied
and in a slow rhythm, the black man at center stage begins to sing “Working on the Building.” Those in the audience stand and rock back and forth, matching his rhythm even when he picks up the tempo. Those in front of us start clapping, nodding their heads. The preacher raises his face toward the blue sky and sways in a Ray Charles fashion, as if he sees nothing but his own image of heaven.

Then I notice Rae. Her eyes are closed and she's moving with the music as if she's entered her own world and blocked out everything but the music.

The black man, who is bald, changes the tempo yet again with “Known Only to Him,” a song I recognize from the Elvis gospel album that Stu listened to more and more toward the end. It's then, I realize, the preacher has disappeared from the stage.

I elbow Ben. “Where'd he go?”

“Who?”

“The guy who was preaching earlier.” The guy who looked like an old version of Elvis, much older than forty-two.

Ben shrugs. “How should I know?”

As suddenly as the music started, it ends. The crowd pulls out baskets of sandwiches and fried chicken. Rae doesn't motion to us or anything; she just steps forward through the crowd, toward the stage. I attempt to follow but am stopped by a man with long, gray hair tied in a braid, his beard straggly.

“How y'all doin'?” he asks. I imagine him as a bouncer in a bar. His muscles bulge, bunching the sleeves of his T-shirt into his arm pits.

“Fine,” I say. “And yourself.”

“Not too bad today. Nice day. No rain.” He rolls his arm and pops his shoulder. “No arthritis.”

I nod, looking past him to Rae, who has reached the stage and is giving the black singer a hug. They're laughing, and I'm anxious to catch up to them. Ben and Ivy stop beside me. Ben and the man shake hands.

“How'd you folks learn about us way out here?”

“A friend.” I use the word loosely in reference to Howie. Is the preacher, I wonder, one of Howie's older, retired impersonators?

“A friend,” Ben agrees.

“Someone here?” The man looks around.