Elvissey (17 page)

"You don't get it?" he asked. "You Christian?"

"What are you?" I responded.

"Damned," he said, intoning with such melodrama as
only a teen can muster. "Might as well talk to the wall, then."

The road countrysided, passing flat fields on the right; the
riverplain must have been some unseeable distance beyond.
The interstate's wall rolled on, leftward, as before. High oak
and loblolly pines erupted along the borders of lots. Six
small signs no larger than floorboards sequenced along the
shoulder, each bearing white-lettered sentences enscribed
upon a sunbleached red field, and reading WITH GLAMOUR
GIRLS / YOU'LL NEVER CLICK / BEWHISKERED / LIKE A / BOLSHEVIK / BURMA SHAVE.

"What's Burma Shave?" I asked. "An art project?"

"Lady, you kill me," E said, smiling as if he liked me. "Tell
me where you're really from."

"New York, told as said. That's our city's newssheet, true?"

"Looks like it," he said, opening the Mirror's pages. However loosely he held his gun, his aim kept true. "I've heard
people from New York talk before. You don't sound like
'em." He snorted, as if his lungs imploded.

"Are you choking?" I asked.

"Laughin'," he said. "Listen to this. `Panty raid turns
violent. Twenty University of Kentucky coeds assaulted, three dead.' Just havin' fun, says-" He paused. "Participle-"

"Participant," I said, reading the word which so troubled.

"My kinda fun, sounds like."

The incident's charm eluded me; then again, so had his.
"That's monstrous," I said. "Those poor women."

"Hell, they just didn't interview the ones that liked it."

"Mayhap those were the ones killed," I said. Rearviewing,
I glanced at John's middle as it shook with the roll of the car.

"They musta asked for it-"

"As we did?"

He gazed my way; smiled. "Maybe."

"What are you going to do with us?" I asked. E pressed his
gun's muzzle against my side and scooted closer to me,
pushing its tip against my ribs.

"You never did tell me how you know my name," he said,
"or why you're lookin' for me."

"We've a job for you," I said. "We came to flagpole the
idea and see what flies."

` Jobs're a drag, ma'am," E said. "I've had enough jobs."

"Once you're captured they'll work you in prison,
surely-

"Goddamnit, shut up-!" The vehemence with which he
slung his demand intimidated as intended. I muted, and
readied to brake the car if he began flailing, but he didn't.
A billboard on our left advertised the Ditty Wah Ditty Tourist Court's clean cabins, six miles downroad. Allowing him
time enough to calm, I waited until he again appeared at
comparative peace before conversing anew.

"Why do you ma'am me sometime and lady me others?"
I asked.

"Your husband didn't act like a businessman," E said,
ignoring my question as if I'd not asked it, pronouncing biz
as bid. "Acts like a teacher I had back in high school."

"A teacher?" I repeated, astonished by the concept that
my husband could so image. "You mean in a reformatory?"

"Yeah," he laughed. "Humes High. Teacher I had, he
taught biology. Mean of sonofabitch. Just looked down on
everything and everybody."

"You've misread my husband, then-"

"Turned out he was a commie," E said.

"How uncovered?"

"Had a map of Russia right there in his house. Nobody
was surprised."

"Who was looking for commies?"

His lip drew up as he laughed again, evidencing delight at
my having to so inquire. "Must do things real different up
north," he said. An overalled man guided a plow as his horse
clomped through a yellow field on the right, rutting dirt; I
perceived by his stance that our appearance startled him as
his amazed me. We'd never been awared as to how recently
the peasantry had subsisted in such ancient manner in the
veldt. "Doesn't"-pronounced dudn't-"Doesn't this feel
good now, just runnin' down the road like this?" E asked; I
shook my head. "How long you been married?"

"Fifteen years."

"How old were you? Fourteen?"

"I'm forty-four," I said.

"I don't believe you," said E. "You don't look it. He does.
Looks like he's been sewn up so many times they can't find
a place to stitch."

"Generally they do," I said.

"Why's a good-lookin' woman like you married to an old
gorilla like him?"

"That's none of your business," I said; once more felt him
shove his gun against me.

"I think it is," he said. "Don't be tellin' me otherwise."

"My business doesn't matter and yours does, that's what
you're telling?"

"Come on, don't get upset-"

"Take that gun off me," I said; he did. "Did your mother
tell you what your business should be all the time?"

His face slackened as if he'd been sedated; he moved away
from me, and was wordless for a moment. "I loved my
mother."

"You snuffed her, all the same."

He nodded, as if one shouldn't preclude the other. "One
time she told me it was harder than I'd ever know, raisin' me.
I told her I didn't try t'make it that way but she said it didn't
matter, I did anyway. Nothin' I ever did was right, hear her
tell it."

"Where's your father?"

"I don't know," E said, his color fading until he was almost so pale as me; he so monotoned as he spoke that a
stranger might have thought he was talking of someone
else's family. "He passed some bad checks. Got caught, went
to jail. Never come back. It tore mamma up. We'd just
moved to Memphis. She kept sayin' if it hadn't been for that
we mighta been all right."

"What was her job?"

"Mamma worked for a while as a nurse's aide at the hospital. Mopped floors. Emptied rich ladies' bedpans. Quit once
or twice, said she couldn't do nothin' with a bad back."

"So you worked, then?"

"Yeah. Didn't want to. Hell, what choice's anybody got?"
he said. "Where's the radio in this car?" I switched it on,
cautioning my actions so that he wouldn't think I threatened. After he situated the radio he took control of the
knobs, moving through the spectrum's static, blurring
sound into garble.

"That problematicked between you and your mother?" I
asked.

"I don't wanta talk about it." He ceased his search when
a flourish of strings wafted up, backgrounding a singer.
"Dean Martin," E said. "He's okay." However unmemorable
the song might have been, E knew the lyrics, and as we drove
he began singing along. It evidenced at once that his voice
duped exactly the earliest sound of our world's Elvis. Dryco would have no trouble foisting him off on his audience so
long as he did nothing but sing; I was grateful that the
regooding of the rest of him would be left to them, so long
as we got him back. The song ended, and he quieted; the
announcer started spieling for an upcoming program.

"Your voice is one of a kind," I said. "We're music people."

"Up in New York?" he asked. "What's this job you were
talkin' about?"

"Singing. Performing. We'd heard word of your ability."

"Heard from who?" He foottapped the floor as an instrumental came on the radio; John added his own counterpoint, assuring me by producing his own percussion.

"Word rounds," I said. "What goes, comes. You've sung in
public before?"

"One time in Mississippi, last year," he said.

"Tell."

"What for?" he asked. "I'm still up for this job?"

"So long as you don't hurt us," I said. "What happened?"

"One weekend I took off 'n hitchiked down to the Jimmie
Rodgers Festival in Meridian. I was born in Mississippi, that
made me eligible to play. I brought my guitar. Sang a couple
songs. I didn't play country, though. They started booin' and
laughin' at me. Sonsabitches-" His voice broke before he
quieted, lending his voice greater youth than it already held.

"Everyone thinks themselves a critic," I said. "Why didn't
you bring your guitar along with you?"

"I smashed it upside a tree after I got off stage," he said.
"Couple old rednecks said it was the best thing I coulda
done with it. If it'd still been in one piece I'da beat 'em blind
with it-"

"Then you've no instrument-"

"Aw, I could always rig up a diddly bo if I needed somethin' to play. It's not necessary to-"

"What's a diddly bo?"

"Take a board, drive some nails in it, tie string between
em. It'll do the trick."

"You didn't play country," I said. "What did you play?"

"Blues," he said. "They don't care much for it in Mississippi, I guess."

The interstate's wall apparently shielded the local industries from view; every few kilometers more of those cloudhigh chimneys towered above its length, spewing blackness.
Scattered along the right roadside, interspersed with clapboard shacks, were oversized houses encompassed by verandas; gleaming copper cupolas supplied their green in lieu of
that of the naked trees surrounding. The houses must once
have been plantation HQs, I thought; their matches, in our
world, were undoubtedly torched during the Civil War, or
left to rot into the soil once their support systems were
emancipated. But these places looked museum-preserved,
appearing new-built through the netting of gray moss hanging from their yards' stripped trees, as if my ancestors were
still being used to brighten paint and glaze windows.

Where were my people? WELCOME TO MISSISSIPPI, read a
directional beyond the road's intersection with a narrow dirt
lane; our car wheels dusted the asphalt as we sped on. Possibly, I thought, they'd all been painted as I'd been, washed of
their color to better satisfy someone's notions of decor; mayhap, like Nyasas, they'd hied themselves away before others
took charge of their relocation. I conscioused of another's
touch, mid-reverie; E stroked my arm with his free hand's
fingers.

"Don't," I said, drawing back, feeling as if roaches were
still strolling across me. I slowed as I bumped the car over a
wooden bridge; the brown water below resembled dirty
honey. Afternoon sun shimmered the horizon; pools of
water appeared and disappeared on the concrete distanced.
Heat rippled the air above the red and ocher flatland. E
flipped through one of his magazines, aiming his gun at my
side; looked up when he noticed me judging its angle.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Call me Isabel."

He laughed, sounding as if he'd just returned from a
panty raid; it appalled me to consider how much longer I
would have to semblance calm. I tried to think of ways I
could convince him to release John. "Figures, way this car's
painted-"

"What's meant?"

"Nothin'," he said, softening his drawl. "I like this, Isabel.
I like ridin' with you."

"The weapon's nonessential, I'd think," I said.

"You're thinkin' wrong, then," he said, looking at his
magazine once more. The article he read was entitled I
Remember Lemuria.

"That's science fiction you're reading?"

"No, this is true," E said. "It's about the Dero. I read
this'n lotsa times before but it's good. Mamma wouldn't let
me bring magazines into the house when I was little so-"
"Dero?" I replayed. "Dero what?"

"You never hearda Dero?" I shook my head. "This fellow
named Shaver found out about 'em during the war. Dero
live in caves and in secret hideaways. They kidnap people
and take 'em down below and torture 'em, kill 'em sometimes. When they're not doin' that they cause everything bad
that happens in the world. They must be minions of the
Demiurge."

His allusions were absent of understandable referents,
and I was thoroughly baffled. "I see ..."

"Some think they're the ones in the flying saucers, the
ones that aren't Germans."

"What do Germans have to do with Dero-?"

"I think they might have hooked up together, myself.
You've never seen one a the German flying saucers?" E
asked; I shook my head. "We see 'em down here all the time.
They make 'em in the Farben plant, outside Memphis. They
won't own up to it of course, but everybody knows whose they are. Fellow I met told me one swooped so low flyin' over
him he saw a swastika on its underside."

"Swastikas?" I said. "Germans are still Nazis?"

E stared at me, his mouth agape, as if I'd spoken of my
own Dero. "You don't keep up on these things in New York?
What the hell do you think they are-?"

He eyed me as if, reapprised, he now distrusted anything
I told him. "You hear about them re-forming all the time,"
I said, hoping to reassure. "I'd not figured they'd ID things
such as those."

"Yeah, usually they lay low," E said. "I don't trust 'em
myself, whatever they say."

"Better red than dead." As I said it I realized I'd transposed, but let it go; he seemed not to notice.

"I read that there're buildings in New York where if you
press the right button in the elevator, you go down to where
the Dero live. You never heard about that?"

"No," I said. "You say Dero cause all that's bad in the
world?"

"That's what they say-"

"But they didn't kill your mother."

E lifted his gun, placing it against my cheek as if he
readied to fire. "Uh-uh," he said. "Won't be the ones killin'
you either if it comes to that."

"Put it down, Elvis," I said, keeping my eyes fixed roadways, hoping to see any car approaching, spotting none.
When he didn't take away the gun I gradually flatfooted the
accelerator, speeding us up to sixty miles per. "Shoot now
and we'll crash and we'll all die. That's what's wanted?"

"My mamma doesn't concern you-"

"There's no reason for shooting her." I heard John tap his
foot against the door, awaring me that he was conscious, if
unmoving.

"You weren't there," he said, putting the gun away,
thrusting its barrel between his body and his waistband,
drawing his shirttail over the bulge. I brought up my foot, slowing to reasonable speed. "You don't know, you weren't
there-"