I let her know where I was staying and she gave me directions to her house: “Drive straight down Makataka Road till you pass the church. A few minutes later you’ll see Tornado Alley Trailer Park.”
This was close to the western edge of the Appalachians and as I bumpily drove along an old fence line, the wooden posts stitched together with rusty barbed wire, past dented old vehicles and dilapidated homes, I began descending into that great gulch of entrenched rural poverty.
It was three o’clock when I drove by the old church, then made a sharp left turn onto the dirt road of Tornado Alley Trailer Park. The place was covered with various types of debris, large and small, scattered upon cracked tracts of weed-strewn concrete slabs. Toward the rear of the property there appeared to be a very large breadbox, which I realized was a grouping of antique recreational vehicles.
A clearing of yellow grass was encircled by an old wooden fence and inside were a slew of youngins. Crawling in the mud, running in the high grass, swinging from trees, kicking each other, sneezing all over, climbing on a broken jungle gym, and dangling from a rusty bar that once held a swingset—kids. The place was like a human puppy mill. As I pulled up, two floppy-eared dogs came galloping up to my car and started barking.
I sat in my vehicle and waited for the dog’s owner, checking out this strange improvised domicile. Up close, it appeared to be winched and rigged together from the salvaged parts of several old trailers.
The wheels had been replaced with cinder blocks and the seams of the trailers were hammered and wrapped together with duct tape. Two small shacks that resembled outhouses were tagged onto each side of the place. It sort of looked like two aluminum railroad cars that had slammed into each other, with square wooden barbells at either end. Parked out front was a weathered pickup truck.
“Buck! Henry! Down!” I heard a young woman shout from afar. The two dogs, which turned out to be quite sweet, meandered back to the children.
Vinetta was edging out behind the trailer frantically engaged in some activity. It took a moment to realize she was hastily plucking laundry—diapers, colorful onesies, and little jumpers—from the zigzagging line that seemed to snare every tree within the property. With a long blond ponytail that came down past her butt, Vinetta Compton was photogenically adorable. She was also surprisingly slim considering all the babies that had shot out of her.
Setting her large blue laundry basket down just inside her front door, she finally came over. As she moved across the crab grass, she mindlessly plucked toys out of children’s mouths, collected garbage, and snatched up a couple of bawling babes on the way—a multitasking parent machine permanently stuck on high-speed autopilot.
CHAPTER SIX
The batteries of my handheld digital recorders were long dead, which was fine as I didn’t want to make her nervous. I grabbed a pen and pad as I stepped out of my car.
“Hi, I’m Sandra Bloomgarten, the reporter.”
“Oh cheesewhiz! Not Cass-andra Bloomgarten, the gossip columnist!”
“Well I never had a column—”
“Reading celebrity rags is one of the few joys I got left.” She led me into her house and pulled an old tabloid off a small stack. Flipping through it she pointed to an ancient story I had written about the early hints of romance between Angelina and Brad while on the set of their film Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
“I didn’t know anyone noticed the bylines of tabloids.”
“With a name like Cassandra Bloomgarten, how could I not remember it? My god, I got a telescope to the stars right here in my living room!” she said, compelling me to chuckle. Instantaneously, an adorable little girl behind me started crying.
“Ohhh! What’s da matter?” Mama asked in a playful voice.
“He stole my dolly doll!” She pointed to a darling little blond boy right behind her. He was dressed in a bright purple jumper with a shiny black belt, and was holding a cloth doll by its head.
“Sterling, can this even be true?”
“No ma’am …” He casually dropped the evidence behind him.
“Is that yours?”
“No, but …” He looked down at the dolly doll.
“How would you like it if she stole your Tonka truck?”
“I wouldn’t,” he responded earnestly, then picked up the tattered Cabbage Patch rip-off and shoved it back into her sticky little fingers.
“Okay, Evil Elvis, give me a ‘Hound Dog,’” she said dolefully.
Suddenly the little boy, who couldn’t’ve been older than four, silently started mouthing something.
“Do it loud so the nice lady can hear you.”
In his tiny whiny voice, he yodeled: “Ainnotin buttahunda, cryin allda-tine, aintnotin buttahunda, cryin alldatine. Ain caughtna rabid anya ainno frena-mines.” Even at that slight age, he was able to ham it up with pelvic gyrations and air guitar strumming. Upon completion he took a deep bow, and in a perfect juvenile Elvis, he said, “Thankya very mush.”
“Now leave the building,” sexy Mama said, even though they were already outside. The child dashed off.
“What the hell was that?” It was the most entertaining form of child humiliation I had ever witnessed.
“When I was growing up, when we did something wrong, we used to have to say Our Fathers and Hail Marys. They were kind of our timeouts. But since the church has become a haven for hypocrites and pedophiles, I make my kids do Evil Elvis instead. The girls do Evil Elviras.”
“You must get sick of hearing ‘Hound Dog’ all day.”
“Each of them have a different Elvis number. That way I can tell them apart. And unless I’m drunk or entertaining I make them do it at a whisper so I don’t have to hear it anymore.”
“Well, you should call Colonel Parker, because if each of these kids can do that in an Elvis onesie, you could definitely get on the Tonight Show.”
“Much as I could use the money, the only thing worse would be a half a dozen little prima don and donnas.”
“I’m here about your late husband’s death,” I said, getting to it.
“Of course,” she said, leading me through the house as kids seemed to be tumbling out of the woodwork. The place reminded me of a story I did on exploited Asian illegal aliens who were packed into a barrackslike basement in Chinatown.
Elvis was the single motif running through that never-ending trailer: an Elvis wall clock, two Elvis lamps, velvet Vegas Elvis needlepoints. Although the place looked sufficiently childproofed, I could see she was living under obvious duress. The three electrical outlets I could see—though located six feet above the ground, beyond all their little reaches—were octopussed with what looked like more plugs than the circuits could handle. Yet that was the least of her problems. Vinetta, the nonstop mother-machine, was clearly on overload herself. Another girl, little Eugenia, suddenly earned an Evil Elvira for roping her face in her mother’s bright orange lipstick and was told to perform her act of contrition—a soft and abbreviated “Fallin in Love wit Yous.”
“Gosh, even at a whisper that can be annoying.”
“You have to zone them out. Particularly when a group of them misbehave.” She paused a moment. “Earlier today I had five of them doing Elvis songs at the same time. What a screechfest that was.”
“What is this place exactly?”
“Used to be a trailer park till a tornado struck last year. Everyone moved out except for us. We couldn’t afford to, so we’re alone here now.”
“How can all these kids be yours ?” She looked no older than twenty-five.
“I got two rows of nipples and drop them four at a time,” she said with a straight face.
When I widened my eyes thinking of what a great story it would make, she let out a cackle. It was then that I looked up and spotted something in a small plain frame. It looked simply like a fine line, and the frame was placed high on the wall, almost up near the ceiling.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A lock of Elvis’s hair,” she said. “
I put it up there so that none of the youngins can ever get to it.”
“Elvis Presley’s hair?”
“Yes sir-ee,” she said. “It’s the only holy thing that Floyd left me. We got into a big fight over it, cause we really couldn’t afford it. But he bought it off the Internet with a letter of authenticity and I ain’t never selling it.”
A duet of giggles pulled us to a distant corner of her human puppy mill. She introduced me to her adorable pair of twins who were watching TV. “Rufus and Cotton, say hi.”
“Hi,” they chimed in perfect unison without removing their twinkling eyes from the fourteen-inch black-and-white screen.
“Come on, boys, sing Mama a tune,” she said, then turned to me. “This one does ‘Jailhouse Rock’ and that one does a powerful ‘Burning Love.’”
“But we didn’t do nothing wrong, Mama,” one of them responded.
“TV’s on,” the other added.
“I’m asking you, not telling you. For the nice lady.”
Too focused on their cartoon, they weren’t taking requests.
“First Floyd had two from a prior marriage. His first wife, a tweaker, ran off on him, dumping him with the seven-yearold, Urleen, and eight-yearold, Floyd Jr. Then we had three of our own—the twins and their older brother. Then my dear sister passed with lupus earlier this year so I got her two, Sterling and Eugenia, who are two and three … Give me a moment,” she said, as she began putting together some kind of just-add-water gruel for her many hungry mouths.
“Do you work?”
“Every waking moment,” she replied tiredly. “Unfortunately, I don’t get a salary, but between my sister’s life insurance, my husband’s Social Security checks, and modest savings, as well as clothes from the donation bins and food from the local church pantry, I scrape by.”
A boring adult commercial must’ve come on the TV because both twins looked up at the exact same time. Probably confounded by the first squinty-eyed Jewess they had ever seen, they stared for another moment, then smiled. It took me a moment to recognize that I was feeling a strange form of maternal envy. About a year ago, giving birth to just one little premature baby would’ve saved my marriage.
“So when did Floyd take up an interest in Elvis?”
“Well, you know in these parts Elvis is a big thing, so he was always interested, but Floyd kinda went off the deep end late last year. First he bought that strand of Elvis’s hair just when we adopted my sister’s kids. I mean, we always loved Elvis, collected his paraphernalia, had the kids sing his tunes and all, but for him to suddenly decide to be an Elvis impersonator … I still can’t bring myself to throw it out.”
She opened up a tight closet and took out a big cardboard box. Lifting the flaps, she reached inside and removed an ensemble that could only be called Elvis Presley Vegas Wear. The outfit even included a cape with electrical wires. When Vinetta plugged it in, the entire suit lit up like a chubby Christmas tree.
“Wow!”
“I stitched this together myself.”
“How exactly did Loyd die?”
“Floyd was murdered,” she corrected, “because he was on to something really big.”
“What?”
She took a deep breath and nervously looked to the twins who were staring back at their toons. “He had reason to suspect that the owner of the Blue Suede was instrumental in … in some way—and I know this is going to sound harebrained, cause I thought it was harebrained right up to the instant Floyd was killed—but he believed John Carpenter was involved in Elvis Presley’s untimely death.”
“Elvis OD’d with a truckload of pills in his system.”
“I know it sounds insane, but Floyd found something big, I think.”
“What exactly did he find?”
“He said that Carpenter had the motive, the resources, and he thinks he more than had the opportunity while working for him.”
“Okay,” I bit, since I was there anyway, “what resources and motives did he find?”
“That I don’t know. I never touched Floyd’s papers.”
“Then I guess that ends our investigation.”
“Hold on. He actually did leave a diagram. Just follow me.”
“Look,” I said, as it was now nearly dark and growing cold outside, “why don’t I come back in the morning?”
“Nonsense. You can stay in his office. It has a cot and electricity so you can read as late as you like.”
Before I could consent or reject, she led me out of the house and past several screaming babes. As we walked across the dark field something smelled rank.
“Watch it over there!”
At the very end of their property I could see a large pile of burnt planks that looked like a toolshed that had caught on fire. Between where we stood and the pile of scorched wood, the odiferous earth seemed to erupt with feces like a herniated diaper.
“Septic tank’s on the fritz,” Vinetta explained. “I’ve been meaning to fix that.”
She led me upwind and uphill until we came to a door that was camouflaged the same color as one of those cracked concrete slabs. She opened it then led me down a few creaky steps into the storm cellar, where she opened a second door.
“This is where we run when the tornado monster’s on the loose,” said a sticky little girl by her side.
“If anyone knew that Floyd stored his files in here, they would’ve torched this place too,” Vinetta said, pulling a small drawer string, flipping on a naked bulb dangling overhead. Aside from various small articles of junky furniture were several beat-up file cabinets pushed every which way. Magnetized to their metallic sides were drawings and spelling quizzes as well as math assignments with gold stars. Apparently Floyd Jr., the oldest kid, was a good student. Packs of disposable diapers were stacked in the corner.
Against the far wall was a single metal cot. Above it was a homemade chart that appeared to be the product of a paranoid mind.
Dusty knitting twine ran along the wall connecting several fuzzy photos of men to other ill-focused photos of men. It resembled a hierarchical structure that the FBI would create to relate members of a crime family. In this case, the central image that all other photos revolved around was a shadowy photograph under which was the caption: John Carpenter, the mysterious coowner of the Blue Suede.
Looking carefully at the picture of Carpenter—a large man walking in the woods—it reminded me of an infamous Big Foot photo from the early 1970s.
“When the toolshed blew up, everyone assumed the files went too, but they were all down here,” she explained, pointing to the dented cabinets. Before she left, it struck me to ask why she didn’t notify the police immediately with all this “evidence.” But not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, I kept quiet.
For the first few hours, I fitfully searched through the filing cabinet for that one smoking gun—a clear and simple document that would reveal that some murky figure named Carpenter had murdered the King of Rock and Roll.
As the hours tediously unraveled, though, the files only released more smoke. It was a landfill of documentations, utility bills, credit card offers, bank statements, and endless receipts. Unfortunately, nothing on that twine-lined wall explained anything. There were no neat Pelican Briefs, no Deep Throats, not even any manila files with carefully printed headings. Mostly they were filled with curling scraps of yellowing papers. A phone number here, an illegible marking there. I could feel my hands slowly drying up, just begging for moisturizer. At one point, after hours of skimming, a wave of itchiness hit as though hordes of dust mites had swarmed up my arms. Eventually I found a handmade flier regarding the 2004 annual Sing the King contest at the Blue Suede. On the back, I saw various names followed by hastily drawn question marks. For the most part, the handwriting was unreadable.
All papers I found led to a single overwhelming conclusion: Loyd was one phenomenal pack rat. Along the back wall, behind an old poster of Farrah Fawcett, I made an odd discovery. In a stack of half a dozen Florshei
m shoe boxes were hundreds of different-sized photographs. There were also lots of negatives, and when I held a few of them up to the single bulb, I could make out voyeuristic closeups of intertwined black-and-white ghosts.
Usually the photos showed couples. Frequently they were poorly lit and ill-focused, probably taken with a broken zoom lens. Precisely who these people were or what their significance was remained a mystery. One photo in particular caught my eye: a sleazy-looking guy and a younger, cute blond girl. Something about the girl’s cowboy boots and longhorn belt buckle grabbed me. In one slightly clearer photo she appeared to be giving him a blowjob, but I could only see the top of her head. Something about the guy gave me the willies, I didn’t know why.
By two or three in the morning, I had checked out all but two rusty filing cabinets buried in the back like a pair of upright metal coffins. I leveraged my body around one, spinning it, then pried open the top drawer. It was packed with yet more trash. In the middle drawer, however, I made an exciting find—a half bottle of Jack Daniel’s. There in the bottom drawer, I made an even more surprising discovery—emptiness. Odd in that hoarder’s paradise. I just couldn’t help sensing that something had been covertly removed from it.
Inasmuch as alcohol sped up time and opened part of my brain, allowing me to read deeper into things, I took enhancing sips from Mr. Jack Daniel’s. Eventually, though, looking through more shoe boxes I collapsed on the rickety old mattress. Before passing out, I noticed that three of the four legs of the wooden cot had snapped. On the floor I also spotted what I initially thought to be a short, fat snake skin. It wasn’t until I delicately picked it up that I realized it was actually lambskin—a used condom.
After shrieking and tossing it in the air, I realized that dear departed Floyd wasn’t quite so innocent. Perhaps to get away from all the little screamers, he and the misses would sneak down here for a little privacy. Yet in a family of seven children, where family planning was God’s work, I just couldn’t imagine him ever unraveling a condom. Looking further under the bed, I saw that even more cardboard boxes were holding it up. Inside them was yet more clerical garbage. Rifling through one, I spotted “case history forms.” The boxes held files of divorce cases Floyd Loyd had worked on.
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