As she pulls on her housecoat, she’s calling for Elvis. Maybe he’s still safely in the basement, where he’d gone after supper with Gene and Junior and Lamar and Cliff and Anita and the rest of the girls – she’s given up trying to learn their names. Gladys peers down the steps. Though the lights are burning and the TV sets are on, there are no voices.
Suddenly there’s a boom and a flash. The hallway lights up, and she ducks and cries out his name again, but nobody comes running. Guns. There must be guns. Just months ago, there was an attack on Liberace’s mother at the star’s home, and ever since, Elvis has been careful that Gladys should never be alone in the house. He has surrounded his family with more men; he never calls them bodyguards, but they certainly look ready for a fight.
In the kitchen, she calls for him again and is answered by another explosion; the windows go blue and green. When she sees fire falling through the sky, she understands what is happening and sinks into a chair, all the strength in her legs gone. There is no shooting. There are no intruders. Elvis is letting off fireworks.
Now she understands why he needed so much cash: he’ll have driven over the state line to buy boxes of the things. It’s not the first time.
Boom. The window glows pink. Squinting through the glass, she makes out bodies rushing around the back lawn. There are squeals and shouts of ‘Over here!’ and ‘Come on!’ and ‘Now!’ Then another crack, and a series of Roman candles illuminate the sky, fizzing above the fields and plummeting back to earth. She sighs. She won’t interfere. It’s important for Elvis to blow off steam, especially after the news of the drafting.
But where is Vernon? Surely the noise must have woken him. For a second she considers knocking on the guest bedroom door, then thinks better of it. Some nights he crawls in even later than Elvis, and if this is one of those nights she’d really rather not know.
Resolving to pour herself a beer and find her pills, she rises and, from the corner of her eye, she spots a glowing figure running towards the house. As it gets closer, she realises it’s Cliff, and there are flames coming from his coat.
She rushes to open the back door and peer out. Her nephew Gene, who Vernon calls ‘that idiot boy’, throws himself at Cliff, bundling him to the ground.
‘Aunt Gladys!’ he shouts. ‘Get water!’
She grabs the nearest pan from a shelf and runs to the faucet, ignoring the ache in her legs. As she does so, she remembers the snow in the deep freeze, but rejects the idea of using it: that is for her son, for Christmas.
By the time she’s reached them, the fire is out, and Cliff is sitting on the grass, grasping his forearm and moaning, his coat smoking in his lap.
‘What in the world are you boys up to?’ Gladys demands.
‘He’s OK. Ain’t you, Cliff? Ain’t you OK?’ says Gene, whose freckled face is smeared with soot.
Gladys crouches next to Cliff. The sleeve of his shirt is in tatters.
‘Put your arm in this, if you can,’ she instructs, placing the pan of water by his side. He does as he’s told, and lets out a yelp. Now that she’s outside, Gladys can hear, between the explosions, the sound of her son’s laughter as it climbs from amused chuckles to wild barks. Usually, on hearing this delirious sound, Gladys cannot help but laugh in response. But not tonight.
‘We got to get you to a doctor,’ she says.
‘Noooooo!’ sings Gene, jogging on the spot. ‘Noooooo doctor!’
‘Ain’t no need,’ says Cliff, through jagged breath. ‘I’m OK.’
‘Where’s Elvis?’
Cliff and Gene exchange a glance. The laughter is becoming louder.
‘Over yonder, in them trees,’ says Gene.
‘Well, go find him and tell him to quit. I want an end to this.’
‘It’s a game of war, Aunt Gladys!’ says Gene, clenching a fist and punching the air. ‘Elvis is the captain!’
‘War?’
‘Battles! Fighting! Real fun stuff!’
‘And what you fighting with, Gene?’
Gene looks at the ground, then at Cliff, then at the ground again. ‘Not the fireworks. Noooo, ma’am! Noooo!’
Gladys hauls herself to her feet. ‘You fetch Elvis, right now!’
‘But it’s safe, Aunt Gladys! Elvis says so! He told us, didn’t he, Cliff? He said, nooooo aiming for the face—’
‘Gene,’ says Cliff. ‘Go get the boss.’
Another explosion. Green fire drips through the sky.
‘Get Elvis!’ Gladys cries.
Gene scampers away.
‘Let’s go inside and patch you up,’ Gladys says to Cliff, helping him to his feet.
As they walk to the house, she asks, ‘How can a game be called war?’ and Cliff replies, ‘Guess it ain’t really much of a game, Miss Gladys.’
TROMBONE: 1947–1948
1947
As Aunt Lillian often remarks, Vernon seems to make a habit of losing jobs and houses. It isn’t long before he falls behind with the payments on their new place and Elvis and his family have to move again, first to Tupelo’s poorest coloured neighbourhood, Shake Rag, and then, when Gladys gets a job with Aunt Lillian at Long’s Laundry by the railway tracks, on to a house on North Green Street. Grandma Minnie Mae, who Elvis has recently nicknamed ‘Dodger’ on account of her ducking out of the path of a ball he threw across the yard, moved in with them after her husband shocked the whole of East Tupelo by filing for divorce. Vernon calls his daddy a no-good liar, and worse. But Dodger looks to Elvis like she’s happy to be free of that old man. From the way she swings her long, stringy body around their rooms, humming a little tune, sweeping corners that only she can reach, her ankle-length skirts whispering along with her breath, it seems to him that she’s dodged another ball.
They are still in a coloured neighbourhood, though Vernon often points out that theirs is a whites-only rental, and is on the very edge of what he calls Dark Town. They have no call to feel ashamed, he says. The Presleys can hold their heads up, even on the neat streets of Tupelo. Gladys says nothing, but her rage is obvious to Elvis. When his daddy is home, it’s there in her every movement, even in the way she holds her son: her arms are stiffer than they used to be, and her embrace sometimes threatens to squeeze the breath from him.
It is early summer. Elvis is out in the small backyard – so small there was no room for Mama’s chickens, who have been left with Uncle Noah – standing on an empty crate. A chinaberry tree growing in the neighbour’s garden casts its umbrella-shaped shadow across him as he practises his line for a school play.
‘My name is FEAR! People tremble and shake when I am near!’
He pretends not to know that he’s being watched through a hole in the wooden fence by the coloured boy who lives in the house behind his. If he admits he knows this, then he might have to feel ashamed.
‘My name is FEAR! People tremble and shake when I am near!’
It’s important to scowl, and to make himself bigger as he says the line. He breathes in, expanding his chest. Miss Camp has instructed him to imagine he is the Devil himself as he speaks the words. ‘But only,’ she has warned, her string of pearls trembling, ‘for the duration of your performance.’ It’s actually near impossible even to open his mouth at his new school. Most of the other kids at Milam wear pants and sweaters, not overalls, every day of the week. Not one of them lives near Dark Town. Miss Camp likes Elvis’s singing, though, especially ‘Barbara Allen’, which Grandma Dodger taught him. Miss Camp says that’s a sweet, sad song, and she’s right. When he sings it he doesn’t have to worry about sounding hillbilly. Sometimes his eyes well up when he gets to the bit about the mother digging the grave long and narrow, and Miss Camp looks at him like he’s as good as those kids in pants and sweaters, if not better.
Elvis knows his face is right, but he’s struggling with his voice. He tries again. ‘My name is FEAR!’ Then he stops and looks around, in case the boy reacts. But there’s just the warm breeze in the chinaberry leaves, and the low buzz of f
lies.
‘My name is FEAR!’ Louder. ‘People tremble and shake when I am near!’ No. He rushed that last bit, and barely whispered it.
He jumps down, rubs his hands roughly over his sweating face, then, without thinking too much, leaps onto the crate once more.
‘My name is FEAR!’ The whole thing shouted now, and his body as big as he can make it. ‘People tremble and shake when I am near!’ Perhaps a little pause after ‘tremble’ and more emphasis on ‘I’.
This time he imagines he’s up on the screen at the Strand, a bad guy in a sharp suit in a Gene Autry picture. Balancing his imaginary pistol on the shining hood of his brand new automobile, he narrows his eyes and recalls Miss Camp’s words. The Devil himself. His suit is black and his car is deep red and his aim is deadly. He says the line once more and twirls around, still brandishing the pistol, being careful not to look towards the gap in the fence, where he hopes the eyes of the boy will be widening in awe. He’s almost singing the line now. He’s not sure what he’s doing with his body; it’s something between acting and dancing; something, perhaps, like the Devil himself. Closing his eyes, Elvis thrusts his hands in the air and yells, ‘My name is FEAR! FEAR, I tell you!’ He almost laughs at himself, but not quite. ‘My name is FEAR and people tremble and shake and damn near piss their pants when I come around!’
Then he fires off a round of imaginary bullets, his groin juddering as the pistol explodes.
To his great surprise, a finger appears through the hole in the fence.
‘BAM-BAM-BAM!’
Elvis stops and stares. The finger remains where it is.
‘BAM!’ says Elvis.
‘BAM!’ says the finger.
Gladys has told him to be polite to his neighbours but not to get involved with coloureds, because these things have a way of not turning out for the best. And, mostly, it’s easy to follow her instructions. When he walks along the street, few people look him in the eye, even though he cannot help but stare at everybody he sees. Here on the Hill it’s not like in Shake Rag, where the women wore feathers and paint in the daytime, but there are still preachers dressed in shining suits and chunky jewellery, women in fancy hats like toy buildings, and music coming from the most unlikely places – Mr Ulysses Mayhorn’s store, for one. He’s heard that trombone moaning, and he wants to hear it again, soon.
But Mama is working over at Long’s, and is not here to watch over what he hears or sees.
When Elvis approaches the fence, the finger disappears. He looks through the gap and there’s no sign of the boy, but his garden is a paradise. There’s not only a large watermelon patch, but also a fig tree, a peanut patch, and an orchard of peach and apple trees with a couple of matted-looking mules standing beneath. Everything is glowing in the afternoon sun, as if waiting to be taken. Elvis stares through the gap, trying to drink it all in before it disappears. He knew the people on the Hill were respectable coloureds – ones with jobs in the finest houses in Tupelo – but he had no idea they might have gardens like this. This garden is almost as good as his uncle Bob’s, and Uncle Bob has one of the best gardens in East Tupelo, with enough produce to feed half their church. Surely Mama could have no objection to him talking to a boy with such a garden. A boy with such a garden would be, in her eyes, a clean and deserving kind of coloured boy.
Then Elvis hears breathing, and realises the boy is pressed up against the fence, just out of his eye-line but real close. He shifts round so he can see the side of the boy’s face.
‘Bam!’ Elvis says again, softly.
The boy jolts away from the fence. He’s tall and well built and neat-looking. He has a long face and eyes that slant slightly as they stare at Elvis. He doesn’t smile, but he doesn’t look afraid, either.
‘I’m Elvis Presley,’ says Elvis.
‘That’s funny,’ says the boy. ‘I reckoned your name was Fear.’
After a moment, Elvis breaks out laughing.
‘I’m Sam Bell,’ says the boy.
For days, the performance on the crate becomes a ritual. Elvis climbs up, does his line, does it again, and Sam watches through the gap in the fence. Sometimes Sam laughs, and his laugh is like somebody falling down the stairs: a long, loud series of bumpy noises. When he laughs, Elvis gets mad, and tries the line a different way, telling himself no coloured boy will laugh like that at him. It always ends in them both firing their finger-pistols.
Then Elvis says, through the fence, ‘Your garden sure looks good.’
Sam crosses his arms tightly and stands very still.
‘You got peanuts back there?’ asks Elvis.
Sam sighs and tilts his head.
‘Them mules look like they could use riding.’
Sam lets out a small laugh. ‘They’s good for nothing but petting.’
There’s a pause.
‘You good at saying that thing of yours,’ Sam says. Elvis notices Sam has a way of not opening his mouth very wide when he speaks, as if he’s unsure whether he should make any sound at all. But when he does, his voice is low and serious. It makes Elvis want to speak in the same way as Sam: with measured, thoughtful authority.
Elvis grins. ‘You good at firing that gun of yours.’
‘You could maybe come over,’ Sam says, ‘but I gotta ask Mama first.’
This is all the invitation Elvis needs. In a flash, he’s crawled beneath the fence and is standing next to Sam. From here, the garden doesn’t look as big as it did from the other side, and Sam, too, looks smaller. The two boys blink at one another. Sam’s overalls are newer than Elvis’s, but he, too, is barefoot. He smells a little spicy. Perhaps he has something in his hair, which is cropped close to his head and shines in the sun, as if it’s oiled.
‘I’ll go ask her, then,’ Sam says.
‘I’ll come with you,’ says Elvis.
Sam looks hard at him. Then he shakes his head and mumbles, ‘I guess.’
All his life, Gladys has warned Elvis: Don’t go in other people’s houses and dirty their floors. When you play with a friend, stay in the yard. If it’s wet, play on the porch, or beneath the house, so long as you’ve checked for snakes. Back in East Tupelo, he’d spent hours with Guy and Odell, playing trucks beneath the floorboards of his own house. The fine dirt there made a good racetrack.
As Sam leads him through the orchard to the porch, Elvis smells the ripe peaches on the tree and tells himself that perhaps the rule about playing in the yard doesn’t apply with coloured folks. So many rules are different, when it comes to them. And, as a white boy, doesn’t he have the right to go in that house if he pleases?
On the porch, they hesitate.
‘I don’t know what she’ll say,’ Sam warns.
‘Won’t know till we ask her,’ Elvis assures him. Usually, if he’s polite enough, and smiles at the right moments, older folks say yes to him.
Sam pulls open the screen door and Elvis follows him over the threshold and into the aroma of freshly baked biscuits. His stomach growls. The floor of the living room is so polished it gleams, and in the corner of the room is a piano with the lid up. The keys are all intact, and there’s music on the stand. It looks as though it will play good, exactly like the one in church. He could sit there, and let his fingers run over the smooth keys, turning his hand so his knuckles catch each one. Sometimes he can pick out a tune in church, when the preacher lets him. He’s much better at playing the piano than the guitar.
When they reach the kitchen doorway, Sam’s mother stands before them. She is wearing a flowered dress and a checked apron, and she’s as tall and thin as Dodger. She seems to fill the entrance, stretching her arms from one side of the door frame to the other, blocking their progress.
Seeing Elvis, she draws in a breath. And stares. At first her stare is openly surprised, as if she might laugh. Then her eyes dart suspiciously from Sam to Elvis and back again.
Suddenly Elvis knows with absolute certainty that he should not be here, that his mama will be disappointed and his daddy m
ad enough to whip him. But it is too late to back out.
Sam, who stood so straight and still before, is quivering. His hands keep fluttering around his body, as if to chase away some phantom. Is this what he looks like, Elvis wonders, when Miss Camp tells him to please hold still, for heaven’s sake?
‘Who,’ Mrs Bell asks Sam, ‘is this?’
Mother and son consider Elvis as if he’s a curious and perhaps dangerous pet that’s just been delivered to them by mistake.
‘Elvis,’ Sam manages. ‘This here’s Elvis.’
‘What kind of name is that?’
‘His name,’ Sam states, simply.
She keeps her hands on the door frame. ‘And is Elvis a friend of yours?’
Just in time, Elvis stops himself from answering the question for Sam. Instead he focuses on Mrs Bell’s hair, considering its depth and texture, imagining how it might feel beneath his fingers. Would it be like wire wool? Or soft, like a lamb’s coat?
‘Samuel? Is this boy a friend of yours?’
‘Yes, Mama,’ Sam mutters.
She breathes deeply through her nostrils.
‘Your mother know you here, Elvis?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ says Elvis, scratching at his neck.
She lets her hands drop. ‘Well,’ she says, stepping back so they can pass, ‘I guess you’d better come on through. Sit down there. I’ll fetch you both some biscuits.’
‘Thank you, ma’am, that sounds real good,’ says Elvis.
Mrs Bell gestures towards a wooden chair at the table by the back door.
Before he sits, he cannot stop himself from adding, ‘You have it real nice here, ma’am.’ It’s what his mama would say, in this situation. She might add a question, too, about which talented lady did the pretty embroidery on the cushions in the living room.
Graceland Page 10