by P. F. Kluge
Biggest Elvis was to be our Santa Claus, I heard. He hadn’t spoken to me. I’d heard him singing “Blue Christmas” and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” Christ and Elvis in one show: it surely appealed to him. If he imitated the one, how long before he followed the other? Biggest Elvis was a strange man and part of me regretted that I would never get to know him. Jimmy Fiddler pushed us together and—because at the last moment I rebelled, if failure can be rebellion—Jimmy Fiddler had kept us apart. I saw that now
“You had a fight with Biggest Elvis,” Elvira said.
“What makes you—”
“That was a statement,” Dolly said. “Not a question.”
“This is the question,” Elvira said. “Did the fight come before or after?”
“Is better if it happens after,” Dolly said. “Then you take the money and you leave.”
“No, no,” Whitney disagreed. “Before. Then you don’t have to do anything with them. No bother.”
“Bother?” Dolly asked.
“I like to keep the man waiting as long as possible,” Whitney announced. Smiled like an angel.
“In your case, Whitney,” Elvira said, “that sounds like good policy.”
Whitney smiled at the compliment and then Elvira turned to lecture me. “First you get the American. Then you decide for how long, for how much. You decide. You stay in control. But first you have to get him. Now, Malou, you tell me. Did you get him?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”
“Are you going to get him?”
“Yes,” I said. “Soon.”
I got out of the jeepney when it stopped near a bar called Show Me and found a path that led through vegetable gardens down toward the beach. Three children came running toward me, just to take a look.
“Where does Mr. Wiggins live?” I asked in Tagalog. Shrugs and puzzlement came back to me. They’d never heard the name. One of them pointed me back to where I came from. I should ask at the bar.
“Show Me … Elvis!” I commanded. They broke into laughter and pulled me along. One of them pointed across a rice paddy to where an Elvis figure scared off birds. There were Elvis scarecrows all around, like a field of crucifixes. On a chicken coop, hand-painted: ELVIS LIVES! HERE!
At Biggest Elvis’ house, people were sitting on picnic mats, splashing out in the bay, standing over fires and cooking. Elvis costumes were flapping on a clothesline in back, beady, gaudy things, like paintings hung out in a gallery of rice paddies, offerings to birds and dogs and naked children. I could hear Elvis singing “Burning Love” and I couldn’t tell whether it was the living Elvis or a recording, until I came around the comer of the house and saw that it was both. Biggest Elvis stood on his porch, dressed in shorts and T-shirt, barefoot, singing along with a tape player, so that the dead and living voices could not be separated. Then it ended and he saw me. And I saw who was with Biggest Elvis and it was not someone I would have expected to be there, out of uniform as well.
“Hello,” Biggest Elvis said. “Come on up.” As I climbed the steps I saw the people on the beach watching me closely. Who is this woman who comes to visit Elvis? They were suspicious. They did not necessarily approve. Was I good for him? Good enough?
“Want a beer? Soft drink? There’s food.” He was cordial but I sensed some wariness. He turned down the tape recorder. “You know Father Alcala?”
“We’ve met.”
“Yes, hello, Malou. Nice to see you.” I sensed it again, the terrible artificiality of Filipinos abandoning their own language around Americans. We become like characters in foreign films, our voices dubbed, our words out of place. “I didn’t know you knew Biggest Elvis.”
“She works at Graceland,” Biggest Elvis answered. Was there anyone left in the world who called him Ward Wiggins? He could be ironic about Elvis, he could be scathing about other imitators. But when I saw him here, among signs and scarecrows, surrounded by local people, I wondered. His doubts were for the record, something he used to gain the confidence of skeptics, but in the end, at home, he believed. In Elvis. And Biggest Elvis.
“I work as a bookkeeper,” I added.
“Well, someone has to, I suppose,” Father Alcala said. He’d taught at the high school I attended. Once, we traveled together to Manila, where I won a spelling contest. The winning word was sacrilegious.
“Is she the one …” Father Alcala turned to Biggest Elvis.
“I was telling you about? Yeah.”
“Diaspora. I should have known it was Malou! We don’t get many students like Malou. I’m surprised to see you’re still in Olongapo.”
It sounded like reproach, as if I’d disappointed him. Here, leaving was a measure of success. The longer you stayed away, the greater your triumph. If you came back to visit, you were welcome. If you stayed, you were suspect.
“Come see me, Malou,” he said as he got up to leave. He nodded at Biggest Elvis and stepped out onto the beach. In these islands, you didn’t just walk away. You went from person to person and that is what Father Alcala did, shaking hands, listening, laughing, gesturing toward the porch I now shared with Biggest Elvis. I watched this good man move among his people. We were all proud of Father Alcala. Not because he was a priest. There were many priests. And not because he was a good man. It was because he stood up to the Americans. He spoke out. He talked back.
“Is it true what they say?” I asked. “That he comes sometimes to Graceland?”
“Why not?” Biggest Elvis asked. “He’s my friend.”
“That surprises me.”
“And my enemy. It’s complicated. We’re something, the two of us together.”
“And today? What is this?” I gestured out toward the beach, where the picnic was over but the table remained piled with food. As people left, they took home piles of fish, cuts of pork, mounds of rice. “Was it loaves and fishes? Your miracle? Or his?”
“San Miguel, chicken, ribs, and fish. Every Sunday. On me. It didn’t seem right to live here and not do anything.”
“And you sing?”
“Just a little number now and then. On the house.” The sun was setting now and, as the sky turned color and the wind pushed little waves to shore, the party on the beach was slowly ending. People came up to the porch to say good-bye. “Well, all right,” Biggest Elvis said, and “Any time at all” and “You know where to find me” and, to teenagers, “Take care of business, now.” The old men shook his hand, bowing slightly, and women held up their children so he could touch their foreheads, the same foreheads they’d offered to Father Alcala a short time before. Two or three groups remained, building fires out of driftwood.
“Nice out here right now,” he said, as if we’d shared many Sundays out here and our argument had never happened. “You should see it when the fleet’s in, all covered with ships.”
“I have,” I say.
“From here, I mean. It’s like they all came just for me. Wow, what did I do? They sent the Navy after me!”
Sooner or later, I would have to say what I’d come to say. Out with it. I couldn’t do that sitting down, relaxing. I got up, walked the length of the porch, braced myself.
“It’s not true, is it?” He interrupted me before I began. “You live here all your life and you take sunsets for granted. Is it?”
“There was an American officer I knew. He said you have to give it an hour, before you make up your mind. The best comes after sunset. He rated them, ten to one.”
“So we’ll watch and see how this one turns out.”
“I notice the sunset. But to you it says, look at this, look at me, look at where I’ve gotten to. I look at the sunset and it tells me where I haven’t been.” I couldn’t wait any longer. “I came here for a reason.”
“Let’s have it.”
Like most Filipinos, I fit my words to my audience. We tell the audience what it wants to hear. That afternoon, I tailored nothing. Baby Ronquillo, our club owner, had gotten curious about the interests and intentions of
a certain Colonel Parker, manager of the three Elvises, guardian of two. Worried and tempted by a wealthy American’s unexpected interest in Olongapo—why here of all places, why now of all times?—she might have gone to Guam and asked a direct question. But that wasn’t Baby Ronquillo’s style. A direct question amounted to a confession of weakness—of ignorance—and an expression of interest carried the risk of rejection. Why exert herself when she could permit her driver—a B-movie villain—to insult and demean a Filipina employee, to coerce her to extract information by any means, preferably sexual, from an American who might, or might not, be in Colonel Parker’s confidence?
“So intricate,” I said when I was done. “So dumb.” Biggest Elvis stayed in his chair, looking at me, and past me to the beach, where sunset turned the mountains purple and campfires were flickering on the water’s edge and it was possible to notice the first stars overhead. “The result,” I said, “is what you see. I repeat the same mistake. I do the complicated stupid thing and I do it badly. I hide the Scrabble. I induce you to talk to me the way that you’ve been wanting to talk and I abuse your confidence with questions about Colonel Parker and I do so badly that even you can tell—”
“Even me?” he said. “That hurts. I thought I was perceptive.”
“I thought I was obvious. In any case … the whole thing collapses because I did not do what I should have. I should have come to you and told you that I was scared and needed your help.”
He didn’t answer. He sat in darkness and I stayed against the porch railing, the evening sky behind me. He could see me but I could not see him. “That’s what you’re doing now? Asking my help?”
“As you see,” I said. I leaned back against the railing, relieved. Whatever happened next might be bad, but now that I had shared this story, it would not happen only to me.
“I don’t know about Colonel Parker,” Biggest Elvis said. “They’re wrong.”
“You’ve met him?”
“Sure. When he hired me and a couple times after that. He’s shrewd. I can tell you that and you can tell them. When we talked it was always about the Lane brothers, or the act, or travel or business. And me. He wanted to know all about me. He picks you clean with questions and you don’t even mind. The next day, you realize you gave a lot and you got nothing. He was here when he was young, he told me. I remember that. I asked him when, what year. He said 1941, 1942, part of 1943.”
“That was …”
“Not a good year for Americans in the Philippines, I know. He was a prisoner.”
“You said ‘part of 1943.’ Did he escape?”
“No. That’s the part that really sticks with me. And that’s the only time he wasn’t just on automatic pilot when we talked. They put him on a freighter with a couple hundred other prisoners, packed into a hold, hotter than hell and no light from above. Pails of water and slop passed down that people killed for. They drank their own piss. They drank blood. All the while they were heading for Japan, through an ocean full of American submarines, he was more than half hoping that their torpedoes would hit the mark and put everybody out of their misery. All he asked, he said, was to be out of that hold, out of that ship, before he died. It wasn’t drowning that bothered him, but going down inside that freighter—the Nagasaki Maru, it was called. All he asked was to be in the water, looking up at the sky. He didn’t want to go down inside that ship. ‘A sardine can for a coffin.’ That’s what I remember. It won’t impress Baby Ronquillo.”
“No,” I said. “It’s only a story.”
“Only a story?” He seemed surprised, maybe a little disappointed in me.
“I don’t see what—”
“It’s a story, Malou. Not ‘only’ a story. And, for what it’s worth, that’s the one time I felt I was seeing Colonel Parker.” He got up out of his chair and stretched. “I’ll see what I can find. Meanwhile, if Jimmy comes at you again, tell him that you tried your best with me and that I sensed your curiosity, which I did because I’m so perceptive.”
“Because I was so clumsy!”
“Tell him that I told you I know plenty but I want to talk to him directly, without some woman in the middle. If he wants to know about Colonel Parker he talks to me. That should work.”
“For a while, only.”
“It’ll buy time and get you out of it. You’re off the hook. So there.” He looked pleased to have been of some service to me. Now the next move was mine. “It’s not your problem anymore.”
“There’s more,” I said. “I’m sorry for all this. I feel like I missed a chance with you. I’ll never know what might have happened.” And, because I am Malou, I had to add a line. “Maybe nothing.”
“Maybe nothing. There’s always that possibility.” Then he touched me and it came as a surprise, that he touched me at all, and at this time, and the way he did. He put his hand at the side of my face, on my cheek. He kept it there, as if giving me a chance to know the feeling of it, to recoil if I wanted. I feared I might, too, instantly, instinctively, before I could do anything about it, before I could fake affection. I would flinch because he was Biggest Elvis. Or an American. Or a man. But nothing like that happened. I did not recoil. “Maybe nothing,” he repeated, drawing me closer. Gently. Biggest Elvis had a gentle touch. No grabbing, no force. He only guided me into his arms.
“Maybe nothing,” I repeated. We could have been dancing, but there was no music now. I felt my head against his chest, my body against him, his hands moving down the sides of my body, confirming things. Now his hands rested, ever so lightly, on my ass. I moved in closer, accepted the inward invitation, the decision to proceed. “I can go now,” I said, but the words meant nothing.
“Stay,” he said. I liked being with him. I felt that I had passed a test, already, but more tests awaited me. I wondered what it might be like, awakening in the morning—if I could sleep at all—walking out to the main road, at the same time the children went to school. I wondered about the old people in the fields, watching me pass in the early morning, and Elvira, waiting for me back in Olongapo, asking, “How big is Biggest Elvis?”
“It’s not tonight,” I said. “But tomorrow and the day after that. I have no trouble thinking about tonight.”
“Just how far ahead do you need to see, Malou?”
“Can you tell me I’m not making a mistake?”
“No. Not for sure.”
“All right then,” I said.
“I can walk you out to the road,” he answered, and I realized he had misunderstood what I said—“all right, then”—or how I said it.
“What I meant was, all right, I’ll stay.”
“You’ll stay?” He couldn’t believe his ears. He pulled away from me a little, held me at a distance to see what he had, and I knew then that he was mine. “You’re fine.”
“You’re lucky. Shall we go inside and see what happens?” Then, the same thought occurred to both of us and we said it together, Biggest Elvis and Malou. “Maybe nothing.”
I liked having Biggest Elvis. It pleased me and it surprised me how much I was pleased. I’d wondered whether it was possible, in a place like Olongapo, to have sex in a way that did not make me feel like I was renting my body. The good thing about Biggest Elvis was how grateful I made him, how much he wanted to do for me, how unworthy he felt. The body that I’d hid delighted him; the body he showed the world caused shame. In bed, he contained himself almost forever, waiting for me to tell him that I wanted him, that it was time, high time, and he wanted to hear it again, just to make sure it wasn’t a mistake, that it was all right and, until the very last, he’d have stopped—I swear it—if I told him to. I did not. Then, at a certain touch from me, a certain whispered word, he exploded.
I dreaded what might happen afterward. I feared that our intimacy would entitle Biggest Elvis to questions I wasn’t ready to answer, my last time with a man, my first time, what it meant then, now, where it would lead and when would we meet again. After a moment of silence, I got off his bed and tip
toed around the room, retrieving my clothes. I pulled at a door in the back of the room.
“That’s my closet,” he said.
“I was looking …” I paused. I couldn’t say I’d been looking for the door, the exit, the way out. “… for the shower.” He didn’t ask me whether I always took my clothes along into the shower.
“Come on,” he said. He’d looked normal enough, on his back. Rolling out of bed, he was massive. His height saved him from being comical, but it wouldn’t save him forever. “It’s in back. I’ll show you.”
I stood on a concrete slab, naked, while Biggest Elvis climbed up a ladder. He turned something, a valve or faucet, and looked down at me. I was enjoying the stars and the night breeze off the bay.
“You ready?” Biggest Elvis asked.
“Anytime,” I said, reaching for some soap I’d seen on a crossbeam. “Aiiii!” Water slammed down from above, so cold it took my breath away, as though someone had emptied out an iceberg on me.
“Sunday special,” Biggest Elvis said, coming down the ladder. “It’s leftover ice from the beer cooler. It goes into the tank. They put it there while we were inside. You didn’t hear them because the air conditioner was on. Anyway, we were busy. You like it?”
“It … surprised me. Yes, I love it. Look.” I was laughing like a little girl. He hadn’t heard me laugh that way before. “Goose bumps.”
“Move over,” he said. “We have only five minutes of cold water. And I’m not used to sharing.” He stepped into the waterfall and made funny gasping sounds—uh-huh … huh … uh-huh—as he hopped up and down, jogging in place. “I can hack it, I can hack it, I can hack it.”
I laughed at him and Biggest Elvis grabbed me, lifted me up, right into the stream, right where it came out of the catchment, turning around with me until I was dizzy and he was badly out of breath. Then he stopped and let me slide down, so that his lips were on me as I descended, between my legs, on my thighs and stomach, my breasts and lips, and the water washed over us.