by Jack Womack
"We should overnight soon," I said, laying my book aside. "We've gone sleepless at least a day and a half."
"Next exit, then," he said; he'd talked little since leaving Dixieland, stirring at moments only to retrieve a piece of dried fruit, or to ask me how I felt. By his demeanor I understood that he wasn't mooded to talk of what had happened, of why his anger had so risen without being thwarted. We exited as we crossed Tennessee's border, coming down onto a twisting two-lane, its surface blackened by mud washed down from the hills. Unpainted houses stood alone in roadside depressions, or beside stagnant ponds, suggest ing that the area was yet inhabited. Not long after sunset we drove through a small town. One or two people walked its main street, windowshopping shuttered stores.
"Isn't it Saturday here?" John asked. "All appears plagued. The natives'd restless tonight, I'd think."
We found the population when the street became road again, outside of town. Dozens of rusting cars and minitrucks were parked near several square, windowless concrete bunkers. Through their open doors streamed the townsfolk; circles were drawn over most of the entranceways. Some distance from the others was a rambling shed; on its roadfac- ing side, a crude painting of a rattlesnake entwining its coils around a cross.
"Keep driving," I said. "All're busy here." Downroad, far from those crowded boxes, an assemblage of frame cabanas encircled a gravel lot; above the gateway were neon letters spelling TO RISTS.
"That's us," said John, and we drove in. Lightning's reflections flared the dark above the farthest hills. As we walked toward the office we saw another sign, one that read White Only. A woman with a barrel's proportions stood behind the counter inside; an unseen TV echoed racket wallround.
"Stayin' overnight, folks?" she asked; we nodded. "Glad to have you all visit us. Hope you have a pleasant stay." Her voice sharpened as she opened the guestbook. "Cash up front and proof of marriage." Our U.S. driver's licenses impressed her enough; she handed John a key after we'd paid. He stared at it long enough that I elbowed him, trying to distract. "What're you New Yorkers doing down this way?" she asked. "You coal people?"
"Vacationing," I said. John crossed the room, walking up to a Coca-Cola machine, a tall red-blood box. Slotting coins, he opened its windowed door and withdrew two bottles.
"Sounds nice," she said. "Goin' far?"
"Memphis, Tennessee," I said. "We're wondering how much more of a row we have to hoe."
She blinked her eyes, as if they stung. "Take the Moses Road when you leave in the morning, you'll get there by afternoon. Checkout time's nine-thirty. Say, mister, the opener's on the front of the door-"
"Accomplished," John said, thumbing off each cap.
"Well," she said, "have a good night, then." She backed away from the counter as she moved into another room, eyeing us all the while; we exited into rain. John's leg prevented him from running so swiftly as me to our cabin, but the clouds hadn't yet burst and we weren't soaked through. The place was no larger than our bedroom; contained but a concave bed, dusty table and lamp. The bathroom was no less lavish. As I toileted I rubbed myself with the thin towel provided; no sooner was I dry than my parchment skin wetted anew. The harsh light illuminated my veins so well that I didn't have to search for them as I performed my medi- check. As I watched the strip go pink, assuring a negative response, I listened to rain brush its beat against the roof. The downpour intensed while John bathroomed himself, and I lay listening to it until he emerged, and we faced each other stripped.
"It's honeymoon two, Iz," John said, evidencing desire, looking lovely; but my stomach ached, my head throbbed, and the memory of pain from our last encounter overcame my libido. The floor groaned beneath my steps as I walked over to where he stood; I reached up and brushed his damp hair from his brow.
"Let's lie for now, John. We'll play at morningside if able."
He nodded; stroked his chest as we bedded ourselves atop the sheets. A red and blue vine enscrolled his torso's Y-scar, his sole tattoo serving to disguise the Krylar's insertion-line. Gravity rolled us toward one another, pressing us together in the depths of the bed. He held out his palm that I could see his evening's dose, the standard baby blue and one of Leverett's white triangles.
"Medicheck's AO?" I asked, watching as he swallowed his pills dry.
"AO. Yours?"
"No infectives," I said. "Headwobbly, all the same. Sto- machturned. I'm dragging axles waltz-timed."
Lightning lit our room with blue flashes as the rain increased and thunder upvolumed. I petted his elbow's inner curve, touching the lumps left where his bones had reknitted. "Regooding doesn't become me," John said. "All efforts to change my ways within unavail. Appletrees don't grow oranges, Iz. Are they blinded to that?"
"Not all of them, surely," I said, suspecting that they were. "The man at Dixieland. What happened?"
"I keened to ex him, Iz."
"Obvioused," I said. "You should have sickened unto death, as prescribed," I said. "You didn't. Why?"
"Unknown," he said. "I'm medicating, you watched-"
"Thank you for showing."
"I knew you worried," he said. "It's beyond me, Iz. Tolerance levels overrode, possibly. Mayhap the rite of passage affects the innards somehow. Psychovirals in the air. I don't know but-"
"But what?"
"It's matterless, Iz, I'm regretting nothing, not even the interplay. This world's rewired me." He smiled without my having to cue; I couldn't remember the last time that had happened. "I'm alive."
"Understood. It's good, John. Ear-play your reactions, all the same," I said. "You've calmed now?"
"As a morning lake," he said. "But wide-eyed. I'll not sleep tonight, I can tell."
"It frightens me to see you so upset," I said. "When that other face turns toward me, I know it's not your own."
"It is."
He stroked my neck so tenderly that I lay almost unmindful of the ease with which he could have broken it. "Sleepa- way, then," I said. Telling myself that for the nonce I was satisfied with our lot, I listened to the rain. Beneath its rhythm I noted an unrecognizable cacophony, previously unheard. "What's that?"
"It's an outward sound," John said. "It's loudening. Listen." The gray sheet stuck to me as I got up. Peering out the room's window into the woods behind the motel I saw-far from the road, but close to our cabin-another of those concrete blockhouses, this one scarred by neither mark nor sign. A full house seemed in attendance within.
"Some ceremony, you think?" John asked, staring through the trees, seeing no more than I could. We heard exhilarating screams and tambourine's rattle rising above the raindrone, against a three-quarter-time stomp; those inside began chanting, their phrases sounding as Kana-lea, kana-lea, kana-lea. After a minute the chant ceased, and all silenced; then, the congregants began singing an a capella hymn.
"Is it religious?" John asked. "A ritual?"
"A southernism, mayhap."
The worshipers boomed forth as they undertook the chorus, their voices lifting is if overjoyed.
There were eleven additional verses, and as they concluded the last those in attendance screamed and laughed as drunks, intoxicated by spirit, besodden by the love of grim thoughts. John smiled, hearing their words, as if even before he listened their spirit had found its way inside of him. My fatigue overtook me; we lay down again, and after a short time I fell asleep. As he'd foreseen, John remained wakeful nightlong; he was lowvoicing as I drifted into my darkness, humming the song's chorus to himself.
Through the next morning I read, all the way to Memphis. Read The Growth of the American Republic:
Now this basic force, the secret of the sun, this energy beyond comprehension has been found. The atom has been split, and mankind stands at the threshold of a future no one can foresee.
Attempted to decipher the Daily Mirror:
PUT ANOTHER ROSENBERGER ON THE GRILL DOES REICH HAVE BOMB? NEIN, SAYS SPEER IKE DENIES SAUCERS OURS; PHILLY BUZZED
Idly thumbing Knifelife, found a quot
e from Edmund Burke:
No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear; for fear being an apprehension of pain or death, it operates in a manner that resembles actual pain. Whatever is terrible, therefore, is sublime, too.
"Memphis, five miles," John said, gleaning a towered directional outskirting another factory complex. The countryside west of Nashville was exclusively given over to industry, contrarying what we'd been told we'd likely find. "Twenty minutes, accounting for traffic."
"Mayhap we should verify their presence, prearrival?" I asked. "It's Sunday, they could be churching."
"Best not to lessen surprise," John said. Though his face was still flushed with new redness, his features had taken on the oddest cast, perspiring sans sweat, as if his skin had been waxed and polished. He'd medicated again that morning, predeparture; again, I'd watched, to certify.
"Is anything troubling?" I asked.
"Not at all, Iz," he said. "Life's renewed."
Memphis skylined on the horizon. On our left, some kilometers south of town, I saw industrial chimneys several hundred meters high; the heavy black smoke issuing from their spouts besmeared the clouds floating in from the west. Within the city the highest building held only twenty floors; suburban steeples jabbing up from all quadrants pricked the sky. Some were crucifixed at their points, but most were apexed with open circles such as the ones enscrawled above the doors of those boxes back in the mountains.
"The address's mapped?" John asked as we unramped from the interstate where it slashed into downtown. We stopped alongside a Piggly Wiggly store; I was uncertain what might have been sold at a place so named.
"We're directioned true," I said, examining the atlas. "Go right, and eventually turn left. It's Alabama Avenue we want."
For twelve blocks we drove up a treeless commercial strip of one- and two-floor brickfaces storing groceries, laundries and other small shops. The city's populace appeared as if they'd been floured, showing almost so colorless as I did, though the sun was hot enough to blister. Halfway along our course we glided past a windowless beige building, recently built; its grounds were fenced and guarded by men in blue uniforms. An Army-green bus, its windows painted and rear door soldered shut, was pulling out of its driveway as we sped by. Along its side was stenciled the legend, Memphis Department of Rehabilitation.
"A correction facility, I'd hazard," John said.
Seeing the sign for Alabama Avenue, we lefted onto its rutted pavement; yellowed grass grew in the avenue's gutters. Neither sidewalks nor streetlamps lent civility's appearance; judging from the houses' condition, none in the neighborhood had ever been monied. Junked cars were parked in barren yards; children scrambled over their rusted frames, staring at us as we rolled by. John parked our car before number 462, a two-story frame with encircling veranda: paint eczemaed from its boards, curling away in long, dry strips; an upper-floor window was patched with brown paper. The gutters sagged away from the roof, overweighted with wet leaves. No one evidenced as we exited and tramped across the muddy yard; ascending the porch's rotting steps, we sighted four battered mailboxes.
"Presley," I read. "Number two."
"On the side," said John, looking round. "After you." We lightfooted as we stepped across the porch, hearing the slats splinter and groan beneath our shoes. The unpaved driveway was emptied of cars; dogs were barking in the next street over. The air was thick enough to pour. "Door's unlocked," he said, touching the knob. "I'll precede."
With his fingertips he widened our passage, pushing the door open; wordlessly motioning that I should follow. The Presleys' living-room walls were newspapered with sheets of the Press-Scimitar, affording them as well the sole library seen. The windows were open, and unscreened; flies beaded every surface inside. A doorway led into a short hall stacked with unopened cartons; the kitchen showed, beyond. I glimpsed a white refrigerator streaked with gray and yellow stains. When he came to the end of the hall John jumped away from the kitchen, bumping into me as he raised his hands over his head.
"Excuse," he said, to one unseen. "Harm's unmeant."
"Who're you?" I heard a young man say. "Who? Let me see you.
I trailed my husband as he entered the kitchen, stepping over a woman who lay on the floor. Her appearance was that of Gladys Presley; she seemed to be asleep, wearing what I imagined at first to be a red apron over her white cotton dress. Elvis had a gun.
5
He barely resembled the icon with which we were familiared. If, while drunk and guided solely by a blurred snap, one attempted to mold with one's hands the features of Elvis onto a nongender-specific passerby, one could as easily have reproduced the look of this world's E. His hair was flatbrushed, with strands snaking down with humidity's weight; acne bubbled up from his face, poxing him with blisters. E's pink and black blouson buttoned with bone-white metal snaps, four on each cuff; its collar drooped from his craw as if unwilling to abut his skin. His black baggy trousers were sideseamed with yellow sequins. His hand shook as he leveled his gun at us; he bit his nails, I could see, and though his weapon's size was moderate I couldn't guess its caliber.
"Who the hell're you people?" he asked, liplicking. A daft anger inhered in his eyes, as if he readied to kill for having sneezed on his shirt. "What're y'doin' in my house?"
Trailing as John led, I froze, and listened to my husband's voice reveal nothing. "We overheard in passing," he said, appearing as calm personified, feigning that confronting an armed adolescent didn't fear him. "An accident, we thought. Then we looked."
E stepped nearer; his bath powder's scent sickened. "Y'like what y'see? Huh?"
"Then it was an accident?" John asked, softspeaking, lulling me with verbal opiates if not E; he spoke as if to a baby he wished to make unconscious without exertion.
"Yeah, a accident," E said, his voice upscaling into a child's petulant whine, adding to his threat. "Might be another accident. Tell me who you are."
"You're threatening?" I asked, keeping minded such distraction techniques as I knew. "Why would you hurt us?"
"Why wouldn't l?" E's fabled charisma was absent from his double; still, however disappointing his look and manner, there was no mistaking the voice. His wordsound iden- ticalled with that of his counterpart, though E's drawl was mud-thick. Hearing him speak, I noted anew the sensation felt when I'd heard this world's Eisenhower; that of an awe so encompassing as to terrify rather than astonish, as if I tried standing in hurricane's midst. "What's that accent? You're not Germans, are you?"
"Why Germans-?" I asked.
"Warum Deutsch?"John said, trolling for reactions.
"Sure's hell not police," E said. "Keep your hands up and get up against that wall there. Go on."
My hands stuck to the wall, it was so grease-bespattered. Flies bombarded me as I stood there with my husband, restraining my shakes as I turned away from our host. In the instant between our circling and his touching I anticipated all the places where he might lay hands; then he pawed my shoulder. "What'd your mother do, Elvis?" I asked, thinking he must have stung himself as he jerked away his fingers.
"How'd you know my name?" he asked, recovering at once enough to position his gun-barrel's tip behind my ear. It uncertained, what my husband might be reading in E's actions and stance; I feared overmuch that our quarry would, at any second, ex us sans qualm or reason, and so I couldn't distance myself enough yet to judge. Seeing John's lack of motion assured me but little; guaranteed that, as circumstanced, there was naught to do but waitwatch.
"We're looking for you," I said.
"What for?" E asked, pressing his gun against my head, pinching my scalp. "You all government?"
"You're hurting me," I said; simultaneously felt his free hand pushing up my dress, and his fingers kneading my hip.
"Turn around here," he said; I spun, ready to slap. As he gazed at me fullface I watched his features shift. I was older than his mother, after all; however toned and tucked I'd been, however bleached
I showed, my age evidenced clear in the corners that needed dusting: in the wrinkles around my eyes, at my lipcorners, at my neck's root. E drew his hand from under my clothing; took the gun far enough from my head to allow air to circulate between them again. 'Just checkin' to see if you're armed," he said, as if to apologize. "Have to."
"Don't hurt me again," I said. "Or touch me as if I were property."
"I'll do more'n that if I haveta," E said. "What're you lookin' for me for if you're government? We're not commies or niggers."
"We're not government. We came for you." E attempted a sneer, but hadn't yet perfected its angle and pitch, and so he appeared not so ominous as mentally challenged. "We want you to hear our proposal," I said.
"Better hear mine first," he said. "I'm tireda this bullshit. Hey!" E goosed John with his gun. "Face me but keep those hands up. Who sent you?"
"Our employers," John said as he turned toward E, his voice so untensed as before. E placed his gun-barrel at my husband's lips, stilling them.
"Y'aIl gonna do what I say," E said. "Dig me?"
"Duggen," I said. "Don't do that."
E replaced the barrel against my lips, brushing its coldness against them as if to add color. "Y'all got a car?" he asked.
"We do," I said as he took away his gun. "Why'd you kill your mother?"
"That's none a your business, ma'am. Don't ask me why. Just do it."
"Understood." Looking at John, steeling myself against kneeshake, blinking stinging sweat from my eyes' lenses, I saw his wink; grasped sans analysis that he would do nothing until E threatened overmuch: how much threat might that be, I wondered, if a gun at my head and a hand up my dress didn't inload emergency into crisis? It occurred that mayhap his medication had at last effected, doubling his coma, leaving him loboed.