The king is dead, p.14
The King Is Dead, page 14
“I beg your pardon, Miss Estella.”
“Have you gone deaf, Ollie? Last night—I thought you police knew everything—Dixie came over here and threw red dye all over the pups. Didn’t you know that?”
Well, maybe he did and he’d forgotten. The shooting had slipped down a notch in importance since Lovie Rakestraw had been found dead.
Estella said, “I don’t blame her, I know she’d warned Sonny about the noise, they don’t bother me when I turn my hearing aid off, but Sonny’s gonna be mad as a wet hen when he finds out, and you know how he is when he’s mad. He’ll go over there and scream at Dixie and upset her, poor thing, pregnant with those fatherless children. Now I’m looking at Dixie right this minute through my window into her kitchen, she and Lucille are jabbering at one another sixty miles a minute pointing so hard at the morning paper they’re going to poke a hole in it, just read about Lovie Rakestraw would be my bet. People rose at a decent hour, turned on the radio, they’d get a jump on the news, but those two, they like to lie around in their beds, not that I’m saying that’s wrong, anyway that woman who was here last night creeping around in the yard, she was back just a while ago, took their paper into them.”
“What woman who was creeping around last night?”
“The little brunette in the jeans and the cowboy boots, of course she was dressed real nice today, looked like a saleslady.”
“Miss Estella, did you tell any of the officers about this woman?”
“No, I did not. And before you ask me why, I’m going to tell you—a., they did not ask me, and b., they talk to me like I don’t have good sense. You don’t do that, that’s why I mentioned it to you, though I wouldn’t have if I’d thought about it for a minute. Now, Ollie, are you going to come over here and do something about these pups before Sonny comes back home and finds them dyed red right before that Jackson Kennel Club Show and goes over there and has a fit and puts Dixie into premature labor with those poor fatherless twins?”
16
Dewey had popped a Seconal to calm down the Benzedrine he’d popped to get himself up before he stepped into the registration tent. Now the drugs were wrestling it out in his brain. He thought the upper was winning because he still felt pretty jazzy. He slipped his gold Elvis sunglasses on against the bright spring sunshine that was struggling through the smoke and the haze. “Come on over here, Elvis, and have a beer,” one of the barbecuers called, and Dewey was headed that way when this tallish brunette stepped right in his face.
She was wearing big gold hoop earrings, a yellow cotton sweater that her curves did a nice job with, and a pair of faded plaid slacks. Madras, that’s what they called it. Old beat-up sneakers. Had a little bitty white dog on a blue leash. Dewey squinted. There was something familiar about the two of them, but he couldn’t place it. He nodded and tried to scoot around them because the woman was standing between him and his beer.
“Oh, excuse me,” she said. “Here, let me move out of your way.”
“Thank you kindly, ma’am.” The bubba with the words SMOKE IS FOR REAL printed across his chest gave him the beer along with a big wink. Yep, lots of Elvis groupies showed up at these things, that’s what Dewey’d been told. And this one was a prime example, unless he missed his guess, dying to speak to him. “You an Elfan?” he asked her, thinking he’d give her a foot up into the conversation.
“I don’t know,” she smiled.
He liked the way she looked. He’d put her at thirty-five or so, somewhere around Mary Ann’s age.
“What’s an Elfan?”
“An Elvis fan, they call ’em Elfans.”
“I’m sort of one, I guess.”
Dewey shook his head and gave her The Smile. “Ma’am, pardon me, but I don’t think there’s any such animal.”
She gave The Smile right back to him and said, “You mean either you’re an Elvis fan or you’re not?”
“That’s pretty much the size of it.” And then he shifted himself, threw one foot up on a wooden box that someone had left by the side of the tent. Turned and gave her his profile.
“You really do look a lot like Elvis,” she said.
“Well, I try to.”
“Do you mind talking with me a few minutes?” Then she pulled a little notebook and a pen out of her back pocket and handed him a card. Dewey squinted at it. Between the sunglasses and the drugs, it was tough for him to read. Then she stuck out her hand just like a man and they shook and introduced themselves, though he didn’t really catch her name. “I’m a journalist,” she said. “Working on a book. I thought I might do something with impersonators.”
See. It was happening exactly like he thought it would. Here it was, tonight was the first eliminating round, and he hadn’t even done that yet and already he was standing right on the edge of fame. He knew it, knew it, knew it. Knew that once he stepped forward, the whole thing would fall into place. Now she was saying something about Atlanta, a newspaper, or maybe it was a book. It didn’t matter. Soon, they’d all be lying at his feet like little dogs.
“I’ve talked with some of the other contestants, and they have some pretty interesting stories. One’s the mayor of a town in Illinois. Another is a preacher.” Now she was grooving on it, made her cheeks flush. “One is black, one is a woman, and there’s a little kid. One man told me that when he heard on the radio that Elvis was dead, he pulled his car across two lanes of traffic and almost died in a head-on collision. He decided that Elvis’s spirit saved him and this was his mission.”
Dewey spit in the dirt. “You talk to that Magoo and that Vaughn?”
Sam nodded. “They said they’d show me some trophies later.”
Dewey spit again. “They don’t know nothing. They ain’t ever even been in Tupelo before.”
“And you?” She looked up at him while she was scribbling.
“I was born here.”
“Really?” And then he could tell she was staring at the name tag they’d pinned on him. It said his name and his town. “I live in Holly Springs now, it’s about fifty miles up the interstate, toward Memphis. But I was born here.”
“You don’t say.” Then she narrowed her eyes, probably trying to figure out his age. “I met some other people here at the cookoff from Holly Springs.”
“Yeah. There’s probably some smokers. It’s like a whole world of Q, here to Memphis over to Arkansas. I eat a lot of it myself.”
“I understand Elvis liked barbecue. If you were born here, did you by any chance know him? Is that why you’re an impersonator?”
“You might say that.” Dewey gave her his other profile, reaching back to make sure his collar was still turned up. He’d always hated his long neck, just like Elvis.
“You did? You knew him? What was he like?”
“Well, he was like a kid. Any poor kid, except he was kind of intense in a way even back then.”
“What do you mean intense?”
“I don’t mean strange. It’s that he wanted to play music. He used to follow around this guy called Mississippi Slim who picked and sang on the local radio station. Followed him like a pup. But Elvis left here, you know, when he was thirteen.”
“And why was that?” Now she was scribbling like crazy.
Dewey frowned. His face grew dark. His long blue-black hair flopped lower on his forehead. “Because Vernon was fired again.”
“Vernon was his daddy, right?”
Dewey rolled his eyes. If she didn’t know that, what point was there in talking to her? But then he tried to get ahold of himself. Come on, old son, he said. She’s gonna start you on that road to the bright lights, be patient now. “People were always taking Vernon’s jobs, his houses, his dignity away from him.”
“What kind of job was he fired from?”
“Driving a delivery truck.”
“Oh, really? Elvis drove a truck too, before he made it, didn’t he?”
Dewey nodded. Well, she knew something. “Vernon was delivering hooch for a bootlegger.”
“You really do know a lot about Elvis. Do you go to Tribute Week at Graceland? I understand those people are experts.”
Experts! “What do they know? They’re ghouls! Bloodsuckers! They don’t know! They don’t know nothing!”
Dewey could hear himself getting loud, but he couldn’t help it. His head was starting to ache, the strain of listening to those fools back in the tent piled on top of the drugs. He dropped his foot off the wooden box, started pacing back and forth in the dirt.
“They never walked in his shoes. They don’t know how it feels, your daddy having to pack up and leave town and move up to Memphis, accused of selling off a stolen pig!”
Dewey was talking a lot louder than he meant to. A little crowd was gathering. Amen! a man shouted. And then Dewey got the feeling, the one that used to come over him when he was a little kid in church. The preacher would say, “Melt the sinner’s heart, oh Jesus!” and the thrill ran right through him and he knew that it was his turn to speak. His duty to testify. Just like now.
He wheeled on the audience, taking a karate stance, his legs wide, that right hand pushed forward like a knife. “They don’t know how it feels, your daddy shipped off to the penitentiary when you’re three, a man telling lies on him about another pig! Your daddy shipped to Parchman, the pea farm. They work you sunup to sundown, chopping cotton in Parchman Penitentiary. Did you know that? Did you know that Vernon was sentenced when Elvis was only a pup?”
“Tell it like it is, Elvis,” a woman in the crowd screamed.
Dewey struck another pose. This was great! He was filled with the power. He could feel it brimming, splashing over on the people. “Man said he sold that hog for four dollars, then added zeros to the check! Like he was that stupid!”
The crowd laughed. “That would be stupid!” a bubba said slapping his knee. Dewey rolled an eye over toward the writer woman. She was taking notes like crazy.
“Vernon wasn’t stupid! He had a long run of bad luck, like most poor people do. You think people are poor because they want to be?”
“No way!” the crowd answered.
Dewey was pacing up and down. Sam thought he looked like an old caged lion she’d seen once in the Atlanta zoo. She watched the crowd, open-mouthed, swaying, and this wasn’t only an impersonator, and he wasn’t even singing. It was pretty amazing.
“Well, they’re not poor because they want to be! They’re not poor because they’re lazy! They’re poor because they started out poor and it’s hard to get ahead when all you can think about is putting food on the table!”
“I hear that!” The crowd was clapping now to the rhythm of Dewey’s words.
“Vernon and Gladys’s folks both, you know they was poor for generations! Sharecroppers! Working for those who had, could never get ahead themselves! Gladys’s momma had a whole passel of kids, and TB, then Gladys’s daddy died!”
“Preach it, Elvis,” said an old man who looked like he’d hoed many a hard row himself.
Dewey didn’t even pause for breath. “Gladys slaved in the fields, cleaned houses, sewed in a shirt factory for two pitiful dollars a day, right over there,” he pointed a block away to where the old factory buildings still stood, “and was grateful for it! They lived in the slums in Memphis!”
“Poor, unh-huh. Those folks was poor.” That was an old black lady, holding her hands like she was praying, rocking back and forth to the music in Dewey’s words.
“Did you know?” he shouted. “Did you know that up in Memphis Vernon loaded paint cans for eighty-three cents an hour? Gladys cleaned up other people’s cafeteria slops? Elvis drove a truck? About to make that first recording for Sun, right then, on the verge, they didn’t have nothing! They was broke! Do you know? Do you know what I mean?”
Dewey was screaming. The crowd was clapping its hands. Yes, yes, yes. Sing it, brother.
“People born with means, they don’t understand,” said a woman standing right behind Sam.
“They don’t,” said Dewey, “they don’t. They don’t know the feeling. Feeling. Feeling. Ah know the feeling. Feeling.”
And then Dewey hit the wall. Inside that black leather he was wet to the bone. The drugs in him had waged a mighty battle, and they had won. He needed to lie down. He didn’t think he’d slept more than three hours all night. He never slept. Or when he did, he walked. Walked in his sleep like he walked in the King’s shoes.
Now he staggered off from the crowd, back over to that wooden box he’d thrown his foot up on when he was showing off to the writer woman. He couldn’t remember why he needed it, but he knew he needed it. Something to do with Mary Ann. He picked up the box and stumbled to his motorcycle, leaving the applause of the crowd behind him, someone yelling, “You gonna take it, man! Gonna win that there contest.”
Dewey believed that. He was, he knew he was. He jumped on his bike, and it roared to life, the power now between his legs, and in that moment it came to him. He knew who that writer woman was. Brunette, Mary Ann had said that. A dog, Mary Ann said something about dogs when she went to see her. The right age, and rich, but not dressed rich, that was a trick he’d learned rich people played. That woman, what did she say was her name? Sam, Sam, that was it. Mary Ann had that funny look on her face when she talked about her, playing cute, never said the woman’s exact name, but said something about the country, patriotism, Uncle Sam, that was it, this was the very woman Mary Ann had come to Tupelo to find. And rob.
17
So what did she look like?” asked Dixie.
“Didn’t you sit right there and listen to me tell Ollie Priest all about her? And I already told you once.” Lucille was fast running out of patience.
“Heard you say she was brunette, five-four, one-twenty, pretty, if you overlooked the black eye, carrying a suitcase full of sexy undies.”
“That’s her, all right. Did you see how Ollie got excited ’cause I remembered as much as I did?”
“I wish you hadn’t.”
“Yeah, well, you wish that and I’ll keep hoping I don’t go to jail for withholding evidence. At the very least I bet I lose my notary public, they come take my stamp away. Why’d you shake your head at me when he asked if she said her name or we knew where she might be staying? We know exactly who she is and where she is and her room number.”
Dixie ignored all that. “What you were looking at was that purple dressing gown you were telling me about when that cute young policeman Ollie sent over roared up in the driveway, missed her just like Ollie did five minutes later.”
“Well, Miss Nancy Drew, what exactly was it you wanted to know?”
“Tell me this, Lucille,” said Dixie with a look on her face that made Lucille wonder what the hell was going on, “forget these babies making me resemble a double-wide mobile home, does your Miss Velma favor me even slightly?”
*
“I always said good timing’s half the game,” said Sam, riding shotgun in Ollie’s midnight-blue Oldsmobile, the two of them taking a ride out to the Elvis Presley Campground.
Ollie saying what luck it was he ran into her, he pulling out of Dixie McClanahan’s driveway, she pulling into Red’s next door. A man had to eat lunch sometime, take a break, there was something he wanted to show her, and wasn’t it nice she happened to be carrying a big sample of Floyd Morgan and the Holly Springs Hogboys’ ribs she was going to share with Miss Estella who’d come to the door in a navy blazer and gray slacks and waved her off, saying, Child, don’t think a thing of it, go have yourself a good time riding around with the police even if they won’t do anything about helping a poor old helpless woman with her dogs. Ollie saying Golly gee, Miss Estella, I clean forgot, could we talk later, I’ll give you a ride too sometime if you’d like that. She said she would indeed, but only if there was gunplay and she could wear a uniform.
They headed north out of town, then east into the piney woods, Sam telling Ollie about Floyd Morgan’s rotisserie almost jolting him to the Great Cookoff in the Sky. Ollie was holding a rib with his right hand, steering with his left. “Well, I’m glad he lived, ’cause he makes some good Q. Juicy, not too hot, not too sweet. You find out what happened to his cooker?”
“You mean after it shocked him? Cooter Williams had it dragged over to the dump.”
“We’ll have somebody go take a look at it.” Ollie picked up his phone, and before he’d finish his potato salad, one detail would be questioning Cooter’s workmen and Floyd, then taking Floyd over to the dump, where another detail would have already begun the search.
Sam said, “So you think it’s worth looking into?”
“I don’t know what I think, except I’ve never seen so much hullabaloo go down in one twenty-four-hour period in all the years I’ve lived in Tupelo.” Ollie chewed for a minute. Then he told her the boys hadn’t found anything amiss with the Holcomb wiring. “Yep. Looks like two separate incidents. No connection between the shooting and Lovie Rakestraw’s death. At least not that one anyway, and I’m fresh out of guesses.”
Then he told her about Lovie Rakestraw’s little indiscretion.
“So you think Lovie’s husband found out she was fooling around, set the timer on her whirlpool, left town, and bye-bye Lovie?”
“I’d like it a lot, except she ought to have fried the night before, unless, of course, she skipped her bath and didn’t lay a finger on any of the plumbing. Which is pretty unlikely.”
“A woman who was as fond of water as you said, I doubt she’d go to bed without brushing her teeth. So now you’re looking at the lover. How about other enemies? Beneficiaries?”
“Husband gets what’s hers. Enemies?” Ollie waggled a hand. “Lots of folks thought Lovie was a little too big for her britches for somebody who grew up dirt poor in Milltown.”
“Married up?”
“Way up.”
“All in all, I’d say you have your hands full. Raft of people to talk to.”
Ollie shook his head. “Not so much confusion in these parts since the tornado of thirty-six. ’Course I wasn’t around for that, and it was an act of God anyway. I don’t think God had anything to do with this mess.”
