The Graceland Tales

by Donna D. Prescott

  “That’s not just a problem for the younger generation, though,” says Hubert. “It’s a problem for the larger community. Doctors need to reevaluate how and when they prescribe these drugs.”

  “Look at Elvis’s drug use,” I say. “I believe his doctor ultimately lost his medical license over how he prescribed drugs for Elvis. Elvis was a good-hearted, generous man who just wanted to play his music.”

  “I heard that Elvis’s autopsy showed that his colon was of a record-breaking size because he was so constipated because of the drugs he took,” says Dwight the Lay Minister.

  “Eww, TMI,” says Sandra.

  “And it’s not just a problem with drugs. Depression and other mental health problems haunt humans. Look at the suicides—Kurt Cobain, Robin Williams, Anthony Bourdain, Kate Spade. How many senseless deaths is it going to take for society to address these cancers of the soul?” asks John the Pastor.

  “This is true. But, like, we’re getting away from problems of young people today. What about kids getting shot up at schools? Columbine should have been the only school shooting. Instead, how many school shootings have happened since then? Like, how can this generation or future generations trust adults to take care of them? I registered to vote the day I turned eighteen and have voted in every election since. But adults need to step up and take responsibility and stop claiming my generation is not as good as past generations. I have a story to tell about a young woman in my dorm. We took Western Civ together.”

  Senator Pam stands up and says, “That’s enough, Sandra. We get your point. You don’t need to lecture us any further.” Sandra looks at her mother, incredulously, grabs her bag, and storms from the coach. Adam the Senator’s Aide and Hector the Elvis Tribute Artist both stand up to follow her.

  Hector looks at Adam and says, “Let me handle this.” Adam pauses and sits back down.

  Senator Pam addresses the coach. “I am so sorry. I’m thrilled my daughter has opinions of her own, but sometimes she can be quite—um, outspoken—in how she expresses them. Plus, children like nothing better than to embarrass their parents. There is a time and place for such discussions, and I apologize if Sandra has offended any of you.”

  “Don’t worry, Senator. You should be proud of your daughter. She clearly has a mind of her own and thoughtful opinions, even if you—or any of us—disagree with her,” I say. “She doesn’t offend but she does make one think.”

  Senator Pam drops heavily into her seat. For a few moments, the travelers sit in still silence, reflecting, perhaps, on this recent scene. The rhythmic click of train wheels hiccupping over railroad ties provides the soundtrack.

  After several moments, Rene/e says, “I guess, just as some old fogeys like to complain about the worthlessness of the younger generation, some in the younger generation take pleasure in complaining about how clueless the older generation is. Perhaps, it balances out. I’ve been lucky in my experience. My parents accepted my sexuality much easier than my sister did.”

  “Maybe she didn’t feel threatened by a brother but felt competition from a sister,” says Elaine a Techie.

  “Maybe your sister is afraid you’ll ask to share her clothes,” I suggest.

  “You could be right, Donna. I’m taller than my sister but narrower in the hips. We can’t share pants but we could share shirts and some dresses. I always envied my sister’s relationship with our mama. She’s two years older than me. From my earliest memory, I used to try to get them to take me shopping with them. When they took me along, I would disappear among the racks, feeling the fabrics and wishing mama was buying for me, too, and not just for my sister.”

  “Do you and your mama and sister go out shopping together now?” I ask.

  “Not yet. Mama enjoys having pedicures with me, but my sister has never quite gotten comfortable with me as her sister instead of her brother. Mama laughs and says I’m the daughter she never had.”

  “What about your father?” asks Blanche the Lawyer, leaning forward to look around Franklin the Real Estate Magnate.

  “Once he got over the initial shock, he was relieved that I’m not gay. He can accept his transgender daughter the heterosexual, but he could never accept his son the homosexual. Still, I’ve always considered myself heterosexual. When I was still in my boy body, I was attracted to boys, but I never felt ‘gay.’ It’s hard to express what I mean. It’s a lot harder to inform your family that you’re not gay, but a girl in a boy’s body—coming out of a different kind of closet.”

  “Yeah, one with dresses and blouses and high heels,” giggles Blanche.

  “And now, you’re a woman in a woman’s body,” says Franklin.

  “Yeah, you right!” says Rene/e. “And this Cajun woman is going to delight you folks with a Boudreaux and Thibodeaux joke to lighten the mood here.” She stands and moves to the center of the coach.

  “Oh, I love Boudreaux and Thibodeaux jokes!” I say.

  “OK. Boudreaux and Thibodeaux, they done work at the old Jax Brewery in New Orleans. One day, Thibodeaux, he fell in the big vat of beer and drowned. Boudreaux, he got the job of breaking the news to the widow Thibodeaux. He began, ‘Mais, cher, I’m so sorry to tell you that Thibodeaux, he done fell in the big vat of beer and drowned.’ The widow Thibodeaux wiped away a tear. ‘Tell me, cher, did he suffer much?’ Boudreaux replied, ‘Mais no, he got out three times to go pee.’” Most of the remaining travelers laugh except Kirk who has been staring out the window into the dark countryside since he sat down, as if the sleeping cattle could make the world right.

  “I have a Cajun-related joke to tell,” I say. “I actually heard this joke from a guide on a swamp tour many years ago. He was a Cajun making some extra money by offering these tours. He talked of those dark days when the government decided to try to stamp out the Cajun dialect, but the government could not stamp out the Cajun spirit. So, the government sent an English-speaking teacher to the Cajun school. The teacher decided to teach the little students to count in English. He told the kids to repeat after him. He said, ‘Say one.’ All the kids said ‘one.’ Then he said ‘Say two.’ And all the little kids got up and left.” Rene/e and I both laughed, and Blanche and Franklin chuckled.

  Dmitri the Hacker says, “Not even the native English speakers get it.”

  Blanche says, “Oh, in French, ‘say two’ sounds just like ‘c’est tout,’ which means ‘that’s all.’ The kids thought the teacher had finished the lesson, so they left.”

  “Cute,” says Gita the Cook. She flips the page in her sketchbook and starts another sketch, a muted yellow aura glowing from her sari.

  “Now that I’ve warmed up the crowd, Theresa, I’m going to tell y’all a Cajun folktale.” Theresa seems grateful that Rene/e averted further unpleasantness after Sandra stormed out and smiles wanly. The doors at the front of the car slide open, and Ernest and Bella return. She takes her original seat near the front. Ernest goes back to his seat, retrieves his belongings, and takes the empty seat next to Bella.

  Rene/e

  THE TRANSGENDER WOMAN’S TALE

  RENE/E: My old grandmaman used to tell me this story when I was a bébé. We would visit her at her house, and at bedtime she would tell us a story. We always begged her to tell us the story about the voodoo lady, Mambo Marinette, who cursed the Catholic priest, Father Guérin. We liked it that the Father was too smart for his own britches. It goes like this: Mambo Marinette was an old woman who lived down on the bayou. She never had any children. She was known for her bonté, her goodness, and for her healing spells. You got a broken heart, she give you a spell. You need to earn some extra cash, she give you a spell. She knew her herbs and potions. Her gris-gris bags were popular with the folks. And no one ever heard her utter a bad word against nobody. Now, Father Guérin, he wanted Mambo Marinette to quit casting her spells and come to his church because he felt she was taking business away from him. He was a greedy sort, like Brother Kirk talked about in his story.

  (Hearing his name, KIRK momenta
rily rouses himself from his pout and then stares back into the gloom.)

  He traveled around the parish visiting the sick and the poor and trying to get them to give him money for the Church that he would really spend on himself. He didn’t like to see people giving their money to this old voodoo woman when they should be giving their money to him. He would try to sell the sick and the poor indulgences to help them get well or get money—win the lottery or something. He would try to get his parishioners to give him money to light candles for their dead relatives. He didn’t like to see Mambo Marinette taking money he thought should rightfully come to him. Now, Mambo Marinette knew Father Guérin for the scoundrel that he was and never like to see him coming to visit. He would walk up her lane and say ‘Mambo Marinette, I come to bring you to the Lord.’ And she would say ‘Father Guérin, it’s not my time yet to be going nowhere but here.’

  One day, Father Guérin was out visiting folks when he came upon another traveler. ‘Hail and well met,’ the priest said, thinking maybe he could get some money from this fellow. The traveler said, ‘Welcome. Where are you going to on the bayou? Will you travel far today?’ Father Guérin said he wasn’t going far. Not wanting to admit he was a priest trying to scam money from his parishioners, he claimed he was an insurance salesman. He said that an old voodoo woman lived nearby and she owed him money on an insurance policy which he aimed to collect. ‘Where might you be headed, my friend?’

  (JACK THE IMMIGRANT MERCHANT closes his Business English text and gives his attention to RENE/E’S story.)

  ‘Me, I’m headed home. I’ve been out on business, trying to collect some money due to me. So you sell insurance to the poor bayou folk, do you? Well, we’re in a similar business, collecting money.’ Father Guérin said that maybe his fellow traveler could teach him a trick or two. ‘Yeah, man, I can sure share some tips with you. To tell the truth, I make my living by extortion. The men I visit, I take money any way I can, through trickery or violence. I make a good living at it, too, me.’ Father Guérin, warming to this stranger, said ‘Ah, yes, I can learn from you, my friend. If my clients cannot pay me with money, I take whatever they got instead—furniture or even livestock—chickens, sometimes even a pig.’

  ‘My friend, let me level with you now that we’re getting to know one another better. I am a fiend and I dwell in hell.’ Father Guérin said, ‘What, Monsieur Diable himself?’ His companion said, ‘Yes, Monsieur Diable himself. I’m out today to see what I can get.’ Father Guérin said, ‘To tell the truth, I’m really a Catholic priest trying to get myself some extra money. Travel along with me, then. Together, we should make quite a haul.’ Monsieur Diable said, ‘Tell me about this voodoo lady.’ Father Guérin said that she was so good, she never said anything bad against anybody or anything. Monsieur Diable then offered a challenge: whichever one of them could get her to utter a curse, Monsieur Diable would make that curse come true. Father Guérin liked this deal. He thought if he could get the Devil himself to curse Mambo Marinette, then she would have to give up her voodoo and come to his church. She would have to give him a whole lot of money to try to redeem her soul from Monsieur Diable.

  (The doors at the front of the coach slide open. THE CONDUCTOR flashes his rubber chicken key ring and scurries through, trying not to disturb the storyteller.)

  So they got to her house. As they walked up the lane, Father Guérin said, ‘Mambo Marinette, I come to bring you to the Lord.’ And she said, ‘Father Guérin, it’s not my time yet to be going nowhere but here.’ Mambo Marinette was laying out some herbs for making some gris-gris bags when her minou, her kitty cat, caught whiff of a mouse and scattered her herbs and stuff chasing it. As the kitty ran off still chasing the mouse, Mambo Marinette called after it, ‘The Fiend take you and that mouse, too!’ She ignored the two men while she gathered her scattered herbs, muttering and huffing to herself. Father Guérin could hardly contain his glee. He said to Monsieur Diable, ‘You hear that! She cursed her very own cat, gave that kitty to you. We made a deal! She cursed the kitty. Now you have to take her precious cat to hell.’ Right then, her minou returned with the dead mouse and dropped it at Mambo Marinette’s feet. She left off straightening her herbs and supplies, picked up the cat, and stroking it said, ‘Ah, that’s my sweet minou. You caught that bad mouse what been nibbling on my herbs.’ Monsieur Diable turned to Father Guérin and said, ‘The voodoo lady’s curse was not sincere. She never intended for me to take her kitty.’

  Mambo Marinette, holding her cat close, said to Father Guérin, ‘I hear you trying to take my kitty away. You always trying to take stuff from me or trying to trick me into giving you money. The Devil take you!’ Monsieur Diable asked Mambo Marinette, ‘You sure you want the Devil to take this man of God?’ Mambo Marinette spit. ‘He’s no man of God. He’s the Devil’s own child and the Devil should take him home.’ And with that, a big whoosh sounded and Monsieur Diable and Father Guérin disappeared. Monsieur Diable took them both home to hell.

  “That’s one way to clean up your own backyard,” laughs Senator Pam.

  “And it’s a lot easier than trying to get the government involved,” says Franklin the Real Estate Magnate.

  “Y’all know, we loved that story so much. We loved it that the old lady ended up outsmarting the priest without even meaning to. We used to try and make that sincerity of the wish thing work in real life. I wished my sister would get eaten by a gator and she wished I would get kidnapped by gypsies. Bien sur, our wishes never came true, but we still loved that story. Which reminds me of another Boudreaux and Thibodeaux joke.” Dmitri the Hacker groans. Rene/e blows him a kiss.

  I squelch the impulse to point out that Rene/e’s tale bears similarities to Chaucer’s Friar’s Tale. Instead of a voodoo woman, the Friar’s Tale involves a poor country woman. The corrupt summoner in the tale threatens to take her new pan, and when she sincerely curses him, the Devil takes him. It is a striking example of the power of folk tales, but after Ernest’s outburst at me, I decide to keep quiet this time.

  “Boudreaux and Thibodeaux were out in their bateau fishing on a lake. Boudreaux, he catches himself a lamp that’s all covered in mud. So he wipes off the lamp and out pops a genie.”

  “Oh, I’ve heard this one before,” says Blanche. “It’s funny.”

  “So the genie tells Boudreaux that he gets three wishes for freeing him from the lamp. First Boudreaux wishes for some new cooking pots for his wife. The genie tells Boudreaux that when he gets home that afternoon, he would find his wife cooking with the new pots. Then Thibodeaux tells him to wish for a new bateau. Poof, they find themselves sitting in a brand new boat. For the third wish, Boudreaux thinks real hard and finally wishes that the lake was made of beer. Poof, the new boat is floating on a lake of beer. Thibodeaux slaps him upside the head and says, ‘Man, what you gone and done that for? Now we going to have to pee in our brand new bateau!” Everybody laughs. Even Kirk looks away from his window and stifles a grin.

  Dmitri the Hacker says, “Hey, I never been to New Orleans, but I heard a creepy story about it. It really happened to a friend’s cousin’s boss.” Instead of returning to her seat behind me, Rene/e goes up the aisle and stops at Dmitri’s row. Dmitri moves into the aisle to continue his story. Rene/e tweaks his cheek and takes the window seat.

  Dmitri

  THE HACKER SPEAKS

  “Uh, oh. Not one of those stories,” says Oriel the Hotel Manager.

  “The friend’s cousin’s boss—I think his name was Martin—went to New Orleans for the first time one year for the Mardi Gras. He rented a hotel room on that famous street, um,”

  “Bourbon Street?” Franklin says.

  “Yeah, Bourbon Street. People tell me that the Mardi Gras is a time when people behave bad, do things they would never do in their home city, so Martin met a woman in a bar. He liked her, especially after drinking. He didn’t care if he ever saw her again after that night. She invited him to her hotel room. He went. In the room, they had another drink. T
hen, he woke up in a bathtub filled with ice. Turns out, the woman gave him drugs and stole his kidney.”

  “That’s just not true. That story was proven false many years ago. It’s just an urban legend,” Franklin says.

  “But no,” says Dmitri, “I know it is true.” Franklin pulls out his phone, taps on it, and holds it up to Dmitri. “See. The New Orleans police themselves say it’s not true.”

  “Oh,” says Dmitri. “Why would Martin tell a story that is not true?”

  “It’s sort of like the story that Rene/e just told, a folk tale but updated for modern times. People tell these kinds of stories to scare one another—like ghost stories around a camp fire.”

  Rene/e says, “Dmitri, me and you, we’ll share some New Orleans stories later, cher.” Dmitri flashes a half-sincere smile and instead of returning to his seat next to Rene/e, takes the aisle seat beside Gita, who continues to sketch.

  “Early in his career, Elvis acted in a very good movie, set in New Orleans, King Creole,” I impart. “Can I at least talk about Elvis on this trip, Ernest?” Everyone looks at Ernest. “Sure, why not, darlin’. We all love Elvis. Just don’t preach to us about Chowser.”

  “His name is pronounced ‘Chawser,’ Ernest.”

  “Right. Just don’t preach to us about Chawser.”

  Blanche the Lawyer redirects the conversation. “The stories we told at slumber parties when I was a girl were the absolute best. I still get creeped out by the one about the babysitter and the phone line. The teenaged girl was babysitting over night for twins. They were sleeping upstairs in their bedroom and she was downstairs on the sofa. The phone rang and a male voice said,” she deepens her voice, “‘The twins are dead.’ She was absolutely terrified and just laid there. The phone rang again and the same thing happened. The male voice said, ‘The twins are dead.’ Finally, she called the operator and asked where the call was coming from. The operator said, ‘Honey, it’s an extension phone in the house.’” She nestles closer to Franklin.