Losing Graceland

by Micah Nathan

Downstairs Ben heard the laughter of Darryl and his gang. The old man was talking, joking, telling stories. Ben had left him seated on the couch, gauze taped to his temple, drinking milk from a brandy snifter (“I’ll take a milk and brandy without the brandy”) and eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (“Toast that bread dark as night and go heavy on the peanut butter”).

  He stared at the ceiling, smooth white glowing pale from the half-moon. It was during moments like these, Ben thought—unexpected late-night parties, laughter trilling past midnight—that his alienation surfaced at its most savage. Of course, only he remained aware of it, hiding behind a smile and understanding nods.

  He didn’t know where the alienation originated because it had always been with him, long before his father’s death. He’d had it as a child, listening to his parents laughing and drinking in the living room with their friends, and he remembered squeezing his eyes shut as hard as he could—blossoms of white, red, and yellow dissolving and reforming in the dark—until the noise faded away, their voices retreating into soft babbles and the clink of glasses. Nothing comforted him during those late nights. Only the autistic closeness of his blanket and the rhythm of his heart in his ears.

  The night he found out his father had been rammed into a hot dog stand, he left the house and drove to the driving range. He’d never golfed before, never understood the appeal of walking around a giant lawn all day, lugging a bag full of iron sticks. But that night—the phone call, the amnesiac drive to his parents’ house, the confusion, the salted peanuts for dinner—he wanted to golf, the best part of golf, the only part he understood: smacking the shit out of a little white ball.

  He bought ten buckets and asked the skinny kid behind the counter to give him their best driver. The kid—wearing a baseball cap and a T-shirt with Bobby’s Links blocked across the front—snickered and said, “They’re all shit,” and gave Ben a chipped club with a dull face. Ben didn’t care, even if he felt like taking a swing at the skinny kid’s face.

  He’d left his mom on the couch, with her sister and some cousins from his dad’s side. He didn’t think about them as he whacked ball after ball into the night, tiny white spheres zipping into the fluorescent dark like tracer fire. He didn’t think about his father and the hot dog stand. He didn’t think about his final year of college beginning in one week. He just swung and swung, shocked at how far the balls seemed to travel, imagining himself at long last discovering his true calling, his hidden talent unveiling a path to glory. Maybe I’m a born golfer, Ben remembered thinking that night. The first tour I win, I’ll thank my dad.

  The old man shook him awake.

  “We’re running late,” he said. “We need to get to Kentucky by dusk.”

  Ben sat up. Morning light soaked the carpet. The old man’s bandage was fresh and his hair was still wet from a shower. He wore his black bathrobe.

  “There’s some breakfast waiting for you,” the old man said, then he left, whistling.

  Ben walked downstairs. Sunlight poured through the kitchen windows. Myra stood behind the breakfast bar, her black hair wet and brushed back behind her ears. She wore a white bathrobe and pink slippers. Her face looked freshly scrubbed. Pieces of mascara clung to her eyelashes.

  “Good morning,” she said. “We saved you some bacon and I can put on a fresh pot if you’d like.”

  Ben looked around the living room. No trace of the night before. No bloodied gauze, no bikers.

  “Where’s Darryl?”

  “At work. Coffee?”

  “I’m okay.” Ben sat at the bar and munched on a crinkled strip. “Where’s the old man?”

  “You mean Elvis.”

  Ben smiled but she did not.

  “It’s really him,” she said.

  He said nothing.

  “It’s him,” she insisted. “Last night onstage—don’t tell me you didn’t feel something.” She pulled out the dishwasher rack and began loading glasses into a cupboard. “He told me the two of you are going to rescue his granddaughter.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Can I go with you?”

  Ben paused in mid-chew. “It’s not up to me. I mean, it’s his granddaughter—”

  “Last month my niece Rhianna died,” Myra said. “When she was five the doctors diagnosed her with lymphoma and said she’d be gone in six months. That was four years ago. We’d just celebrated her ninth birthday. She couldn’t hold on anymore, but she was such a little warrior.” She closed the cupboard and took a deep breath. “One month after her diagnosis, we took Rhianna to Graceland and she touched that painting of the King. The one with Priscilla and Lisa Marie and he’s wearing those tinted glasses—”

  “Myra, he’s not Elvis.”

  She stared at Ben. “You felt something last night. Tell me you didn’t.”

  “I did. But that doesn’t make him Elvis.”

  “Four years,” Myra said. “The doctors gave my niece six months, and after she touched that painting she held on for four years. Now, explain that to me.”

  “I can’t.” Ben wanted to ask, If that painting worked like you think it did, how come your niece still died? But he kept quiet because a few months after his father’s death he was convinced his father had faked it so he could leave town and start a new family. Grief made you believe the sun revolved around the earth and that kid from Saved by the Bell died from eating Mentos with Diet Coke and if you feed a seagull Alka-Seltzer its stomach explodes.

  The old man walked into the kitchen from the back of the house. He leaned over and kissed Myra on the cheek.

  “Now, is that good bacon or is that good bacon,” he said. “Never liked it with the soft fat around the edges.”

  Ben’s cell vibrated in his pocket. He looked at the number and excused himself, walking back upstairs.

  “Ben?”

  Downstairs he heard Myra shriek with laughter. In his mind he saw the old man feeding her a bacon strip. Inch by inch. The crumbly burnt stuff falling into her barely tied robe.

  “Ben, I spoke with your father last night.”

  He slid down to the white carpet, his back against the side of the bed. He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead.

  “I just wanted to tell you I haven’t dreamt about him in weeks, but he apologized and said he’s been very busy. Very busy—can you imagine? Anyway, he wanted me to tell you that you need to be careful because apartment fires are among the top five killers of men in their mid-twenties. He said that no matter how careful you are yourself, you live in a public building and cannot control the actions of others. Chinese cooking uses a lot of oil, you know. And the Chinese are not known for their safety.”

  “We have smoke alarms, Mom. In every room.”

  “And in the stairwells?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your father is still very concerned. Fire inspectors are overworked and understaffed. I doubt they’ve come to your building within the past year.”

  “We had an inspection a few months ago. I requested one, after you called.”

  “And the inspector was thorough?”

  “He seemed very competent.”

  “That’s fine but it only takes one day to violate code. Maybe you should call for another inspection. Your father and I think it would be prudent.”

  “Tell Dad there’s nothing to worry about. Tell him I’m being very careful.”

  “You can tell him yourself.”

  “I’d rather you tell him.”

  Silence. Ben counted the seconds. He could see his mom, sitting at the kitchen table, sleep lines creasing her face.

  “Well, I’ll make sure to let your father know. And please be careful, Ben.”

  “I will.”

  He closed his cell and rubbed his head with both hands, then pressed his thumbs into the pressure points above his ears.

  The Triple Warmer Meridian, it’s called. He’d read a massage book a few weeks earlier, The Art of Erotic Massage, copyright 1978, found in a box in the basement of his
apartment building, next to piles of dirty linens, empty vegetable crates with Chinese script painted along the side (possible fire code violation), and stacks of rusted oil paint cans and turpentine (definite fire code violation). The massage book was hilarious—age-yellowed glossy paper, and the women all had enormous bush. One woman with pendulous breasts lay on a crocheted orange hammock, legs spread, her nude man standing behind her with both hands on her shoulders, both of them with the come-hither stares of professional swingers. Satisfying women isn’t just about the clitoris or the G-spot, the caption insisted. It’s about kundalini. The energy that lies dormant at the base of the spine. The dragon’s fire.

  He thought about calling Jess.

  What’s that? You want me to visit you? You know I’d love to but I can’t. I’m driving Elvis to Memphis in search of his granddaughter. That’s right, I said Elvis. The one and only. He even looks a little like him.

  Downstairs he heard more laughter. The old man was like a light switch, Ben thought. From dark to blinding just like that.

  But maybe I can stop by on my way back home. Work on your kundalini for a while. I’ll bring the hammock.

  Motorcycles roared into the driveway, and Ben jogged downstairs.

  Darryl Sikes walked into the living room and looked around slowly. He wore his leather jacket and heavy, dark boots. His face was flushed, sweat running down his temples.

  Ben stopped on the bottom step. Myra tied her robe shut. Darryl’s leather jacket creaked like a redwood in a windstorm as he stomped into the kitchen and turned on the faucet.

  “You’re bleeding,” Myra said.

  He scrubbed his hands with soap. “This isn’t my blood.”

  The gang of bikers burst through the front door. They carried a bloodied man between them. They put the man on the floor and Frank gritted his teeth.

  “T-Rex hit KC in the face with a ball-peen hammer,” Frank said. “Sons of bitches must pay.”

  Ben stared at the bloodied man. His cheek was split open and bits of tooth poked through the glistening flesh. He breathed from the other side of his mouth, swallowing blood and trying not to cough.

  “They hired Screaming Eagles to bust the strike,” Frank continued. “So KC dropped the first scab. Next thing we know, someone hits Petey over the head with a two-by-four.”

  Myra put her hand to her mouth. “Oh God, no—”

  “Then T-Rex nailed KC. Didn’t even give him a fighting chance. Just popped him with the hammer and let him fall.”

  Darryl ran his fingers through his hair and stalked around the living room. KC began to cough. Blood sprayed from his mouth and soaked into the carpet.

  “Call the police,” Myra said.

  Darryl shook his head. “No cops.”

  “Darryl—”

  “No cops. Not this time. We’re Hell’s Foster Children. This time we do it my way.”

  The door to the basement opened and the old man stepped into the living room. He had changed into his red sweatsuit, hair combed high, a pair of green-tinted aviator glasses resting on his sagging cheeks. He held a laundry bag in one hand and a mimosa in the other.

  The old man walked around the couch. The gang of bikers stepped aside as he craned his neck to look at the man lying bleeding on the floor. He set the laundry bag down and sipped his mimosa. He stared long and hard while KC sputtered and spit, then he gulped the rest of his mimosa and wiped the dribble off his chin with his sweatshirt sleeve.

  “Details,” he said.

  “Union hired us to protect their picket line,” Darryl said. “This morning they tried to bust the strike.”

  The old man frowned. “You also union?”

  “Some of us,” Darryl said. “Local 210. Frank here is president.”

  “What’s being built?”

  “Miniature golf course,” Frank said.

  The old man nodded to himself. “Ben, pull the car up.”

  “It’s already parked close,” Ben said.

  “Then pull it closer. My back is killing me.”

  The old man turned to the group and held out his empty glass. Myra took it away.

  “Saddle up, boys,” he said. “I’m leading a charge of the righteous.”

  6.

  hey pulled up to the construction site, led by a wisteria-on-white Caddy with a young man at the steering wheel and an old man who looked like Elvis by his side. Behind them a convoy of roaring Harleys, sun gleaming on chrome, black enamel, and mirrored sunglasses.

  “You ever been in a fight?” the old man asked.

  “Ninth grade,” Ben said. “Bill Pippen got me into a headlock for fifteen minutes. My friends chucked basketballs at his head until he let go.”

  “Man, I mean a real fight. Just you and some sonofabitch trying to rip each other’s heads off.”

  Ben thought about Patrick. “Not really.”

  The old man sucked air between his front teeth. “Keep your hands up and your chin low. Bend your knees. Strike fast and hard, use the strength from your hara.”

  “What’s a hara?”

  “The center of a man’s energy. Three finger widths below the navel.”

  “Is that anything like a kundalini?”

  “A what?”

  “I’m just fucking around,” Ben said. He saw the rival gang at the construction site, large men sitting on plastic chairs, their feet up on coolers.

  “Get serious,” the old man said. “Hara, son. Center of your power. Let’s do this.”

  The old man pulled himself out of the Caddy and walked across the gravel parking lot. Ben walked with him, members of Hell’s Foster Children close behind, Darryl and Frank in the lead.

  The foreman stood by a row of Porta-Pottis, looking down at his clipboard. A circle of bikers sat on folding chairs, working their way through a twenty-four-pack. Behind them, rolls of plastic putting greens, stacked like logs. Ben saw a half-assembled wooden dragon, a Swiss clock tower, and boxes of fake bricks. He saw dozens of sand mounds like giant anthills with shovels sticking out of them.

  “I understand you’re using non-union labor for this job,” the old man said.

  The foreman looked up from his clipboard. He had the tanned, leathery face of a man who’d worked his entire adult life in construction. His arms were ropy and long, veins running from shoulder to wrist, blue on tan, with a tattoo of a screaming eagle on his forearm.

  The foreman slipped his pen behind his ear. “Are you an inspector?”

  “I’m a concerned citizen,” the old man said.

  “No shit,” the foreman said.

  The old man thumbed over his shoulder, toward Hell’s Foster Children, who stood in a leather-clad pack. “See those men back there? Those men are the backbone of this nation. Union men who work an honest day for honest wages. Now, your ragtag bunch of mercenaries—” The old man swept his hand across the circle of men sitting in folding chairs. “I don’t know where you found them, but you’re better off putting them back. I’ll tell you a sad story. At a show in Meridian, Mississippi, my manager hired non-union for stage construction, and wouldn’t you know it, two of my backup singers fell right through the stage. One of the Jordanaires busted her ankle. Poor girl was laid out for two weeks.”

  “Get the fuck off my construction site,” the foreman said. “Before I throw you out.”

  “You’d do that to an old man?”

  “I wouldn’t.” The foreman plucked the pen from behind his ear. “But he would.”

  He pointed with his pen at the circle of men sitting on folding chairs. The biggest of them stood, slowly, and stretched his arms over his head. His black leather jacket had T-REX emblazoned across the back with a graphic of his dinosaur namesake riding a chopper.

  T-Rex walked toward them and stepped in front of the foreman.

  “There a problem?”

  “Hell’s Foster Children hired a spokesman,” the foreman said.

  T-Rex looked the old man up and down. “Who are you supposed to be?”

&nbs
p; “Liberace,” the foreman said.

  “No, he looks like that English dude with the faggot name,” T-Rex said. “My mom was a fan. Dinglebat-something.”

  “Engelbert,” the old man said. “Engelbert Humperdinck.”

  T-Rex grinned. “That’s right. Is that who you’re supposed to be?”

  The old man sighed.

  “Okay.” The foreman put the pen back behind his ear. “T-Rex, get these two the hell out of here.”

  T-Rex nodded at Hell’s Foster Children. “What about them?”

  “Waste of time,” the foreman said. “Now get to it.”

  T-Rex grabbed the old man’s arm and the old man stepped back, lowering himself into a karate pose, feet spread wide, fists held low. Pain flared in his hips and his knees popped like cherry bombs, but he steeled himself even as sweat dripped down his sides, his leg muscles quaking in protest. Sometimes he dreamt of karate routines, the old days of sweat and taped fingers and grungy mats in California dojos with that clean white California sun you couldn’t find anywhere else. Light streaming across the dojo floor, across his toes, which he saw less and less of as the years ticked by. Well, hello there. My it’s been a long, long time.

  The foreman burst into laughter and T-Rex grinned and lunged for the old man, but the old man stepped into his punch and it landed in the center of T-Rex’s throat. T-Rex grabbed his neck and gagged, stumbling to his knees as the old man’s green-tinted aviators fell off his face.

  “Christ almighty, I tore a muscle,” the old man said, and he clutched his side while T-Rex squirmed on the dirt, trying to catch his breath in giant whoops like the call of some prehistoric bird. Plastic lounge chairs were kicked aside and the Screaming Eagles rushed forward, knocking over their beer cans, gurgling foam into the dirt. Ben heard battle cries behind him as Hell’s Foster Children joined the fray, a stampede of boots like the charge of cavalry.

  “The charge of the righteous!” Ben heard the old man shout, then he raised his fists, lowered his chin, and bent his knees, and the foreman swung, and Ben’s eye felt like a gong struck with a mallet.

  They celebrated at Lil’ Rascals Neighborhood Bar and Grill, gorging themselves on Bourbon Street shrimp, Cajun steak tips, and pitchers of Budweiser Select. The old man sat at the head of the table between Darryl and Myra. Hell’s Foster Children bore the marks of battle—rips in their jackets, torn collars, busted noses. Nostrils ringed with red crust. Eyebrows matted with blood. Swollen knuckles.