Mama says good things come to those who wait, but he doesn’t see that. If you wait, you may as well be asleep.
His father leads him on until they hit the edge of Mud Creek, where men come not to hunt, but to bathe. Elvis has heard the shrieks of joy echoing from this place on hot summer afternoons.
The bathing hole is overhung on three sides by weeping trees. Men and boys fish here for catfish, perch and bass, but this morning Elvis and his father are alone. They stand on the bank, which shelves steeply into the water, looking across to the red mud of the opposite shore.
‘I guess you can figure why I brought you here,’ says Vernon.
Elvis knows well enough, but he shakes his head.
‘You know men come here to wash, and to swim sometimes?’
‘Mama says never to come here for that.’
Vernon looks off into the trees. ‘She does. The thing you gotta understand, though, is that all men and boys come here, and all mamas tell them not to. But the mamas know they’re gonna. And they don’t mind one whit.’
Elvis frowns.
‘What I mean is, what your mama don’t know, won’t hurt her.’
‘You saying we got to lie to Mama?’
‘Ain’t lying, as such. More protecting her.’
Elvis licks his lower lip. ‘But she says it’s dangerous.’
‘Sure, there’s the odd snake, and them catfish can get pretty big and kinda cross sometimes—’
‘What about the boy who drowned?’
Vernon raises his eyebrows. ‘That boy lost his wits, is all. Long as you keep your head, you’ll be OK.’
There’s a pause.
‘What if she finds out?’
Vernon removes his gun from his shoulder. ‘You gotta learn, son, that there’s two worlds. The woman’s world, and the man’s world. And this here is part of the man’s world. Women ain’t got jackshit to do with it.’
As his father begins to unbuckle his belt, Elvis can see that he has little choice but to brave the water. He turns hot, then cold, at the thought. He has never liked being naked in front of others. Even with his mama, he will cover himself with his hands when he’s getting in or out of his nightshirt.
‘Why don’t we go cross yonder?’ asks Elvis, pointing towards the other side, where the shore shelves more gently.
‘Better just to jump straight in deep,’ says Vernon.
Elvis can smell the water: cold, muddy, alive. And the gum trees, too, with their gluey punch.
‘But the catfish …’
Vernon drops his pants. ‘They ain’t gonna bother us.’
‘Odell got his finger bit. It went right to the bone. He reckoned that thing was more cat than fish.’
‘Get your clothes off, son. We’re going in.’
Vernon stands before him, naked from the waist down. He never removes his shirt in front of anybody. Once Elvis had tried to lift it when they were roughhousing, and his father had cuffed him round the head. Gladys explained, later, that Daddy’s back was marked, badly. It was an ugly thing that he didn’t want Elvis to see, and it had happened when he went away that time, which is how she now refers to Vernon’s spell in the pen.
Elvis looks into his daddy’s light blue eyes. They are dancing.
‘You chicken, boy?’
‘No.’
‘You ain’t afraid of them snakes, are you?’
Elvis peers at the fat pink end of his father’s penis, poking from beneath his shirt.
‘Naw.’
‘All you gotta do is jump up and yell, “Here comes Elvis!” Those snakes’ll be good as gone.’
Elvis laughs, a little.
‘So go on, then,’ says Vernon. ‘Get ’em off.’
Elvis unbuttons his shirt and pushes down his pants and undershorts. He wonders if this would feel better if Magdalene Morgan were watching him. Sometimes, in church, he catches her eyes resting on his face, as if she’s searching for something there, and it gives him a huge jolt of pleasure to be looked at in that way.
Then he sees something copper-coloured moving in the trees on the other side of the water. Squinting, he realises this is the hair of Noreen Fishbourne, the fourteen-year-old girl whose breasts push against the front of her too-small pinafore. Odell says that Noreen is fast, and most probably will have a baby soon, the way she carries on. Many people in his church believe Noreen to be possessed by a demon.
Elvis stands frozen with shock, unable even to cover himself with his hands, as Noreen, aware that she’s been caught, places a finger on her lips and fixes him with a stare. There is a long moment during which neither of them seems to breathe. She keeps staring at him so strong it makes the pit of his gut contract and release as if he were hungry. Then, just as Vernon twists round to see what has caught his son’s eye, Noreen slips away into the brush.
‘Yeeeeeeeee-hah!’
Vernon jumps into the water, knees tucked to his chest, sending splashes up Elvis’s body and ripples across the creek.
Elvis stands dumbly, waiting for his father to emerge, wondering what to do when he does. He cannot tell Vernon about Noreen; he doesn’t care that she would get in trouble, but he can’t face admitting that she’s seen him, naked as Adam. Perhaps her demon has seen him, too.
He considers gathering his clothes and running after her.
Then a few bubbles break the surface, but Vernon does not appear. He’s been down there a while now. Elvis inches to the water’s edge. Holding his hands to his groin, he leans over, peering into the cloudy pool. His whole body feels burned by the air. He thinks he might explode with shame.
‘Daddy?’
His father could be down there, bitten by a deadly cottonmouth, his lungs fighting the muddy water. And it would be Elvis’s fault, because Noreen looked at him.
‘Daddy!’
The water parts and Vernon emerges, face blood red, eyes streaked with mud, teeth shining white. He lets out a great shout: the long, loud sound of the still living.
Elvis is so relieved that he leaps into the creek. The water takes his body, right up to his shoulders.
Vernon gives another whoop. ‘There you go, boy! You in deep now!’
And he is. It’s cold and silty, and there is something touching his foot that feels like a branch, or maybe a snake. He swallows, shudders, and concentrates on moving through the water to reach his father’s outstretched hands.
‘Easy, now,’ says Vernon.
Elvis wades further in, then, alarmed at the way the mud is dragging his feet from him, panics and almost goes under. The water jumps to his chin and he gets a tangy mouthful, but he is caught by Vernon, who scoops him to the safety of his chest.
They bob together, Elvis gasping and trying to smile.
‘It’s OK, son.’
Elvis wipes the silt from his eyes and takes a deep breath.
‘I’m gonna tell you something. And you must never tell this to your mama. Understood?’
Elvis can only blink, and scan the bank for a glimpse of Noreen’s red hair.
‘Fact is, I never learned to swim. But that don’t stop me enjoying this creek. You can go under like that, and the water brings you right back up again, long as your feet find the bottom. Understand?’
Elvis shakes his head.
‘If you can pretend to swim, then it’s like you really can.’
‘You just pretend?’
‘Hell, yeah. Sometimes I almost convince myself, I’m so good at it.’
At this, Elvis laughs.
‘Morning, Vernon.’
Elvis whips his head around. Removing his shoes on the bank is Roy Martin, who owns the grocery store on Lake Street. Elvis glances back at his daddy, unsure if it’s all right for another man to be here, and wondering if Mr Martin has seen Noreen. But his daddy is smiling determinedly.
‘Morning, Roy. Great day for it.’
Mr Martin tugs his shirt from his head. He is a large man, and although he is much older than Vernon, his shoulders are packed w
ith muscle and his neck is thick. He pushes down his pants and undershorts in one sweep and stands, stretching his naked body towards the sky.
Taking hold of Elvis’s chin, Vernon twists his head around. ‘Quit staring,’ he hisses. In a louder voice he calls, ‘Just showing the boy the ropes.’
‘’Bout time, ain’t it,’ states Mr Martin.
‘Woulda had him down a year ago. But you know Glad.’
There’s no reply.
Elvis wonders if Mr Martin will notice that his daddy is still wearing his shirt, and that it’s wet through and light brown from the creek water. He’s aware that his father is sometimes awkward in the company of other men. Vernon’s own father, JD, hasn’t visited since that time after Vernon got back from the pen. Mama has warned Elvis that it is their job to protect Daddy from the other townsfolk, who just don’t understand what he’s been through.
Vernon tries again. ‘That woman is awful tender-hearted when it comes to her son.’
Elvis watches his daddy’s hopeful face as he waits for Mr Martin’s response. But nothing comes.
There’s a lot of splashing, and from the way the water is rocking around them, Elvis guesses that Mr Martin is now submerged.
Vernon’s face falls. ‘Maybe we better haul on out,’ he mutters.
Suddenly it seems very important to Elvis that they stay in the water.
‘Spin me round first!’ he says.
Vernon hesitates, glancing towards Mr Martin.
‘Daddy, spin me round! Please!’
Vernon rearranges his hands beneath Elvis’s armpits and looks him in the eye. ‘A spin you want, is it?’
‘Yeah!’
‘You asked for it, boy.’
Gripping him hard, his daddy lifts him so his feet no longer touch the bottom and whirls him in a circle. Then he does it again, faster. The water rushes over Elvis’s legs, both soft and urgent. The sunshine warms his naked shoulders. Elvis lets out a hoot, and his daddy joins in, still whirling him in the water, until they’re spinning so fast and whooping so loud that Elvis doesn’t know who is keeping who afloat or where the bottom of the creek has gone. There is just the water, holding them both.
It makes him think of what Brother Mansell says in church about being open to the glory of God, and he is about to shout it out loud, to lift his face to the sun and yell, ‘Glory!’ when he remembers that Mama isn’t here, and doesn’t even know what he is doing, and Noreen has seen his peter. He wriggles from his father’s clasp, and almost goes under again.
Vernon finds him and lifts him once more. ‘You gotta stop doing that,’ he says. ‘You gotta work on pretending.’
Elvis coughs out a mouthful of gritty water and rests his head on his daddy’s shoulder. Together, they watch the ripples they’ve made run all the way to where Mr Martin stands, looking off towards the trees.
* * *
Grandma Minnie Mae has told him: love’ll hit you like a carny truck. When it comes it looks all fancy and colourful and like life itself. But then it just drives on, and you got to keep up, and sometimes ain’t nothing you can do but hang on the back and get dragged through the dirt.
Although he has noticed Magdalene Morgan at school and in church before, Elvis doesn’t even begin to feel the carny truck until she sings.
Brother Gains Mansell, an uncle of Gladys’s, introduces her at the Wednesday evening service, telling the congregation that Magdalene has been practising a solo of ‘The Old Rugged Cross’.
Elvis stretches his neck to get a clear view as she walks out wearing a pink dress with a white collar, her head held high. He’s sung in church as long as he can recall, but never alone in front of everybody, though he’s imagined what it would be like many times. Not for one minute did he think this girl would beat him to it.
Magdalene stands before the congregation, her whipped-up black hair surrounding her face like a dark cloud. Her cheeks are pale saucers, perfectly round. She holds her hands together tightly, and without waiting for Brother Mansell to count her in, she begins.
‘On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross …’
Brother Mansell rushes to catch up on the piano, and the congregation smile indulgently as Magdalene’s voice drifts over the pews. Everyone, even Magdalene, is slightly unsure where this voice is headed.
‘I will cling to the old rugged cross, and exchange it one day for a crown …’
Elvis smiles to himself: he could do better. She’s pretty good, but his voice is stronger and more beautiful than hers. Grandma Minnie Mae weeps when he sings ‘Danny Boy’.
As she reaches the second verse, though, Magdalene’s singing grows more confident, and he finds himself imagining joining in. Together, they could fill the room. His sound could sweeten hers. He would tell her to take her cue from him, and her pretty mouth would open at his command.
By the end of the song, he has decided that they will sing together, and that perhaps he will fall in love with Magdalene Morgan. Maybe then he can forget the feeling of Noreen’s stare. Whenever he passes Noreen in the street, she doesn’t smile or blush or turn her head like other girls. She looks him right in the eye, as if daring him to speak.
That night, he hopes he will dream of Magdalene. But it’s Noreen who comes to him. In the dream, he’s pushing her down into the creek. As he watches her hair turn dark in the muddy water, he feels relief, because now she won’t be able to look at him. But when he wakes, he is hotter than hell, and the blood throbs in every part of his body.
That Sunday, there’s a dinner at Brother Mansell’s comfortable five-roomed house. Gladys has baked a caramel cake to add to a table already overflowing with the congregation’s best offerings: fried pies, chicken and dumplings, stuffed eggs, apple cobblers, potato salads, fried catfish, bean pots, cornbread. There’s real coffee, too, and bottles of Big Orange and root beer for the children. The guests spill out onto the porch and the backyard. The other boys from church – Jack, Odell, Kenneth – run off to climb the oak tree while their parents stand and admire Brother Mansell’s fiery azaleas.
Elvis has already made up his mind to talk to Magdalene, but first he takes a plate and loads it with chicken and dumplings and collard greens and cornbread. Sunday dinners at the preacher’s house are no time to lose your appetite: the food is free. Gladys often points out that Brother Mansell is family, so they should make the most of his kindness, and not feel shy about helping themselves to a second plate.
After consuming one plateful of chicken Elvis resists going back for another and, leaving his parents in the house, slips out into the yard to look for Magdalene.
He doesn’t have to go far. She’s sitting on a ground rug by the fence, concentrating on peeling an orange. Before he can let himself think better of it, Elvis marches right up to her and announces, not as enthusiastically as he’d hoped, ‘I liked your singing.’
She glances at him and nods, then gets back to work on the fruit, pressing her thumb into the skin and releasing a spray of moisture into the air. It smells clean and sweet; nothing like the orange Kool-Aid his mother fixes for a treat sometimes. First wrenching the whole thing apart, Magdalene loosens a segment. She waves it in the air, and, assuming she is offering it to him, Elvis holds out his palm.
Her eyes meet his, then she pops the orange into her mouth and chews, her gaze sliding to the side.
‘I guess everybody’s been saying you’re good,’ he says.
She swallows. ‘Nuh-uh.’
‘Well,’ he says, stuffing his hands into his pockets, ‘you are. I wasn’t sure, at first. But then you really got it.’
She does not look pleased, but it seems to him that her eyes don’t often tell the truth, which he finds interesting. When he’s caught her staring at him in church, her expression can shift from boredom to interest in a heartbeat. He can always tell what his mama is thinking, and most often Grandma Minnie Mae too; but this girl’s thoughts are a mystery to him.
‘You wanna go walking?’ she asks.
‘When?’
‘How about Saturday? You can take me to the hatchery. Probably warm enough now.’
The hatchery is where courting couples go for picnics and kissing. There are plenty of low trees and hidden nooks there, and there is no way Mama will allow it. He calculates, though, that she will probably be distracted enough for the next half-hour or so not to notice his absence.
‘How about right now?’
She stands. ‘OK,’ she says, taking his hand and planting what’s left of the orange in his palm.
Elvis looks down at the fruit.
Magdalene puts her hands on her hips. ‘You wanted it, didn’t you?’
He peels off one sticky segment and gives the remaining orange back to her. ‘It’s yours, Magdalene,’ he says. ‘I want you to have it.’
It amazes him that it’s so easy to escape the preacher’s garden and walk away from his family and the members of his church. He and Magdalene simply stroll out, side by side, in silence. Everybody is too busy eating and gossiping to notice.
Once they’re on Kelly Street, Magdalene wipes her hands down her front, and he has to stop himself from advising her not to dirty her Sunday clothes. She’s wearing a light blue dress with an embroidered trim all along its edge. It’s too big for her – probably it was once her sister’s – but still he feels proud to be walking with a girl who looks so good. Not that there is anybody around to see them; most folks are at the church dinner. The porch swings hang empty, and the streets are silent on this spring afternoon.
She takes confident strides and walks a little away from him, as if to avoid physical contact, even of the accidental kind.
He must ask her about the singing, but every time he thinks he’s going to say something, the words go dry in his mouth.
‘Your mama’s real nice,’ she says. ‘You’re lucky. My mama don’t even notice where I’m at, half the time.’
Graceland Page 6