Graceland

by Bethan Roberts

  ‘Ain’t you s’posed to be in school?’

  ‘We had library hour this afternoon. So that’s, you know, kinda optional.’

  ‘Ain’t no school I know that’s kinda optional.’

  ‘I figured this was more important,’ says Elvis, through a mouthful of rice.

  Mr Mayhorn pulls his shoulders back. ‘Don’t you know how goddamn lucky you is in that school?’ He jabs his glasses at Elvis’s chest; the tips of the arms are furry from chewing. ‘You got books over there, I guess? Enough for one each? And that fancy new brick building. Look at yourself, boy. You eating chicken feet with Ulysees Mayhorn when you could be studying to be a lawyer or something.’

  Elvis cannot bear to meet the man’s stare, so he looks at the wall behind him instead. There’s a faded calendar from a paper-products supplier, and a framed picture of Christ with a lamp – the same one his mama has hung on their bedroom wall.

  Mr Mayhorn pushes the screen open and shoos the dogs into the backyard. For a second, Elvis considers bolting after them into the brightness of the afternoon.

  ‘You wasting time, boy,’ Mr Mayhorn says, quietly.

  Elvis pushes away his half-finished plate of food, not caring, now, if his action causes offence. ‘I’m just more interested in the music, is all.’

  Mr Mayhorn pours himself a cup of water from the pitcher on the table, then takes a long drink. ‘How come?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Not good enough.’

  ‘I love it, sir.’

  ‘Why?’

  Elvis looks at Christ’s glowing lamp. ‘It’s like God.’

  Mr Mayhorn puts down his cup. ‘You blaspheming now?’

  ‘I don’t – I didn’t—’

  ‘You want to be a gospel singer, that it? Go round praising God and wearing greasepaint? Singing holy and living dirty?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Although he has thought about it.

  ‘Hillbilly singing, then? Twanging your guitar there and crying your guts onto your spangled shirt?’

  ‘Not really, sir.’ He’s pictured this, too.

  Mr Mayhorn glances at the guitar. ‘Can you even play that thing?’ he asks.

  ‘I can play some. But it’s hard.’

  ‘It ought to be.’

  ‘Is playing the trombone hard?’

  ‘It’s so hard, it hurts. Every time, it’s pain. But a good sort of pain.’ He waves a hand in front of his face. ‘You too young to understand.’

  ‘Can I see it?’

  Drumming his fingers on the table, Mr Mayhorn says, ‘You don’t let up. I give you that.’ He sighs. ‘Stay there. I keep her in the bedroom.’

  He stands and walks gracefully from the room, taking his time.

  Elvis waits, trying to keep his knees from jogging up and down.

  You got what you wanted, says Jesse. Good job, boy.

  When Mr Mayhorn comes back, he’s carrying a battered leather case. He rests it on the floor, then kneels before it. His thumbs click the locks back and a whiff of polish escapes. Elvis doesn’t dare to lean across, sensing that he must be patient, and let Mr Mayhorn ease the trombone from its velvet bed.

  ‘First, we got to put her together. She ain’t nothing till we make her. And it must be done tenderly.’ Still kneeling, Mr Mayhorn points first to the half of the trombone that’s shaped like the head of a lily, then to the long thin tube. ‘Bell and slide,’ he says, removing both halves from the case.

  He gets to his feet and, holding the slide in his left hand, balances one end of it on the floor before gently connecting it with the bell.

  Elvis stands to get a closer look.

  ‘You gotta treat her real nice,’ Mr Mayhorn says, twisting in the mouthpiece. His big fingers hold the instrument firmly yet lightly.

  ‘Step back, boy.’ He waves Elvis out of the way. ‘One dent in her and she’s dead.’

  Elvis does as he’s told.

  Grinning, Mr Mayhorn holds the trombone up and turns it in the air.

  ‘She’s real pretty, sir,’ says Elvis.

  ‘As a picture!’ agrees Mr Mayhorn. He holds the mouthpiece to his lips and blows a long note, sliding it into a tune which Elvis recognises as the opening to ‘Basin Street Blues’.

  ‘Now,’ says Mr Mayhorn. ‘Your turn.’

  Elvis stares at him, astonished.

  ‘That’s what you came for, ain’t it?’ Mr Mayhorn asks. ‘Hold her here,’ he says, taking Elvis’s trembling hand and placing it beneath the warm mouthpiece. ‘And here.’ He fastens Elvis’s other hand on the slider, showing him how to hold it between two fingers and thumb. It feels cool and dangerous, like holding his daddy’s shotgun.

  ‘Now stand up straight. Get the air into your lungs.’

  Elvis does as he is told.

  ‘And quit twitching your leg. You got to pucker up your mouth, real firm at the sides, bit looser in the centre. Like this.’

  He presses his lips together, and Elvis tries to copy him.

  ‘Good. Now. Keep your lips shut and blow air through them, real fast, so you buzzing.’

  Mr Mayhorn demonstrates, making a high farting noise. Elvis giggles, but Mr Mayhorn ignores him and keeps forcing the air noisily through his lips, so Elvis gives it a try. It tickles, and he wishes he could do it without spitting everywhere.

  ‘Not bad. Lips on the mouthpiece,’ says Mr Mayhorn.

  When Elvis lifts it to his mouth, the instrument is damp with Mr Mayhorn’s spit, but he doesn’t care.

  ‘Not too firm,’ says Mr Mayhorn. ‘Now blow, and remember you want her to come to you, not blast her away. She won’t sing without you. You got to show her who’s making the music. Now do your buzz.’

  Elvis blows, and the kind of sound a dying dog might make comes out.

  Mr Mayhorn maintains a straight face. ‘Nice try,’ he says. ‘Go again.’

  Elvis blows, and the sound is no better.

  ‘Again.’

  Elvis closes his eyes and tries to feel Magdalene beside him, like when he sings in church and that beautiful sound comes from deep within his body. But all that emerges from the trombone is a thin whine.

  Mr Mayhorn takes out a handkerchief and mops his brow. ‘Hand her over.’

  ‘I could give it another try.’

  Mr Mayhorn puts one hand on Elvis’s shoulder and the other on the instrument. Gently, he pulls the trombone away and starts packing it back in its case. ‘Maybe the horn just ain’t your thing.’

  A lump comes to Elvis’s throat.

  ‘Maybe you oughta stick to your old guitar.’

  ‘I sing some.’

  ‘There you go, then.’ Mr Mayhorn clicks shut the locks on the case. ‘Now, I gotta get back in the store …’

  ‘Sir?’ says Elvis. ‘How did you know you was good?’

  ‘I don’t.’

  Elvis laughs.

  ‘I’m serious,’ says Mr Mayhorn, putting his eyeglasses back on. ‘I mean, other people tell me I’m good. And that’s real nice. But all I know is, I got to do it. Seem to me that the minute I start thinking I’m good is the minute I start to stink real bad.’ He opens the door and gestures towards the glaring afternoon. ‘Now get on back to school.’

  1948

  His mama and daddy go out into the yard to argue, which is almost worse than doing it in the house. Any passing stranger could listen to them out there, and Sam and his family, who Elvis has never heard shouting, will certainly witness every word. At least inside it would be only Dodger who’d know. But after supper is finished and the crockery washed, and Elvis has slipped into the bedroom to be alone with his funny papers, Gladys takes Vernon out under the branches of the chinaberry tree to list his failures.

  As her voice rises through the night air, Elvis lies in his bed, having given up trying to focus on Zorro. Gladys explains, almost patiently, the ways in which her husband fails to live up to her expectations. Since he’s regained his job driving for McCarty’s, these ways have become more numerous and g
rave. Now he’s not only failing his family and his church, but he’s betraying them, and she knows it. She’d have to be a fool not to notice the way he smells when he comes home! Does he think these flattened burger buns he’s brought home from his delivery round will put her off that unholy scent? Does he truly believe that damaged goods can make amends for what he’s up to?

  Vernon interrupts his wife with a shout. ‘I don’t wanna hear this shit again, woman!’

  Elvis leaps up and rushes to the door. He imagines himself bursting into the yard, to the rescue. He even has his hand on the door handle, ready for action. But which one to save? He knows it should be Mama, but at the moment it’s Daddy he feels for. Gladys warms to her theme. Her eyes will be darker than the night sky now.

  ‘Don’t you curse at me, Vernon Presley! You think I don’t know what you get up to? I guess you forget to mention your wife and child to them ladies in the pig-stands. You’re as bad as your own daddy! He spent more time with them whores down Goose Hollow than he did in his own home.’

  At this insult, Elvis scoots back across the floor and slides beneath his parents’ bed, pulling the dusty rug over his body. There is a deadly silence. Nobody should mention JD Presley, who everybody in town knows to be a swaggering, no-good drunkard, in Vernon’s presence, let alone make a comparison between father and son.

  Elvis knows that his mama usually starts these arguments, and always gives as good as she gets. Once she left Vernon with a bruise on his cheek the size and colour of a plum. But there is no denying his daddy is the stronger of the two, and Mama will come off worse if the argument becomes a physical fight.

  There’s nothing but silence, for the moment. Elvis imagines the wrinkles in his father’s forehead deepening as he shifts from foot to foot. Elvis used to think of his daddy as a lined man. His clothes were scrupulously ironed, his hair carefully combed, but his face was lined even when he wasn’t yet thirty, and he seemed to have trouble standing straight. He often made himself smaller by pointing his shoulders towards the floor and complaining of pain in his back. When he did that, Gladys seemed to tower over him, the breadth of her shoulders matching his, and Elvis liked to believe that his mother’s sturdy body was bigger and stronger than his daddy’s.

  Since he’s been on the road, though, Vernon has been standing straighter.

  His mama starts again.

  ‘You’re good for nothing and always have been! To think I used to watch the door for you to come home! I shoulda known by the way you slouched your old self in, always late, always tired, too doggone lazy to lift a finger—’

  Elvis focuses on the mattress above. It swells between the springs like something infected. He wishes he could escape to Mayhorn’s, but there is no way out while his parents are in the yard.

  ‘Lazy! My mama always said you was a no-good son of a gun, and she was right!’

  The pattern just above Elvis’s nose is so faded, the roses look like pink stains. There are no thorns, just petals. He lets his vision blur, and wishes his ears could do the same. Why can’t you let your hearing go just out of range, like you can let your eyes slide slightly out of focus? He always hears too much. Even now, he’s aware of the slow sweep of Dodger’s broom on the kitchen floor. Whoosh, pat. Whoosh, pat. No doubt she’s listening, too.

  ‘Gladys. Enough, now.’

  There’s a warning in his daddy’s voice, but he’s not really mad. Not yet. Sometimes his mama will relent, and then she won’t get hit. If his daddy can handle this right, they both might come out unscathed. Elvis wills his father to be smart this time. If he can just hang in there without defending himself too much, Gladys will run out of steam.

  ‘Don’t you “Gladys” me!’

  ‘Honey, I understand you’re mad, but you got to trust me. I ain’t been with nobody but you. I couldn’t. You know that.’

  ‘You was before.’

  ‘That was one time! It was a mistake. I was drunk. And I’m sorry. You’re my only one, Glad.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it.’

  It could go either way. If his father continues in this vein, it could end with the two of them making up in bed.

  ‘Glad.’

  ‘I can’t stand it, Vernon. I just can’t.’

  The worst of her anger has passed. Elvis can hear the difference in her voice. The relenting. Her words not exactly softening, but ready to bend to his daddy’s will, if he plays it right.

  There’s a long stretch of quiet. Dodger’s broom stops. Then Elvis hears the weeping, and he slides out from beneath the springs and crawls into the chill of his own pallet. He might be able to sleep now, because he is used to the sound of his mother weeping. And weeping is a lot better than bruising.

  * * *

  Vernon tells a story about their neighbours.

  ‘Don’t go saying too much,’ Gladys warns.

  ‘Boy’s old enough to hear it.’

  A week has gone by since their last big row, and they are sitting at the kitchen table with Minnie Mae and Elvis, having finished a good supper of cornbread, greens and pork chops. Vernon brought the meat home with him, saying it would help Elvis to take in the news. Gladys has told her husband that he can break it. Not one iota of this has been her decision, so she won’t be the one to tell her son.

  ‘You know old McCrumb,’ Vernon says, ‘drives that taxicab?’

  Elvis nods.

  Vernon leans close to him. ‘Turns out he killed his wife. In cold blood.’

  ‘Vernon!’

  ‘Elvis wants to hear this, don’t you, boy?’

  ‘Sure I do.’

  Gladys covers her mouth with a hand.

  ‘I done heard it with my own ears!’ Vernon declares. ‘The other night. A scream and then a whump, you know? I tell you, it was like God’s own wrath coming down.’

  ‘I didn’t hear nothing,’ says Elvis, sitting up straight.

  ‘You was out. At that nigger church, most likely.’

  ‘You hear this, Mama?’

  To hide her face, Gladys stands to clear the plates. ‘I coulda heard something …’

  ‘Anyways. Then there’s this silence – went on real long – a loud sort of silence, wasn’t it, Glad?’

  ‘Musta been him dropping something,’ says Minnie Mae, joining Gladys at the sink. ‘He always was clumsy as an ox.’

  ‘Naw. Wasn’t that at all.’

  Minnie Mae takes up the dishtowel. In the window, the women’s eyes meet. Gladys raises hers to heaven, and her mother-in-law slowly shakes her head.

  ‘You ain’t seen nothing, though,’ Minnie Mae tells her son.

  ‘I tell you what I seen! I seen old McCrumb putting something in a sack in the trunk of his taxicab! Then driving off real quick!’

  ‘Probably his dinner,’ says Minnie Mae, in a low voice.

  Gladys stifles a laugh.

  ‘In the middle of the night? I tell you, that weren’t no dinner. Unless McCrumb makes a habit of eating his wife’s head.’

  Gladys crashes a bowl onto the drainer. ‘Now you going too far!’

  ‘That’s what it was, Glad,’ Vernon says, evenly. ‘I swear on my mother’s life.’

  ‘Careful, now,’ says Minnie Mae. ‘I’m standing right here, and I’m still breathing.’

  Elvis’s mouth is hanging open. ‘Was there blood, Daddy?’

  ‘Some,’ says Vernon, going to the icebox for a beer. ‘There was some blood.’

  He saunters back to the table and pops the bottle open. ‘Word round the neighbourhood is, he drove round all day with his wife’s head in the trunk. Imagine that! All them folks getting a ride with the head of a murdered woman!’

  ‘They’da smelled it,’ says Dodger.

  ‘Not necessarily. Not at that point. Not if it was still fresh.’

  Gladys squeezes her dishcloth dry and stares at the grimy suds in the sink.

  ‘Long and the short of it,’ says Vernon, taking a swig from the bottle, ‘is the police came by this afternoon and haul
ed McCrumb off.’

  ‘That don’t mean he killed his wife,’ says Minnie Mae, gently prising the cloth from Gladys’s grip and pushing her out of the way so she can finish the dishes.

  ‘But let me ask you this: where in the wide world has Mrs McCrumb gone?’

  ‘Maybe she’s visiting her relatives over Pontotoc.’

  ‘You crazy?’

  Gladys has had enough. She crosses the room and places a hand over her son’s. ‘What Daddy’s trying to say is, we gotta pack up and leave. It’s for the best.’

  ‘I was getting to that—’

  ‘Like Daddy’s saying, it ain’t safe here,’ says Gladys, being careful to keep her tone flat. ‘So we gotta leave.’

  Elvis stares at her. Something has shifted in his face, and he looks five years old again.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Vernon. ‘Your mama here’s petrified. Done made her all jittery. This neighbourhood’s never been the best, but this – well, it’s just too bad. So we’re moving to the city. Making a fresh start.’

  ‘The city?’ asks Elvis.

  ‘That’s right, boy! Just picture it: bright lights! Movie theatres bigger than you’ve ever imagined! We’re gonna make our futures!’

  ‘Daddy says there’s more work in Memphis. Jobs with prospects,’ says Gladys, glancing at Vernon.

  ‘We’re moving to Memphis?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Elvis swallows. ‘That’s real far—’

  ‘We leave tomorrow night,’ says Vernon. ‘We’ve decided, so why wait?’

  At this, Elvis jumps from his seat.

  Gladys grasps her son’s fingers, but he yanks them away.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘I just can’t!’

  ‘Why not, son?’ asks Vernon.

  Elvis is clutching at the back of his neck and bending over as if he might vomit.

  ‘Son,’ says Gladys, softly. ‘We got to go.’

  ‘But you said the police have taken McCrumb.’

  ‘This morning,’ says Vernon.

  ‘Then there ain’t nothing to be afraid of, is there, Mama? If he’s gone, it’s all right.’

  Gladys looks to the floor.

  Vernon spreads his hands on the table. He seems to be considering his skin’s every mark and line as he says, ‘We gotta go, son. That’s all there is to it.’