Mr Phillips can only glare at him.
Mr Davis says, ‘Maybe we ought to move on to the details of this tour.’
Mr Neal, who, until now, has been silently studying the edge of his napkin, says, ‘Yes! Great idea. Tom, you were telling me, weren’t you, about that big resort hotel in Nevada you’re talking to …’
Elvis manages to sit for a while as the talk turns to dates, towns, venues, promotional activities. Mr Phillips glowers in the corner, not uttering another word. Elvis is so distracted by Mr Phillips’s mood that he doesn’t really hear what’s said. Scotty and Bill seem at ease; they help themselves to coffee from the pot on the table and even throw in their own suggestions for venues. Unable to stand it any longer, Elvis rises from his chair.
‘I’m right sorry, gents,’ he says, ‘but we gotta get back for the next show. It was a real pleasure to meet you, Colonel Parker, and you, Mr Diskin.’
Holding out his hand, he realises it’s trembling, but he’s unsure whether it’s with outrage on Mr Phillips’s behalf, or with excitement at Colonel Parker’s words: a national stage.
Colonel Parker looks surprised. ‘Leaving us already, son?’
‘I’m sorry, sir, but I like to be ready, you know, for a show.’
Colonel Parker sits back in his chair and folds his arms. ‘That’s a good attitude. But you do realise this is your future we’re discussing here?’
‘And I’m real grateful to you, Colonel Parker, it’s just—’
The Colonel holds up a hand. ‘Call me Colonel. And save your gratitude,’ he says, ‘for when I’ve made you a real star.’
Elvis lets out a laugh, but the Colonel keeps a straight face.
There’s a pause, and then the Colonel waves him away. ‘Off you go, then, fellas! I like to see entertainers committed to punctuality! See you on the tour!’
As Elvis turns to leave, Mr Phillips glances at him and Elvis flinches, expecting to see blame of some kind in his eyes. But all he sees is sorrow.
* * *
The lights in the Big Creek High School gym are down, but Elvis can see the girls up front, screaming, crying, beating their fists on their knees and shaking their heads as if in grief. Ever since he became a regular act on the Hayride, his shows have gotten crazier, but this is the craziest yet. He’s got pretty good at knowing which flick of the wrist or hip, which special kind of sneer, will have the girls leaping from their seats. At first, Mr Neal paid a few of them to scream, at least that’s what Bill said, but tonight it doesn’t look like any girl here has much control over what her body is doing.
Scotty hides his amazement behind an ironic smile, but Bill looks like a schoolboy who just got told there are no more lessons, ever. They’ve all quit their day jobs, and after every performance Bill tells Elvis how he just can’t believe it. All this money. All this music. All these girls! There are always girls waiting after a show, and they are ready and willing for just about anything. The ones Elvis doesn’t want, Scotty and Bill can scrap over.
He drops to his knees at the edge of the stage as he finishes ‘I Got a Woman’, knowing that it will get them on their feet, and looks out at the front row. Instead of standing to clap, they are lifting their skirts and showing him everything they’ve got. Some of them are wearing underclothes, but not all. One girl with blonde curls falling in her eyes has her checked skirt bunched around her waist and her legs wide apart. She’s bellowing like some animal. He pauses, seeing the darkness between her thighs, and almost points his finger – but then remembers who he is now, and that he’s on stage, and if he points at this little girl, who knows what will happen to her? She could go to jail.
He shakes his head and laughs at the delicious insanity of it, and hopes his mother and father, who are watching the show from a couple of rows back, haven’t noticed what’s going on. Gladys and Vernon regularly come along if it isn’t too far to travel, and he likes that they are there to see how popular he is, and how good he’s become at putting on a show. He doesn’t hold back for his parents’ sake. His mama says how an audience reacts to him is a special thing, so why should he put the brakes on? If anything, he wants to push the audience further, so his mama can see how much they adore him, and how hard he works to be worthy of their love.
He’s into ‘Baby Let’s Play House’, pumping his legs to the beat, singing about how he’d rather see his baby dead than with another, when he realises that the audience can’t hear him. They’re covering their ears and yelling and whistling so loud he fears he may lose the song, or the dusty curtain above the stage might fall on his head. He can no longer feel the thump of Bill’s bass. The floorboards are vibrating, not with music but with screams. The sound rips through Elvis, making him think of the tornado that went through Tupelo when he was a baby. The Baptist church across the street was razed to the ground, but Uncle Noah’s house, where they’d sheltered, escaped unscathed. Gladys has told him, over and over: Sometimes I think we survived because of you, son. Because God wanted to spare you. She’d held him so close that he’d screamed to be set free, and the tornado had passed by.
If he can survive that, he can deal with this, easy. He can keep singing as the noise rises up and around him like deep water. He can keep moving, going up on his toes and bumping his hips, turning to face Scotty as he jiggles his ass, which makes them even crazier; and he’ll keep pinching his nose and laughing, because now the whole thing’s a big joke – the girls, the moves, even the song. And if he laughs first, then nobody else can.
It’s a joke only for a moment before he’s back in the music, though he senses it’s not the song that counts so much as the way he sings it, the way he moves to it. His lungs taking their air and his mouth making these sounds. Nothing can stop what’s inside him from coming out. Beneath his satin shirt, his chest expands. His flecked jacket is soaked with sweat. Even his hair seems to have its own rhythm. He feels like that angel back in Priceville cemetery, firing his arrows of love to the mere mortals on the ground. He does have Jesse’s power. Here it is, coming out of every pore.
Elvis sticks his right arm out and brings it down slow to signal to Scotty and Bill that they should take this last part easy. He slides to his knees again to finish the number, pleading with his baby to come back, and the girls roar and weep their desire to do so, if only he’d let them.
Then they rush towards the stage, hungry for anything he can give, screaming, ELVIS ELVIS ELVIS, and he hears his name and recognises it. Yes. Here I am. I was waiting for you, and now I’m here.
Raising his arms in triumph, he says, ‘Thank you, you’re a great audience,’ and then he bows low, straightens up, waves, bows again, thanks them again.
When he finally turns around, Scotty is gesturing to him to get off, and Elvis spots something in his friend’s face he hasn’t seen before. It takes him a second to recognise the emotion as fear. He glances over his shoulder and realises that dozens of girls are climbing towards him, their skirts hitched about their waists as they haul their legs onto the stage, standing on each other’s hands and pushing one another down in their fight to be the first to reach him. Although he has felt something come loose in an audience before now, this is the first time the stage has been stormed.
Scotty has already fled, holding his beloved Gibson guitar above his head, and Bill is on the top step yelling, ‘For God’s sake, Elvis! Get off!’ But Elvis doesn’t move. He’s fascinated by these girls, the way they have broken all the rules. It dawns on him that the stage is a special place where he and they are free to do what they want. Together, they can make up their own rules. And he is sure they won’t hurt him. They love him too much for that.
But they are coming at him now, a swathe of females panting and screaming his name, their fingernails snatching the air. A girl in a tight yellow sweater is beckoning to him with both hands, her painted mouth hanging open. Another is making a strange grunting noise as she stares at him, slowly shaking her head. A brunette stands in the centre of it all, one hand
at the back of her neck, her eyes glassy, as if she’s about to faint. Instinctively, he ducks, covering his head with his hands, and is instantly squeezed on all sides by girls. The sweet scent of laundry detergent and hairspray mingles with the sharp musk of their bodies. Somebody grabs at his jacket, somebody else goes for his pants. It becomes a little hard to breathe. He tries to laugh, to say, ‘Easy, ladies, give a fella a break,’ but finds he has no voice.
‘Elvis! I’ll love you for ever and ever!’
‘Sing to us one more time!’
‘I’m yours, Elvis!’
‘Please, Elvis! Please!’
Then he hears his mother yelling, ‘Why are you hurting my boy?’
And his father’s voice: ‘Get offa him! Go home!’
His parents must be picking them off, because, astonishingly, the hands fall away, the roar in his ears subsides, and he can breathe again. Then his father grips him beneath the armpits, lifting him from the crowd, and his mama takes hold of his legs. To his surprise, she doesn’t falter at the weight of him. She anchors his ankles at her hips, as if he is a cart she must pull, and pushes on through the girls, yelling at them to move aside. As Gladys and Vernon carry him to safety, Elvis turns his head and gives the girls a grin.
Backstage, his daddy’s shirt is crumpled and his hair is so sweaty it sticks up from his forehead in what looks to be a bad parody of his son’s style. His mama dabs at her brow with a handkerchief while Vernon fetches her a chair, then hands her his hip flask and instructs her to drink. Elvis flinches as, without protest, she takes a good few gulps and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.
Now he’s in the safety of the locker room, Elvis realises his legs are weak, and he takes a chair next to his mother. For a while they both pant and sweat and shake their heads and say, ‘Lord have mercy.’ Each time Gladys says it, it sounds more desperate, but each time Elvis does, a little laughter creeps in around the edges of the words.
‘They didn’t wanna hurt me none, Mama.’
Gladys’s hand trembles at her mouth.
‘They just wanna get close to me, is all.’
Gladys fixes him with a black stare and says, ‘Looked to me like they was gonna kill you. They coulda ripped you clean in two.’
Elvis glances at his daddy, who is leaning on the bolted door. He has nothing to say. ‘Get that fan on,’ Elvis instructs, and Vernon does as he is told.
Thick, stale air moves around them. Elvis takes his mother’s damp hand. Gently, he presses it between his own until the trembling stops, and whispers, ‘There, there, baby. Elvis is still right here.’
Gladys leans forward so their foreheads touch. Her skin is sticky on his, and he can smell liquor on her breath.
‘They just had me so scared,’ she says.
‘Shh. It’s OK, baby.’
‘Elvie.’
‘Mama.’
‘I can’t stand to see you hurt.’
‘I know it.’
‘I keep getting these dreams. They’re tearing you apart, and there ain’t nothing I can do about it.’
The fan shudders. Outside, they are squealing his name. Elvis tries not to smile, for his mother’s sake.
Gladys balls her handkerchief in her fist. She takes a deep breath, shakes her head, then says, ‘Maybe you oughta limit these shows, son.’
Elvis leans back in his chair. ‘What do you mean, limit?’
Gladys reaches for her new crocodile-skin purse, which is big enough to hold a small cat, drops the handkerchief into it, and clicks it shut. ‘I mean, ain’t the records enough? All of this – I can’t fathom it, son. Seems to me like you ain’t thinking straight.’
Elvis jumps to his feet. ‘I’m thinking real straight, Mama. I’m building my career here. Tell her, Daddy. The shows are how I sell records.’
Vernon folds his arms. ‘Boy’s right, Glad. It’s all part of it.’
Gladys tightens her grip on her purse. ‘But do you have to do so many?’
Elvis paces the length of the room. The cement floor is gritty beneath his delicate shoes. ‘I gotta keep selling records!’ He manages not to kick a locker door for emphasis. ‘So I gotta keep doing the shows. It’s like Colonel Parker says, I gotta break out of being a regional star. I gotta go national!’
Gladys clicks the clasps on her purse open, then shut, then open, then shut.
‘But you’re on stage almost every night, making them girls lose their minds. It scares me half to death to watch it.’
‘Mama,’ says Elvis, pausing before her, ‘you know I’m doing it all for you and Daddy, don’t you? Pretty soon I can buy you a house. And a new car. Anything you want—’
‘But I can’t see why in the world you’d take such risks!’
‘I’ll be able to buy you anything at all. So you gotta quit asking me to limit stuff.’
‘And see you wind up dead?’
She looks at him with such rage that he thinks he might be in for a whipping. That palm might draw back and swat him across the legs. He takes a step away from her, in readiness.
But all Gladys does is snatch the flask from Vernon’s hand.
Elvis steels himself. He keeps his voice steady. ‘I’m sorry, Mama, but if you can’t stand to watch, then I reckon you oughta stay home. Ain’t that right, Daddy?’
Vernon nods, silently.
Gladys takes another drink, and Vernon announces that it’s time they hit the road.
* * *
In May, he goes to Lowenstein’s on Main to buy Dixie a pink playsuit. The assistant looks down her nose at his wad of bills, which prompts him to buy three silk dresses for his mama, too. He hands much of every week’s gains over to Gladys for safekeeping, but the truth is there’s so much cash around he finds it difficult, and frankly unnecessary, to keep track. There’s more than enough for the family to rent a new two-bedroom brick bungalow in a better neighbourhood, and for his father to quit looking for work. Elvis wasn’t sure this was such a good idea, but Vernon told him it was simple: he could work for his son, sorting out all the little things Elvis no longer had time for. Answering fan mail, for example. Hell, he was already doing it!
Elvis hasn’t seen Dixie in three weeks. He has a short break in his touring schedule, and they have a date arranged for this evening, but as he drives home from Lowenstein’s, he wonders if he can present the gift to her sooner than that, and perhaps even get her to let him watch her put it on. But where? If he takes her into his bedroom, his mother will be knocking on the door, and Dixie shares her room with her sisters. Perhaps he could persuade her to try it in the car. The thought of Dixie easing up those little shorts on the back seat of his new Cadillac – which he’s had painted pink and white, remembering that car his mother saw parked outside St Joseph’s – has him turning the vehicle around and heading straight for her house.
She lives in a one-storey place on a leafy avenue over the south side of the city. He parks the Caddy, throws it a loving look, then races up Dixie’s porch steps.
Luckily for him, her father’s car isn’t in the drive. Mr Locke has made it clear that he’s not entirely sure about Elvis. He’s always asking about the shows, about how Elvis stands the odd hours, and whether he ever thinks of taking up something a little more steady. Elvis tells him that he’s just no good at anything else.
Dixie’s mother is more amenable, but even she’s no pushover.
‘Well,’ she says, keeping him on the porch, ‘Dixie isn’t expecting you right now. I don’t think she’s ready yet.’
‘That’s an awful shame, Mrs Locke. I know she’d flip for this movie—’
Then a voice comes from the hallway. ‘Elvis? Is that you?’
Elvis smiles. ‘Why, there she is, ma’am. And she looks good and ready to me.’
Dixie pushes past her mother, bounces onto the porch, and flings her arms around his neck.
‘Hi, sweetheart.’ He pecks his girl on the cheek, then turns to Mrs Locke. ‘I’ll have her back by ten-thirty, ma’am. I
promise.’
Dixie tugs him down the steps.
When he has her in the car and they’ve pulled away from her house, he gestures towards the back seat. ‘I got you something,’ he says. ‘But you can’t look at it yet.’
She reaches over to lift the paper, and spots the pink fabric. ‘Ooh!’ she says. ‘Is it for the prom?’
He’d forgotten about Dixie’s goddamn High School prom. He’d promised to take her, months ago.
‘’Cause I already got my dress and all—’
‘It’s better than that,’ he says, ‘but you got to wait.’
Dixie moves up close to him. ‘You’re still taking me to the prom tomorrow night, right?’
‘Course I am, baby!’ He grasps her hand and kisses her fingers.
‘When can I open it?’
‘When we get to Riverside Park.’
‘I thought we were going to the movies.’
‘Are you kidding? I need to see you in it first.’
She gazes at him, wide-eyed. ‘Elvis. What in the world are you suggesting?’
‘That you try it on for me.’
‘And where am I supposed to do that in Riverside Park?’
He drops his voice. ‘In the back of the car, honey.’
She slaps his thigh. ‘You’re crazy! I am not undressing in this car!’
‘I won’t look,’ he says. ‘I’ll keep my eyes right on the lake. I’ll just be taking in the glorious view, baby. I swear.’
She folds her arms. ‘I want you to turn this vehicle around and take me straight back home.’
‘Aw, you don’t mean that,’ he says. ‘I ain’t seen you in weeks! So now I want to see as much of you as I can.’
Graceland Page 25
