“You know what I mean. I wasn’t trying to pull nothing.”
“You had someone pull it for you. But, you know, I was thinking, just this morning, while I was packing for this stuff. I was thinking, maybe I ought not bring Johnny. I mean, if I need a groupie fucked or a dog blown, I can bring him, but otherwise, what’s he worth?”
“Ah, come on, man.”
Elvis laughed.
“I’m just yanking you, being mean. I got a mean streak, you know?”
“Believe me. I know.”
“Yeah, you would, wouldn’t you, Johnny? Well, I ain’t proud of it.” We sat silent for awhile. With Elvis it was sometimes hard to know when he was serious. I assumed he was always serious when he was being mean. I think he liked the power he had over folks with his money and his fame. Wanted to see if he could insult you and get away with it because you worked for him. In a way, all of us, and especially me, were his cattle to brand or send to the slaughterhouse.
It was a little harder to get rid of me than some of the others. I knew too much. Yet again, who the hell would ever believe me? Maybe next year they’d be talking about how the last time they saw me I was on my way to Bolivia, or some such shit.
“Colonel said there’d be good food. Fine cigars,” Elvis said. “I don’t smoke, and my idea of good food is a barbecue sandwich.” (At this time I didn’t smoke, and was proud of it. Should have stuck to
that position. Two years later I was four packs a day, and now I’m paying for it. As for Elvis, he liked a good cigar now and again.)
“They’re supposed to have fried peanut butter and nanner sandwiches on board,” Elvis said.
“Even I put a limit on the shit I eat, barbecue included.”
“Was that some kind of comment on my weight?”
“No… Well, you look fine, but you’re starting to slide south a little. What we do, our business, you got to be in good shape.”
“I work out.”
“Getting out of bed does not count as exercise.”
“Don’t be a shit, Johnny. Jobs for someone your age and background are hard to come by. Guess there’s always the car wash again, or barber college.”
Elvis didn’t like discussions of his health, and the thing was, he was all right, really. It was the other guy that took up his tastes, food and pills, carried them to greater extremes, bloated up to the size of Moby Dick and died on the toilet with a turd hanging out of his ass. Died, perhaps, with a bit of help from Colonel Parker. But hey, I’m only guessing.
As for the real Elvis, I must be honest. I’ve never gotten over him leaving like that, putting in that replacement, leaving me high and dry with some stranger who looked like him. I think that’s part of the reason I took up smoking. Disappointment. Depression.
Sometimes, when I’m feeling kind, I tell myself that whatever happened he did because he didn’t have any choice, and that from time to time, he thought about us, wherever he might be.
The day was growing long and we had to get out of the car and pee a couple times. We walked around and stretched. We got back in the car. We rolled up the window and turned on the air-conditioner. When it became too stale inside, or we decided to save on gas, we turned off the engine and rolled down the windows again. The first mosquito showed up. The sky was becoming as dark as the river.
Before I saw it, I heard its egg-beater sound. It was the largest paddle wheel I’d ever seen, though I admit, I had only seen them from a distance. It was painted white as good intentions and there was shiny gold and silver stripping all over it. A thin trail of smoke wiggled up from its stacks and faded into the clear blue sky. That thing was a beast.
“It’s like the Titanic of the Mississippi,” I said.
“It’s called the Nocturne.”
We got out of the car and walked down to the dock, stopped at the chain that stretched across it. We watched the Nocturne paddling in on that mud-colored river. It really stank down there by the water. I could see dead fish floating and some asshole had dumped garbage in it, plastic bags and cigarette butts, assorted bits of trash.
The Nocturne had Chinese lanterns hanging on cords all across the deck. They weren’t lit, but I could imagine how cool they would look when they were and the sun was down.
The steamboat began to slow and backwater a bit, finally gliding sideways so that it came up against the dock, gentle as a lover’s kiss. I could see people on board. There were about half a dozen. They were slow and lumbering, dressed in ship whites and caps. They had on white deck shoes. Two were women, the rest were men.
A man and a woman left the group, moving clumsily, they unlocked a large gate and let it drop like a drawbridge. It clapped loudly against the the dock.
Then Colonel appeared, the cane under his arm like a swagger stick. He waddled briskly down the dock and pulled a ring of keys from his white coat pocket. He wore white pants and white deck shoes, had on a white pith helmet. He appeared to have stepped out of an African safari movie.
Unlocking the chain, he looked up at us, said, “Well?”
We got back in the car without saying a word. Colonel stood to the side, and we drove onto the steamboat. As I said, this was the Titanic of steamboats, huge and magnificent. I can’t tell you a lot more about it. I am no expert on steamboats, or boats of any kind for that matter. I have never liked deep water, so I pretty much stay away from boats if I have a choice. But, trust me. It was a big fucking boat.
Colonel Parker strolled on deck behind us, walked around to the driver’s side, said to me: “Drive to the left.”
A gap opened in the floor, and we drove down and inside. I took note of the woman who had opened the gate. She was standing on my side of the car not far behind Colonel. My skin crawled like a snake. She was nearly pretty, or had once been, but her skin was gray and slack and her mouth hung slightly open. Her red hair was long, limp, and fell onto her shoulders in a greasy mass. There was a rope burn on her neck. She was, as were the others I had seen on deck, voodoo dead folk, their souls stuffed in what were called gris-gris bags, probably jammed tight in Colonel’s underwear drawer. They were cheap labor, expendable, just the way Colonel liked them. They always made my skin crawl.
Way I understood it, was their souls had to be taken right before they died, or within a day after they died, because the souls stayed hung up for a time, like they were fat cats that had to wiggle through a drain pipe.
Not really sure what all the rules were, but once those souls were trapped, they were simple-minded, easy to train to simple tasks, and they ceased to decay. Colonel had them cleaned and sharply dressed. He ordered them about. I think he liked that the zombies didn’t mind he talked funny.
I parked the car in the bottom of the steamboat next to a black Lincoln and a red Mustang, and me and Elvis went upstairs.
There was a table on the deck, and standing by it, slack-faced and orderly, were more zombies. There was also Colonel in his loose white suit and stupid pith helmet. Two zombie males we had not seen before were coming up from below, out of the stairwell, carrying our luggage.
“They know what to do with that?” Elvis asked.
“They can handle it,” Colonel said. “Sit. Let’s eat.”
There were a lot of chairs at the table, but I knew the zombies wouldn’t be joining us. Elvis and I sat. Colonel said to the red-headed dead woman, “Bring the others, Elvira.”
Elvira went away. Elvis said, “You knew her when she was alive?”
“No,” said Colonel. “I liked the name Elvira, so I named her that. I give them all the names after I buy them. I have them brought in from far away so they’re less likely to be recognized. Not that I go walking with them in the street on a daily basis. But, now and again, I have to have them do things. But enough of that. I had some of those shitty peanut and banana sandwiches fried up for you, boy.”
“Not by one of the dead folks?” Elvis said.
“No. They can do simple tasks, but cooking a good meal isn’t simple. I had
our chef do it. Did you know my chef worked in great New York restaurants most of his life?”
“I don’t much care for New York,” Elvis said. “And I don’t trust Yankees all that much.”
“You are quite the ignorant pill, aren’t you?” Colonel said.
I thought this was funny, as Colonel was about as suave and debonair as a horseshit-covered barn shovel.
“And I suppose the dead people will serve the food?” Elvis said.
“Oh yeah,” Colonel said. “They’re clean and they’re good at it. No rotten fingers will fall into your soup. Thing is, after awhile, it’s like what brain they have left starts to run down. We have to empty their gris-gris bags and let their souls fly away. Then they’re done. They really die. When it’s all over for them we put them in the steamboat furnace for fuel. That way they’re up in smoke and gone away.”
“Where do you get them?” I asked.
“Different places. Mostly I get them from prisons all across the country. They are losers or criminals or people who want to commit suicide. We help them, with the agreement their souls are ours.”
“That don’t seem right,” Elvis said. “No matter what they done or who they are.”
“We didn’t dig up your mother,” Colonel said.
Elvis’s face blanched. “If you had, Colonel, you’d be dead.”
“Just kidding, boy.”
“It ain’t funny.”
“She’s fine and tucked tight behind Graceland still, under a smooth stone. And the gris-gris bag that’s got her soul, well, it’s put away quite nicely, and unless I say where it is, it’ll never be found.”
“Don’t ever talk about my mama like that, like she’s nothing but a spirit in some bag.”
“But she is, boy. And I am in charge of her soul’s confinement. Don’t forget that.”
Colonel had a sparkle in his eye then, and it was all I could do not to jump across the table and grab him. He could be such a mean-spirited old shit. More so than Elvis, by far.
“Hell, Elvis, you’re starting to sound like a goddamn Democrat,” Colonel said. “Without the dead we couldn’t do the work we do, boy. It’s a few souls from criminals and suicides, and what we use their bodies for is to make the world a better and safer place, and they aren’t talkers. As for you mother. No one is using her. I just have her soul.”
“I came into this work willingly,” Elvis said. “So did Johnny. And him you’ve got no hold over.”
“Either of you can leave at any time. Johnny, he can go back to washing cars, and I can keep your mama’s gris-gris bag until the heat death of the universe.”
I know Elvis was thinking about how he could kill Colonel and get his mother’s soul back, but I could feel him calming down beside me. He had to, because there wasn’t a thing he could do that could make the Colonel give up that bag until he decided he wanted to.
The others came out, led by the dead folk. There were four of them walking with the dead folk. The Blind Man, who I had worked with before, was there. He was lean and wiry, an albino with a white shock of hair and skin to match. He wore starched whites. He had on ebony sunglasses and carried a thin black cane. I knew behind the glasses were dead pink eyes. I knew the cane had a sword inside of it. I knew too that even if the Blind Man couldn’t see the sun if he was looking right at it, he could hear a mouse grunt a shit two blocks away, and he could smell the stink of it from a block away. I liked him. He saw the short-term future in his head like a picture show, and sometimes he saw things that were neither past nor future, bits from other worlds and other places. Best I can explain it.
With him was John Henry, who was a big black guy with arms that looked to have been packed the way you pack sausage; tight and firm and bulging. When he was at work, he liked to kill the bad things with a hammer. Which I figure is how he got the name, though there was a rumor he was descended from the real John Henry, the one who died trying to beat a steel-driving machine. Can’t say for sure. I don’t even know if there was a real John Henry in the first place. This John Henry wore a Hawaiian shirt decorated with enough colorful parrots to populate a South American jungle, had on loose pants and sensible shoes with laces that were double bowed. He gave the impression he could tie a steel girder into a knot and wear it for a bow tie.
With him was Jack, an Asian guy. If you’re thinking he was some kind of Kung Fu dude, you’d be wrong. He was logistics. He was about five-five and solid for a guy that did a lot of book work. He was smarter in some ways than all of us, and in other ways, well, I wouldn’t have wanted to send him out to get a correct burger order. Oh, he had some fighting skills, alright, but his real skill was planning an attack.
Now, the one among them made me perk up, made all of us perk up (the living amongst us anyway) was a newbie. She was late twenties or early thirties, as fresh as a daisy, hair dark as the devil’s soul. Eyes the same. She was about five-five I figure, and maybe 125 very solidly put together and nicely arranged pounds, all of those pounds sweetly tucked into a blue blouse with a kind of sun roof for tits. Her skin was Wonder Bread white. She had on blue pants so thin and tight you could count the freckles on her thighs, had on pirate boots too. I thought, if there is a God, or if it was Mother Nature made things, when they made that lady they were on their game that day.
And then I recognized her. Not that I knew her, but she was an up-and-coming singing star. Raven they called her, but the sound that came out her mouth was no caw; it was greased sweet-jelly soaked in bourbon and Tupelo honey. She moved like a cat. She probably pooted flowers.
“This, gentlemen, the lady you are burning your eyeballs on, is Jenny Jo Dallas, better known as Raven,” Colonel said.
“I prefer Jenny when I’m not performing,” she said.
Her real name sounded to me like the sweet rustle of cool sheets and squeaking bed springs. I won’t kid you, it wasn’t her personality I was interested in. Least not right then. Sometimes it takes a boy a while to grow up. Damn sure took me a while.
“She’s a new addition,” the Colonel said. “Still in training. But she’s showing more than a bit of promise, in both careers.”
“Thank you, Colonel,” Jenny said.
Elvis, always quick with the ladies, stood up and waited for her to be seated. He didn’t pull the chair out for her. That was too much. This was business, and when you were part of our business, common courtesy was supposed to be enough. Elvis was cutting it in the middle. He was smiling big. He was already thinking of later that night and how it might come out. He was pretty confident about that kind of thing.
Me and Elvis knew the others, and we all exchanged greetings, Jack making a joke about all us Round Eyes, the jest of which I don’t quite remember. You have to keep in mind that for a few moments there, after seeing Jenny, my brain cells were as confused as a tangle of fishing worms.
“I’ve heard you sing,” Elvis said to Jenny, leaving the rest of us high and dry in our conversations. We dropped ours just to hear her speak. It was a great voice. The tinkling of bells.
“Where?” she said.
“Christmas special… Last Christmas,” Elvis said.
“Ah, the White House gig. Yeah. I was glad they televised that. I was low on the list of performers, but what I couldn’t believe is the other four got sick, bad sick. I mean, they got over it. But they all came down with the same thing day before the event, and I got to be the star, no one else for them to focus on that night. That launched my career.” She looked at the Colonel. “Imagine that. All of them coming down sick.”
Colonel threw up his hands. “Hey, honey. You had the juice. I just let everyone else find that out. The others were established. Now you are.”
We all laughed then. It had been one of Colonel’s many star-promoting tricks. Probably paid folks to drop certain herbs in the foods or drinks of the others. Harmless in the long run, but in the short run, he gave his client the star treatment. It worked. She was on the rise. Her last two songs, both written by her, had h
it in the Top 40. And with the way she looked on TV, album covers, that sort of thing, she was going to blow out the top of the charts in short time. If she didn’t get killed in our business, of course. They’d have to rig something then, make it look like an accident, suicide, an unsolved disappearance. There were a lot of ways they could go. Sometimes, for one reason or another, they retired you. James Dean and Marilyn Monroe come to mind.
We ate. There was all kinds of food, meat and vegetables, bread and rice, those sandwiches Elvis liked.
Blind Man entertained us for awhile, listening to things out on the water, hearing people on shore talking, telling us their conversations when all we could hear was the paddle wheel lapping at the river. Shit, he could have been making it all up, but from past experience, I didn’t think so.
We ate, and some of us had drank wine. We didn’t let Jack drink when he was on the job, and he knew he wasn’t supposed to, though now and then he sneaked about and found a sip. It could impair him. He didn’t handle drink well.
Colonel cleared his throat, and in his odd little voice, said, “This one is a guess and find mission. Since Nixon himself called me to the White House to meet with me personally, I assume they fear it might be a big deal.”
“But they don’t know for sure,” Jack said.
“Correct,” the Colonel said. “I figure it’s important, Nixon himself having me come in for a chat.”
Colonel was a name dropper. He especially liked to drop the Presidents’ names. He had worked for several, all the way back to Eisenhower.
“If it’s seek and find out, why would they go to all the trouble to bring us in, an elite team, before they know there’s a real problem?” I said.
“Good point,” Elvis said.
“I’m with Elvis and the kid,” John Henry said. “We’re a lot of fire power for an unknown mission.”
“There are portents and signs,” said Colonel.
“What?” John Henry said. “Some kind of shit read in chicken guts and such? They still got that woman on payroll, one that plays in entrails, ashes and dried shit?”