One bright February morning, a truck pulls up in the dirt road outside the house, music blaring from its radio. For days now, Gladys has been talking of Vernon’s return from the pen. Thanks to her petition and his good behaviour, he’s been pardoned and is coming home after over a year. She grasps her son’s shoulder and squeezes, hard. ‘Oh,’ she gasps. ‘Oh, my.’
Elvis studies his mother’s pale face. He considers her to be beautiful. Her black hair shines and her skin glows white, but it’s not these things that make her special. Uncle Frank and Aunt Leona, whose house they are living in, often talk of her warm and easy way with folks. His mama smiles a lot, and laughs at many things he just can’t fathom. She returns his unblinking gaze for a long moment before stating, ‘But it can’t be. It’s too early.’ Still, she unbuttons her apron and casts the item aside, revealing her best dress, the pretty green one that he likes. Then Gladys slips on what Elvis knows to be her special shoes. Tiny straps encircle her ankles. She pats her hair and pinches up the blood in her cheeks. Pulling open the front door, she lets the music in.
Elvis rushes to her, grabbing her legs, pushing his face into her thin skirt.
She puts a hand to his head. ‘Don’t be foolish, baby. Mama ain’t going nowhere.’
As he peeks out at the day, cool air hits his face, making him blink. The truck is real fine: army green, with a shining black roof. He’d like to swing himself up into its cab. From its open window comes the voice of his mama’s favourite singer: Jimmie Rodgers. Whenever she talks about Jimmie, her eyes brighten, as if she’s seeing something that belongs only to her. I’m gonna buy me a pistol, just as long as I’m tall, I’m gonna shoot poor Thelma, just to see her jump and fall …
Gladys walks onto the porch.
The music stops and a man climbs from the truck. He’s dressed in a battered leather jacket a little like Vernon’s. Although Elvis knows Vernon’s jacket is folded into the trunk beneath Uncle Frank’s bed – he and Mama are sharing a pallet on the kitchen floor – for a second he wonders if his daddy’s hair colour has changed. The man is about Vernon’s height. And hasn’t Grandma Minnie Mae said that prison will do strange things to even the strongest of fellas? But then his mother’s shoulders sag, and he knows this is not his father.
The man tips his hat. ‘Good morning, ma’am. Sorry to disturb …’
His mother sways a little, and lets out a groan.
‘Ma’am?’
Gladys puts a hand to her pale face. Elvis runs to join her.
Clasping her son to her side, she says to the man, ‘I’m sorry. I – I thought you were my husband.’
‘Pardon me, ma’am?’
‘I been waiting on my husband’s return, after – a long spell.’
The man takes off his hat and holds it to his chest, revealing his dark hair. ‘I’m right sorry, Mrs—’
‘Presley. Gladys Presley.’
The man clears his throat. ‘You want to sit, ma’am? Can I fetch you a chair?’
‘No, no. I’m just fine.’
‘What about your son here?’ The man squints at Elvis. ‘Reckon your mama’s all right, child?’
‘My daddy’s coming home today,’ says Elvis, in his clearest voice.
Gladys pats his hair. ‘That’s right, baby. Now, how may I help you, sir?’
‘You know where Lake Street is?’
Elvis watches the man nod seriously as Mama gives rambling directions. He feels sure that, soon enough, he will have her back inside, where he can seat her in a chair and fetch her a glass of water, maybe pat her on the knee and say, ‘There, there,’ and she will touch his cheek and thank him from the bottom of her heart.
When Gladys has finished, the man says, ‘OK if I visit your outhouse, ma’am? I been awful long on the road.’
‘It’s over the back there. Help yourself and welcome.’
As the man rounds the porch, he glances up and says in a slightly lower tone, ‘Anything I can do to thank you, lady? Make amends for your disappointment and all?’
Gladys touches her neck and lets out a small, amused noise. ‘Oh, no!’ she says, her words coming out in a rush. ‘Ain’t no call for that!’
The man walks on.
Then Gladys pulls herself straight. ‘Hold on,’ she calls to his back, ‘there’s one thing you could do.’
Elvis gazes at her, confused. It must be past the hour for his milk and biscuit, now. Why is she encouraging this stranger to linger at their house when his father – his actual, real father – may be home any minute? And what if his daddy finds his mama talking to this man? Elvis already understands this would not please Vernon one bit.
‘Would you put the music on, just while you’re gone?’ Her voice has gone real high and tinkly. ‘I don’t know why, but I guess I got a hankering for a song this morning.’
‘Sure,’ says the man, with a wide smile. ‘I understand.’ He walks back to his truck. ‘There you go,’ he says and, with a flick of his hand, a song about a train blares out. Gladys and Elvis both know the tune.
The man salutes, then disappears round the back of the house. Once he’s gone, Gladys claps her hands. ‘Daddy’s coming home today!’ she says.
Elvis says, ‘But that wasn’t him, Mama.’
‘I know that! But did you see he had a jacket like Daddy’s? It’s a sign! A sign that Daddy’s really coming.’
Elvis had not considered that his father might fail to return.
‘But Daddy is coming,’ he says. ‘You promised.’
‘Sure he is, baby!’ Gladys gives her son a sideways look. ‘I love this song! Now, you watch this!’
And she arranges herself on the centre of the porch, arms stretched to either side. The song’s chorus begins, and she breaks into a dance.
‘Watch your mama, now!’
Her feet pound the boards, moving so fast that he cannot quite fathom what it is they are doing. Her skirt flies this way and that, revealing her long legs. A train whistle blows, and she grins and pretends to pull a cord. When the music becomes more urgent, she frowns in concentration, thumping out the rhythm with her feet, twisting at the waist. He’s seen her sway and clap her hands in church; he’s heard her sing along with the radio at Uncle Bob’s house. But he’s never seen his mama dance like this. Her body appears light as air, yet it feels to Elvis that the whole house is shaking. The porch vibrates, sending pleasant tremors through his bare feet and up his legs. Gladys smiles so widely that he spots her tongue, pink and shocking inside her mouth.
She reaches out and he readies himself to be scooped up, but she touches only the air.
This is too much. Sensing that the only way to get her attention is to join in, he grabs her sweaty hands and shouts the words he can make out: ‘RUMBLE’ and ‘ROAR!’
He looks into her laughing face as she sings along. Then she twirls around, losing his hands, so he twirls too, even though he understands that he is getting in the way and she would rather he sat and watched.
Only when the radio announcer’s voice comes over the song does Elvis hear the low whistle and the clapping.
The dark-haired man is standing by the oak tree, watching.
‘That was mighty fine!’ he calls. ‘Both of you!’
‘Oh, my,’ says Gladys, wiping an arm across her brow. ‘You weren’t meant to see that.’
‘You a good dancer, Mrs Presley,’ says the man.
‘Oh, baloney,’ says Gladys, beaming.
The man saunters to his truck. As he slams the door, he says, ‘Thank you, ma’am, for the entertainment.’
Back inside, they are both slightly breathless.
‘Let me get your butch, baby.’
He sits at the wooden table, on the verge of tears. He doesn’t know why he wants to cry, but he knows his mama will be disappointed if he does. This is a happy day. She’s told him so, many times. But Mama is strange today. She just won’t look at him properly.
She sets a cup of milk on the table and he takes a sip. For once, even though she’s added a little molasses, it doesn’t taste good. His stomach feels hard and bunched up, as if it’s full of marbles.
‘Drink your butch, now, Elvie.’
Usually she would sit and drink, too. They would say their words for milk together, Butch, butchy, yummy creamy butch! She would stroke his face and they would share some buttered biscuits. But today his mama cannot seem to sit down. She rose early to wash the floors and scrub the porch boards, and now she is fiddling with flour and lard, filling the air with white dust that catches in his throat.
‘Gonna make Daddy some dough burgers, just how he likes. And an apple cobbler, too. Then when Uncle Frank and Aunt Leona come home from work, they can sit with you and me and Cousin Corinne and Daddy, and we can all eat as a family.’
Dough burgers are his favourite. And she’s not looking at him, even now.
He wants to knock over the milk, let it run across the table and drip onto the clean floor.
But instead he asks, as he has done many times, ‘Mama, did Daddy do something bad?’
Light and quick, not missing a beat, she rubs fat into flour with the tips of her fingers. ‘It’s like I said, baby. Daddy made a mistake. And the Christian thing is to forgive. Those men who took him away have forgiven Daddy. They shortened his sentence because he’s been so good. That’s why he’s coming home.’
Elvis focuses so hard on his milk that his vision blurs.
‘Will the men come for me, Mama?’ he asks, his lower lip trembling.
‘Oh!’ She swoops to his side. ‘No, baby! What made you think that?’
He looks at her troubled face, drinking her in.
‘Sometimes … I make a mistake.’
Like yesterday, when he let Corinne’s English bulldog play in the house, and Mama yelled because she’d just got all the sheets clean for Daddy and now she’d have to start over.
‘Oh, no! The mistakes you make are only small, baby. Mama’s gonna protect you, you know that.’
She pulls him to her chest, and he relaxes against her gratefully.
‘I thank the good Lord I have you, baby. I thank Him every day.’
As she has given him this, he offers her something in return. ‘Poor Daddy,’ he says.
‘Poor Daddy!’ she agrees.
Prising him from her, she says, ‘Elvie, I want you to promise me something.’ She grips his shoulders. ‘When Daddy comes, we ain’t never gonna talk about that place again, OK?’
He reaches up to dust the flour from her hair, but she stops his hand.
‘Elvis? You hear what I said?’
He blinks.
‘Daddy won’t want to keep going over it. So don’t go asking him a heap of questions. OK?’
But he has so many questions! What was it like, in jail? Was he chained up, like in the stories? Did he sleep on straw? Was he whipped?
‘Daddy won’t want to think about all that bad stuff. We’re gonna help him do that, ain’t we?’
‘Yes, Mama. Poor Daddy.’
‘That’s right. Poor Daddy.’
That afternoon, when Cousin Corinne comes home from school, she and Elvis crawl into the space beneath the porch. There isn’t room to stand, but there’s enough to play. He likes it here, even though it smells of chicken shit and Mama says to watch out for snakes. It is more sheltered than the yard, and from here he can hear Mama and know she’s there without having to check on her. She walks across the porch in her stockinged feet. Thumpety-thumpety-thumpety. Much more sedate and measured than this morning’s dancing. Clonk-whoosh. Dipping the pitcher in the water bucket. Thumpety-click-clunk. Going back through the door.
‘Elvis!’ moans Corinne. ‘You ain’t playing!’
He studies his cousin’s small eyes and clumps of lashes. She is louder and quicker than him in everything.
‘I’m playing dead!’ he says, lying on the damp ground, letting the dirt brush his cheek. He wonders if this is what it’s really like to be dead. Smelling the cool earth. Hearing the living walk over you as you peer out at a thin strip of light.
Corinne thrusts a corn shuck with a scrap of crocheted fabric wrapped round it into his face. ‘You be baby.’
‘Waah!’ says Elvis, automatically. ‘Baby hungry!’
‘Just you wait now, baby,’ says Corinne, arranging herself so she is sitting next to his head. ‘Mama’s busy. You gotta wait.’
Clinkety-clunk-clunk. And a scrabbling sound. Mama straightening Aunt Leona’s furniture, again.
‘Don’t wanna.’
‘Mama knows you a good baby, but you gotta wait,’ says Corinne.
Suddenly he can stand it no more.
‘TORNADO!’ he shouts, sitting up and shaking the corn doll in Corinne’s face. ‘TORNADO!’
Both children are familiar with this game.
‘Hide!’ shrieks Corinne, and they throw themselves, face down, in the dirt.
They’ve heard all about the real tornado that hit Tupelo when Elvis was a baby. Mama loves to tell the story. It lasted just a few minutes but it killed hundreds and destroyed entire streets. God’s wrecking ball had come to town, she says, and it shook the house, the yard, the sky itself. The first she’d known of it was the whispering of the newspaper sheets that lined the walls of their house. She’d stood in the yard, Elvis on her hip, and seen something green and scattered in the sky. The clouds billowed into gigantic mushrooms, then flattened. Vernon’s uncle Noah had collected the whole family in his school bus and taken them to shelter in his brick house, where Gladys had braced herself against the wall, holding Elvis to her, as the tornado came close. She held him so hard he cried, but still she held him tighter.
‘Is it passing?’ asks Corinne, her voice subdued.
‘It’s coming right this way!’ shouts Elvis. ‘You’d better get on!’
Corinne hauls herself onto Elvis’s back. She’s almost two years older, and her hot body feels reassuringly heavy. Her hair tickles his neck. The knobbles of her buttons push into his spine.
He can still hear his mother overhead. There’s a scratching noise, as if she’s cleaning the stove.
‘Hold on, now!’ he says.
‘Reckon it’s passing over.’
‘No. Stay down.’
As Corinne clings to him, he rocks to and fro, slowly building up speed.
‘TORNADO!’ he cries. ‘Hang on!’
‘I can’t!’ squeals Corinne.
One last jerk and she’ll fall into the dirt. He whips himself sideways, but Corinne hangs on, her weight squeezing the breath from him.
‘Reckon it’s passed,’ he whispers.
‘Naw,’ she says, hopefully. ‘Looks like it’s coming back.’
There are unfamiliar steps above, now. Heavy and deliberate. They cross the porch and there’s a long pause.
Then a shout comes from the house. ‘Vernon!’
Summoning all his strength, Elvis gives a single thrust of his body, and Corinne tumbles off.
Above them, the screen door is wrenched open, and there’s the sound of running, followed by a long wail. Then he hears nothing at all.
Elvis stays where he is, sweating and slightly dizzy. Looking at Corinne he announces, ‘Tornado’s over.’
The room seems much smaller with his father in it.
Vernon’s face is grey and baggy-looking, and his clothes hang from his bones. He stands by the stove, blinking at Gladys, who has her hands across her mouth, and seems to be propping herself against a chair.
‘Glad,’ he says, ‘you ain’t changed?’
‘Not one bit!’ Mama says, grasping Vernon’s hands in hers.
Then Gladys notices Elvis in the doorway. Wiping her eyes she says, ‘Baby, come say hello to your daddy.’
Elvis twists his fingers together. That leather jacket in the trunk won’t fit this man any more. The man this morning seemed more like his daddy, or, at least, how Elvis imagined his daddy would be when he returned: solid-looking, confident, winking. Driving a loud truck. Perhaps bearing gifts, like the music his mama danced to. This man’s eyes shift from spot to spot, not quite focusing. His pants and shoes are covered in dust. And there’s a nasty new smell in the room.
‘Elvis,’ says Gladys, ‘come on over, now, and say hello to your daddy.’
Elvis considers crying ‘TORNADO!’ again. He hears Corinne, still playing beneath the house, singing a lullaby to her corn doll.
‘Elvis …’ warns Gladys.
‘It’s all right,’ says Vernon. He walks slowly across the room and crouches down before his son, his knees cracking. Elvis notices a small hole in the thigh of his father’s pants and the skin beneath, pink and scaly-looking. The smell grows stronger. ‘Hello, son,’ Vernon says. ‘All right with you if I come live here?’
Elvis glances up at Gladys, who nods, firmly.
‘I guess,’ he says.
Then his father embraces him, and Elvis feels the hardness of Vernon’s collarbone against his cheek.
‘Daddy’s back,’ says Vernon. ‘And soon we can get our own place.’
Elvis pats his father’s arm. ‘Mama’ll be real happy now,’ he says.
Vernon laughs, uncertainly.
‘I brought you something, son.’
He fishes in his pocket and produces a piece of paper. Carefully, he unfolds it to reveal a once-glossy image of a man in a pointy green hat with a quiver of arrows slung across his shoulder.
‘I saved it for you. From a movie magazine.’
Elvis takes it in his hands. The paper is soft as cloth, and tatty at the edges, but the colours are bright. The man’s hat sweeps across the page and, beneath his moustache, his teeth are milky white.
‘Robin Hood here’s what you call an outlaw, see? A law-breaker. But he’s a good man,’ says Vernon.
‘Is his moustache real?’ asks Elvis.
Vernon frowns. ‘I don’t know. I guess.’
‘Say thank you, Elvis,’ says Gladys.
‘Thank you, sir.’
Vernon straightens up. He looks at his wife. ‘Run along and play now, boy. You could pretend to be Robin Hood!’
Elvis gazes at his mother, but she is too busy smiling at Vernon to notice.
A low growl comes from behind him. He turns to see Corinne on all fours, pretending to be a dog, her corn doll’s head jammed between her teeth.
When he looks back, his parents have disappeared into Uncle Frank and Aunt Leona’s bedroom.
* * *
As far as Elvis can tell, his daddy sleeps pretty much all the time.
At night, the three of them share a pallet on the kitchen floor, but as soon as Aunt Leona and Uncle Frank have left for work, Vernon makes use of their bed. While his mama is doing laundry in the yard, Elvis sneaks into the bedroom to get a look at this man, his father.
He has the Robin Hood picture in his pocket, not because he loves it but because he wants to keep it safe without having to see it, and he fingers its wilted edges as he stands by the bed, watching the hump beneath the quilt. Mama spent some time trying to get Daddy out of the bedroom this morning. First she talked to him real sweet, offering coffee and biscuits and even fried apple pie. Then she raised her voice and asked how long it was going to be like this. Elvis heard no reply. After that, his mama had let his daddy be.
Elvis moves closer and examines Vernon’s face. It’s creased into the pillow, and is almost the same yellowy colour as the flour sack from which the case is stitched. Elvis tries to recall what this face used to be like, but can picture only his daddy’s dark blonde curls, which are still there. His voice, too, is the same, although Elvis remembers his father singing ‘Clementine’ and ‘I’ll Fly Away’. No songs have been sung in the house since Vernon’s return. There’s that sour smell about him, still. Perhaps he’s been sleeping so hard that he hasn’t had a chance to wash. Mama says he’s tired, after being away so long, and needs to rest.
Then Vernon’s eyes flick open. They are gummy and red around the rims. Elvis ducks, too late.
‘What you up to, boy?’
Elvis slides his body beneath the bed, and waits.
‘Come out and let me look at you.’
Elvis stays where he is, studying the unswept floorboards.
‘You like that old picture I got you?’
‘Yessir,’ says Elvis, from under the bed.
‘That’s good, son. Did I tell you who it is?’
‘Robin Hood.’
‘Naw. That’s Errol Flynn, pretending to be Robin Hood. For a movie. You seen a movie, right?’
‘Yessir.’
Gladys sometimes takes Elvis to see a picture playing on the back of the flat-bed truck that parks outside Uncle Noah’s store during the summertime. But he hasn’t seen any movie with this man in it.
The mattress judders above, and his father lets out a long sigh.
‘Shall I get Mama?’ asks Elvis.
‘What for?’
Elvis can’t think of a reason that would sound good.
‘Come out, now,’ says his father, gently.
Elvis scoots from beneath the bed but remains sitting on the floor. His father has his hands tucked beneath his head.
‘When you getting up, Daddy?’
‘When I’m good and ready,’ says Vernon, gazing at the ceiling.
‘You wanna play some? I got a truck …’
‘Not now, boy.’
‘Daddy?’
‘Yeah?’
‘What did you do?’
Vernon’s eyes roll towards Elvis. Slowly, he heaves himself into a sitting position. Before speaking, he takes a long drink from the cup on the nightstand.
‘Man name of Orville Bean, owns half of East Tupelo, messed with me. He wrote me a cheque for a hog I sold him, and it said “four dollars”. That hog was worth more like forty. So I changed the numbers on the cheque. That’s all.’
‘You got sent to the pen ’cause you changed some numbers?’
Vernon presses his lips together. ‘Uh-huh. But it was wrong of me to do that.’
Elvis nods in what he hopes is an understanding way.
‘You been taking care of Mama good, I can tell,’ says Vernon.
Then a loud voice comes from the front of the house.
‘I gotta talk to my son,’ it says.
There’s a slam, and his mama’s voice is pleading, ‘You can’t go in there right now, JD …’
‘Son of a bitch,’ Vernon mutters. He looks at Elvis. ‘Fetch me them pants,’ he instructs, nodding at the chair beneath the window. Elvis does as he’s told. From the other room comes the sound of boots treading the boards, his mother offering coffee, and chairs scraping. And the voice again.
‘Don’t he know it’s nearly noon? His brain get fried in Parchman, or what?’
Vernon buckles his belt and pushes open the door. Elvis trails behind.
Elvis’s granddaddy is sitting in the biggest chair, the one with the fancy cushion Mama made. The sight of this man’s bony behind crushing Mama’s fine embroidery makes Elvis’s breath come quick. The man smooths his hair back with a big hand and blinks through his thick eyeglasses. His eyebrows are black and wiry. Sometimes this man is sitting on the porch when Elvis and Gladys visit Grandma Minnie Mae, but as far as Elvis is aware he has not visited this house before now.
‘Daddy,’ says Vernon, from the doorway.
‘Son.’
Elvis has never seen any look other than a scowl on his granddaddy’s face, and today it is particularly impressive.
‘My wife fixed you some coffee?’ Vernon asks.
‘No need,’ says JD. ‘This won’t take long.’
Elvis makes a break for it and runs to his mother, who is standing by the bucket and dipper with the coffee pot in her hand. He hangs on to her apron.
‘What’s on your mind, Daddy?’ asks Vernon.
JD cocks his head to the side. ‘We oughta talk private.’
‘Anything you got to say to me you can say in front of my family,’ says Vernon.
‘If that’s how you want it,’ says JD.
Gladys puts the coffee pot back on the shelf and presses a hand to Elvis’s shoulder.
JD narrows his eyes. ‘What I gotta say is this: why ain’t you out working a job, boy?’
‘Ain’t found me one yet, sir.’
‘I hear the WPA’s looking for men to dig latrines down in town. That sounds like it’d be near perfect for you, with all your experience shovelling pig shit.’
A strange noise comes from Vernon’s throat.
‘JD,’ says Gladys, ‘I’ll thank you to remember that my son is in the room, and his ears don’t need to hear no cursing—’
‘You need to get your ass down there,’ JD continues. ‘You just can’t get out the pen and go to bed, boy. Folks is saying you as good as dead in here. You gotta step up. Provide for this family. Your gal here’s been doing it long enough. Now it’s your turn.’
‘Like you did, Daddy?’ says Vernon, looking up.
There’s a silence. Gladys’s fingertips dig into Elvis’s shoulders, making him squirm away.
JD pushes back his chair and strolls across to Elvis like he has all the time in the world. Crouching down, he peers at his grandson. A powerful smell of tobacco comes off him as he pats Elvis on the chest, hard, three times. ‘You listen to your granddaddy, boy, and listen good. Don’t be like your paw here. You know what he did, don’t you? He cheated. Lied. Stole. Took the easy way out. That ain’t no way to live.’
‘Reckon that’s the only way you taught me,’ says Vernon.
In a flash, JD is up on his feet. He marches across to his son, draws a hand back, and slaps him across the face.
Elvis pees in his pants, just a little bit.
Vernon stands there, hanging on to his face like it might fall off.
‘Get out of this house,’ says Gladys, her voice trembling. She goes to the door and holds it open, leaving Elvis standing alone, exposed to these two men, one with his head in his hands, the other breathing hard and opening and closing his fist.
‘Get out,’ she repeats.
JD picks up his hat. At the door he turns to Gladys and says, ‘I feel right sorry for you, woman.’
‘You ain’t got the faintest idea what he’s been through,’ says Gladys. ‘He don’t deserve no more punishment.’
‘Naw,’ says JD, ‘and neither do you, I don’t reckon.’
Still scowling, he places his hat on his head, tips it to Elvis, then leaves.