We can’t stay out here again.” Junebug ran toward the woods, calling for Little Ed and Clevey, his voice slicing through the ominous quiet. I followed him, avoiding even the trees that had survived, seeing too many branches barely hanging on their moorings. “Here!” I heard Trey’s voice call back hoarsely. “Over here, hurry! Hurry!” His voice broke; shock and fear had replaced coolness and swagger. Junebug and I didn’t see the others right off; they had fled into a dense copse of loblolly pines that the tornado spared. I finally saw them, in a small clearing: a stone-faced Trey, his arm around a sobbing Little Ed, Clevey shaking, Davis staring at the ground gape-mouthed. We ran up to them and Junebug saw her before I did, crying out, “Jesus Christ!” The six of us stood there, silent for once as a group, our eyes riveted on the body of a teenage black girl. I’d thought the sky looked like a dead staring orb, but that girl’s open eyes were the true thing. Blank. Empty. Without a hint of life, staring unflinchingly at the storm. Her skin was brown as rich earth and her face was the kind that just gets prettier with time. But she had no more time left. She was drenched, her yellow blouse molding to her soft, motionless breasts. I made my eyes look at her face again. I couldn’t see any blood on her, but there was a dent in the side of her long, dark hair, as though someone had dropped her, like a doll, from a great and unforgiving height. Her mouth was open and delicately small white teeth stood in perfect formation. A lank of her straightened hair lay across her throat. She was wearing a navy wind-breaker, torn open by the storm, old jeans, and muddied cowboy boots. She was beautiful. And we six boys stood, paralyzed, as the giant wheel of the hurricane moved its calm canopy of eye away from us to thunder down more destruction.
But where the path we walked began
1
To slant the fifth autumnal slope,
As we descended following Hope,
There sat the Shadow feared of man; Who broke our fair companionship,
And spread his mantle dark and cold,
And wrapped thee formless in the fold,
And dulled the murmur on thy lip, And bore thee where I could not see
Nor follow, though I walk in haste,
And think that somewhere in the waste
The Shadow sits and waits for me.
“Why on Earth does Wanda Dickensheets think she looks remotely like Elvis?” Junebug asked me, sipping coffee and chewing on a cheese kolache.
“First time I ever saw a woman dressing like a man,” Sister offered, dropping another kolache on Junebug’s plate. She left me unpastried, putting her head near Junebug’s shoulder to get a better look at the latest goings-on in downtown Mirabeau.
Frowning, I watched the spectacle across the street. Ed Dickensheets steadied a sign against the blustery November breeze while his assistant fastened a garish placard to the awning of the old dress shop that the Dickensheets had bought.
Apparently Ed didn’t steady it quite right, as his wife, Wanda, brayed at him from the sidewalk to hold the placard straight. Wanda was dressed like Elvis Presley in his later years, resplendent in a white, high-collared, rhine-stoned jumpsuit. A black pompadour wig covered her head, and her ample breasts were somehow concealed from view. I could see Ed’s lips tighten as Wanda yelled in her finest fake Tupelo accent, her jet-black man’s wig bobbing along with her temper.
“I hope this doesn’t mean Little Ed’s going to start dressing like Priscilla,” I said.
“Oh, my God.” Sister peered out the Sit-a-Spell’s window from the cafe counter. “She’s actually waving a jelly doughnut at him. Quick, Jordy, get my camera. I’ll sell the picture to the National Enquirer. ”
I was too busy reading the sign Ed was hanging: WORLD-FAMOUS INSTITUTE OF ELVISOLOGY-where the king still lives. “As soon as the tabloids find out that Elvis is alive in Mirabeau,” I said, “all those inquiring minds are going to leave those Burger Kings in Chattanooga high and dry. We’ll have ourselves a tourist trap. Get out the radar gun, Junebug, and make the town some money.”
“What the hell has gotten into Ed?” Junebug asked, but I didn’t correct him. I still thought of Ed as Little Ed; he’d kept that nickname all through high school, up until his daddy, Big Ed, dropped dead of one chicken-fried steak too many. It’d been hard to keep from calling him Little Ed, since he still wasn’t a big man. I resolved to mend my ways. After all, now Ed was a respected seller of radio ad time for KBAV, in addition to being Mirabeau’s newest businessman.
“I don’t believe it’s as much Ed as Wanda and her mother, Ivalou,” I offered, fighting off the urge for a cigarette to go with my coffee. The stress of the past few weeks had pert near driven me back to the packs. “If Wanda is Elvis, then Ivalou is surely Colonel Parker. Those two conned Ed into that trip to Graceland, and since Wanda saw how much money folks spend on Elvis mementos, she’s been the queen of painted velvet. She thinks there’s enough people sharing her taste to keep a business running.”
“Where’s old Clevey when you need him?” Junebug laughed. “He’d have a field day poking fun at Ed for this one.”
Some things-like Clevey’s teasing Ed until a vein popped out on Ed’s forehead-never changed. Clevey’d been coming in daily to the cafe since it reopened last week, but he hadn’t made an appearance this morning- undoubtedly too busy trying to find more interesting news around town for his stories in The Mirabeau Mirror.
“It’s better he’s not here. He’d probably request a song from Wanda, and I don’t want to hear her warbling ‘Jail-house Rock,’” I said. Sister made a huffing noise and went to wipe her spotless counters.
Junebug shook his head and then glanced around the newly redone cafe. “All these new businesses. Mirabeau’s about to get metropolitan, don’t you think?”
Having left Boston to come home, I couldn’t exactly agree with his assessment of the new Mirabeau. Now, I love Mirabeau; it’s my hometown, and I had willingly moved back close to a year ago to help care for my mother, who’s ailing from Alzheimer’s. Agony was watching Mama’s daily slide down into dementia, but the idea of her in a nursing home was even more painful. I have a horror of those places; they’re the modern-day version of the iceberg, set adrift with the Eskimo elderly. I had no wish to see my mother in an antiseptic-reeking dormitory full of people waiting to die.
In any case, Junebug was plain wrong. The town hadn’t changed that much in the years I’d been up North enjoying my career as a textbook editor. The addition of two new businesses hardly signified an economic boom.
The Institute of Elvisology might cater to its special customer base a whole six weeks, I guessed; the newly bought and refurbished Sit-a-Spell Cafe held (I hoped and prayed) a far brighter prospect. As long as its two proprietresses could agree. Right now the future looked bleak.
Having abandoned their only two customers (Junebug and me), the two intrepid entrepreneurs debated with pinched smiles by the kolache counter, the fragrantly steaming fruit pastries sweeter than their words but no less heated.
“Candace, sweetie pie, we’ve covered this already. I am not preparing any ethnic dishes aside from Tex-Mex, spaghetti, or French fries,” Sister insisted nicely. She’d finally given up her glamorous job as the cook out at the End of the Road Truck Stop (also known locally as Hell with Twelve Booths). Sister was one of the best cooks in the county and she’d finally realized her culinary talent was wasted on folks too road-tired to use their taste buds. Sister looked right spiffy in her new turquoise T-shirt with Sit-a-Spell Cafe stenciled in white cursive across the front. We can nearly pass for twins, she and I, with our blond hair and green eyes. I of course have a calmer, more pleasant temperament.
“But my friends in Houston say Lithuanian food is in!” My girlfriend, Candace Tully, ran a tired hand through her heavy brown hair. “We need a gimmick, something different to grab customers. Food they can’t get elsewhere
