23
The blood kept coming and coming. I stood over the cop, watching him die. He was in and out of consciousness and when I tried to put my hand on the wound, my hand got lost in the blood. At first I thought my hand disappeared, but then I felt this horrible pull. I was being pulled through the cop's bloody wound, first my arm, then my shoulder. There was a horrible growl like the wound was alive, and it sucked me in. My head was covered and everything I saw was crimson. I couldn't breathe, because I was choking on the cop's wound from the inside out. It was swallowing me and choking me at the same time. I screamed, but nothing came out because I was smothered in blood. Suddenly, I felt wetness different than the blood and a scratchiness, followed again by more wetness and then a loud piercing shout.
My eyes opened and I looked right into the dark eyes of whatever beast had grabbed me. It licked me again and I realized the beast was Al.
Another fucking nightmare and I was covered in sweat and breathing hard. I looked around. Slowly, the inside of the Moody Blue came into focus. I was home, I was okay, and little by little reality replaced the dream state.
'Welcome back,' Karl said from the threshold of my bedroom.
'You could hear me?'
'Blood curdling screams are tough to miss.'
'How long did I do it?' I sat up and wiped the sweat from my forehead.
'Half an hour with intensity, but on and off most of the night.'
'You were up all night?'
'I'm not big on sleep.'
Al flopped off the bed and went over to Karl, who scratched underneath Al's chin. It made Al's rear leg spasm and he loved it.
'I'm sorry for getting a little rough with you last night. I'm a little fucked up lately,' I said.
'No sweat. I had it coming,' Karl said. I threw in Elvis's comeback 8-track to give my mind something other than the nightmare to think about. It was cued up to 'Guitar Man.'
I grabbed a cup of coffee and tried to sing along. The words went too fast for me, especially when I was under-caffeinated. I couldn't get my lips around the phrase '…so I slept in the hobo jungle…' without blowing the line.
'I wondered what Elvis would've been like if they hadn't got to him,' Karl said, half to himself.
Under caffeinated or not I couldn't let this statement just hang out there.
'Karl, I don't take statements about Elvis lightly. You want to give me a run down on the meaning of that last statement?' I sipped my coffee.
'It's pretty obvious isn't?'
'No, Karl, it isn't obvious at all.' I got a tad annoyed.
'When Elvis started out what kind of music did he do?' Karl asked. Karl used his Socratic tone of voice.
'Well they called it R amp; B or race music. Basically he did Black music.'
'He wiggled.'
'Right, he expressed himself sexually in a way only black performers did. He opened up the world to a different culture.'
'Yeah, I guess you could say it like that.' I wasn't sure where Karl was going.
'So now black kids and white kids sang and danced to the same stuff. Then what happened?'
'I don't know; he went into the Army, I guess.'
'He got drafted. In a peace time draft, the government takes the first guy to integrate the culture with popular music and put him away for two years.'
' Hmm…I never thought of it in those terms.'
'And if you're a student of Elvisology you know what happened to the King over in Germany, don't you?'
'I don't know-a lot of things happened to him…'
'Elvis gets introduced to amphetamines. The Army gave them out to guys who had guard duty at night. Elvis got introduced to drugs by the government,' Karl raised his eyebrows.
'Yeah, but back then didn't everybody in the Army get uppers?'
'Not everyone, Duff. And what, Mr. Addictions counselor, do amphetamines do to you?'
'Keep you awake, give you energy, give you confidence, and-'
'Stop right there. What happened just before Elvis got sent to Germany?'
'His mother died.'
'And Elvis's mom was everything to him, right?'
'Yeah.'
'So is it such a stretch to know in advance Elvis would really, really like a drug that would make him feel confident during a part of his life filled with existential insecurity?' Karl's eyebrows went up again.
I didn't say anything. I just thought.
'Then he comes back and he does movies where, through his music, he embraces different cultures. The Mexicans. The Native Americans, the Polynesians.'
'C'mon Karl even I thought the movies were silly.'
'Of course, you did. They wanted you to. Elvis knew they wanted him cleaned up and non-threatening, but he found ways to champion the little man's causes. But you had to be paying attention.'
'You said something about 'they got him.''
'Even in the 70's Elvis brought different cultures together with his music. He sang the music of the Irish, the Italians, and still did R amp; B and traditional Southern Gospel. To the end, he brought the masses together.'
'Why would it be threatening?'
'C'mon Duff. If everyone stops hating and starts singing and dancing together, then how will the powers that be turn us on one another? If the poor and disenfranchised culture gets celebrated, then a boundary is broken down. The powers need boundaries.'
'But Karl-how did they 'get' Elvis?'
'First of all, they got him hooked and knew they had something on him. They also knew he was under control, because with the drugs his expression got limited. And after he was used up and died, they covered his tracks by discrediting him.'
'I don't follow.'
'Duff, I'm sure you're tuned into the media and our culture. What do they say about Elvis? He got fat, drugged up, stupid, into weird sex-remember the Albert Goldman book? Today, kids think of Elvis the caricature, not the heroic culture-defining man from the poor integrated background.'
'So you're saying they discredited Elvis because he brought people together?'
'He brought the wrong people together. How did the greatest entertainer of the last century become a caricature of himself?'
'Uh…'
'Because if the masses don't take Elvis seriously, then they don't watch and listen. They follow along. That's the way they like it.' Karl raised his eyebrows as if to say 'you understand?' I think I was starting to.
Maybe Karl wasn't crazy. Maybe I hadn't been paying close enough attention to what had been going on around me. Maybe things weren't as they appeared. If they could make Elvis out to be a nut and make him something to mock, what couldn't they do?
'Duffy, can I ask you something?'
'Sure.'
'Are you crazy enough to want to do something about all this shit-I mean the shit Newstrom has in mind?' Karl looked at me and his face lost all expression. He had stopped scratching Al and stood still.
'We should call the FBI or the police or something.'
'They'll laugh,' Karl said.
'Karl, if a bunch of innocent people are about to get murdered I think we have to do something. The hard part is you only seem to know things in general terms. The fact that something is going to happen somewhere doesn't
