Comeback Tour

securing a bootleg musichip of Tasha's 'Concert for Uzbekhistan.'

He found himself humming 'Blue Moon of Kentucky' under his breath. Recently, the old songs had been coming back to him. Something would remind him of a line of lyric, or a piece of music would contain a string of similar notes, and he'd find himself half-way through 'Heartbreak Hotel,' 'Jailhouse Rock' or 'Blue Moon.' He was getting old, he guessed.

An armourcab drew up across the street, and Krokodil got out, with Hawk-That-Settles in tow. She had forsaken her pinstripes for a loose white outfit a little like Elvis' karate robe. She was carrying a hip-holstered magnum, and a heavy shoulderbag. Her hair was tightly drawn back in a ponytail. Her eyepatch made her look like a zen pirate. Hawk smiled and waved, but Krokodil just carefully crossed the road. Gandy whistled as if a '55 Chevrolet with sharkfins and a chrome jukebox radiator had just cruised by.

'That is some woman,' said Nick.

Elvis didn't say anything in reply, but shouted 'Good morning ma'am' across the road.

'Hi, Colonel,' said the Indian.

'Can I put this in the back?' Krokodil asked.

'I can open up the trunk. There's no one in it.'

Krokodil explained. 'We may need these things quickly. The back seat will do.'

'You're the boss.'

Gandy stepped forward, and opened the door for her, grinning. She slipped her bag, which was weighty, onto the seat. Elvis heard metal objects shifting inside the holdall. Krokodil came along with her own tools.

Krokodil left Gandy standing holding the door and walked over to Elvis.

'You're ready?'

'Sure. Do you want a recaff or anything before we set off?'

'No.'

There was a pause.

'Fine by me. We might as well go, then…'

Krokodil opened the front passenger door and got in, fastening the seatbelt over her chest. She looked straight ahead, and waited. She didn't have anything to say to Hawk.

Elvis looked around, shook hands with Hawk and Nick and gave Gandy a high five.

He got into the car, and left them standing outside his apartment building. Nick waved a rag.

It was a long, straight highway for a while. In the rearview, Elvis saw Hawk get back into the armourcab. He wondered what the Indian would be doing while his…his what?…employer? mistress? owner? best friend?…while Krokodil was off to Cape Canaveral.

They came to the PZ wall, and the Memphis cops processed them through. They knew Elvis and his business, and didn't give him too much hassle. The cops in this town were okay. It was the Good Ole Boys you had to watch out for.

The Memphis NoGo wasn't too heavy. It was mainly just run-down. People came out of their shacks to watch the cars pass by, but they didn't often set traps or toss petrol bombs. Last year, Elvis had put together a watertight kickback and corruption case against Burke Crowther, a city councilman—a Good Ole Boys client, naturally—who had been trying to get a ruling through at state level declaring any unemployed NoGo dweller as fair game for the indenture gangs. Councilman Crowther had been removed from office, and since then Elvis could park his pink Cadillac unlocked outside the NoGo clubhouse of the Mighty Mean Mothergrabbas gangcult for a week and come back to find it unscavved, unscratched and fresh-polished.

Elvis waved to Mama Maybelline, Den Mother of the MMM chapter, as the Cadillac cruised past her open-air exercise class. Then, they were away from the city and out in the soggy scrublands that would eventually turn into fullblown swamp.

Krokodil sat like a dressmaker's dummy, not speaking. Elvis asked her if she wanted him to play some music on the system. He had some good stuff on pirate CDs. Howlin' Wolf. Johnny Bumette. Hank Williams. Gene Autry. Bobbie Gentry. She wasn't interested. Elvis was beginning to get the impression he was sitting next to a human- shaped refrigerator.

Then, she reacted as if she smelled something. Cyborgs were like that. They had esper senses you couldn't figure out.

She opened one of the dash compartments, and pulled out Dollman Cleele's likeness of Robert E. Lee Chamberlain.

'What's this?' she asked, her tone telling him that she knew all about Santeria.

'A present.'

'Who is it?'

'Not a nice man.'

'I can tell.'

'One of Gandy's friends made the thing. A houngan. Do you believe in all that hoodoo?'

Krokodil was quiet for a moment, looking at the doll's face.

'Do you?' she asked.

Elvis felt an icy tingle. He had a feeling this salvage gig was going to be a lot less simple than it sounded.

'I don't know. I was born in the backwoods. I've spent time in the Caribbean, in Latin America. And I've been in and out of the swamps for ten years or more. I don't know if there's a Jesus H. Christ like my Mama said, or if there's a Damballah, a Baron Samedi, a 'gator that walks on two legs or a Sanity Clause. But I do know there are unnatural things in this world.'

'You're right there.'

The way she said it, flat and inexpressive, give him a frisson. Elvis was grateful that they were heading South-East, away from the Delta, away from Robert Johnson's crossroads. But the Blues That Walks Like a Man wasn't just a Mississippi myth, and the Devil was waiting at more than one crossroads.

Krokodil carefully put the doll back into the compartment, and shut it up. She put her hands in her lap and seemed to go to sleep with her eye open, like a machine with the power switched off.

Elvis took the main interstate to Grand June, just dipped into Mississippi to go South of the expanse of still deep water that had been Lake Florence and which filled the Tennessee River Valley. There were church steeples and shaky upper-storeys standing out of the Lake at Tuscumbia and Decatur, where whole towns had been abandoned to the rising water level. They took the high ground around Guntersville and cut South through Alabama, striking towards Birmingham and Montgomery. They made good time. After about three hundred miles of engine purr and air conditioner hum, Elvis cracked and reached into the music rack.

He jammed in a CD at random, and wished he hadn't.

The clear, young voice, given its twang by a curled lip and a flared nostril, filled the car. Krokodil turned to look at him, her neck working like the swivel arm of a security camera.

'Is that…?'

The song was 'I Don't Care if the Sun Don't Shine.' He had cut it in 1954. The session percussionist, Cunningham, had used an empty record box instead of a drum. Marion Keisker, Sam Phillips' secretary, had written an extra verse in the studio to fill out the song. All these things were creeping back to his mind now.

Krokodil's eye narrowed. Her question hung in the air.

'Yes ma'am,' Elvis sighed. 'That is.'

PART TWO: THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC

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