Comeback Tour

There was an early morning fog. It was going to be a hot day. Now, it was pleasantly cool.

'No, really. Why didn't you stay with it?'

He'd been asked that before, but he'd never answered as truly as he did now. 'I don't know. Maybe, I wanted to keep a piece of my soul for myself.'

'I think I know what you mean. I wasn't always like this. My father…well, you don't want to know about him… it's all ancient history. I'm not even the same person. Not even physically.'

She held up her hand, as if trying to look through the skin.

'Durium-laced bones, you know,' she said. 'And the whole catalogue of doodads. I've got a sponge in my heart that can change the pattern of the beat.'

'There's something else, though. Last night, the witch, she said…'

'That I was possessed? Look around you, who isn't?'

'Your soul is all you own, Krokodil. It's worth more than the Devil's hundred dollars.'

She smiled. 'Is that the going rate?'

'It was for Robert Johnson, they say. A hundred dollars and all the music.'

'That sounds like a better deal. All the music.'

It really was surprisingly cold. The blanket had been heavy with dew. 'Not really.'

'But you could have changed the world. You could have been Petya Tcherkassoff.'

'Petya Tcherkassoff? Ma'am, you are showing your youth.'

'How do you mean?'

'You ain't hardly heard of me, have you?'

'You were very highly recommended. Not many Ops…'

'No, not for the Op Agency, for the music. I don't mean any more to you than, uh, Glenn Miller or Al Jolson?'

'Who?'

'That's what I mean. Who? Lady, without me there wouldn't have been a Petya Tcherkassoff. You know his 'Don't Be Cruel'?'

'Sure. You sang it last night. Pretty well.'

'Krokodil, I sang it first. He copied me. Here in the USA, I'm forgotten, but all those Sove musickies remember. My old records were smuggled into Russia in the '50s. I started the whole thing.'

'Come on, now.'

'No, really. Once I had this bodyguarding job. A feller called Lennon who came over from England for some UN conference. He's head of their Labour Party. That's the opposition, or something. He ain't got much power or influence or anything, but he's there to speak against the Prime Minister, What's-His-Name Archer. He knew who I was. Back before he was a politician, he used to have all my records. He said that he'd been a musician too. He said that if I hadn't given up, he might have stuck to it despite all the discouragement. But however it turned out, I touched his life. That's a hell of a responsibility, and I ain't sure I really want it. I don't know why it's important I tell you this. I'm just an old man with a trunk full of memories, but you must know that this is the plain truth. I was big, and I walked away from it'

'Why are you telling me? Why is it important?'

'Because of what 'Ti-Mouche said. The thing in you. Don't sell out to it. I had years of that, years of selling out.'

'To some crooked manager, sure, but…'

'Seth. He was one of them. He's the Devil, ain't he?'

Krokodil was affected. 'Yes. I think he is.'

'Damn. I knowed it. I knowed it back in '56 when Colonel Parker took me up to his red-carpeted office and showed me the contracts. I knowed it, I knowed it, I knowed it…'

'You hiring me? It wasn't no accident, was it?'

Krokodil sighed. 'No. I don't think so.'

'What made you?'

She tried to speak, but found it difficult. 'The…the thing in me. It brought me to Memphis. It made me seek you out.'

'You don't need a nursemaid. You can take care of yourself. You could have brought your Indian.'

'That's true. But I think I need you, Elvis. I don't know what for. It's maddening sometimes. It's not like knowing everything you need to know. You only get little bits and pieces. I keep having visions…waking dreams, whatever…and you were one of them. Hawk tracked you down. He's a dreamwalker, a Navaho witch doctor…'

'These visions, am I…what?…fighting? Dying?'

Krokodil smiled again, a tight and quiet little smile. Her remaining eye twinkled. 'No, Elvis. You're singing, playing the guitar. What the hag said last night was true. That's your magic.'

'I can't figure this. It's just plumb crazy.'

'I've had to live with it since I was seventeen. You can get used to anything.'

'You must have had some life, sister.'

'Yeah, I must, mustn't I?'

'Well, if it's the Lord's will, I guess we gotta go with it.' He looked up at the skies, but only saw a ceiling of fog. 'Jesse Garon,' he said, 'sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't have been better if I'd died, and you'd lived…'

Gently, Krokodil kissed his lips. He put his hand in her hair. She tasted like a real woman. He opened his eye, and saw her patch pressed near his cheek. They clung to each other, trying to shake off the fear.

She pushed him away, alert. She had sensed something. The Moulinex was in her hand, her thumb on the safety. The boat rocked gently. Elvis put out a hand to steady himself.

A figure slipped out of the mists. It was 'Ti-Mouche, her face newly painted. She was carrying the guitar Elvis had played last night.

The witch woman looked at the pair in the boat Krokodil returned her gaze confidently, refusing to be spooked.

Elvis wondered about the demon inside his employer. Whatever it was, he couldn't imagine it being worse than the things that had inhabited Donny and Marie Walton. And he knew there were worse things ahead, at the Cape.

'Ti-Mouche knelt by the water's edge and gave him the instrument.

'Cadeaux,' she said, 'a present.'

'Thank you kindly ma'am, thank you.'

He laid the guitar on his lap, feeling the music vibrating sub-audially through the wood and wire.

'Sorciere, use the magic…'

She stepped back into the fog, and became indistinct. Elvis had the impression she was not alone. A manshape stood by her, and he recognized the dreamshadow of himself he knew to be Jesse Garon.

'Elvis,' said Krokodil, 'what is it?'

'A ghost, ma'am.'

'There are lots of ghosts here, you know that.'

'Yes.'

He ran his fingers across the strings. The chords rung in the air, dissipating in the mists.

The figures—'Ti-Mouche and Jesse Garon—were gone. The chill was being burned off the swamp.

The sun broke through.

XIII

Simone knew that the mad old man could see the ghosts too. They were the spirits of all the astronauts who had died in space, or on the ground, or under the sea. They were the original sacrifices that had given the space program its brief burst of power. Now, Roger was recharging the voodoo batteries. She understood more than she told. Her aunt had been the mama-loa of the community. She knew all about the spilling of blood, the making of