Blue Cadillac

West out of Nashville in a red-and-white Mustang, Braxton Cox swung too fast around a curve, and his body remembered old times. All of a sudden, he felt in a sweet slide. He felt the rush again, the gliding just above the asphalt, just free of friction. The Mustang bucking, he toed off his loafers and splayed his bare foot over the accelerator pedal. A sun like money and a moon from a song bounced ahead of him big in the sky together.

"Goddamn! This is goddamn beautiful!" he said aloud.

Braxton was a high-tech sales rep going home to Memphis for his momma's sake to eat Thanksgiving dinner. His wife had left him and married a Brazilian oilman who was, according to her, better in bed than Braxton. His wife had been a stewardess. That's how she'd met the Brazilian, less than a year back.

He was scooting through the woodlands of the Natchez Trace, where Interstate 40 cut across the old Indian trail that pioneers and hunted men had cleared from Natchez to Tupelo and on to Nashville. He was near where Captain Meriwether Lewis of Lewis and Clark had shot himself to death at a place called (continued on page 130) Blue Cadillac (continued from page 126) Grinder's Inn, now a plaque in the wilderness. Pines covered the hills, undiminishable. This was God's country, home country.

A view like this had to have a sound track. Braxton's right hand scooped tape cassettes out of the glove compartment onto the seat beside him, then shuffled among them tor Elvis' World-wide 50 Gold Award Hits, Volumes 1 & 2, a twin pack he'd bought on sale in a spasm of nostalgia like the one that squeezed him now.

Elvis came on loud, moaning, "Any way you want me, that's how I will be!"

Braxton one-handed another curve, a horseshoe, and, panicked, smashed down on the brakes, then swerved out and accelerated all the way to the floor, because he'd come up on a car almost standing still at about 40 mph, which was about half what he was doing.

Palm on horn, hard, he squealed past with his eyes bursting. The car beside him was just incredible! A baby-blue Cadillac convertible with the endless fin fenders of the old profligate days. It was as if Elvis' voice itself, like Aladdin's, had summoned out of the air of the past a dream car to match Braxton's mood.

Braxton was around the curve and hurling along the straight stretch before his brain could get his hand off the horn and his foot off the pedal. In his rearview mirror, the stupendous machine rolled over the hilltop and streamed toward him. He got his window down, back-twirling the handle like crazy.

Elvis yelled, "I'm in love! I'm all shook up!" out the open window.

Even louder, Braxton heard, "Ooogah! Ooogah! Ooogah!" Here it came like a tidal wave. Sticking his head out, he opened his mouth to say "Hi! Where'd you get that car?!" But, instead, he gasped and swallowed 100 feet of wind.

A blonde girl, just beautiful, her hair flying like fire, had one hand on the white steering wheel and, with her other hand, just as her car skimmed past his, she pulled down her strapless red halter. The elastic popped right down below her breasts, setting them loose, as if she'd all of a sudden decided to give them some air. Then she raised her bare arm and, like a Walt Disney flower, unfolded her middle finger at Braxton Cox! The blue Cadillac varoomed away in a puff of exhaust that probably used up two gallons of gas.

Braxton was 34. He'd been to college in the Sixties, when even at Ole Miss the world had gone wild. He'd horsed around, flying helicopters for the Navy in Corpus Christi, and Texas ports are not shy places. But, goddamn, he sighed, he'd never seen anything like what he'd just seen going past him in Tennessee. A big truck roaring up from the other direction almost blew the Mustang off the road, while the trucker had his head out the window, staring in the sideview mirror. His mouth looked as if he were blowing smoke rings.

Ten minutes later, Braxton saw the blue Cadillac in the roadside parking lot of a silver train engine called the Casey Jones Tavern, after the famous local railroad man who'd killed himself trying to bring old 382 in on time. Braxton cut Elvis off in a gurgle, skidded into the lot and, fishing for his loafers, rolled out of his bucket seat. He leaned down into the Cadillac like King Arthur looking for the Lady of the Lake. "I love this car," he said, and sighed, and felt the white dash and white upholstery with powder-blue piping. There wasn't a speck on it, or a thing in it, except.... "Lawdy!" whispered Braxton ... except a pair of pink bikini underpants lying like an orchid on the shiny white seat.

•

Braxton shook down his plaid trousers and smoothed down his yellow V-neck sweater and patted his wallet and patted his zipper. He was thinking he was about to jump backward through his life, like a child in a home movie, sped up and reversed, who's sucked out of the pool and returned to the diving board. The girl from the blue Cadillac looked up from her booth and saw him.

On the check-out counter, a stand-up picture of a little Puritan boy praying said, Thanxgiving Delux Family Dinner $7.93. Braxton ordered a double Wild Turkey and a Heineken; he pulled a pack of Marlboro Lights from the cigarette machine. The price had gone up since he'd quit smoking and drinking last year, after his best man had driven drunk right into an underpass embankment, gone up since he'd thought he might be able to get his wife back from the Brazilian if he never stank or stumbled.

Seated at the counterstool across from the blonde girl, lie could see that her eyes were the same color as her Cadillac, as if she were a part of that world where people had cars made to match their eyes. The red halter was so skimpy she had goose bumps. Somehow, he'd been sure she'd be in shorts, but of course she wasn't, in late November. She had on a short, tight denim skirt and tight boots with thin gold chains around the backs of the heels.

She was sucking the orange peel from a whiskey sour. Her other hand floated deep into a blue Eastern Airlines shoulder bag and brought out menthol Virginia Slims cigarettes.

Braxton leaned out from the counter. "Excuse me. Where'd you get that car?" He topped his glass with beer foam without looking; he'd worked on the act two years in Corpus Christi. "That's one of the prettiest cars I've ever seen."

On the outblow of her match, she said, "Why don't you stop following me, all right?" She had a home-country voice.

"I'm not. It's just luck. Anyhow," he tried a smile, "I thought you left me a message on your car seat."

"Like what?"

"Did you buy that car?"

"My momma left it to me." She'd finished the spikes of orange meat and was now eating the rind itself. "Why'd you keep blowing your horn at me back there for?"

"You're eating the rind."

"You almost killed me, screeching around, blowing that horn."

Braxton smiled sweetly on one side of his mouth. "I'll let you in on a secret; you almost killed me ditto, what you did back there."

"Good!" she said. She giggled. "Sometimes I'll just act crazy. That's what my friends say. They never know what's next."

"I bet." What had she been doing in that car ... with her panties off?

She lifted her bare arms to twist her hair into a ponytail. A rubber band was ready on her wrist. "I heard Elvis on your radio," she said, "but I couldn't pick it up."

"It was a tape." Braxton took his drink over to her booth. "Lots of people used to tell me I looked a lot like Elvis."

"I don't know why."

"Well, I guess they thought I did."

"I don't much."

"How about if I do this?" He curled part of his upper lip over his teeth, dropped his eyelids and pulled a curl down on his forehead.

"Maybe a little," she admitted.

"Well, how about this?" He sawed his leg back and forth and thwacked the air with his arm. "How about this?" He spun up, chopping space with karate hands, kicking as if he could knock off years with his feet. He couldn't believe he was doing it. Neither could the half-dozen other customers who hadn't stayed home or gone home or had homes (continued on page 142) Blue Cadillac (continued from page 130) for Thanksgiving dinner. Four were startled. Two were glazed.

Ears throbbing, Braxton slid into the girl's booth while she was laughing. A waitress came, a railroad cap high on a blue-black beehive hairdo. Braxton was still breathing through his grin while she took their orders. The blonde girl wanted waffles for supper.

Her name was Marie. She was 19 and had lived her whole life in Dayton, Tennessee, where long ago Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan had fought the famous monkey trial over teaching evolution. Braxton told her, "You live where Inherit the Wind happened. I remember when they were making it. With Spencer Tracy?" She hadn't known about it. It was before her time.

She leaned toward him, blue eyes like postcard lagoons. "You like Elvis?"

"He was the king."

The girl said, "My whole life is based on Elvis. Because of my momma. That's why she named me Marie. You know, 'Marie's the name of his latest flame.' That's me."

Braxton said, "You smoke a lot for somebody so young."

"I only smoke menthol."

"You smoke a lot. I used to smoke two packs a day. But I quit." He noticed his burning cigarette in the ashtray. "I cut back. I had a cousin killed himself smoking four packs a day. Emphysema."

"What's that?"

"Your lungs clog up."

She filled hers with air. The red halter swelled.

Cranberry juice wet Braxton's turkey meat. The sight nagged at him, parent to child, relentless. He should drive home at once for Thanksgiving dinner; he could still get there by seven if he scrambled. His mother would still be in and out of the kitchen, to check the oven, check the time. But her mouth would be thinning by the minute. Sullen, he swatted off the guilt by waving his arm for drinks.

He said, "I guess your momma really liked Elvis."

Marie scooped out another orange peel. "She'd laugh if she heard you say that. Liked! Back in school, she carved his name right into her arm, with a pocketknife, E-L-V-I-S. Right across, like that."

"Goddamn! ... Excuse me."

Marie looked deep into his eyes. "He was the only man she ever loved, that's all. She toldme that when she died."

"Well, I'm sorry to hear you lost her."

"Oh, that's all right."

"Was it a while back?"

"Five days ago today."

"That's terrible."

"It was diabetes. But she'd had it a long time."

"That's terrible. I'm sorry to hear that."

Braxton's voice was so sympathetic, the girl's voice thickened. She coughed. "So, anyhow. Momma asked me to do something for her and that's what I'm doing. And that's why I'm sitting here right now, because, otherwise, I'd be going in the opposite direction. But the last tiling she asked me was would I drive to Memphis and go to Graceland and let him know she was gone and give him her souvenirs and her hair that she'd never cut?" The girl rubbed her blue Eastern bag as she talked, as if she consoled some creature inside.

"Let who know?"

"Elvis."

Braxton nodded again. He didn't know what to say, and ate some French fries.

"He's buried there at home because of the violence. You know."

She took out of the bag a soft, rumpled paper sack. From the sack she drew a thin shank of brownish-gray hair in a ponytail several feet long. The humanness of the thing jolted Braxton so much he bit his tongue while he chewed.

Marie kept smoothing the hair. "This was my momma's. She made a vow to Elvis and never cut it. Isn't it long?"

Braxton nodded, and moved her new drink closer.

Lagoon water splashed from the girl's eyes in tears. One, two, three in a row. The last hung there too full to drop. Braxton was moved to pat her hand. He could feel the dead hair underneath it.

Marie spoke solemnly. "That last night, she pulled me right down to her face in the hospital bed. 'He was all I had. He was everything. No one will ever understand,' is what she kept trying to whisper."

Braxton grew solemn, too. "Marie. I'm just a stranger. But believe me, in all sincerity, I am really sorry to hear about your loss. I mean, a mother is, well."

Nodding, the girl started to take out dozens of articles from the blue-vinyl bag. She picked through them--pins, buttons, charms, photos--pushing them about on the table like a vendor at Lourdes.

With an index finger, Braxton looped wide circles that ringed their heads, as if to tell the waitress they were angels haloed, or insane. The waitress brought more drinks. She had to clear away all the old ones because there was no room left on the table. Braxton decided it couldn't possibly be as late as the waitress' watch implied. He kept nodding at the objects Marie was holding up.

"This is the ticket, Overton Park Shell, Memphis, that was the first. She saw him there, and at the fairgrounds, and everywhere, long before he got to be anybody. So, that's what I mean, it proves it was true how she felt, way before it got to be the thing. She had over 20,000 pictures of him. All the albums. Everything. Look here, see." She shuffled out a photograph of a teenaged girl of amorphous form and fanatical eyes who sat at a cheap little white dressing table. Its surface was thick with things that said "Elvis Presley" or displayed his face: a mound of novelty hats, plaster-of-Paris busts, trinkets. The mirror was entirely papered over with his face. The girl was clothed in the image of the star; he smiled from her blouse and her toreador pants. She wore the ponytail now in Marie's sack.

"Look here," said Marie. She showed Braxton a stained handkerchief she took out of a velvet box. "You see this spot? And this one? That's his perspiration. At one concert, he fell right down on his knees in front of Momma, and when she held this out to him, he used it. He wiped his face on this." She put back the handkerchief and held up a square of laminated plastic. "That's his hair in here. See those strands? Momma ran her fingers through his hair and that much got caught in her ring. At Fort Dix."

Braxton was earnest. "Marie. This is a lot of stuff. There're aspects of sales on these items that you probably aren't acquainted with. If you'll take a stragger's advice, you ought to get in touch with somebody who could offer you an expert's opinion, like an appraisal."

"She had every single one of his 45s; there's a whole garage still packed full of souvenirs. I just locked it all up. I guess somebody probably could open up a museum if they wanted to."

"That's what I mean."

"I just locked it up and left."

On the color television in the corner, two football teams had been getting up and knocking each other down for a long time. It was pitch-black night outside. Braxton had broken his mother's heart.

Marie slid her relics back into their bag. "Maybe I better drink some coffee," she said, and giggled. "I think I'm smashed. When I was in junior high, (continued on page 278) Blue Cadillac (continued from page 142) sometimes I used to get drunk as a skunk every night, throwing up, passing out. Momma cried when she found out I was drinking. Braxton? Braxton, that's a nice name. In Las Vegas with my momma, I met three guys had actually legally changed their names to Elvis. One of them was black. One of them had gotten his fiancée to change her name to Priscilla, and they'd come out there on the bus from Detroit to get married the same place Elvis and Priscilla did. But something went wrong, I forget what."

"Coffee. All righty! Just sit tight."

Braxton sprinted around the corner to the men's room--where he'd been desperate to go for half an hour--and stood skittery at the urinal, worried that Marie would wander out of the tavern alone. A vending machine sold condoms. He couldn't believe how much they cost now.

Back at their booth, the girl sat, bared shoulders and back beautiful, curved like blond bentwood, incredibly naked skin. His wife's skin, he now realized, had been too white; he'd loved her in spite of her very skin.

Marie was talking; she might have been talking the whole time he was gone. "I shut up the house. It's a duplex, you know the kind, and just told the neighbors, 'Look, will you rent it out for me, and I'll send for my stuff,' because I had to get out of there. I was going to start junior college this fall, but Momma was too sick. It was just me and her."

Pity settled in Braxton like cement. "No daddy?"

"D-I-V-O-R-C-E. He went to California. He didn't like Tennessee."

"You going out there to see him?"

"That's a joke." She had wrapped the shank of hair around her wrist. Now she uncoiled it, fed it back into the bag.

Braxton noticed he'd somehow smoked his whole pack of Marlboro Lights. "California has a lot to offer. I used to live in Corpus Christi, Texas. Now I live in D.C."

She said, "I'm trying Atlanta. I don't think I'd like Texas."

"D.C., either," said Braxton. He smiled right at her; the smile floated in her lagoon eyes, and he watched it move. "How's this?" he said, his heart fast. He slid out of the booth, toppled to one knee. "How about we both get off for good in Memphis? I grew up in Memphis, it's OK. Tonight we'll drive over to Graceland for your momma, and then we'll go stand on the bluffs and yell up in the sky at everybody dead. 'Hey, up there, we miss you! Hi, Dad! Hi, Marie's momma! Hi, Elvis!' And then, first thing tomorrow--how's this?--we'll go get married! You and me. Why not? Want to? I'm free as a bird myself."

The girl swiveled her legs away from his. "No, thanks. I'm not totally down on marriage like my friends. But I think marriage ought to be like ... meeting Elvis Presley. It's nothing to joke about."

Braxton hauled himself up, dusted his plaid trouser leg. "That's for damn sure," he said, drowned all of a sudden in grief. He would have left, but he was too worn out to move. So tired he slumped down on his spine, low in his chair, and closed his eyes.

"You know what?" He heard her voice, plaintive, and opened one eye. Slowly, her butane lighter was raised toward her cigarette. She jerked back when its flame leaped at her. "You know what? This is true, let me tell you, Braxton. In 1961, one time my momma got asked inside Graceland. They needed more people. They were horsing around. She couldn't believe she got asked. She and her friends hung out at the gate a lot, but that night, one of them got in, and she got Momma in. This was the story she told me at night and all, when I was little, about Graceland. How there were stars blinking up in the ceiling of the hall. Momma said they were all out back, sitting around the pool, Elvis and all his friends, and girls, even though it was the middle of the night. The guys had a bunch of lighters." She flicked hers on. "They broke off the tips so the flames would shoot out and they shot them at each other's bottoms for a joke."

"Elvis did?"

"No. His friends. He watched. Then, after they used those up, Momma said they threw hundreds and hundreds of new flashbulbs into the pool and shot at them with BB guns so they'd explode. Elvis did that."

"Did the girls.... What did the girls do?"

"They sat around and kept their eyes on Elvis. My momma tried to talk to the two beside her, but she said they looked right through her like she was cheap glass. They sat around, working at trying to ball Elvis."

Braxton sat up and stared at her. In a minute, he asked, "What was he like?"

Marie poured sugar from packets into her coffee. "Momma said he was better-looking than you could ever imagine, and sad as rain."

Braxton and Marie sat, quiet, in their booth. In the television's blue rays, waitresses ran back and forth. On the screen, football players ran back and forth. Braxton felt sad as Elvis, poisoned by blueness, maybe the blue from the crackling rays, and weary from the liquor and the cigarettes. The film of his life had reversed again, gone forward, thrown him--heavy with the years he'd kicked at--slung him back off the diving board, back down into the blue stinging water.

•

Outside in the lot of the Casey Jones Tavern, the blue Cadillac turned the moon blue, turned the gravel silver blue. Braxton read the car's front plate. The king lives on. The back plate was Tennessee's. America at its best.

Lights inside the Cadillac's trunk spilled over suitcases, boxes, trinkets and bedding. Buttoning a red-suede jacket over her halter, Marie turned slowly to Braxton. She whispered, "He gave my momma this car."

Braxton's heart tromboned. He whispered, "Elvis? Elvis did? Is that really true?"

The girl handed Braxton the keys and then got in on the passenger's side. Dew was cool in his palm when he slid behind the steering wheel. They sat there, white under the moon.

"Why?

"Because she started crying right there by the pool that night, and some of the guys tried to hustle her out quick, before Elvis got bummed out, but he said, 'Wait a minute, how come she's crying?'"

Braxton moved his fingers over the instruments on the dash, over the shadowy chrome and white and powder blue, up and down the white steering wheel.

"And she was so scared, he had to get right in her face to hear her. It was because he looked so sad. she was crying. She thought that maybe it was because it was the first time he was living at Graceland since his momma died, and maybe it felt lonesome being home without her. Boy, that makes sense now."

Braxton slid the seat back, moved the mirrors, with his fingers felt for the ignition, held his hand there on the key, waiting, listening.

"He made somebody take her home. Then, in a few days, this comes to the house. The salesman drove it. Momma's daddy blew his top. He thought she must have, you know, for it. And there was a card with it that said, 'Don't feel blue." That's all it said, 'Don't feel blue.' And it was a blue Cadillac to go with the card."

"Did he sign it?"

"No, but it was him."

"Goddamn. That's really great. They used to say he was always doing that, giving away motorcycles and diamond rings. And imagine that."

Go ahead," Marie told him. Braxton turned the key. The big convertible moved forward like lake water. One finger on the wheel led it out of the lot.

"Go ahead," she told him.

Slowly his foot pressed down, into the pedal, down, farther down. The pedal went back in hasteless ease. The Cadillac surged over the road's black waves.

Their hair stung at their faces. The wind stung, too. Braxton was crying.

"Do whatever you want!" she yelled, and he laughed in yelps.

"Just don't kill us!" she yelled.

Too far away, too long ago, the bluffs of Memphis jutted out at the moon where the town's lovers had always parked to make love in their cars. There were stories that thwarted lovers had killed themselves by jumping from the bluffs into the Mississippi River below. Chickasaw Indian lovers had lain on the bluffs before La Salle stood there claiming all the land wild beyond him, before De Soto stood there discovering the river below, before the townsfolks stood there watching Yankee gunboats sink their fleet, before Braxton W. Cox stood there with his friends on the night before his wedding, and flung bottles of Wild Turkey up at the moon and called to her to join the party he was sure would never stop.

Now he drew his foot back. The threepoint turn was like gliding his finger through lake water. "We better turn around," he said.

"Stop a second," she said. "What do you want to do?"

A dirt road was dark with trees.

"Do you want to ball?" she asked. "That's all right, if you want to."

The woods made almost no sound at all. He saw the lighter's red eye, smelled the cigarette paper.

He said, "You know what we used to do? I mean at first, I don't mean when the Sixties really got going good but before that. We'd neck for a long time. It wasn't actually too often that somebody would come out with what you just said, right off."

She said, "Yeah, I guess so. A lot's happened since then."

Braxton leaned back, his neck on the cool white seat. Stars were everywhere. "Too much for me," he said.

In a minute, the girl crushed out her cigarette and moved over against Braxton. He cupped his hand beneath her ponytail and kissed her for a long time. Then he slid both hands inside the red halter and pulled it down and kissed her breasts for a long time. Finally, they got out of the car and went to the back seat. It was dew-cold, snow-white, so wide and long he hardly had to bend his knees. Her skirt bunched at his stomach. The little chains on her boot heels rubbed at his calves. She said when they finished, "I saw a star fall. That was nice."

•

Back at the Casey Jones parking lot, Braxton said, "Atlanta, hunh?"

"I guess so," she said.

"Listen, that was pretty great back there. I just want you to know that, Marie, OK?"

She said, "That's all right." She opened another pack of cigarettes; he'd seen cartons stacked in the trunk. "Listen, let me just ask you something, OK? My momma loving Elvis so much, do you think she was weird?"

"If it made her happy...."

"It got to be sort of a weird thing with me. Listen, when I was little, she took me to Memphis to see Elvis' momma's grave, and it's got this big statue of Jesus with his arms out and two little angels, and Momma was talking about who it was we were coming to see, she was kind of hoping Elvis would show up at the cemetery, too, and see the blue Cadillac and remember she was the one who'd cried for him and he'd told her, 'Don't be blue.' But I was pretty little and I got it in my head that the statue standing there with his arms out was Elvis. I told my friends, later on. Crazy Marie again."

Braxton was cold, logy-headed, tired, and needed to get back to the bathroom, and needed to have gotten back to his mother's house six hours ago so he could try to make her understand again how he could have lost his wife to a Brazilian. He felt he was hurt somewhere inside him deep and dull.

The girl slid behind the wheel when he got out of the car.

"Yeah, I guess that's a little weird," he said. "Kids think funny things."

"You ever see the Christ of the Ozarks, Braxton? It's huge. You know, on Magnetic Mountain in the Ozarks? Well, the arms stretch out around 70 feet across. I thought that was Elvis, too. The lady at the souvenir shop said that those arms were so big and strong you could hang six Cadillacs from each one with no trouble." Marie looked up at Braxton. "So. That's what I thought. That Elvis had arms 70 feet wide with blue Cadillacs hanging from them on strings, and when he saw my momma so sad, he snapped one of the cars off its string and gave it to her. I really believed that for a while."

Braxton pushed down the lock on her door. "You can't go to Graceland in the middle of the night. Why don't you come home with me? I'll take you over there in the morning."

She buttoned her jacket. "That's all right. You're nice, but don't take it personally, I feel like I want to be on my own now. OK? Thanks, anyhow. See you around, OK? Happy Thanksgiving." The car rumbled awake, backed away from him.

"Sure you don't want to get married?" he called.

"Sorry," she yelled.

"Sure I don't look like Elvis?"

She waved her arm as the blue Cadillac carried her away, enchanted maiden, to its master, the king of Graceland.

"It was as if Elvis' voice itself had summoned out of the past a dream car to match Braxton's mood."

"Her name was Marie. She was 19 and had lived her whole life in Dayton, Tennessee."

"First thing tomorrow we'll go get married! Want to? I'm free as a bird myself.' "