Free Losing Graceland by Micah Nathan Page A

turned to Ben. “That’s when you see right into someone’s soul. How they look in their private moments. First thing in the morning she’d think I was asleep, and she’d sit by the bedroom window. Way the sunlight touched her face, you’d think it had to ask permission. Long golden hair and the whitest skin I ever seen. Like fresh cream. One green eye and one blue. And her hands …”
    He held up one bruised hand.
    “Fingers like a china doll. Soft skin put me to sleep every time it touched my face. Couldn’t even make love to her because it would’ve been obscene, until one night she begged and begged and so I obliged. And now it’s her granddaughter I’m going to save.”
    The old man took off his aviators.
    “Emma had a daughter named Gladys. Named after my mother. I was at Gladys’s christening, in a small church on the banks ofOtter Creek. Eighteen years ago Gladys had herself a daughter. Nadine Emma Brown. I used to send money but I stopped, and if you held a gun to my head, I couldn’t tell you why. But I blame myself for Nadine’s fall from grace.”
    Ben swerved around a fallen branch thick as an elephant’s leg. The old man put his aviators back on.
    “Priscilla told me I’d be the ruin of everyone I love. Told me everything I’d gained would be their loss. God only gives so much before He takes, you understand. God isn’t about good versus evil. He’s about balance. Give a penny, take a penny. The blind can hear a fly taking a shit; the deaf can stand in the clubhouse and see a blade of grass on the eighteenth hole. And if you believe that, let me tell you about a hooker in Duluth who sucks dick so goddamn good, she gives one out of three men heart attacks.”
    The old man laughed to himself, fist held to his mouth with his head down as if he were listening to the laughter of his previous life. Then sadness washed over his face, and once again he leaned his head against the window.
    “But I’m being serious now,” he said. “Without balance the whole thing falls apart because the sun always melts the wings of motherfuckers flying too high. September 1976 I dreamt of a grinning beast walking through the desert with a six-shooter and a bottle of whiskey. I’m sitting in the shadow of a giant red rock eating at a big table, a big old feast all for me. Then I hear its spurs jangling and the cylinder on its six-shooter is clicking round and round, and it kicks over a cactus and takes a swig of whiskey, pointing the six-shooter between my eyes. It throws its head back and howls and says,
Boom.
” The old man shuddered. Rain spat against the windshield. “That’s why I left. When I left God turned away. But now that I’m alive again, God’s taken notice.The beast howling thirty years ago slouches toward Memphis, waiting to be born.”
    The old man tore open a bag of pretzels and stuffed a handful into his mouth. He chewed slowly, crumbs tumbling down the front of his ripped red sweatshirt.
    “My teeth hurt,” he said through a mouthful. “One of those bikers clocked me good.” He looked at Ben over the top of his aviators. “You got the worst of it, though.”
    “Thanks. I’m not much of a fighter.”
    “It’s the spirit that counts, son.”
    The road curved and dipped. A truck screamed past, throwing spray.
    “What’s her name?” the old man asked.
    Ben glanced over at him.
    “I saw you tighten when I said everyone has a lost love. What’s her name?”
    “Jessica.”
    “This the one that dumped you?”
    Ben nodded.
    “Never met an ugly girl named Jessica,” the old man said.
    “She was beautiful,” said Ben. “I’m still not sure what she saw in me. She could’ve been with someone taller.”
    The old man sang quietly. “
Our love is oft-times low, our joy still ebbs and flows—
”
    “It’s not that I can’t get women like Jessica,” Ben continued. “I just can’t keep them. Once they figure out my game, it’s over.”
    “
But peace with Him remains the