Free Last Ride to Graceland by Kim Wright Page B

few months ago. Breast cancer.”
    â€œI’m sorry to hear that. And how old would you be?”
    â€œThirty-seven.”
    â€œThirty-seven?”
    â€œYes, sir. I was born in 1978. Seven months and four days after my parents got married. Seven months and nine days after my mama left Memphis. So I think you see my situation. I would think it’s rather obvious why I’m driving this route, and just what truth I’m trying to get at. May I ask you some questions? Starting with your name?”
    He’s staring at me. At least I think he’s staring, because he’s put his aviator sunglasses back on. But his feet are planted wide apart and he’s got a hand on each side of the doorframe. Looking back at him with the sun streaming in on both sides, I’m reminded of those old cowboy movies where the bad guy comes bursting into the saloon and it hits me that maybe I’ve been stupid, getting out of my car and coming in here with a stranger. Icould scream at the top of my lungs and there’d be no one to hear me, not here at the end of a rarely traveled road with nothing but the sound of airplane engines in the distance. Normally a dog might be some help, but Lucy’s just curled up on the grimy concrete floor, licking himself.
    â€œName’s Philip,” the man says. “You can ask me your questions and I’ll answer them as best I can, even though all I know about your mama is that she’d come in with the other girls who sang backup and he’d be with them too. I don’t know what Honey told you growing up, but Elvis was never too good to mix with the common man. He wasn’t the sort who’d sit on his plane and send somebody to get him a sack of burgers. No, he’d get off and come in himself, and whether you believe it or not, little girl, he sat right on that corner bar stool the last time he was in and he played up a storm. The blues and rockabilly, the kind of music that gave him his start, and he remembered every line of every song. Even though by that point he’d been singing his Vegas crap for better than ten years.”
    â€œI believe you,” I say. “He was playing the old stuff at the end. Like he was circling back. Like he knew he didn’t have long.”
    The man shrugs. “Whatever you say. Your mother was just one of the girls who came in with him. I don’t know what there is to tell you beyond that.”
    â€œBut she came through town again,” I said. “A year later. In the Blackhawk, the car I’m driving now. You’d have to remember that, wouldn’t you? It would have been probably no more than two, maybe three days after Elvis died, and this time she was alone. Maybe scared. I’m thinking probably scared. It seemslike all that would have made an impression.”
    He pulls off the glasses again. It seems to be his nervous gesture, this putting on and pulling off of his glasses. Everybody has one. His small eyes are red rimmed and I wonder if he’s one of those people who has to wear sunglasses all the time because he’s light sensitive. “And I’m sure it would have made an impression if I’d have seen her,” he said. “But I didn’t.”
    â€œYou’re sure?”
    â€œI said I didn’t see her and I didn’t.”
    â€œBut here’s the thing . . . There’s that cup and a bag out there in the car, both saying the name of this restaurant, plain as day. The Juicy Lucy in big pink letters, and that’s how I knew to come here. I’m not suggesting anything, sir, because I’ve seen your face on a billboard and I’m sure you’re a respectable man here in Macon, a pillar of the community. I’m just trying to get at the truth. Or at least my own little piece of it.”
    He leans back abruptly, pulling his hands away from the doorway. “Now look here,” he says. “I could have run you in for