AFTER (22 page)

It was late evening when they finally reached their destination. The main complex across the street was deserted… trashed and burnt out. The glass had been shattered out of the shops and exhibits, and everything had been looted… all the memorabilia, all the gaudy, overpriced souvenirs.

They were surprised to find the house standing intact behind its brick wall and its decorative gate; the one with the music notes and the guitar-playing icon on the ironwork. The wall was covered with graffiti, but most of it had been placed there – out of love, respect, or obsession – long before the world had done a fiery pirouette down the toilet.

But it wasn't entirely untouched. Someone had skinned several beagles and wired their hides to the front gate for some sort of perverted joke.

Hound dogs.

Darlene shuddered. "That's sick."

Roy's eyes smoldered angrily. "Blasphemy," he muttered. After all, it was said that the place had once been a church in a former life.

He shouldered his twelve-gauge and tried the gate. It was chained and padlocked. "We'll have to climb over," he said. From somewhere down the street, they heard a volley of automatic gunfire, followed by the roaring of an engine. "But let's hurry."

Carefully, Darlene began to scale the gate with Roy's help. She wasn't in as prime shape as she had once been. In fact, she was more than a little overweight. She supposed she could blame that on too many afternoons on the couch in front of the soap operas, when she had been at home washing clothes and taking care of the kids. But then she didn't want to think about that right now. Not about her dead husband, her dead children, or the pretty two-story house that had been her haven for thirteen years. That was ancient history.

Finally, she made it over. They heard the vehicle coming, heading in the direction of downtown. Quickly, Roy pulled himself up and over. They crouched behind the wall and waited. It was a Hummer, jet black with piano keys crudely painted down the side and a death's head emblazoned across the hood. Its occupant laughed and released another burst of gunfire as he drove past.

After making sure that the marauder was long gone, Roy and Darlene turned toward the house. It stood, tall and shadowy, across a lawn of dead brown grass littered with empty beer cans and discarded garbage. Slowly, they trudged up the driveway, on the last leg of their long pilgrimage.

In awe, they walked between the tall, white pillars of the mansion. The front door was gone. Inside it was gloomy and stank of cigarette smoke and piss.

They had both been there before; Darlene during a vacation with Stan and the kids, Roy during an impersonator convention back in '98. They looked into the living room and their hearts sank. The peacock mirrors had been shattered, the long white couch smeared with shit, and the grand piano had been busted up and used for firewood.

Tears bloomed in Darlene's eyes. "It's so… sad."

Roy nodded. Although they had only served as traveling companions the entire time they had been on the road, just standing in this place, finally, after miles of ducking and hiding, traveling at night and sleeping in drainage pipes in the daytime, seemed to bring them together in a way they had purposely avoided. Roy took Darlene in his arms and held her. He felt her shiver against his chest. He sighed and looked at the carnage and the disrespect around him. To tell the truth, he felt like crying himself.

They stood like that for awhile. Roy nuzzled her curly blond hair, then moved his lips down the side of her neck.

"Roy…" she muttered, but didn't pull away. "I thought we said we weren't going to…"

"Things have changed," he whispered. "Don't you feel it? We're finally here… for what it's worth. We should celebrate… if you want to."

It had been so long since she had been with a man and, despite those torturous thoughts of Stan and the kids, she felt herself responding. "I… I do," she moaned. "Where?"

"Why don't we go to the Jungle Room," he said. "That was his favorite place in the house." He pulled back a bit and Darlene could see his face in the gloom. Roy curled his lip. "You can pretend I'm
him
, if you want to. It won't hurt my feelings any."

"Well, you do look like him a lot," she said. Darlene stretched up and covered his mouth with her own. Then she pulled away and took his hand. "Okay, let's go."

A few minutes later, they reached the Jungle Room. The place still looked like they last remembered. The furniture had been destroyed and someone had blown holes in the paneling with a sawed-off shotgun, but the stone wall with its built-in fountain was still there, as well as the bright green shag carpeting, although it was matted and mildewed in places. A scattering of discarded condoms revealed that the room had been used for the same sleazy reason by countless other horny visitors.

Soon, they were on the floor, engulfed in the fire of passion. Clothing was discarded as they hungered for one another. Wantonly, they rolled around on the carpet – kissing, biting, licking.

"Let's do it," she moaned softly. "But it's been a while…"

"We'll take it nice and easy, baby," he said in the smooth Southern drawl of the man he had spent most of his life making a living off of. "Just help me
outta
these jeans, will you?"

They almost had Roy's pants off, when the floor underneath suddenly began to rumble and roar. At first, thoughts of an earthquake crossed their mind. After all, the city of Memphis was located over a fault. But, no, there was definitely something unnatural about this phenomenon. Something man-made.

Startled, they heard the squeak and clank of heavy machinery beneath the floorboards. With a pneumatic hiss and a burst of cool sanitized air, a circular section of the floor seven feet away suddenly lurched upward and swung back with a metallic clang.

Frightened, Roy and Darlene stared at the blue-white glow of fluorescent light emanating from the hole in the floor. An image of aliens emerging from a spacecraft suddenly crossed Darlene's mind, but the one who actually appeared was far more surprising than any extra-terrestrial might have been.

"
Lordy
Mercy!" came a familiar voice. "What's going on up here?”

A man's head emerged from out of the opening. Against the brilliance of the inner light, his profile stood out in relief. It was a profile they both knew almost intimately.

Shocked, Roy and Darlene watched as he stepped up out of the hole and stretched. Then he looked around. "Damn! Look what they did to my room. The sorry sons-of-bitches!"

"Who…who…?" stammered Darlene. But she really didn't need to ask.

The man was elderly, in his late seventies, but was whipcord lean and fit as a fiddle. His shock of snow-white hair was combed into a shapely pompadour reminiscent of the 1950's, with a few stray strands falling down over his forehead. He was dressed in a black leather jumpsuit; one that had been a fixture of his '68 Comeback Special.

"Who am I?" he said with a chuckle. "Why, I'm the king of this here castle, baby." He lifted his brows in amusement. "Now why don't you two get decent? Cover up those
titties
and put away that pecker and introduce yourselves."

Darlene quickly pulled the cups of her bra up over her breasts. "Uh, I'm Darlene
Palowski
from Chicago."

Roy was so stunned by the man's sudden appearance that he nearly caught himself in his zipper. "I'm Roy." Self-consciously, he finished his introduction. "Um… Roy Rogers."

The man threw back his head and laughed. "You know, that's pretty funny, man. That's like if my real name was Tom Jones or something."

"So you're really
him
?"
muttered Roy. "You're actually…"

"In the flesh," said the old man.

Roy hardly knew what to say to the man he had idolized since high school. "This is a real honor, Mr. Pres—"

The old man raised a hand. "Just call me Big E."

"But… but you're
dead
," said Darlene. Just looking at him made her feel a little lightheaded and dizzy.

"Afraid that was all my doing, darling," Big E said almost apologetically. "Sorry about that."

Not only was Roy shocked, but as a lifelong fan he was swiftly feeling a sense of betrayal. "So you really faked your own death? How come?"

Big E took a seat on a charred mound that had once been a heavy oaken armchair. "Well, you see, it was for a reason. I was in fear for my life. The Mafia had a contract out on me."

Darlene's eyes widened. "The Memphis Mafia?"

Big E shook his head. "
Naw
, not my own guys! The real deal. It seemed that some of the performers in Vegas weren't too happy about me horning in on their action. So one of them put a hit out on me."

"Who? Sinatra? Newton?"

"No, it was that fella with the big-ass voice. The Camelot-singing dude."

"Robert
Goulet
?"

"Yeah, him. Or was it Jim Nabors? Hell, I don't know. My memory ain't what it used to be."

Roy was trying to sort it all out in his head. "So that was just a wax dummy they had laid out in the casket in '77?"

Big E chuckled. "Not wax. Believe it or not, it was constructed entirely of pork sausage."

"What?"

"That's right. One of the
Jordanaires
told me about this fella down in Alabama who was a real artist. Used pork fat and gristle the way the Renaissance masters worked in marble and oils. Funny thing was, that dummy kinda smelled like me, so that went a long way convincing folks, too."

In the fluorescent glow of the open hatch, Big E's face grew introspective and a bit sad. "You know, after my demise had been announced and the ol' death wagon was on the roll, I
sorta
regretted pulling the stunt. Here I thought people had forgotten about the King and I'll be damned if everybody and their mama didn't show up here at the house. All those pretty gals
squawling
and bawling like I was Lord Jesus laid out in the tomb. I just about jumped out of where I was hiding and hollered 'Hey, it was just a joke, y'all. Here I am!' But by then it was too late."

Roy pointed to the opening in the Jungle Room floor. "So you've been living down there ever since?"

"Exactly what
is
down there?" asked Darlene curiously.

"A big ol' bomb shelter I had built in '62, back when the Cold War was in full swing. The thing is a freaking fortress, four stories down with steel walls a yard thick."

"And you've stayed down there for decades?"

"Oh, I haven't been there all the time. I took a big road trip back in the 80's. Man, I saw everything I never got a chance to see when I was famous. Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Roswell. Had me a fine ol' time. Then some jackass in Indiana recognized me at a Burger King and I headed home, just to be on the safe side."

Darlene stared at the hatch in the floor. "Would you mind some company? I mean, it'd sure beat living the way we have since the Burn went down."

Big E shrugged his shoulders. "Ya'll can have it. I ain't going back down there."

"How come?"

"Cause it's too damn depressing for a man my age," he told them. "Too clean. Sterile like a hospital… or a nursing home."

"But do you really want to live up here?" asked Roy. "In all this filth and depravity?"

"Well, now, maybe we don't have to." A sly grin crossed Big E's face. "You wanna know something? I own my own Caribbean island. It's down past St. Thomas. Pretty little place… all grass huts, coconut trees, and brown-skinned gals with big boobs. I wanted to buy one of the Hawaiian Islands once. Boy Howdy, I
loved
Hawaii! But the Colonel put the kibosh on that plan. The money-sucking leech."

"Memphis is a hell of a long way from the Caribbean," Roy reminded him.

"Oh, we could get there. I've got a souped-up speedboat under lock and key down on the river, ready to go. Just a quick trip to the Gulf, then we're home-free. Out into open water and we'd be there in two days. We'd lie out there on those white sand beaches and live it up… just like Brooke Shields and that curly-haired boy in
The Blue Lagoon
."

"So this is for real?" asked Darlene, hope gleaming in her eyes.

"Hey, Big E don't lie… except for that whole death deal and all." He glanced out the side windows. The sun had gone down and twilight blanketed the surrounding grounds in darkness. "But if we're going, we'd best do it now. It'll be a lot safer making it to the river at night."

"But how will we get there?"

"Just leave that up to me, sugar
dumplin
'," he told her with a wink that made her a little weak in the knees, even if he was older than Methuselah.

Soon, they left the Jungle Room behind. They were exiting the house when Big E glanced at a portrait hanging on the wall… one of his ex-wife and daughter. The picture had been defiled in a dozen humiliating ways. Someone had scrawled a crude sketch of an exaggerated penis in close proximity to the little girl's mouth.

A dangerous look shown in Big E's eyes. "If I ever come across the bastard who did that, I'll kill him." Roy and Darlene had no doubt that he would, too.

The two followed him outside, past the racquetball court. "Oh, I've been meaning to ask y'all something that's been on my mind lately," he said.