In the Court of the Yellow King (5 page)

“Say again, little lady? I don’t speak that lingo.
Je suis Americain.
I’m a disk jockey with the ABC Radio Network in New Y—
”

“I shall not tell you. It is a secret,” she called back in a honeyed drawl that didn’t sound French any more, and maybe a little older than I guessed. On both cheeks a pink spot was burning, and her eyes were very bright.
“
Our hunting-falcon arrives. Now we got to starve you. Then you learn to hunt.”

Those words should have been creepy. Instead, they filled me with a kind of breathless expectancy that began wearing me out almost immediately. Hell, friend, I wasn’t even sure why I ran until I stopped running.

And when my jets cooled and those crazy kid sneaks quit laying rubber, I looked up and then I had to go to Memphis.

After that, I’m afraid everything got a little weird.

The sun hung, a purple globe, above the misty Blue Ridge. Nothing at the bungalow in Memphis looked fully unpacked. It was a queer chaos of odds and ends, hung with threadbare tapestries. An old six-string guitar in good repair stood by the window, looking strangely like an instrument of torture in a medieval gallery.

I knew that the time had come, with no escape, to sound out the troubadour who could bring blues music all the way to white radio. His eyes burned like black stars, and the shadows of my thoughts melted like twin suns into that accursed lake. I knew that the time had come. The world now trembled before him.

“Come in, Mister Freed, come in.” The voice had an odd ringing quality to it. The batwinged cherub of juvenile delinquents everywhere (to hear some of those idiots in Congress tell it already behind closed doors) was chunky, but it was merely puppy-fat and shirttail-poor work muscle, with raw bones behind that.

His face looked like a pallid mask, as pale as his short-sleeved undershirt and hair were black, his eyes the expert drillbits of dexedrine holding something behind them, framing something in place. Something with two layers, Past and Distant Past. Something else behind those. I wondered what ailed him.

“Welcome. You, uhh, kinda came when we was cleanin’ up,” the joke had been shared on the telephone already, “But... Yeah, yeah, this’ll be good to do. I think we’ll be talking a long time.”

When the King shook my hand, his grip felt like iron. He showed no signs of haste, nor of fatigue, nor of any human feeling. There began to dawn in me a sense of responsibility for something long forgotten. “I’ve already been gone so long, the wife’s making jokes that I got taken by aliens in a flying saucer,” I joked. “So what the hell?”

His eyes got strange again. “Oh, those kind weren’t never from Space,” he said out of nowhere. “It’s way more complicated. They come from outside. Between. Anyway. Come on in. Make yourself a drink.”

My shudder reached a long way back, as though it had been dormant for years and now rose to confront me. I knew that meeting him brought him nearer to the accomplishment of his purpose and my fate. “This is all Fate,” Elvis read my thoughts with startling alacrity, “For a purpose. Because my brother Jesse got taken too soon. I swear to God, no one knows how lonely I get without him. And how empty I really feel. Except in the tunes, baby. Except in song.”

He led me into the living-room, still talking, and showed me where a bottle of Kentucky bourbon was kept, and a big Ball jar of something called ‘branch-water’ in the cupboard that I took to be springwater. Fine. Ice, too, and I found that in the icebox, like anybody.

I didn’t notice Elvis taking a drink. But watching this boy-king, this Tutankhamun, pace around from living-room to kitchen with that twinkle in his big brown eyes, I realized that I was seeing the phantom future of Music itself. Women would melt for this. (Some men, too, especially in the Village.)

But when Elvis looked at me again, I felt sick. “You know your public. Which are also mine. You’re kinda like a...” He snapped his fingers. “Like a lightning-rod for music. Like a prophet, Mr. F-”

I waved a dismissive hand. “The King calls me Prophet, the King can g’wan call me Alan.”

His upper lip curled, and the smile touched his eyes. Briefly, I saw the dumb kid with a spark behind all this. The dumb kid that had waved a six-stringed wand and opened a door to a world bigger than he could survive and stay sane. “You got your finger on their wants, Alan. I look beyond their wants and I can see their needs.”

I smiled back, somewhat indulgently. “Well, I do fear to tread where you rush in.”

At that, Elvis Presley sang the entire first verse of “I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You” until we were both snapping our fingers. But this time the shared smile never went above his lips. His eyes stayed the same.

“Now, I know there’s a lot you probably want to know,” the King told me. “And we’ll kinda start in the middle and work at both ends, but...” Something happened to his eyes. Something I didn’t like.

“First, I want you to meet my Mama.”

Welcome to our home, Mr. Freed. Pay no mind to all these danged old cats. Won’t you sit down?

Baby... I mean Elvis, my dear son, he says this won’t be home much longer. Neither will the old place, the one those newsmen always talk about. The one that still feels like home to me. This one’s much nicer, and to hear my boy talk there’ll be something I can’t even imagine.

Oh, you were there? At the old place? Just walked on by, you say? That’s nice. You’re the disk jockey, yes. I listen to your programs. You seem all right.

So you saw the old place. Hope you got a photo. Baby’s having some men come in and bulldoze the old place, then seed the ground with salt, just like back in the Biblical times. We’re Assembly of God here, probably donate the plot to the church right up the road.

Vernon built that little wooden icebox of a thing the year before the big hurricane hit, the Big Blow. No running water, no indoor plumbing. Elvis says he’s going to build me... us... a new house. I told you that. You seen the Caddy parked out in the shed, I’m sure. Not that we know what to do with it besides a coat of Simonize and taking it to church on Sunday.

I say ‘we.’ Maybe like Queen Victoria meant it, the royal ‘we.’ I won’t let Vernon drive it. He’d have the paint all scratched-up using it to go on scrap runs or haul lumber wherever to put someone’s new porch on for them for a tenth of what it’s worth so he can go drink that weekend. I’m past caring about any of that, now.

No, I am. I see the look on your face. Vernon did his part already, so be damned to him. I forget if he’s in jail this month or not. Haven’t seen him around. Even a layabout with broken shoulders can still use his pecker. He did. I wear the pants here.

Well, there must be a lot you want to know. Baby only recorded his first two songs three years ago. They were for me, Gospel songs for my birthday, and he paid Sam Phillips for the studio time out of the wages he got driving that delivery-truck fulla light bulbs.

My boy is the Prince. He will be King, one day. My family will reclaim their birthright, as of old. Papa’s line only got Ellis-Islanded to Smith, but that family Bible that baby – Elvis – won’t let no one touch still says Castaigne, from Papa’s granny.

Oh, I see you glancing at that bookshelf. Yes, yes, most of those histories are incomplete, but that one’s not. It’s two centuries old, and...

Oh, no, not the one you’re thinking of, the one that art-school student turned his back on in midstream to go pluck the lower-hanging fruit, then went back and tried to... No, he
dreamed
about Americanizing this version.

A poet wrote this version in jail, back in the Old Country. A thief named Villòn, in 1456. Not our kin, he just knew us. This is the true KING IN YELLOW. Every emperor who ever lived had no kind of ambition compared to the King, who doesn’t rest until He speaks even to the dreams of the unborn.

Emperors have served Him, and we serve His mandate between God and Man in this house too. It...

Oh, are you sure you want to just pick that old folio right on up and start reading? Well. Then let me fix that drink, Mr. Freed. It looks broken. Ha-ha. You opened right to page one.
“When from Carcosa,the Hyades, H
astur, and Aldebaran...”

Here you are. Oh, something’s fallen out of the folio. Have you found the Yellow Sign?

(Alan Freed turned the ebon brooch over in his hand, and it was a Port Authority subway-token, stamped with a single word, PAYOLA. When he turned it over again, he gasped.

See, there, it looks a bit like a scorpion, or a hog’s pecker. Then in the center, the Eye. Have you ever read the Chambers version? Both are books of great truths. Here, I’ll take that brooch from you now. It was Grandmother’s. What... Oh, you’re looking at who’s on the mantel. You’re... curious.

Well, you know.

Baby Jesse was stillborn. Now he can always be with us. It... Why, I can hear a good Catholic boy like you
thinking
it, Mr. Freed. Those eyes were closed
bef
ore
Old Lady Two-Head put Jesse in that there jar. He is
not
looking at you. Ahem. In my own home, men think these things. No respect for the dead.

There’s someone up the front walk. That’ll be time for—

Oh, I see you weren’t introduced. This is my sister’s foundling. Elvis calls her ‘Scylla, from when they were babies, but her proper name’s Cassilda. Cassilda Presley.

Oh, you have met?
Tree-
climbing. Mr. Freed. You’re old enough to be her—

I see. My apologies for doubting a married man’s intentions. I’m sure your gallantry is quite old-fashioned enough for our tastes, when we get to know you. We won’t be cruel.

Cassilda, you did not never have a dream about Mr. Freed coming here! Now whup on out to that side yard and cut some flowers for the table before we sit down to supper.

Kids can be so rude. Now, where was I? Oh, sure. Well, Elvis told you just a little while ago that we’re kind of... remolding him. Reworking the way we do things, with... this. Bob Neal, his manager, well, you probably heard. He got Elvis a... like an advisor, or an attaché.

Bob met this military fella, a reservist from the Louisiana State Militia, used to bark in the gilly, claims to have served a special branch called the Imperial Dynasty of America. Colonel Tom Parker, the Repairer of Reputations. Keeps Elvis whipped into line. The way all boys should be. Under the Dragon’s wing. All boys got the Devil in them. Mine the most of all.