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part 1 of the story
Learning to Tell Time with Elvis

Harvey Huddleston

1

    Walking down the hall, I thought of my last time there when I’d found a lovely Christmas wreath with silver bells and pine cones hanging on her door. Feeling behind it for the doorbell, I’d jarred it loose and sent it crashing to the floor. I went to rehang it but then, thinking how odd it might be for her to hear noises at her door that sounded like scratching or clawing, I decided to knock and when she came, explain away my clumsiness and rehang the wreath at her instruction.
    I knocked but all was quiet. I knocked again but still no answer so I turned the knob and cracked open the door. No one. And no one from book club either. Then it all made sense. She’d taken Theo out for a walk before book club and had left the door unlocked in case any of us came early. But was I early? I hadn’t thought so but since a few minutes more or less didn’t matter that had to be it. After standing the wreath up against the wall, I went in and sat on the couch, hoping to avoid any more mishaps.
    There was some commotion in the hall when Theo came bursting through the door. As he bounded over me I heard her discovering the wreath, “Theo, look what you’ve done.” It was only after I’d begun confessing that I realized I’d had the perfect scapegoat in Theo if I’d only kept my mouth shut. But I hadn’t so I explained about the wreath and doorbell but then she was smiling, seemingly unconcerned with it one way or another.
    So here I was five months later for our next book club with a bottle of wine that held promise if you could believe that guy behind the counter. I knocked on her door – now wreathless – while gathering my thoughts on our latest book. She opened the door with Theo next to her doing handsprings like St. John Bosco had performed to become the patron saint of actors. Then, bending down to calm Theo, she looked up at me and said, “I am so sorry about Herman.”
    Herman, I thought, now where did that come from?
    I’d had to put Herman to sleep about four months earlier. I hadn’t been away from my apartment overnight for a while but it was the Christmas season so I’d decided on a short trip to see friends. Before leaving, I’d noticed Herman having trouble getting up to his place on the couch so I’d placed a wooden box in front to give him a step-up.
    But then coming back the next morning, I’d found him hanging from the couch by his front claws. He’d fallen off the box while trying to get up on the couch and his claws had stuck. He was weak but still alive so, freeing him, I let him lie there while trying to figure out how to help him regain his strength. He wasn’t able to move his lower body so I lifted him up to his water bowl on the coffee table and was encouraged that he took some sips. But then I saw he still couldn’t move and as time passed, it became clear that he never would again. What I’d been dreading was now upon us.
    I’d tried to prepare so I made the call and put him in his carrier and took him out into the fresh air which he’d always loved. The car came and we went. And when I got back it seemed impossible that he wasn’t with me. I cleaned the apartment as it had begun to smell from his many bowel and bladder leaks that I hadn’t been able to keep up with. But when it came to his things, I couldn’t get rid of them. Even now, his litter scoop still lies on the floor of the closet, halfway visible.
    When someone close dies, there’s usually others to share in our grief but with Herman there was only me. He’d spent his first two years in an alley and, even though he liked humans, his way of playing was to lure them in with his good looks and then lash out with his claws. And no matter how hard they tried to make friends with him and despite all my warnings, they always came away needing at least a bandaid. Herman wanted human contact but something inside him just wouldn’t allow for it so I knew how much he depended on me. I didn’t realize though how much I depended on him.
    I still see him in the corner of my eye walking in after the dinner he just ate. Or he’s there in the dim light across the living room, playing our game and peeking at me from around the corner. It’s like he’s there but not really so I’ve tried to get on with it like everyone else has had to do since the beginning of time.
    But then our host, while bending down to calm Theo, looked up at me and said she was sorry about Herman. And she said it with such concern and like it happened only yesterday that I almost fell over. A wave of joy came over me, not the kind that makes you stop to take it in but the kind that drives you forward into the simple act of living. I thanked her and we opened the bottle of wine, which turned out to be pretty good by the way. Then the other book club members arrived and for the rest of that evening it felt like Herman was there with us.
    I wondered where that joy had come from and why it had come over me at the mere mention of his name? I wondered what might sustain it or if it could be sustained. Then a theory began forming in my mind. It seemed that time itself had dissolved in that moment. That is, the distance between now and then contracted to the point where it vanished, leaving only what is and always will be.

2

    It was confusing how people would look at a clock and make a pronouncement like I have to be there by eight. And they’d say it with such authority that I couldn’t help but be impressed. Even my sister who was only two years older than me had this power. I’d ask when Howdy Doody was coming on and she’d give me the answer by just glancing at the clock. It seemed so natural that I assumed she’d been born with this power and that some like her had it while others like me did not. That was bothersome but what really had me worried was the thought that it might be a permanent condition and that I’d forever be at the mercy of my sister and others like her. It went on like this until one day I asked her about it.
    So how did you know it was fifteen minutes after two?
    Because that’s what the clock said.
    But how did you know what the clock said?
    I looked.
    No, I mean how did you know what it said?
    At that she just looked at me. Oh, you mean how do I tell time?
    Yeah.
    Now might come the answer I’d been dreading but instead she asked a question.
    You want to learn?
    ... I think so.
    So come on.
    I followed her over to the clock and she said that there were two hands. The short hand tells the hour and the long hand tells the minute so all you have to do is see how many minutes it is before or after the hour that the short hand is pointing to. Then she told me to tell her what time it was so I did.
    See? It’s easy.
    What’s the skinny red hand for?
    It’s for seconds but you don’t have to worry about that.
    What does it do?
    Now she was annoyed. Okay, sixty seconds make a minute and sixty minutes make an hour. Believe me, that’s all you need to know.
    Then she was gone, leaving me counting the marks around the clock. But then I realized I didn’t have to count them because the numbers already said what they were. It amazed me that not only did we have clocks to tell time but, from then on, I’d never be confused by them again.
    I also thought my sister must be a pretty good teacher to explain it so easily. I wondered if that’s how it was with everything, if all those things I didn’t understand were only mysteries because no one had explained them. Then I had the idea that maybe we were supposed to figure things out for ourselves and the more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed because that was exactly how I’d found out about music.
    I knew that music was supposed to make you feel good but what was it supposed to sound like and what kind of good feeling was it supposed to give you? There was Lawrence Welk on TV with his “champagne music-makers,” and bubbles floating around. I figured his music was supposed to make you happy by the way he kept smiling but it never did that for me. My friend down the block told me his father said the woman on Lawrence Welk was so pretty that he wanted to run out in the street and kiss her. That seemed like a strange thing for his father to say but, even if he did, that didn’t mean he was any happier and it sure didn’t explain anything about music. So it remained a mystery until that night on the back porch.
    I’d sit out there after dark when they’d let me and on this night I was watching and listening to the teenagers next door. The teenager who lived there didn’t pay any attention to me but I liked him anyway because of the time he’d walked around on his hands in our front yard with his feet waving up in the air.
    I sat there watching the reds and blues and yellows reflect off their faces. Their faces were all I could see because the hedge between our yards cut off everything else below their necks. And even though I couldn’t see it I knew there was a jukebox there because of how the colored lights kept shifting and the songs kept changing.
    Then it happened.

Don’t be cruel, ooh, ooh, ooh,
To a heart that’s true.
I don’t want no other love,
Baby, it’s you I’m thinking of.

    And I said, this must be music. It had revealed itself without me doing anything. And that was Elvis singing. I knew about him because he was from Memphis and had made a big splash on TV. He’s telling this girl to not be cruel to him and I wondered what she’d done that was so cruel but he never says and then I realized he didn’t have to because no matter how cruel she was, all that matters is how much he loves her.
    Then it felt like I’d gone somewhere else and whenever after that on a hot summer day with the fan on high and my mother ironing while Elvis or Patsy sang on the radio, I knew exactly what I was hearing.

3

    After first grade we moved to a bigger house in the suburbs and right after that Elvis moved out there too. He was getting more famous and had enough money to buy anything he wanted so I guess that house on Audubon was it. We drove by to see it and it didn’t look much bigger than ours but only Elvis lived there while our house was for the whole family. You could tell which one it was by the music notes stuck on the fence around the front yard.
    It had a swimming pool in the backyard which we only knew about because of my sister. Her friend in third grade had invited her over and it turned out she lived right next door to Elvis. This friend showed her how she spied on him through the backyard fence. I imagined Elvis in his pool with all these girls swimming around but my sister said he just laid out there all day and it was kind of boring.
    Pretty soon so many people were driving down Audubon that his neighbors complained. So Elvis moved away to a new house called Graceland and I wondered what kind of house had its own name. A picture showed it with columns out front and a front yard like a city park with a driveway that curved around up to the house. There were still music notes in front but these were big ones on a fancy gate that closed the driveway off from the street.
    Then I don’t remember much until he got drafted. There wasn’t a war going on so he didn’t have to worry about getting killed. All he had to do was get it over with and hope that when he got back people hadn’t forgotten him. There was also so much new music coming out. One day I’m walking past Elvis’s old house and this song called “The Locomotion” was running through my head. It was like a freight train with this female singer who sounded black and sexy.

Everyone is doing a brand new dance now,
Come on baby, do the Locomotion.
Chugga chugga motion now, let’s make a chain now,
Come on baby, do the Locomotion.

    Then we heard Elvis was out of the army and had brought back to Memphis with him a young girl he wasn’t married to. The paper said she’d come with her father’s blessing and that she’d been enrolled in a private school. It was all pretty weird but Memphians chose to believe the best. Then I found out this private school was the same Catholic girls school where my sister went. My sister said she was nice but didn’t hang out with them much. A chauffeur dropped her off in the morning and then picked her up in the afternoon but that changed one day when she drove up to school in a brand new Mustang.
    So with Elvis collecting young girls and no one thinking about him much, he starts popping up in the movies. What? I mean I knew he could sing but who said he could act. You didn’t just start acting and I figured that had to be especially true for this guy from Humes High but that’s what Elvis did because then he was starring in more and more movies. He mostly sang and danced but he had to be doing something right for Hollywood to keep making them.
    Then the movies stopped and he disappeared again around when the Beatles came out. It was a pretty long time before he showed up again but then he did what they called his “comeback concert.” His hair wasn’t slicked back anymore and he had these thick sideburns like a motorcycle greaser back in the fifties. But his comeback was a success and then his music came back on the radio but that was different now too, slower and more old fashioned. All I knew for sure was that it wasn’t for me. It seemed like he’d crossed over to a more adult image and not a very cool one at that.
    One time we were driving down Bellevue and Elvis was out at his gate talking to his fans. None of us had ever seen him up close so we decided to stop but by the time we got over there, the crowd was a lot bigger. We stood at the back but then the gates opened up and the crowd began moving inside towards one of the stone walls that surrounded the grounds.
    I thought of the time in New Orleans when I’d told this guy I was from Memphis and he said, “Like Elvis.” Then he asked what I thought of him and I’d answered, “Just a Memphis hick who made it big,” and I’d felt bad about that ever since. Who knows what he’d be like if you talked to him up close. Then I thought I might find out if I could get up to the front of this crowd. A friend motioned to where two more friends were climbing up onto the stone wall. I climbed up too and followed them along the top to where Elvis was sitting. We all sat down on the wall cross-legged, just a few feet above his head.
    He had on a shiny gold shirt and white pants as he sat there talking to his fans. Maybe it was the way his hair puffed out but his head seemed twice as big as any I’d ever seen before. He didn’t know we were up there and I thought how easy it would be to just smack him. Then I wondered if anyone else was worried about that when I saw a bodyguard type in the crowd watching us. Someone was taking pictures and I thought what a great shot with the crowd down below and us up above and that’s why they were letting us sit there. I guess the bodyguard tipped him off because then Elvis twisted his head around to look up at us and said, “Hey up there, how you fellas doin’?”
    I answered, “pretty good,” and that’s all we said. He then turned back to his fans and we walked back around the wall and climbed down. His voice had been that same one we all knew but there’d been something different about it too. Along with that deep hollow sound there was a Mississippi twang to it I’d never heard before. I was glad he felt comfortable enough out there to not worry about how he sounded. It was like there was something inside him that made it hard for him to relax and you felt that from him too. It came off as a sensitivity that made you like him.
    He sang everything, love songs, work songs, ballads, Gospel, folk, blues, anthems, jazz, rock and roll. But as his success grew so did his drug problem. During one of his stays at Baptist Hospital with the tin foil in the windows, a girlfriend and I were driving down Union when she said her aunt was his nurse up there and all he did was brush his teeth. He’d brush them and then ten minutes later brush them again. It went on like that all night and the only other thing her aunt said was that it was sad.
    I was turning onto a ramp on I-240 when it came on the radio that Elvis was dead. I figured it was what they were hinting at, an overdose and/or the problems that came with addiction. They said he had a pill doctor who got him anything he wanted and that made sense as I knew plenty of those doctors in Memphis.
    It was normal for Memphians to mourn him but what didn’t seem normal was so many people coming from other places to mourn too. I moved away the next year and watched from a distance as his celebrity grew. It surprised me at first and then I was shocked by how many traveled there to be where the magic had happened. But then for me too, whenever I went back, I took a trip to Graceland to buy the Elvis junk that I then gave out back in New York. It seemed like you just couldn’t go wrong with Elvis.

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