Robert Wells - Elvis - The Siege of Graceland and Other Stories

“Dodger is like a rattlesnake,” he replies. “Her eyes might be closed, but behind those eyelids of hers, she’s wide awake and ready to strike. With that old gun, she can hit a rat’s eye at 200 paces and blow a hole in a tank with the same shot.”

Colonel Parker adds that they cannot risk Elvis being outside in case the military police send in a snatch squad that somehow gets through. He tells them he needs to go and make some phone calls to the main TV channels and newspapers. “That fool of a military police captain has handed me a million dollars’ worth of publicity.”

He holds his hand out, palm upwards and tells them, “It feels like rain. I’m telling you, once the Colonel has finished, it’s going to be raining dollars here at Graceland, heh heh heh.”

Captain Ludendorf soon returns with double the number of military policemen and they are crouched behind their jeep that’s parked halfway down the drive. One of the MPs who is training his binoculars on Graceland tells him, “Sir, I’ve got a clear shot. I can take out the old lady with the gun.”

“Are you mad?” shouts the Captain, flinging his cap to the ground in anger. “Shoot Elvis’s grandmother? We’d get lynched – and that’s just what the army will do to us. Can you imagine if Elvis’s fans were to get hold of us?”

“Sorry about that, sir. I thought we’d be covered by military necessity.”

“Give me those binoculars, I think there’s something going on.” He focuses them on the front door, shakes his head, wipes the lenses clean, refocuses the binoculars, and mutters, “Oh no no no no. I don’t believe this. What’s he doing there? And how did he get in?”

Liberace walks out onto the portico of Graceland in a full-length white ermine coat draped over his shoulders, which Brother George carefully removes to reveal that Liberace is wearing a black diamante encrusted, long-tailed jacket with a piano keyboard pattern on both lapels, matching black shorts and knee-length white socks. Brother George returns with an ornate gilt chair which he flicks with a monogrammed duster and puts it next to Minnie Mae so that Liberace can sit down. He returns again with a small antique side table on which he puts a fabulous Louis XlVth candelabrum, the finest in their collection.

“Good morning Minnie Mae and Aunt Delta,” says Liberace.

“Mornin’ Lee,” replies Minnie Mae.

“As very dear friends of Elvis, Brother George and I wanted to be here to stand alongside him in his hour of peril. We didn’t want to bring Momma in case things got, well, you know, a bit rough.”

“Why thankee, Lee,” Minnie Mae tells him. “There’s no knowin’ how things are gonna go. But y’all can bet yer best grand piano that they ain’t a-takin’ Elvis. He ain’t a-going ter Viet Nam. An’ he ain’t gonna be fightin’ them King Kong.” “You mean the Viet Cong,” says Liberace helpfully.

“Yea, an’ them as well.”

“Oh Lordy no,” groans Captain Ludendorf as he continues to look through his binoculars at the front of Graceland. He did not think it could get any worse, but it just has. He watches as James Brown dances and does a couple of splits on his way across the length of the portico before ending with a spin on one leg in front of Minnie Mae and Liberace. “Hi brothers and sisters,” he greets them. “Soul Brother Number One is here to join the cause and stand shoulder to shoulder with Elvis and Liberace.”

Brother George brings him a chair and Aunt Delta offers to fix him a drink. And then adds, as a little joke, only if he says “Please Please Please.”

An hour later there is a media frenzy, the flames of which have been fanned by Colonel Parker, outside the gates of Graceland. Captain Ludendorf is on his radio phone to request advice on what to do, and for more back-up. There is a cavalcade of TV outside broadcast units and newspaper cars stretching all the way back to downtown Memphis. Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, and Walter Winchell are standing at the Music Gates with their camera crews doing live broadcasts.

Thanks to the information that has been passed on by the Colonel, Walter Cronkite is telling millions of TV viewers, “Is this what the United States of America has come to? I cannot believe it, and you, the viewers won’t either. But I am witnessing with my own eyes a terrible injustice. Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll, a man who served his country with honour and dignity, a man who was awarded a medal, is to be arrested for what I am assured is a trumped-up minor misdemeanour. This is America’s Day of Shame.”

Dan Rather is telling his viewers that Elvis’s grandmother will link arms with Liberace, James Brown, and Hal Wallis to form a human shield to defy the military police. “I am reliably informed they will tell them: ‘Shoot if you dare, but you’re not taking Elvis’.”

One of the TV channels has brought along a couple of retired generals to tell viewers just how they would bring a speedy and successful conclusion to the siege.

Captain Lundendorf is under orders to end the siege as quickly as possible because the army is being made to look like a bunch of fools on millions of TV screens and in millions of newspapers across the world. How can the mightiest military machine in history be seen to be failing to capture one man?

“If we can’t do this, what chance have we got against the Russians?” a four-star general tells Captain Ludendorf from behind his desk at the Pentagon. “Get this mission accomplished now!”

“I think I need more reinforcements, sir,” he replies. “We may come under fire. At least one of them guarding Elvis Presley is armed.” (He neglects to add that it is a little old lady with an antique buffalo gun.)

Later, the Captain scans the portico of Graceland through his binoculars to see that only Liberace and James Brown are sitting there. This looks like it is the right moment to make his move. With a wave of his arm, two armoured personnel carriers and a platoon of military policemen on foot with bayonets fixed begin to trundle up the drive.

As they come to a stop outside Graceland, Charlie Hodge, Elvis’s buddy and faithful gofer who has been with him since he served in the army in Germany, opens the front door. He is only 5 foot 3 inches tall and the Elvis Vegas jumpsuit he is wearing is so baggy that you could get another couple of Charlies inside. But he shouts out, “I am Elvis!” Next to emerge is Colonel Parker, bursting out of a Vegas jumpsuit and with his hair dyed black, to stand alongside Charlie and announce, “I am Elvis!” The next one to join them and proclaim defiantly “I am Elvis” is Dr. Nick. The procession of Elvises in Vegas outfits with their hair dyed black continues to walk out of the front door one after another and shout “I am Elvis!”: Bubba, the Colonel’s assistant; Red and Sonny West, cousins and members of the Memphis Mafia, who are in charge of security; Vernon, his father; Priscilla, his wife; grandmother Minnie Mae; Aunt Delta; his hairdresser Larry Geller; movie producer Hal Wallis; Brother George and record producer Steve Sholes. Even Lamar Fike, a long-time member of the Memphis Mafia, steps out on to the portico. Although, unlike the others, he is too fat to squeeze into a jumpsuit, he wears a tan-coloured linen suit, which has enough cloth to make a small circus tent, and a black wig and declares, “I am Elvis.” The last to come out of Graceland is Old Shep, Elvis’s dog, with a card around his next saying ‘I am Elvis’. He flops down and starts scratching his fleas.

“Captain Ludendorf, sir, I can report we have 16 Elvises if you include the dog,” reports a Sergeant. “They cannot all be the right Elvis, sir.”

“No Sergeant, but one of them surely is. So let’s leave the dog and take all the rest of them to Camp Benedict Arnold and we’ll sort it out there.”