Mark Dunn - American Decameron

What did Elvis and his troop watch that night? Two fairly underwhelming movies. The first was called Macon County Line . It was a low-budget indy written and produced by Max Baer Jr., more familiarly known at the time as an erstwhile Beverly Hillbilly. The movie told the story of a deadly road trip taken by two U.S. Army-bound brothers in the redneck South. Elvis enjoyed this one.

The second film selected by the King to round out the evening’s double feature was a George Segal sci-fi stinker called The Terminal Man , about a brilliant but dangerously epileptic computer programmer. Elvis slept through this one. I know this because Clay and I — and several other ushers and candy-counter girls, including my own girlfriend Jerri, sat behind him. Just before the movie, Mr. Humphries had asked Jerri if she’d ever dreamed of being kissed by Elvis. Jerri was cute and unquestionably kissable. When she had bashfully answered in the affirmative (Jerri told me later that her mother, who had once flown all the way to Vegas to see Elvis on stage, would have killed her if she hadn’t been receptive), Elvis leaned in and gave Jerri a chaste peck on the lips.

Elvis drank.

We were under strict orders not to reveal this fact, since it would undercut the clean-cut image that Elvis’s handlers, even in this late season of his life, still wished to put across to the Elvis-worshipping public. And so we all kept dutifully mum. Elvis is human, I thought. What’s the big deal?

Elvis was pissed.

At one point in the evening he decided to don the mantle of moral authority and reprimand one of his entourage for either maliciously or mischievously pulling up yard signs (and getting caught) during this, a fairly contentious city primary season.

We were ordered not to speak of Elvis’s temper. Elvis has a temper, I thought. Who doesn’t?

The evening ended just as the sun began to rise over the mall. Elvis and his sleepy entourage headed back to Graceland, a couple of miles from the theatre, and Clay and I slid into our parents’ mammoth green Pontiac station wagon and drove back to our “outer” Graceland hovel, having enjoyed our evening of close proximity to superstardom.

These were the times that I felt the strongest connection to my twin brother Clay. It had been a great summer for him too. If one’s eighteenth birthday marks the passage from adolescence to adulthood, then this was the summer — indeed, this was the very night — that Clay and I made that all-important transition.

There are ironies here. Sad ironies. The fact that like me, Elvis was also a twin. His own brother, Jessie, had preceded Elvis by thirty-five minutes but was stillborn. I was also born second, and like Elvis, I also lost my older twin brother. Clay died Christmas week of 2006 of an accidental prescription drug overdose.

Elvis may have wondered what his life could have been like with a twin brother taking the journey alongside him. I didn’t have to wonder. Twindom is a queer phenomenon. One goes through life as both an individual and as part of a couple, for even those twins who allow competition or jealousy to poison their relationship cannot deny the kind of bond that in truth can never really be severed.

Even in death.

I often think back on that night in 1974 when my brother and I turned eighteen, when Clay was well on his way to becoming the funny, gregarious hail fellow well met whom he’d be for most of his life. Because that night wasn’t just about Elvis. It was about two men, both of whom embraced life with gusto, until life tripped them up and ultimately betrayed them. Both Elvis Presley and my brother Clay met sad ends abetted by serious drug addiction.

Tens of millions the world over mourned the death of Elvis Presley. I saw only a small fraction of them on the sprawling front lawn of Graceland the week of his demise in 1977, but the crowds that turned out were vocal and communal in their bereavement. When Clay died, there were far fewer to mourn his passing.

Several years later, I continue to mourn my brother and to think about him.

Clay was born with a black eye. We joked that it was my fetal fist that delivered the punch. “You boys were fighting with each other even before you were born,” our harried mother quipped. And we did fight. All brothers fight. But not in those first few hours of our nineteenth year on this Earth, when the world was suddenly everything it could possibly be and life held every imaginable promise.

Jerri had been kissed by the King of Rock and Roll. And the King had shown that he could drink and cuss like all the rest of us. And George Segal demonstrated that even a good actor can sometimes be hampered by a bad script.

And did I mention how damned good the popcorn was that night?

Clay and I were all smiles on the short drive to Hickory Hills. Once we got home it was hard to sleep. But we had to get some shuteye. Our work schedules called for us to report back to the theatre at noon.

Life goes on — at least for as long as fate allows.

Jake and I had never done any work in the Fairfield/Highland neighborhood before — I mean after I started my own construction company. I’d worked on a couple of remodels there for two other outfits, but this was my first job in the neighborhood since striking out on my own. The house was on Herndon and it belonged to Henry Badeaux, who was well known in both Shreveport and Bossier City.

I figured it was going to be a good three-day job: first day to pull up the old brick terrace that looked to be about a hundred years old from its crumbling condition; then day two lay in a new foundation, and day three put in a new paver patio. I asked Badeaux why he wanted to go with an itty-bitty company like mine (it’s just me and Jake and sometimes my boy, Kit, on the weekends, and then there’s my hardworking wife Theresa in the office). He said he was drawn to my ad in the Yellow Pages. How do you like that? That little turtle with a toolbelt that my artistically gifted teenage son had drawn for us actually landed us a decent-sized job! And a decent-sized job in old-money Shreveport, for crying out loud.

It was the maid, Callie, who was there the first couple of days we worked. She brought us lemonade (this being Shreveport, and October in Shreveport being just as hot and muggy sometimes as August), and even served us lunch. Every now and then I’d catch her peeking out at us through the utility room window, I guess to make sure that we weren’t loafing on the job.

We didn’t meet Mrs. Badeaux until very early Thursday morning, Callie’s day off, and Mrs. Badeaux’s first full day back in town after a week down in the Big Easy to see family. There was a milk delivery van parked in front of the house. I didn’t pay it much mind, except to comment that I didn’t think people got milk delivered to their homes anymore. Jake suspected foul play: an empty van, a missing milkman. I think Jake watches far too many of those Quinn Martin detective shows.

It was about seven thirty when we got our first look at Mrs. Badeaux. We’d already been working for about half an hour, giving the paver sand one last screed before beginning the next big phase of the operation. Mrs. Badeaux looked dressed and ready to meet the day. I’d say ready to go to work except that a) she didn’t work, according to Badeaux, and b) no woman I know would have gone off to work looking the way she did. You’d think she had the starring role in some gypsy movie, for crying out loud. If she hadn’t been beautiful (oh, Lordee, was she beautiful, as second wives — or was she his third? — always are), I’d say she looked like a blueberry. That’s the color she was wearing — this sort of bluey-purple peasant dress with flouncy sleeves and tassels at the bottom and a pirate-like thick sash the color of the dress tied around her waist, and a long, sinuous scarf that went around her neck and hung down low and then wrapped itself around her head real tight but with just enough of her blond hair poking out in the front to assure you that there was a good flock of Herbal Essences-scented yellow silk under there.