She buttoned her jacket against the cold and took her daughter's hand.
"Come on," she said, "it's freezing. We'd better get home."
Pam turned around and waved to Miss Atwood through the window. The piano teacher waved back.
They lived only three blocks from Miss Atwood, but tonight those three blocks seemed like three miles to Emily. She hurried her daughter along the cracked side walk toward home. l ""Miss Atwood said that I'm good enough to start in the advanced book next week," Pam said. Emily, smiled, tried to appear interested.
"That's great." Something was definitely the matter. The night was cold, but it was not windy. She could hear wind, however, and water, and the sounds seemed to come from all around them, not from any particular direction. There was something threatening and unnatural about the combined noises, and she wanted to run down the sidewalk, across the street, and around the block all the way home, locking the door behind her and pulling all the curtains. It was only her own high heels and Pam's presence that kept her from doing so.
Pam continued to chatter on about her piano lesson, going aver mistakes she'd made, difficulties she'd mastered, things her teacher had said, but Emily paid attention to none of it. Her eyes were on the night around them, on the houses that looked abandoned, on the saguaros that looked like people, on the bushes that looked like animals. Nothing seemed right tonight, nothing seemed normal. Her perceptions had been altered, heightened, and everywhere she glanced there was danger. The sounds of wind and water increased in intensity. Then she saw it.
At the end of the block, standing unmoving beneath a weak streetlight, was a large overweight man.
She stopped walking, holding tightly to her daughter's hand. Pam gasped at the force with which her mother held on to her and stopped as well. She'd been talking about how she was looking forward to the advanced piano book because it had more popular songs, but she stopped talking, as she followed her mother's gaze.
"Mom?" she said, her voice frightened.
Emily motioned for her daughter to be quiet. She took a tentative step forward, waiting to see if the figure moved, but the overweight man remained still. She'd been hoping he would step more fully into the light, that she would be able to reassure herself that nothing out of the ordinary was happening here, but her own chills and Pam's voice told her that was not the case. She stared at the unmoving silhouette at the end of the block. Something about the form was familiar but she found that despite the familiarity she was frightened.
"It's Elvis," Pare said softly. What?"
: It's Elvis."
So it was. Emily's heart leaped in her chest. She recognized the figure now. Elvis. Elvis Aaron Presley. The King. The King of Rock and Roll.
They stood stock-still, Emily holding tightly to her daughter's hand.
Between here and the corner, the side walk was a chiaroscuro mosaic, the square sections of cement divided into what looked like huge black-and-white tiles, lightened by porch lights and street lamps, darkened by shadows and night.
She had dreamed of meeting Elvis for most of her life, had faithfully bought every Enquirer and Star that proclaimed Elvis alive, praying it was true, that he had gone into hiding, become part of the federal witness protection program, that he really had been spotted eating at Burger King.
But she knew now, with that same gut certainty that had earlier told her this night was dangerous, that Elvis was dead and had been since
1977."
And that he was standing at the end of the block.
The figure turned, faced them, and now she could see the white suit, the black hair, the sideburns.
"Morn," Pare said, and there was terror in her voice. "Let's get out of here."
Elvis started toward them, moving through the shadows and light, a labored lumber that would have been comical were it not so frighteningly odd.
"Mom!"
The King lurched toward them, grinning at Pam.
"No!" Emily screamed, jerking her daughter by the hand.
And then Elvis was upon them.
Angelina worked slowly but with purpose. There was no hurry. Her sons, David and Neal, were safely within the padlocked storage shed and there was no way they were going to get out.
She used the wire cutters to snip the strands of clothes line that stretched across the small backyard. Mr. Wheeler was right. If she was ever to get into heaven and save her soul from the eternal torment of hell, she had to abide by the word of God.
And, according to the Bible, if her sons disobeyed her, they were to be put to death. The Lord did not tolerate disrespect to parents.
She heard David crying within the shed, heard Neal yelling, pounding on the door in a desperate effort to get out. She smiled to herself as she snipped the last strand of clothesline and let it fall to the dirt.
She'd called Wheeler this afternoon and told him of her decision to put her sons to death for their transgressions, for David's refusal to brush his teeth after dinner and Neal's unwillingness to make his bed, but the pastor had suggested that she offer her children to the Savior as a sacrifice and let Him decide on their punishment. Her heart had swelled when she'd heard those words. The idea that the Lord Jesus Christ would deign to visit her humble trailer filled her with jubilation, and after she'd locked her sons in the storage shed, she'd set about cleaning the inside of the trailer and sprucing up the surrounding yard.
She threw away everything that belonged to her children, and that made the cleaning much easier.
Now it was night, and she knew that it was time to pre pare her sacrifice to the Lord.
She went back inside, took a knife from the drawer in the kitchen, brought along the twine she'd purchased earlier in the day, and walked out to the storage shed. Care fully, not speaking, she unlocked the storage shed door and opened it a crack. As she'd expected, Neal tried to make a run for it, tried to push the door open and flee, but she shoved the knife through the crack, catching him in the cheek. He fell down, screaming, holding his face.
She grabbed David's arm, pulled him out and shut the door, locking it again.
David tried to twist his arm, pull out of her grasp, but she sliced off a chunk of his thigh, the knife easily shaving off a thin piece of skin and muscle, and he went limp in her arms. The blood was flowing, fairly pouring from the wound, but she ignored it and dragged her son across the small backyard.
She tied him to the cross pole of the clothesline, leaving his naked, bleeding body in a reverent position of crucifixion. For good measure, she wrapped some twine around his testicles and tied it. She did the same to Neal on the other clothesline pole. She went back inside, took a shower, put on her pajamas, and crawled into bed to watch an old rerun of The Bob Newhart Show.
Outside, David was silent, but Neal continued to howl well into the night.
She turned off the TV and fell asleep to the music of his screams.
She dreamed of Jesus, and in the morning both of her boys were gone.
Emily looked from Robert to Woods and back again. "Elvis killed my daughter."
"The tape is rolling. Tell us again exactly what happened." Robert smiled sympathetically and handed her a Styrofoam cup of coffee. A long time ago he had dated Emily. In those days, before his marriage to Julie, he had even hall thought that he and Emily would marry, although he could not imagine himself married to the woman now seated before him. Many times, over the years, he had thought of her, of their short time together, and he wondered if she, too, remembered those old days, or if her time with him had just blurred into a hazy, indistinct past. He wondered what it would have been like had they married. Would he look older now? Would she look younger?
That was what he hated most about living in a small town--the past was always intruding. You could never get a clean start if your history was a part of your present.