The Killer Riff
an excerpt

Steve stood alongside the road out in the country. It was sunny and hot with the humidity. The leaves were thick in the woods alongside the road. For some reason, he knew he was deep in the country somewhere like in Tennessee. How long had he been here? It was like he’d been transplanted there.

However, he knew that he had a bindle pack on a pole slung over his shoulder. It was just like the bums you’d see in cartoons. He also knew that he was waiting for something. So, he stood there in the hot wind along the dusty road, waiting for whatever it was.

Over the hill in the distance, he saw a car coming. It was coming quickly and spewing dust from the unpaved road off the back of it and up into the wind., which carried off to his left. At first he could see the car was old, maybe a Caddy? As it got closer, he made it out. It was definitely a Cadillac from the late 50s; this is what he was waiting for. He knew it.

The ’59 gold Cadillac El Dorado convertible pulled up. Except it wasn’t a full convertible; it had something of a landau top, so that the people up front got full sun, but the people in the back got shade. The car must have been going about seventy, but he heard its accelerator lift and saw the car slowing down and angling for him.

The car pulled up alongside of where he was standing. As it stopped, the light brown road dust caught up with it and blew past Steve. He screwed his eyes shut from the dust and waited a few seconds until he felt the breeze and the grit blow past him. He waited a few more seconds, listening to the mellow V-8 exhaust and smelling the rich gasoline exhaust.

When he opened his eyes, two men sat in the front seat, clad in sunglasses and looking at him. The driver was a big man. He had an extra chin was wearing a white Texas cowboy suit with wide leather lapels, a bolo tie, and a big cowboy hat. He had a toothpick in his mouth and a smile on the corner of his lip. “Howdy, son,” he said.

The man in the passenger seat was wearing a black suit, black shirt, and no tie. He kept his shirt buttoned up except for the top button. He had opened the glove compartment as the car stopped and was now fishing something out of a plastic baggie full of pills. He popped one in his mouth and looked up at Steve. His black hair was combed back from his face and his black Ray-Bans revealed nothing about what lay behind them. The man in black sat back and folded his arms across his lap.

“Hello. I’m Johnny Cash,” he said, just as Steve expected.

“Get on in there, son,” said the man, reaching behind Johnny Cash to push the seat up to let Steve in. “C’mon, Johnny. Open the door and let the man in.”

The Man in Black grunted a bit and flipped the big door open for Steve, who flipped his pack onto the floor and leaned in. That landau top was low and made it tough to get in, especially when Johnny Cash wasn’t moving up enough to get the seat very far forward. Steve flopped down in the deep back seat and saw that he was not alone.

Next to him, on the driver’s side, there was what he could only guess was a dwarf. Or was it a dog? Someone—some thing—was swaddled in a white terrycloth robe with the hood of the robe covering its head. There were no legs that he could notice, so he thought that it must have had a nasty accident. Whatever it was, it smelled awfully funny, like it was in need of a bath. Steve tried to lean forward to get a look inside the hood of the robe, but it—he or she?—turned its head away to look out the side window.

The driver got Steve’s attention. “Well, you must be Steve, right?”

“Yes,” said Steve. For some reason, it seemed perfectly normal for the driver to know his name.

“Good! Good! We’ve been looking for you.” The driver gunned the car and they took off, a spit of gravel and dirt rattling up into the rear wheel wells. The acceleration threw Steve back into his seat and he had to make a quick adjustment to stay seated upright.

The driver hitched a thumb over his shoulder and looked at Steve in the rearview mirror as he talked. “He said we’d find you out here.”

The Man in Black laughed a bit and said, “Yeah, and I thought he was crazy.”

The driver turned to Johnny Cash: “Well, now, Johnny, I thought he was stretching a bit to when he told us to drive out here to pick up this young man, but now….” The driver looked up in the mirror at Steve, then said to Cash: “He hasn’t steered us wrong yet, has he?”

Cash snorted and remarked: “Well, it’ll be the devil to pay for listening to him. I know that.”

“We all have to deal with our demons as they come to us,” the driver said.

Cash stared at the driver for a moment, then turned his head the other way. “You should know, Parker. You sold your soul for him many years ago.”

“Now, Johnny, don’t go getting so riled up. The King needed his business manager to keep his kingdom intact, and that’s just what I did.”

“Excuse me,” Steve interrupted, “but are you Colonel Tom Parker?” Steve didn’t know why he bothered asking. For some reason he already knew the answer.

“Yes, that’s me,” said the Colonel, turning towards Steve and extending his hand. “At your service.”

Steve shook his hand. “Nice to meet you.” He took stock of what he had there: “So, let’s see. I’m in a car with Johnny Cash and Colonel Tom Parker.” Each nodded as he said their name. “You wouldn’t happen to have Elvis nearby, would you?”

Johnny Cash laughed out loud and Colonel Parker shot him a dirty glance.

“Now, that’s something of a sore point between Mr. Cash here and me,” said Colonel Parker.

“That’s right,” said Cash, “and you know why. It’s because Jerry Lee Lewis is a Louisiana bullshitter!”

“Now, Johnny, we didn’t know that when we went to see him about his extra services.”

“We didn’t need to!” shouted Cash. He turned to Steve and pointed at Colonel Parker: “He says that we can get Elvis back with no problem! All we gotta do is go see Jerry Lee! Jerry Lee’s got the voodoo! He can get Elvis back for us! Voodoo, my ass,” Cash said as he turned around, facing front now.

Steve leaned forward, so his head was between them hanging over the back of the front seat. “So, Elvis was dead already?”

“Yes,” said the Colonel. “He went to be with his mama several years ago now. Everything was fine. His estate was in good shape and Lisa Marie was taken care of. Then I got a call from Mr. Cash that there was some unfinished business.”

“Unfinished business?” asked Steve. The Man in Black had shot a harsh look at the Colonel, who squirmed and backtracked.

“Oh, nothing big, mind you. Just a small bit of work to finish the estate. Things like that.”

“So we had to bring him back,” said Cash, getting more quickly to the point than the Colonel was.

“Bring him back?” asked Steve. “From the dead, right?”

“Yes, from the dead,” said Cash, reaching for the glove compartment again. He fished around in the ziplock for the right pill, found it, and popped it into his mouth. “Jerry Lee had heard about our predicament. He needed some money, so he called us.”

“You see,” said the Colonel to Steve, “Jerry Lee’s got the touch, that’s what he told us, and he could channel up Elvis right out of the ground to help us with our problem. You know…finishing the estate.”

“Okay,” said Steve. “I understand. So, where’s Elvis?”

“Now, that’s where things didn’t turn out as planned,” said the colonel.

“Hah!” snapped the Man in Black. “The master of understatement!”

“Right! Okay!” Steve shot back. He was getting impatient. “So, where’s Elvis?”

“Now you see, son,” said the Colonel. “It’s not that easy to explain. You see…”

A voice behind Steve interrupted the Colonel: “Let me take this one, Colonel Tom. I think I can explain it to him.” There was no mistaking that country drawl. That staccato delivery. It was the King.

Steve turned and saw the King. But it wasn’t the King. The thing in the robe had pulled back the hood so Steve could get a better look at it. Now there was the Ed Sullivan Elvis…the Army Elvis…the Hollywood Elvis…the ’68 Comeback Elvis…the Hawaiian Elvis…the bloated Las Vegas Elvis. But under a black Elvis wig and a pair of huge sunglasses—the letters “TCB” on the one lens—sat the most current version of Elvis. Or the sort-of Elvis.

Steve recognized it immediately. It was Elvis’ impacted forty pound colon.

“Mr. Presley?” inquired Steve.

“Yes, it’s me,” it said through a cartoon mouth. “It’s nice to have you aboard.”
Steve had heard the story told many times of Elvis—growing way too loaded with uppers and downers and bad drug habits—coming to his fate. It happened one night on his throne in Graceland. One grunt too many and he keeled over dead. When they did the autopsy, they found his colon to be chalky gray and implacted. It weighed in at forty pounds.

“Hello, Mr. Presley. It’s great to meet you.”

“Well, thank you, Steve. Although technically, I’m not Mr. Presley. I’m his colon. But then, you probably already knew that.”

“Yes, I had an idea,” said Steve, moving back to the far side of the rear seat and settling in for a strange ride.

“As my friends in the front seat alluded to, they sought out the services of Jerry Lee, but I’m afraid that his talents were lacking. He summoned all the spirits he could, and brought Elvis’ mind in from the mist. Unfortunately, the only corporeal presence he could divine was my colon.”

“Yeah,” said the Man in Black. “Probably because he’s always had his head up his ass.” Johnny Cash, Colonel Parker, and Elvis’ colon all laughed at that.

“We never should have needed to do it,” said Colonel Parker. “Steve, did you know that Elvis’ death was due to a birth defect?”

“No, I hadn’t heard that.” Steve leaned forward a bit as the Colonel spoke.

“You see, Elvis was born with limited motor skills. His mama…”

“God bless her soul,” Elvis' colon said.

“…she covered for him the best she could. And in all the King’s stage performances and movies, you wouldn’t have ever noticed the problem.”

“And that problem was?”

“He could never turn to his right.”

“Wha…?” croaked Steve. “I can’t believe that would be a cause of his death. After all, Elvis was a bloated, overeating, pill-popping junkie who ate, drank, and drugged himself to death.”

“There’s no doubt that all that contributed to my death,” Elvis' colon said, “but my lack of movement to the right—in the end—is what killed me. You see, that night I had been watching TV and eating a peanut butter sandwich…”

“Just one simple peanut butter sandwich?” asked Steve skeptically. “With two slices of bread and a bit of peanut butter spread on it? That’s it?”

“Well, it’s what I would consider a peanut butter sandwich, although I remember the recipe as being a loaf of white bread hollowed out and stuffed with a jar of peanut butter, sometimes with a banana, too. Then the whole thing was deep fried to a crispy golden brown.”

“Actually, that sounds pretty yummy,” said Steve.

“It sure was,” said Elvis' colon, pointing one of its prehensile fingers down to its lower half. “As a matter of fact, I think I have a piece of the sandwich right here. But I digress. After finishing my sandwich, I washed it down with some milk and vodka. Soon thereafter, I fell asleep. When I awoke later, my gut felt like it was going to explode. I went into the bathroom to see if I could relieve myself. I hadn’t been able to go to the bathroom for the prior two days, and I was expecting that I could this time.

“As I sat there, I started getting lightheaded. A few moments later, I felt myself losing my balance and falling forward and to my left. Of course, I’ve never been able to fall or move to my right, so that wasn’t unusual. Unfortunately, though, the edge of the countertop was right there and I banged my head on it. That’s what killed me. If I had fallen to my right, I would have rolled right onto the three-inch shag carpet and probably would have survived.

“You see, my birth defect of being a non-ambiturner is what killed me.”

“If only there had been a cure at that time,” interjected the Colonel. “The King wouldn’t have had to die.”