Forever Odd

released within five months of his leaving the army in 1960.
        All the other lingering dead of my acquaintance appear in the clothes in which they died. Only Elvis manifests in whatever wardrobe he fancies at the moment.
        Perhaps he meant to express solidarity with those who wished to preserve the statue of the soldiers. Or he just thought he looked cool in army khaki, which he did.
        Few people have lived so publicly that their lives can reliably be chronicled day by day. Elvis is one of those.
        Because even his mundane activities have been so thoroughly documented, we can be all but certain that he never visited Pico Mundo while alive. He never passed through on a train, never dated a girl from here, and had no other connection whatsoever with our town.
        Why he should choose to haunt this well-fried corner of the Mojave instead of Graceland, where he died, I did not know. I had asked him, but the rule of silence among the dead was one that he would not break.
        Occasionally, usually on an evening when we sit in my living room and listen to his best music, which we do a lot lately, I try to engage him in conversation. I’ve suggested that he use a form of sign language to reply: thumbs-up for yes, thumbs-down for no…
        He just looks at me with those heavy-lidded, half-bruised eyes, even bluer than they appear in his movies, and keeps his secrets to himself. Often he’ll smile and wink. Or give me a playful punch on the arm. Or pat my knee.
        He’s an affable apparition.
        Here on the park bench, he raised his eyebrows and shook his head as if to say that my propensity for getting in trouble never ceased to amaze him.
        I used to think that he was reluctant to leave this world because people here had been so good to him, had loved him in such numbers. Even though he had lost his way badly as a performer and had become addicted to numerous prescription medications, he had been at the height of his fame when he died, and only forty-two.
        Lately, I’ve evolved another theory. When I have the nerve, I’ll propose it to him.
        If I’ve got it right, I think he’ll weep when he hears it. He sometimes does weep.
        Now the King of Rock ‘n Roll leaned forward on the bench, peered west, and cocked his head as if listening.
        I heard nothing but the faint thrum of wings as bats fished the air above for moths.
        Still gazing along the empty street, Elvis raised both hands palms-up and made come-to-me gestures, as though inviting someone to join us.
        From a distance, I heard an engine, a vehicle larger than a car, approaching.
        Elvis winked at me, as if to say that I was engaged in psychic magnetism even if I didn’t realize it. Instead of cruising in search, perhaps I had settled where I knew-somehow-that my quarry would cruise to me.
        Two blocks away, a dusty white-paneled Ford van turned the corner. It came toward us slowly, as if the driver might be looking for something.
        Elvis put a hand on my arm, warning me to remain seated in the shrouding shadows of the phoenix palm.
        Light from a street lamp washed the windshield, sluiced through the interior of the van as it passed us. Behind the wheel was the snaky man who had Tasered me.
        Without realizing that I moved, I had sprung to my feet in surprise.
        My movement didn’t catch the driver’s attention. He drove past and turned left at the corner.
        I ran into the street, leaving Sergeant Presley on the bench and the bats to their airborne feast.

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    NINE
        
        THE VAN SWUNG OUT OF SIGHT AT THE CORNER, AND I ran in its windless wake, not because I am brave, which I am not, neither because I am addicted to danger, which I also am not, but because inaction is not the mother of redemption.
        When I reached the cross street, I saw the Ford disappearing into an alley half a block away. I had lost ground. I sprinted.
        When I reached the mouth of the alley, the way ahead lay dark, the street brighter behind me, with the consequence that I stood as silhouetted as a pistol-range target, but it wasn’t a trap. No one shot at me.
        Before I arrived, the van had turned left and vanished into an intersecting passage. I knew where it had gone only because the wall of the corner building blushed with the backwash of tail-lights.
        Racing after that fading red trace, certain