{"id":24851,"date":"2015-05-25T13:13:29","date_gmt":"2015-05-25T18:13:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=24851"},"modified":"2015-06-05T15:50:38","modified_gmt":"2015-06-05T20:50:38","slug":"cherry-in-magnolia-part-one-who-died-and-made-you-elvis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/cherry-in-magnolia-part-one-who-died-and-made-you-elvis\/","title":{"rendered":"“Cherry in Magnolia” – Part One: Who Died and Made You Elvis?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s a kind of jazz-rhythm music
\npeculiar to the American Negro …\u201d
\n<\/em>– Long John Baldry<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jerome \u201cCherry\u201d Terzina, the on-the-run pi-annah <\/em>player with a maimed left hand\u2014an incorrigible car thief partial to married women\u2014was lying about in New Orleans the day after Elvis died.<\/span><\/p>\n

August 17, 1977, the radio busy with slap-bass rhythm and good-God-in-Heaven-I-Can\u2019t Believe-It.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wise men say \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

\"cherrymag1-1\"<\/a>Jimmy Carter: \u201cElvis Presley\u2019s death deprives our country of a part of itself.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Bob Dylan: \u201cWhen I first heard Elvis\u2019 voice I just knew I wasn\u2019t going to work for anybody and nobody was going to be my boss.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

An irritated black voice at the far end of a hallway in a waterfront flop house: \u201cCHERRY!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Cherry had his seaman\u2019s papers, just about the only thing in his life that was in good order. A ship headed for anywhere but here was the way he cooled off the messes he created. But it\u2019s not always the last bucket of hot water that wants to scald you. Sometimes it\u2019s the one that\u2019s been still for so long you\u2019ve forgotten about it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCHERRY! TELEPHONE, GODDAMIT!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And a moment later the teenager heard Ma\u2019s voice for the first time in more than a year. How she found him he didn\u2019t know and didn\u2019t ask.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWillie\u2019s gone,\u201d she said, frantic, biting the cord on the yellow kitchen phone a thousand miles away in Baltimore. \u201cThey\u2019re saying Willie\u2019s run off to Memphis.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"cherrymag1-3\"<\/a>Ma had raised Jerome from about the age of six, the kid already taking things out of purses and cabinets. He\u2019d dropped her postcards from here and there but hadn\u2019t returned to Crabtown since the husband of the woman he\u2019d slept with through high school shot her to death as she watered tomato plants in the backyard.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMa, slow down. What\u2019s the big deal?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And scratched the always-itching scar on his left palm\u2014stretching the fingers he needed to rumble the bass on \u201cDon\u2019t Try to Lay No Boogie Woogie on the King of Rock and Roll\u201d\u2014as Ma blubbered.<\/span><\/p>\n

He was about to tell her there was nothing he could do; that Willie\u2014her flesh-and-blood, the younger kid with whom he\u2019d grown up as brothers \u2014was a big boy who\u2019d show up when he got hungry.<\/span><\/p>\n

About to say \u201cI gotta go\u201d when Ma said that Willie had taken the Monte Carlo and she had it \u201con good information\u201d from Miss Bonnie that he was headed for Tennessee.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat slut Charlene talked him into driving to Memphis for the funeral.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And that\u2019s how Cherry walked away from a regular gig playing Cuban jazz at La Casa de los Marinos <\/em>(Toulouse and Decatur) and got swept up in The Bermuda Triangle of The-King-is-Dead-Long-Live-the-King between Baltimore and Memphis and New Orleans and back again.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s the longest road I know …<\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/span><\/p>\n

Cherry had about $100 on him in tips and the door from the night before. He shoved the bills deep into the pocket of his jeans and into a canvas satchel put his carefully wrapped concertina, a jar of peanut butter, and a .22 pistol. Leaving, he turned the three locks on his door, tipped the woman at the desk $20 to see that nobody tried to get in his room, grabbed the first bicycle he saw on the sidewalk, and pedaled seven miles to the seafarer\u2019s hall across the river in Harvey.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"cherrymag1-2\"<\/a>Elvis Presley\u2019s funeral was scheduled for the next day, Thursday, August 18, about 400 miles and some six hours away. Container ships were coming and going from the France Road Marine Terminal and Cherry thought about throwing in for a job on one of them before he saw a young wiper from Mobile. Cherry knew he\u2019d sailed with the guy before but couldn\u2019t remember his name.<\/span><\/p>\n

With a wink from Cherry and the wiper responding with a nod of his head they were outside\u201491 degrees and humid\u2014and the wiper suggested they sit in his car to smoke the joint. Elvis on the radio, a fat one going-back-and-forth and another in the ashtray of an institutional green Ford Maverick sporting vinyl seats in-laid with indoor\/outdoor carpeting.<\/span><\/p>\n

The wiper took a hit off the doobie, passed it to Cherry and tapped the radio dial: \u201cPeople coming in from all over the world. Man said James Brown just showed up in tears.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s go,\u201d said Cherry, sucking up the weed.<\/span><\/p>\n

The wiper thought about this for a moment. If he hung around the hall long enough, he might catch a slow ride to pay his bills through Christmas. If he went with this shifty white boy who\u2019d just fished a squeeze box out of his bag and played a slow blues over top the drone of the newscaster, Lord knows where he\u2019d end up.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhy not,\u201d said the wiper.\u00a0 \"The<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s a kind of jazz-rhythm music peculiar to the American Negro …\u201d – Long John Baldry \u00a0 Jerome<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":249,"featured_media":24852,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[96,332],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creative-writing","category-elvis"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/CherryMagnolia1FEAT.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/249"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}