{"id":25828,"date":"2015-07-20T13:34:40","date_gmt":"2015-07-20T18:34:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=25828"},"modified":"2015-10-20T11:39:44","modified_gmt":"2015-10-20T16:39:44","slug":"cherry-in-magnolia-part-5-smooth-fast-in-high-gear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/cherry-in-magnolia-part-5-smooth-fast-in-high-gear\/","title":{"rendered":"“Cherry in Magnolia”- Part 5: Smooth, Fast & In High Gear!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"CherryInMagnolia_webheader\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t fall or trip on things, stay away from happenings…\u201d<\/i><\/span>\u2013 Nancy Sinatra<\/span><\/p>\n

By the time the hearse pulled into the cemetery driveway\u2014inching along the boulevard named for the man in the back, cops blocking mourners who would have jumped beneath its wheels as willingly as a jihadist in Tel Aviv\u2014Cherry had collected more than $30 in requests for songs made famous by Elvis Presley.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"il_570xN.707201481_84kf_GRAY\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t even have to sing (a good thing), not much anyway. Just about everyone who dropped change or paper in his pink and black hat took up the song themselves. These were not the beautiful people at Graceland the night before. <\/span><\/p>\n

They were the more beautiful people: Denise from Huntsville, Jerry out of Kankakee, the roly-poly twins Alice and Arlene who took the Greyhound after the bars closed in Vandergrift.<\/span><\/p>\n

Alice: \u201cWhen through the woods and forest glades I wander \u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Arlene: \u201cHow great thou art \u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Most were awful but some were sublime and by the time Cherry put his concertina away\u2014a glint of gold on the periphery, black vinyl in the grooves of his master\u2019s voice\u2014he\u2019d squeezed life into \u201cI Can\u2019t Help Falling in Love with You,\u201d a dozen times, \u201cSuspicious Minds,\u201d for the conspiracy theorists, and \u201cLove Me Tender\u201d just about every other song.<\/span><\/p>\n

Few got through all the verses without breaking down. Standing up, touching his toes and folding the ball cap over his earnings like a purse, Cherry snaked and edged and pushed and pardoned-me through the crowd and\u2014just about the time the stone masons had entered the mausoleum with a wheelbarrow full of sand, buckets of water and trowels\u2014spotted the car on the front lawn of a dentist\u2019s office cater-corner across the street from the graveyard,<\/span><\/p>\n

Charlene the Pig stood barefoot on the roof taking pictures with a 110 instamatic camera, a flash cube (ain\u2019t no time for squares, skank-bucket, \u201cLet\u2019s get real gone \u2026\u201d) popping into the advancing twilight.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Inside the mausoleum, workmen began to seal the crypt, first with a double slab of concrete, then with blank sheets of marble to be inscribed somewhere down the line.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe really was the best looking man I\u2019ve ever seen,\u201d said a woman buying a 1935-to-1977 t-shirt from a black teenager who had a shopping bag full of them.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTen dollars, ma\u2019am,\u201d said the kid.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGive me two,\u201d said the woman.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cMake it three.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Leaving the bicycle behind, Cherry crossed the highway toward the Monte Carlo, bird-dogging so easy to do in a mob, and sat watching it for hours before the crowd had dispersed and the police on the scene began giving away the floral arrangements to fans per the orders of Vernon Presley.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"tbay-cams-kodak-instamatic_GRAY\"<\/a><\/p>\n

He watched as Charlene slid down the windshield on her ass like it was a sliding board, rolled off of the hood and began running back and forth across the street grabbing as many flowers as she could, handing them to Willie\u2014who dutifully put them in the road-filthy car\u2014before going back for more.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

When the cops finally told her \u201cNo more,\u201d Charlene ran back to the Monte Carlo and wedged herself into the passenger seat. <\/span><\/p>\n

Before Willie could turn the ignition, stems and petals poking into his neck and shoulders, a sneezing attack coming on, Cherry grabbed a cab that had just dropped off a couple from Kansas City\u2014\u201cparty\u2019s over,\u201d said someone who watched them jump out, anxious and unsteady\u2014and told the driver to follow the gold car with the black roof.<\/span><\/p>\n

The cabbie nodded toward the Monte Carlo, \u201cThat one Chief?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYes, wherever it goes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAin\u2019t going nowhere \u2019til some of this mess clears out.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s alright,\u201d said Cherry, settling into the back seat, taking the hat from his satchel and separating the dollar bills from the change. \u201cJust don\u2019t lose it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo sir.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Cherry had a plan: Follow closely (neither Willie nor Charlene would know they were being tailed), wait until one of them had to take a piss (10-to-1 says it\u2019s the tub, said Cherry to the cabbie, who wanted nothing to do with it), grab the car (lemon-squeezee), and put Charlene on the street.<\/span><\/p>\n

And then, on the drive home\u2014after giving his prize a good wash and an oil change, pull some kind of trick to get some new tires, at least on the front\u2014he\u2019d lecture his younger brother about how far to stick you neck out for piece-of-ass and how far not to.<\/span><\/p>\n

And savor thoughts of the soft crab sandwiches on white toast with lettuce and tomato they\u2019d enjoy together at Ma\u2019s kitchen table deep in the bleeding heart of the Holy Land.\u00a0\"The<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Part 1: Who Died and Made You Elvis<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Part 2: Getting There Is Half The Fun<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Part 3: Wednesday, August 17, 1977 – All Hopped Up and Ready to Go<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Part 4: Thursday, August 18, 1977 \u2014 Sixteen Coaches Long<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cDon\u2019t fall or trip on things, stay away from happenings…\u201d\u2013 Nancy Sinatra By the time the hearse pulled<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":249,"featured_media":25829,"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-25828","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\/07\/RafaelCherry5FEAT.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25828","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=25828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}