by Jameson Draper
Down the crumbling creaking stairs he stumbled, late morning dog day sweat already dripping off his bloated face and soaking through his satin suit that was more of a cream hue than white these days. Never meant to be worn in late August. It was once alabaster and though he never noticed day-to-day changes— he’d been wearing this suit since the early days of the Reagan administration— it had lost all its luster somewhere along the way, though most of the faux diamond-encrusted beads on the front somehow remained, as well as all the buttons. Over the years the suit withstood a ceaseless barrage of perspiration, cheap liquor, cigarette burns and unidentifiable bodily fluids, so to be older than credit scores and remain mostly intact was an accomplishment itself. At this point the suit held a special place in Alvis’ heart, inextricable from his identity. It had not only withstood physical assaults but mental ones as well. It saw marriages, divorces, childbirth, terminal diagnoses, speed benders, “temporary” psychosis, fistfights and funerals but stuck by Alvis’ side the whole way, the only thing in his whole life he believed loyal. What was once a joke among friends that germinated into a costume for harebrained promotional karaoke nights turned into part of his personage, at once a prison and a liberator of his desires. It was somewhere along this death drive that he took on the name “Alvis." But all that was long ago.
***
It was 1982, or somewhere close. Alvis (then still beholden to his given name, Alvin Stokes) and his brother Leland bought a ramshackle inn-slash-tavern-slash-restaurant on Indian River, a half-mile off the dying “downtown” strip of the small old northern Michigan lumber town. Leland, the entrepreneurial brother, saw the property, quaintly named the Pinehurst Inn, as a real estate opportunity. A dilapidated eyesore, it sat on the bank of the eponymous creek of the village, which connected two large inland lakes and was sure, according to those in the know, to soon shed its old skin and become a hotspot for vacationers from downstate. As kids, their father, Alvin Sr., took them up from their modest Detroit bungalow to the small cottage he owned in the nearby woods and they would trout fish the inland waterway, from Huron to Michigan, memories both sons cherished in their own ways as they diverged in life, Leland going off to the business college at the prestigious university in Ann Arbor and Alvin dropping out of school before getting shipped off to Vietnam, where he became intensely familiar with the color orange in gaseous form and the sweet enveloping warmth of the purest heroin in the world. If Leland spent cold nights in lonely dorms thinking about the old cabin as some sort of symbolic homecoming, Alvin saw the innocent memories as nostalgic vignettes floating through his mind in dreamy opiate halfsleep; maybe, at times, the two boys even dreamt the dream simultaneously, unbeknownst to either of them aside from some mystical deep-seated intuition. By the time the brothers came back home, one with a bachelor’s degree and the other with PTSD and heart disease, their father had sold the cabin, which had been torn down to make way for the world’s largest crucifix, the first of what was promised to be many of Indian River’s tourist attractions. When they sprung for the purchase of the Pinehurst and returned to their beloved town after a decade-plus away, though, they realized aside from the monolithic religious iconography, not much had changed— a perfect time, Leland said, to get in on some good real estate before the tourists swarmed. Leland had saved money from each paycheck at his clerical job at a brokerage firm to buy land up north but thought he’d have to wait longer until he could afford it— that is until Alvin, notorious in his own family for job-hopping and aimlessness, got serendipitously t-boned by a drunk driver on a rainy night in a busy intersection and got a large insurance settlement. Though both brothers knew Alvin wanted only an easy life where he could stay wasted and employed, Leland nonetheless entered into this business with him, partially because blood runs thicker than water but mostly because cashflow reigns supreme. And now that they could afford a business of their own, Leland was eager to fulfill his dream. They chose the Pinehurst because it meant something to them and just happened to be on the market at the perfect time. Not once did they even think about changing its name.
Against all odds, things, at first, were pretty good. The tavern was discovered to be far more structurally sound than it seemed to the brothers upon purchase (they built things better in the first half of the century), so Leland didn’t have to do much by way of renovations. He built a boat dock and painted a sign on the waterfront to attract thirsty high-income boaters going between Burt and Mullett Lakes (PINEHURST INN - WHERE THE MUSIC NEVER STOPS. OPEN TIL 2AM!). He painted the outside of the big old brown structure a layer of crisp white. He ripped out the rotting hardwood for black-and-white checkerboard tiles and repainted every wall a deep and hedonistic scarlet. He controlled the books and left the day-to-day tasks to Alvin, who was more concerned with the boozy side of things anyway. In order to attract business and perhaps even meet some local women, one night over smoked whitefish and Ritz crackers Alvin and some of his newfound drinking buddies hatched an idea for a weekly karaoke night in which Alvin would host dressed up as late-era, pill-infested Elvis. “Al, your body style is the perfect fit,” one guy said, “You could even go by Alvis!”
Thus, the legend of Alvis was born. And for those first few years, everything… just worked. The karaoke nights became the de facto gathering place for locals. The brothers were closer than ever, the business was good and Alvis finally had an identity and a group of friends for the first time since his days as a high school diving star. He was even able to use this exile from urbanity and war to wean off junk, even if the vice was replaced by work-sanctioned alcohol consumption. He also found himself going steady for a year or two with a girl from Petoskey. One night at her parents’ big-windowed house in the behemoth aqua shadows of Lake Michigan they conceived a child, which they named Sylvia after the girl’s favorite Elvis tune. And each week his liquor-soaked sociability and charm was on full display at Alvis’ Karaoke Night, where he was able to show off his singing chops, usually opting for Presley’s more spiritual, desperate hymns where he could lay his exceptionally troubled spirit bare. These were the halcyon days at the Pinehurst.
The good days came to an end, as they are wont to do, on a dull day in May 1985 or maybe 1986. While lugging paint buckets up the stairs to the small apartments above the bar, in cruel irony, Leland dropped dead from a coronary. It was always supposed to be Alvis whose heart gave out first. Leland had planned to spend the spring renovating and repainting the units in hopes of opening them up to vacationers in the summer. It was late morning and an already well-lubricated Alvis was smoking a cigarette on the dock when he heard a crash. By the time he ran around to the staircase in the back of the house his brother was there, lifeless, white as a ghost, one of his arms dangling below a wooden step he broke in his death fall. Doctors said it was genetic, luck of the draw. And just like that, it was over. Leland, unmarried and childless, though he never told his brother, seemed to know death was coming. He was in his mid-thirties but already had a will and in it he left his half of the Pinehurst to Alvis: “Brother, keep the music playing,” a sticky note read atop the legal document.
Racked with survivors’ guilt and the stress of running a bar as a mostly incompetent drunk, things in Alvis’ life spiraled quickly. He spent more time with town whores than he did with patrons, hiring local miscreants to tend bar in the dead of winter and, in the summer, boneheaded punk rich kids whose parents would force them to spend summers Up North. The mother of his child left him, opting for a more stable life with a carburetor salesman, leaving the cozy confines of Cheboygan County in the middle of the night with her new man and Sylvia. Alvis woke up to the sound of the breeze from the slim opening in the door she never could quite shut all the way to find her gone forever. And the tourism boom Leland predicted never came, dead in the cold soil like the man himself. They had smatterings of fishermen, hunters and snowmobilers throughout the years but never the real money, the tycoons of Midwestern cities looking to build sprawling estates on the water. What the real estate barons never thought of was the vast beauty of upper Michigan in all its abundant acreage; the rich cityfolk opted for property on the sandy beaches of the Great Lakes surrounding Indian River, which they deemed too far inland. Sometimes these mid-American oligarchs, spurned by a need for adventure or to prove their faltering manhood, would take their expensive boats from Lake Huron to Lake Michigan or vice-versa through the inland waterways and on occasion would stop in Indian River for a beer or two, but not much more than that by way of economic influx. And, over the years, other bars with better health department grades would pop up along Indian River, taking the little tourist money there was to be had while the Pinehurst Inn was left to rot. Alvis didn’t take care of the bar, for he lacked the care and knowledge and eventually health, and by the turn of millennium it had become an eyesore mostly frequented by down-on-their-luck local lifers and transient biker gangs looking to shoot guns in the parking lot and meth in the bathrooms. The bar wasn’t making any money and the structure, finally, after a century of untouched existence, began to show signs of wear, leaning slightly to the side like a sad, wayward and bucolic Tower of Pisa. A few fishermen offered to buy the place to turn into a novelty bar, but with his parents and brother dearly departed and his soulmate and child a world away, the tumbledown inn was all he had left of his old life and he couldn’t— wouldn’t— let go. Strapped for cash, Alvis and his now ever-rotating gaggle of girlfriends that he would never call “girlfriends” moved into one of the units above the bar, a bonafide health hazard, where they’d languish in squalor and take whatever speed the bikers gave them, another habit Alvis had picked up somewhere along the line. But karaoke night still persisted, despite an utter lack of interest from all but the most loyal browbeaten locals. It was all Alvis had. And by this time he no longer went by Alvin but the name we know him to be. He wore his satin suit every day and some say he couldn’t even remember his old name.
***
“Elvis has entered the building!” a drunk man at the bar shouted as Alvis sauntered into the muraled hallway by the front door, deftly ducking the BIKERS ALLOWED sign hanging from the ceiling, navigating the space purely on muscle memory.
“Alvis. A. A.” he grumbled in response. He often thought he sounded charming when he channeled Elvis but usually couldn’t hide his ever-present generalized disgust. The patron was clearly not a local, not only because of his mispronunciation of Alvis (which any regular would know to be sacrilege) but because of his garb. He donned floral swim trunks and a salmon sweater with blue serif text that read INDIAN RIVER: UNSALTED AND SHARK FREE. Clearly this was his second stop of the day, at least, the first being the new novelty store down the street. Tourists always had a way of making themselves known. He looked like a Detroit or Chicago tourist. He stuck out like a sore thumb and Alvis thought he might have gotten lost on the way to Michigan’s premier gay vacation town. “Ain’t you supposed ta be in Saugatuck?”
Whether it was the lingering scent of stale beer and old cigarettes, the junkies still awake from the night before in the otherwise unoccupied upstairs units, the bikers with unkempt beards and poorly-hidden potbellies lingering on and around the property or the homophobic insult just hurled by the man himself, something caused the lost tourist to step up from the barstool, slap a bill down on the epoxied plywood bartop and saunter out into the forenoon sun. Sayonara, Alvis thought. He hated tourists, even if he was once one himself (though that was long ago now), but they were a necessary evil. In the real world they may have been several castes above every resident of Indian River but in this bar the tables were turned. The shoreline tourists were the lowest of the low. Lecherous voyeurs, he felt every time a tourist came into his bar they were there to experience something they couldn’t get downstate, to watch how “the other side” lives, intentions forever impure. But on the other side of the same coin these straggler tourists spending so much money in the summer months— sometimes Alvis would instruct his longer-tenured barkeeps to overcharge them— with their big wives and terrible kids kept the bar afloat, or at least what was left of it. It was like the old days of farming, when those big, fleeting crops would have to last you through the winter. If the locusts swarmed or the weather changed, good luck seeing next summer. And by kicking out the only tourist he’d seen so far that week— it was supposed to rain for several days straight, though not a drop fell, which made those late August doldrums the hottest days of summer— he invited the pests to feast on his crop. They were scarce but loyal. Alvis said it was because they enjoyed his speed-addled stories of Nam and his “velvety” singing voice, but the real reason was most likely all the free alcohol, and the worst part is that deep down Alvis probably knew this to be true, for he was a lush himself, and he knew what it was to be a drunk, throwing ethics to the wind and letting your id be your guiding light.
“Heyo!” came a shout from the hallway near the door. Crossing paths with the departing lost tourist in a stilted, arthritic creep was Norm, coming in for the hair of the dog before his day of “work.” One of the aforementioned local miscreants, Norm owned an auto body shop on Main Street that his dad owned before him and his grandpa owned before his dad. One of the oldest spots in Indian River, it had been losing business ever since the lumber company left and like the Pinehurst had become another phantom of the promised tourism boom. Nowadays, there weren’t many cars in town because there weren’t many people, and the few tourists passing through would avoid servicing their cars on vacations unless it was absolutely necessary. Norm lived in his childhood home, which was paid off, and mostly subsisted on popcorn, TV dinners and liquor, so he didn’t mind the prostrate days of summer. What he did like was stealing Alvis’ alcohol in the morning and then coming back on hot nights hoping in vain to see a pretty vacationer or two. Every time he staggered into the bar, he said the same thing. “None of ‘em buttons popped off that snazzy suit yet, right?”
"No, sir,” smiled Alvin, breathing heavily through his yellowed teeth. He could feel an attack coming on. These days, he’d be seized with severe shortness of breath and would have to sit down until it passed. A couple of times, he’d fainted, but came to quickly, and much to the young barkeeps’ chagrin deemed it a nonissue and pursued the matter no further, save for one doctors appointment that cost him a fortune, one in which they kept saying “john diss,” a phrase Alvis could not understand nor did he care to, thinking doctors quacks that made everything confusing on purpose to suck money out of patients. “Diamond says my gut’s becomin’ a problem for her.”
“For you, or for her?”
“Guess it depends on how you frame it. Not a problem for me, I think it’s very becoming, makes me look wise,” he said, outlining his rotund abdomen in the air. “Like I’m someone that people should listen to, you know, someone with stature, but Diamond, she says—”
Norm cut him off with a cackle and a wheeze, spittles flying across the bar top, his lungs crying inside. “You? Someone people should listen to? Now ya’ve really lost it, bud. Get me some Dewar’s and make it a double, neat, before you go fully senile on me.”
“Norm, you know you’re older than me right?” said Alvis as he slowly walked, huffing and puffing, around to the back of the bar to pour the molasses amber liquid into a semi-clean glass already sitting on the countertop. “Now, like I was saying. I like the belly. But Diamond says she can’t find my Johnson!"
Both men burst into deeper laughter, Norm slapping the table, fingers blacked from years of motor oil, fire and hard living. Alvis’ laugh quickly devolved into the attack he knew was coming. He felt like he couldn’t breathe at all, like his throat was tightening up. His vision blurred. He waved his hand frantically but the rest of his body stayed calm, for neither he nor Norm were new to one of these episodes. Norm calmly stood up and slid the neighboring barstool around to Alvis, who collapsed onto the seat, propped up by his friend’s rough hands. Norm could feel Alvis sucking for air, up and down and up and up and down and up and up and up and down.
“You ain’t gonna live forever with that gut, friend,” said Norm, a mostly empty statement, grasping for words while Alvis grasped for air to cut through a silence he found awkward.
“Suit lasts longer’n yourself,” said Alvis once he gathered his breath, though he still leaned forward in the barstool, elbows against the bartop, his hands rubbing his temples. “The greatest gift a man could ask for. They don’t make ‘em like that these days. Besides, a little Aspirin’ll do the trick.”
“Well, I’m late for work, and gotta get goin’ to the shop soon. Need me to grab one for you on my way out?” asked Norm.
“No, no, I’ll go get it,” said Alvis, dismissively, looking at the broken Timex on his wrist. “It’s in the room, and Diamond’s up there, and it’s gotta be almost noon. We had a late night last night and she told me to get her up by noon if she wasn’t awake.”
“Eh, late night, huh?” Norm said, softly elbowing Alvis in the ribcage.
“Turns out my Johnson’s hard to find but it ain’t missin’.”
“Heh heh. Still can’t believe old girl’s livin’ with you now. Been awhile since you had an ol’ ball and chain.”
“She ain’t my girl and she definitely ain’t a ‘ball and chain,' Norm.”
“Whatever you say, kid.” Norm gathered his keys and his cigarettes he’d left on the countertop and shuffled back toward the door. “What do I owe ya?”
“Aw, c’mon Norm. You don’t have to do this every time. I’ll just add it to your tab. You just gotta do one thing for me.”
“What’s ‘at?”
“When I die— which I will not be doing any time soon, mind you— pass this beautiful little satin suit down to my daughter, m’kay?”
“Sylvia gonna want that ol’ hunka junk?”
“Get it dry cleaned.”
“You even know where Sylvia is these days?”
“No, but I’ll find out.”
“All right, I’ll remember that. But I’m still payin’ my tab, even so.” Norm said as he waltzed out the side door.
“Thank you very much…” Alvis said in his best Elvis voice to himself as Norm walked out into the white hot summer fog. He looked around the bar, empty but open. Maybe he’d get some tourists today. Then the shakes began, earlier than usual, which would tend to happen after long amphetamine nights, which last night had been. He realized he came down to have his own pick-me-up, only to be distracted by the idiot traveler and Norm’s desire to ward off The Fear. He promptly poured himself Stolichnaya in a tall, frozen glass he would hide in the back of the mini freezer below the bar for himself. His favorite corpse reviver. As he downed the smooth Russian grain water, he thought about Diamond, not only his spiritual crank guide but also— and he would only admit this deep in the recesses of his own mind— the closest thing he’d had to a girlfriend since Sylvia’s mother went away. Ball and chain, Norm was right. He’d been scared of commitment ever since, not because he felt he was incompatible with anyone but he knew that he couldn’t take being hurt like that again, no matter whose fault it was. And Diamond was so low maintenance; she didn’t ask anything of Alvis except for him to re-up on speed when they were getting low. She didn’t ask him where he’d been after long thoughtless benders, didn’t ask him about the more sordid and tender details of his past, didn’t ask him to get his life together so they no longer had to live in squalor, didn’t even wish better for him in this unfair life. She simply accepted him, and that was that. She had moved into his place without asking, had moved in through a sort of osmosis, almost imperceptibly, by small degrees until one day he noticed her singular bag of clothes on her side of the bed— which he had gotten to calling “her” side of the bed— and her makeup bag on the bathroom sink. He didn’t even think to broach the topic of discussion, so they just began to spend night after night together without either of them discussing something as infinitesimal as a living situation. The days blended together in a foggy and hellish mixture of alcohol and amphetamines; he hadn’t even realized until this very moment that it had been years spending each night together, save the evenings where one or the other got a little too tweaked out, nights that usually ended in sprays of biker gunshots toward false apparitions in the river or Diamond sleeping at the foot of the stairs in a sundress too cold for those chilly nights reeking of cigar smoke and cheap body spray. He was happy. She was, too. Alvis noticed his shakes were subsiding and his breathing was becoming more manageable again. He took another slow, smooth swig of his Stoli and smiled a mangled toothless grin.
He was brought out of his reverie by the sight of Sam, one of the temporary barkeeps he’d hired for the summer. Her dad was an old regular back in the days Leland was still alive but moved to Chicago well before Leland died. He spent his summers in nearby Charlevoix in a house bigger than any one that existed in Indian River, but thought a summer tending bar at the Pinehurst would help his daughter, a senior in high school, build character before moving out and on her own. She was going to school at the University of Michigan, too, just like Leland. Alvis thought Sam was beautiful, pale skin tanned by the golden northern sun, tall with long skinny legs and straight strawberry blonde hair down to the low of her back. When she’d move around to tables asking dirty bikers and half-sleep drunks for another round her hair would sway in the cross breeze and her pale nape would peek out from beneath it. She liked to wear red and white short skirts and looked like she should be lifeguarding, not tending bar at an inn one strict health inspector away from closing forever. Every time he looked at Sam, Alvis felt a wave of melancholy wash over him. When he first bought the place with his brother, he imagined this was the type of girl that would captivate the dance floor on those sultry summer nights.
“Hey there, Sammy,” he said, now running his empty vodka glass under the sink without soap before placing it back in the rear of the freezer where he liked it. “I gotta run upstairs for a second, you good to watch the bar?”
“Not sure if I can handle it,” she said, smiling. She was peaceful and her teeth were perfect. Alvis could tell she recently had braces. “What if I steal a drink or two?”
“If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?”
***
When he got upstairs, Alvis opened the door softly so as not to wake Diamond from her post-meth slumber, only to see nothing on the bed except two flat pillows and tattered unkempt sheets. He began to sweat profusely in the un-air conditioned room, darting his eyes to and fro, no sign of Diamond.
“Diamond?” he called, knowing well that if someone was out of sight in the tiny room, they were not there. He turned around and peeked his head out the door and called her name again, both ways. “Diamond? Baby, you there?”
Nothing. Panicked, he turned back toward the empty bed, frozen. There, nestled subtly halfway in the sheets on Diamond’s side of the bed, perfectly illuminated by the dusty shaft of amber light peaking through the mostly blacked-out curtained window was a notecard with writing on it. Must’ve gone somewhere early, probably to score. He let out as much of a sigh of relief as he could, given his breathing situation, and walked over to read the notecard, written in perfect cursive. SORRY BABY. WAS NEVER GOING TOO GET BETTER HERE. WILL PAY U BACK FOR CAR WHEN I GET $$$. LOVE DIAMOND
What? Alvis thought, as he mindlessly let go of the notecard and let it float back down on the dirty bed. What? The car?! He turned around, swung the door wide open so fast the knob punctured the flimsy hallway wall and walked out to the staircase. In the lot about fifty feet away was a dirt patch where he last parked his Astro van. Gone. Outta here. Not again. Floored, he shouted to the sky in supplication, “She took the fucking car? And you didn’t do shit about it?”
He decided to collect himself and not make a mountain out of a molehill. Surely she was just being emotional and reactive. After all, this was not the first time she’d had roseate visions of sobriety, though he couldn’t remember ever seeing Diamond attempt to operate a motor vehicle, let alone an old clunky van. His heart was beating fast again and he could feel the cold sweat droplets on his hot skin. The feeling was an all too familiar feeling. Besides, it was Thursday, if he had his days correct. Karaoke night. He had to be on his game for karaoke night. The people expected it. He walked back into the room and grabbed four Aspirin from his nightstand, tossing them into his mouth. Next to the Aspirin was a bottle of Dexedrine with the label scratched off. He grabbed that, too, and poured at least a dozen into his palm. Then he thought again, and dumped the pills back into their bottle. He came back downstairs, the shortness of breath returning. He didn’t even notice a new patron now in the bar, a leatherbound biker from somewhere in the upper peninsula, quietly smoking a cigarette and drinking a sweating room temperature Heineken in the corner in the shade. Alvis was too busy feeling his heart pulsating out of his partially unbuttoned suit for it to register. His head was pounding and now there was an acute pain in his side somewhere near where he thought his appendix was supposed to be. He walked to the back of the bar and took a swig of vodka, no time, even, to pour it into his frosty glass. It didn’t help. It only made the burn worse. Black spots began to populate his vision and the world spun before him. He felt like he could sense people talking to or around him but his hearing was going in and out as well. His faculties fleeting, he leaned his whole body weight against the bar and squinted hard. It was the biker, concerned, more out of collective duty than actual concern. “You good over there, killer?”
“Just a little ache,” Alvis said through gasps as he tried his best to play off his pain with nonchalance.
“Like a stomachache?”
“Like an everywhere ache, man.”
“Do you need someone to get help?”
“Jesus Christ,” Alvin moaned in exasperation. “Never seen anyone a little under the weather? Sam, sweetheart, pour me a tall one.”
The biker shifted his slightly bewildered, slightly annoyed, slightly disgusted glance from Alvis to Sam, who watched with half-interest on the other side of the bartop. At this point in the summer she’d been tending bar at the Pinehurst for nearly four months and this wasn’t the first health episode she’d seen, though to her this one did seem a little worse than usual. She didn’t know it was the second one of the young day, or else maybe she’d view the situation with more concern. Her insouciance as she poured Alvis a glass of straight Stoli sent a wave of reassurance over the grizzled two-wheeled nomad, which proved helpful as a family of green summer vacationers walked in. There was the dad, a short rotund man with a shiny head, wearing oversized wire-framed glasses and a Life is Good t-shirt with loose pleated khakis and thong-toed sandals. The mom was taller than the dad by a couple inches, maybe five-seven, also rotund, wearing bedazzled sandals, short gray cargo shorts and an ill-fitting bright orange spaghetti strap top, holding two small boys by the scruff, both of whom were wearing matching blue swim trunks and yellow swim shirts with Lightning McQueen Crocs. Sam liked to play a game in her own mind to pass the time (Indian River being a cell phone dead zone diametrically in opposition to the doom-scrolling she so desired) and guess the story of tourists passing through: where did they come from? Where were they going? Why did they stop here? Is their relationship on the rocks? Is the husband a drunk? Is the wife cheating? Is this a covert tryst or a long-planned family trip bound to disappoint all involved? She looked at her watch and, wow, already two-thirty, Thursday. They must be a family on one last Up North weekend trip before the kiddos go back to school. Maybe the man and wife don’t really like each other and instead just tolerate each other, keeping the house together while the kids grow up, counting down the days until a divorce would be less mentally damaging for all parties involved. They’re probably going up to Petoskey or Traverse City or maybe even over the bridge, Sam thought, and stopped off the first exit they saw on I-75 after the kids clamored for food. Well, boys, no chicken nuggets here. I hope you like overcooked pizza and the usual mixers, orange juice, pineapple juice, cranberry juice…
Sam knew Alvis, in the corner quietly wheezing and trying not to make a scene, wasn’t going to greet the unsuspecting family that just walked into a foreign dimension to make them feel more at home, so she walked up to them with a brisk, confident, friendly strut. “Hi, welcome in you guys, can I get you anything?”
“Got a menu?” the Dad said, smiling so hard he was almost wincing, sitting down at one of the six tables in the middle of the old dancefloor. Sam noticed the rest of the family was not smiling, the kids in a distracted boyish fuss and the mother consumed by pensive concern.
“Sure, let me go grab you one from the back,” she said. People rarely got food here, let alone asked for a menu. As she walked away, she heard the mother scold the children; no iPads until after lunch. She walked back into the kitchen, squeezing past Alvis and putting a hand on his back in wordless concern and support. When Sam came back out with the menus, Alvis’ eyes were still closed and as she walked back toward the family at the table she could see the mother in hushed tones whispering what seemed like worries into her husband’s ear. “Here you are.”
The husband, still smiling like a Ludwig Meidner self-portrait, took the menus and without glancing at them passed them around the table and looked back at Sam, or more accurately looked straight through her. “Thank you, ma’am! I’m so hungry, I could eat a horse.”
“Well,” Sam said, unsure how to respond to such triteness. “I’ll let you be the judge of the food, then, sir.”
“Hopefully it’s good! You might be seeing some more of us.”
“What? On your way back down from the U.P. or something?”
“Nope,” the smile, by some unfathomable stretch of the imagination, widened. “Just bought a cottage up here. Spending our first weekend trying out all the local spots, figuring out which one is our favorite!”
“I think Vivio’s might be more your guys’ speed, then. Their homemade ranch is to die for,” Sam said drily, but inside she was shocked a couple like this bought a vacation home in this shanty town. Had they never been here, not even once?
“Hah! Well I’ll be the judge, like you said!” the man chortled. He was not picking up on the sarcasm and dwindling hospitality. If anything, Sam was looking out for him, but he refused her help. The mother nudged the side of his potbelly. Politely, he continued. “I must ask, if you don’t mind, is that gentleman in the corner OK?”
Sam originally thought the parents were concerned about the biker but when she turned around she realized he was asking about the man with the slick black hairdo doubled over with his eyes closed in the dirty satin suit. Ah, yes. “Oh, that’s our owner. He’s alright. And if you come back tonight, or any Thursday night, you’ll see him sing some karaoke. You like karaoke?”
The wife loathsomely responded without bothering to answer Sam’s question. “He’s…. the owner?”
Suddenly Alvis opened his eyes, stood up straight, and fired back. “Yeah, I’m the goddamned owner,” he bellowed. The wife looked on in unabashed horror. “You wanna hear a story?”
“Um, sure,” she said meekly.
“My girl? She left me!” he yelled.
“She what?” both the wife and Sam said at the same time. The smile began to creep away from the husband’s face.
“She left me, gone, took the car and took her things. Boom. Middle of the night. Let me tell ya, it doesn’t get any easier the second time. And do you want to know why she left me?”
Silence.
“She left me because, because, uhm, because—” it was clear to see Alvis’ mental wheels turning as best they could, working up a reason on the spot. He burped, then continued. “She left me, because she thinks I can’t… fuckin’... sing!”
“Oh, well now,” the husband said. His voice sounded sorry and alien, artificially gentle, talking to Alvis as fragile as he would his own sons. Nobody ever talked to Alvis like this, not even his own father. At least not that he could remember. The man’s left arm was now wrapped around his wife. “I’m sure you can sing!”
“Yes, I’m sure,” added the stone-faced wife. Sam shot them both a look that said just stop. “I mean, look at your little costume!”
“It’s not a goddamned costume!” shouted Alvis. The wife visibly cowered back into her seat. The boys were on their iPads now and the parents didn’t even notice. “It’s a family heirloom!”
“OK, OK, OK,” interjected Sam. Damage control. “Al, maybe you want to take a break outside?”
His breathing still irregular and pained, he realized what Sam was trying to do. “Goddamned right I need a smoke,” he said, ambling slowly outside, his breath so labored it sounded like a busted whistle. “And by the way, lady, yes— I can sing.”
***
Outside, Alvis stood on the rocks that made up the break wall and smoked two Kools. The sun was glistening on the murky river and the water looked cold and fresh and new. He always preferred the way the lakes looked in their cool blue youthfulness but he knew the green and muddy river was just a sign of a healthy ecosystem below, healthier than either of the lakes. Cleaner, too, as the water never stopped running. The river had become sacred to him, the only thing that stayed the same all these years that was supposed to stay the same. Things changed that weren’t supposed to and others stayed the same that were supposed to change. The river was always going to be here. It was here before he was alive and was going to be here after he left. But something about that big creek always rubbed him the wrong way, and he was too afraid to say it aloud. Maybe it was because it meant so much to the town, a place he’d grown too comfortable with yet resentful of in equal measure. Maybe it was because it was simply a connector, meaningless in the grand scheme of things, only a small piece of a path that led out to the stunning grandeur of the big lakes. Maybe it made him think of his dad, brother, girlfriend, daughter that left him. It’s almost as if the river said, Hey, look, idiot. I’m the only thing that isn’t leaving you. You can’t escape me, even though I don’t matter. When he came home from Vietnam he used to have this dream that he was trout fishing with his father as a young boy. When they pulled the skiff up to the rickety dock, only a few hundred feet from where the Pinehurst lay, a group of people would always be waiting for them, visibly and audibly excited and hopeful to see their catch of the day. Alvis would pull a big trout out of the little cooler and walk it up the dock to the shore, beaming, ready to show everyone the browngreen glistening beauty. But as soon as he got close to anyone— Leland, his mother, his high school buddies, his childhood sweetheart, his infantry regiment— they’d dissolve, literally dissolve, into a pile of ash. They’d only stay solid if he was several feet away from them. And, without fail, he’d get too close and they’d all dissolve. There’d be no one left. In this dream he’d always turn around, sad, scared, looking to his father for support and maybe even a warm embrace, and his father would be gone, hundreds of yards downstream in the river, pushing away the skiff with fast strokes of his paddle. Alvis thought to himself, maybe because of these bleak dreams, that he much preferred the big lakes. The bigger the better, even. Fuck this stupid ass creek. He tossed the butt of his last Kool into the river and watched it, too, float downstream into the thick summer haze.
When he turned around to head back into the bar, there was a woman standing in front of him looking into his eyes, still wet from recollection. She was tall but petite, olive skin and dark lustrous hair, green spectacled eyes and thin pink lips that betrayed a warm smile and perfectly white teeth. She wore a tight black t-shirt and deep blue bootcut jeans over dirty white Adidas Sambas. Of course Alvis’d recognize her anywhere: Sylvia. But, he thought, was he dreaming? Was all this remembrance by the water a part of some weird, fucked up metaphysical dream? A dream inside of a dream? Was the speed making him lose too much sleep, causing hallucinations? But all inklings of delusion were thrown out the window when the apparition in front of him walked closer and touched his shoulder softly.
“Hi, Dad.”
He could barely keep it together, but he had to. He knew he had to. “Hi, honey.”
“It’s been a long time.”
“What are you doing here? I thought you were downstate with that man, last I heard. A big man. Ad man.”
“Bruce,” she said, confirming. “And yeah, I am.”
“Like the Boss,” Alvis said, and smiled. His world felt flimsy. He was waiting for a pin to push through and pierce the thin veil.
“Like the Boss,” Sylvia nodded. “Listen, I just wanted to say hi.”
Well, thanks for that, Syl,” Alvis said. He didn’t want the conversation to end and thought about all the things he could say to keep her talking, none of which seemed particularly interesting or genuine. “So?”
“I’m on my way to Petoskey. The kids don’t go back to school ‘til next week and Bruce got Thursday and Friday off, so we’re visiting Mom.”
“Kids? Mom? Petoskey? She’s back?” Alvis’ voice was starting to get shaky. Information overload. How does one process an entire life they’ve missed?
“Sorry, Dad,” said Sylvia, her eyes downcast. “I tried to tell you. It’s been hard getting a hold of you.”
“What do you mean?” he grumbled. He lost track of the last time he’d seen her; somewhere around college, maybe. “I’ve been at the same place for the last fourty fuckin’ years, hon. Still the same as last time.”
“Well, I tried to call you and write you, but you never pick up or answer. And you don’t have a Facebook or an email address. There have been many times I thought you were dead.”
“Well you could’ve always come find me. I’m not very transient, you know.”
“Well, I’m here now,” she retorted. There was an edge to her voice peeking out through the timidity. “Are you still talking to that girl?”
“What girl?” he asked.
“That skinny girl. Last time I saw you, you kept showing me pictures of some rail-thin young girl you were talking to. Seemed like she made you happy. Ruby, was it?”
“Oh, Diamond,” said Alvis. His heart began to pulsate once again and he realized his breathing was still heavy. “Yeah, yeah. Good, she’s good. Got me going to a doctor. Yeah. We got a, uh, good thing goin’.”
“Well, that’s good Dad,” she said and that soft angelic smile came back. “I’m happy for you. You deserve it.”
There was a beat of silence. Father and daughter, a generation apart and a world removed, three and a half feet from each other in the flesh, both too scared to get closer and too sad to move further away. They sat in silence for ten or so seconds and they both looked each other up and down. Both had aged; Sylvia had grown into a woman with class and dignity and gravitas, Alvis had shriveled into a shell of what he once was, or at least what he once thought he could become. This was a long time coming, and they both knew that, but at least last time they saw each other, neither had reached their destination yet. Last time, he was still a dad. She was still a girl. Now he was an old, sad, lonely man with a drug problem, a failing heart and a dirty suit. She had her own thing going, a separate happiness, ostensibly a job and a family unit, emotional support, an entire world opened up to her that he had lost long ago.
“Well, honey,” said Alvis, unsure of if he even wanted this. “While you’re here, why don’t you come inside? Have a drink. You can even stay here if ya want, Diamond’s gone for the weekend and I can tidy up the room for ya. I can take one of the other rooms and blow up an air mattress or somethin’.”
“Dad,” she said, finally moving back toward him and mechanically putting her hand on the same place on his shoulder she did just minutes ago.
“What?”
“You know I can’t do that,” she said. “Bruce’ll be back at the hotel soon. He wants to go see the Cross in the Woods.”
“What, you hiding out from big bad hubby?” Alvis said but couldn’t quite muster a laugh.
“Not hiding,” she said. “He’s out playing mini golf with the kids and I just chose to not tell him, OK? He thinks me coming to see you is bad for me.”
“I’ll kick his ass,” Alvis said, breath rattling.
“I’m sure you will, Dad. I gotta go. Take care of yourself.” Sylvia said, and after two friendly pats on his shoulder turned around and walked toward the lot. Her Chevy Impala— or maybe her husband’s, who knows— was parked in the same space that Alvis’ Astro van was before Diamond jumped town in it, and now he watched his estranged daughter do the same, gone again as quick as she came. He stood in total silence for a few moments and the world made not a sound. The river stopped running, the cars in the distance stopped humming and the leaves on the maple tree above the Pinehurst stopped rustling. He took as deep a breath as he could and walked back inside the bar.
***
The family was still inside when Alvis got back, which would’ve immensely surprised him if his mind wasn’t on another planet. They were huddled closer than before, eating pizza, greasy paws and scared eyes, like trapped animals who’d come to regret a shortsighted decision. Sam, now sitting in the corner drinking a beer with the biker, whose calloused and sinister hand was traversing up and down her thigh, watched in silence as Alvis went back to his bottle of vodka behind the bar, stumbling and knocking over a basket of lime slices and mixing straws on his way. He popped open the Stoli and glugged it, only stopping to catch his short breath, until the bottle was empty. Sam looked at the family and saw the husband glaring at Alvis, eyes bulging out of his head, half-impressed and half-terrified. Alvis walked around the bartop and over to the little stage in the front of the room where a small disco light infinitely spun below a shoddily written sign that read KARAOKE, EVERY THURSDAY 9PM TO CLOSE. He plugged in the old Memorex Karaoke machine to the secondhand Yamaha amplifiers Diamond bought for him for his birthday, then turned the speakers all the way up. He popped in the old Karaoke: Greatest Songs of Elvis! CD. “Hey, sugar,” he yelled in Sam’s general direction. “What time is it?”
Sam looked at the lusty biker, then the cowered family, then her watch, then back at Alvis. “Three fifteen.”
“Close enough!” Alvis slurred, then turned toward the family, who were trying their best to not make eye contact. He held his hand out stiffly in some drunken and convoluted image of what he thought was respect. “We’re starting karaoke early tonight for our honored guests.”
There was a beat of silence before the husband spoke. “Oh, well, thank you, that means a lot, but we have little kids here and it might be too loud and honestly after we finish this pizz—”
“Quiet!” Alvis cut him off as he yelled toward the Gods. “You pick the song. I do Elvis, as you can tell. Elvis, Elvis, Elvis. Alvis. I’m Alvis. That’s what I do. You like ‘Blue Suede Shoes’? Kids big ‘Hound Dog’ fans? I am yours for the evening.”
“Who’s Elvis, Mom?” one of the boys asked.
“OK, OK,” the husband said, deciding to make the best out of the situation, hoping he was choosing the path of least resistance. “How about ‘Always on My Mind’? It was my dad’s favorite song. And we played it at our wedding, honey, remember?”
The wife smiled a polite smile but her eyes spoke of unbounded fear. She couldn’t answer, so she only smiled and nodded profusely in agreement. Alvis skipped to track six and as the music began to play he unbuttoned two more of his buttons; after all, it wasn’t an Alvis performance without a bit of that grayed and greasy chest. The lyrics began to appear on the screen but Alvis didn’t need them, he knew this tune by heart along with hundreds of other Elvis songs he’d sung thousands of times, through the good times and bad, with groups of lubricated townies and in empty rooms all alone. They’d become as much a part of him as the Elvis act itself, inextricable from whatever lay beneath the rotten suit, predestination set to the tune of crooned radio ballads. It’s like these songs always existed in the twisted, otherworldly universe of Alvis’ head and Elvis’ music simply gave them an earthly vehicle.
“You know, Elvis didn’t write this song,” Alvis said, mostly to himself. “It’s a cover. Someone else wrote it.”
His eyes closed, he pulled the microphone to his sweaty mouth, blissfully unaware of the people in the room. The volume on the amp all the way up, his labored breathing now piped through the cavernous room along with the wistfully thin finger-picked guitar intro, he smiled and began to belt out the tune in an off-key baritone full of heart and devoid of rhythm:
Maybe I didn’t treat you
Quite as good as I should have
Maybe I didn’t love you
Quite as often as I could have
Little things I should have said and done
I just never took the time
Sam walked over and placed another highball glass of vodka on the stool next to the karaoke machine as Alvis would normally request so he could take big swigs during the bridges of the songs. At some point during the track, lost in his own world, focused on controlling his irregular breathing and heartbeat and vocal pitch, he didn’t notice the husband put a fifty dollar bill on the table and scurry out sheepishly with his family like pests escaping exterminators, his hands now around the scruff of his boys’ necks. Alone with the drunken warbler, Sam and the biker got up and slowdanced to the music in the terracotta afternoon sun. Sam closed her eyes and pretended it was nighttime on a riverboat somewhere along the Mississippi. The opportunistic biker squeezed Sam’s ass and pressed himself against her stomach. They swayed to the music, falling into their own separate lonely dreamlike visions where life was easy and the music was good. Alvis kept singing.
But you were always on my mind
You were always on my mind
Alvis opened his eyes into a squint as the song ended and the odd couple shuffled off the dance floor back into the shadows of the corner booth. The sun was shining directly through the window and his face felt hot. He flipped the microphone off, set it down on the floor, then walked over to the Memorex and unplugged the machine. “Karaoke night’s over,” he said. “I don’t think that family liked my singin’.”
***
Alvis polished off the remaining vodka in his highball glass and walked out of the bar, leaving Sam to fend for herself before the wanting eyes of the greasy biker. He walked upstairs and opened the door to his empty room and poured the whole bottle of Dexedrine into his mouth, chewing and swallowing all thirty or so pills. He walked back down the rickety stairs and started west down Poplar Street toward the western afternoon sun where at the end of the street sat a boat launch and a small wooden dock leading out to Mullett Lake. It was getting harder to breathe and even harder to see. After a few minutes he came upon the concrete ramp and little dock in all its empty evening serenity. He slowly took his satin suit off and folded it and set it in a neat pile on the concrete’s edge. He wore no undergarments. He turned around and looked back down Poplar Street and wondered why there were no poplars. The trees and grass were bathed in a soft cocktail hour orange and the breeze was perfect. In the distance the river flowed in a tranquil ambience, all boats docked for the day. He smelled the faint scent of grilled meats wafting from what was surely the beginning of some happy family weekend vacation. His view of the Pinehurst was obscured by the glare of the sun and the lush maples. He could feel his heart beating slower, then faster, then slower again. He turned back around and plodded deliberately toward the end of the dock.
He dove in the water headfirst with perfect form— he never forgot the technique from his high school diving days, kind of like riding a bike— and realized once fully submerged in the cool springs of nature that this was his first time in the water in twenty-plus years. Others yearned for seas to which they could never get, and Alvis avoided the lake from which he couldn’t escape. The water felt immaculate washing over his weary bones and flabby skin and failing organs torched from the torrid heat and decades of abuse. At once, for the first time in his whole life, Alvis felt the captivating call of Michigan’s pristine and abundant fresh water in all its rejuvenating glory, and suddenly it all made sense. He began to swim, breast stroking toward the middle of the lake until he could no longer move his screaming muscles, the image of his soon to be lifeless body clean and pure under the glistening and deepening azure as he pushed and paddled gracefully toward the thing he suddenly realized he’d been waiting for his entire life.
****
Jameson Draper hails from Detroit but lives in Baltimore. He edits fiction at Michigan City Review of Books and bruises at BRUISER. He lives with his girlfriend and their two cats. He loves Negronis and eating burgers with his loved ones. You can follow him on Twitter @jamdraper.