Let’s travel back a few decades.
It’s 1988. Memphis, Tennessee. The year begins cold and dreary. So cold and so snowy, in fact, many folks, unprepared for driving in it, simply stay home.
But in the alternate timeline of my manuscript, on January 8 of that year, Elvis Presley has just turned 53 years old and he’s itching to get out of the house.
Remember, this is the Elvis-verse. He doesn’t die of a heart attack in 1977. He does suffer a heart attack, but he survives it. Barely.
A headline that never makes it to print in my Elvis-verse.
In this version of history, his career is DOA, but not him. Danny, as he’s known to our protagonist in most of the book, now spends his days throughout the 1980s bumming around Memphis, shadowing the cops and watching movies with his dwindling entourage.
Elvis, AKA “Danny”
Bored and restless, he calls his new acquaintance, a young TV reporter named Tom, who also narrates the story. It’s two in the morning.
A voice, manic and wide-awake, shouted, “Thomas! Are you up?”
“Who is this?” I pawed at the clock radio.
“Do you know what today is? It’s my goddamn birthday.”
“Happy Birthday, Danny.”
“It should be happy. Mama always said every year on this earth is a blessing. But I tell you what, right now, good-time Charlie’s got the blues.”
Danny demands Tom meet him ASAP at an out-of-the-way gun shooting range in a desolate stretch of north Mississippi. And Tom complies.
Elvis would be 89 today
In Tupelo he was born … early Lord, one frosty morn’ … back in 1935.
In real life, Elvis Presley was of two minds about his birthday. It must have always been a grim reminder of the one who wasn’t there to celebrate it with him, his twin brother Jesse Garon Presley, who died at childbirth.
Elvis was a giver. I’m not sure he really cared all that much about the money he made. He just seemed to love giving it away. Christmastime—and all year round—he showered people with gifts. Cars, jewelry, even houses. His birthday was the rare time he found himself on the other end of the gift-giving. But he wasn’t as comfortable receiving.
Still, he did enjoy his birthdays. By some accounts he liked to spend January 8th at home when possible, surrounded by a small gathering of friends and family. He’d laugh. He’d joke. Maybe sit at the piano banging out a gospel hymn.
According to the official Graceland website, the most consequential birthday gift Elvis ever received was on the occasion of his turning eleven. Some kids back then might ask for a new bike or maybe a hunting rifle. But Elvis’ mama bought him a guitar.
On his 36th birthday, Elvis treated himself to a new set of police gear. A blue light for his Mercedes, a police radio, weapons, holsters. The works. This real-life hobby of his comes into play big time in my story.
Elvis’ vintage “Fire Ball” police light, on display among other artifacts at Graceland.
When Elvis turned 39, Memphis and Shelby County, Tennessee declared it “Elvis Presley Day,” complete with a parade down the boulevard named after him, the one that glides past his home.
Summer kisses, winter tears
This day isn’t remembered without some weirdness, of course. There was the time a couple of years back when his ex-wife, in remarks before a crowd, repeatedly wished Elvis a happy birthday. The only problem was, the wishes came not on his birthday, but at a commemoration of the 45th anniversary of his death, which happened in August.
As you might expect, his last birthdays were not the most joyous. On his 40th, in 1975, magazines and newspapers carried various versions of the headline: “Elvis: Fat and 40.” He’d be dogged by legions of derogatory press accounts which extended well past his death.
By the time a world-weary Elvis reached his final birthday, January 8, 1977, his last song to chart in his lifetime had hit the Top-5. A tune with the appropriate title of … Moody Blue.
Back to the Elvis-verse 1988
In my book, on that pre-dawn January morning at the firing range, Tom gets an earful from Danny, and a lesson in how to shoot to kill. When Tom wishes him a last “happy birthday,” Danny heads off into the night with a parting shot:
“Fifty-three and goin’ south. Feel like ninety-three. Hell, even my nose hairs have gone gray.”
Like me, Tom doesn’t much enjoy birthdays. But by the time his own birthday comes around, two months later, Tom will be paying a nighttime visit of his own. To Graceland.