A Matter of Seeing and Believing
Darnell Blake's job as a structural engineering consultant took him to dozens of major cities across the United States. Unlike many businessmen, he found the frequent traveling exciting since he had never ventured out of Pennsylvania in his youth. As an adult, he enjoyed seeing places such as Los Angeles, Dallas, Seattle, Miami and Denver.
An amateur shutterbug, during his periods of free time on the road, he photographed the local sights and tourist attractions. In a short time, he had accumulated a large collection of pictures of city skylines, historic landmarks, national parks, seaports, mountain ranges and deserts.
While on an assignment in Memphis, Tennessee, Darnell decided to visit Graceland, the legendary home of the late rock 'n' roll icon, Elvis Presley. After viewing the singer's collection of automobiles, motorcycles, sequined costumes and gold records, he toured the colonial revival mansion and took photographs of the music room, television room, jungle room and billiard room. Then he went out to the meditation garden to see the graves of Elvis, his mother, father and grandmother as well as the small marker erected in memory of Elvis's stillborn twin brother.
While Darnell was sitting on a bench changing the battery in his camera, he glimpsed an old man resting on the bench opposite him. There was something vaguely familiar about his eyes. It was a face the young engineer had seen before, but he could not remember exactly where.
"This is quite some place, isn't it?" Darnell asked, trying to engage the old man in conversation.
"I always thought so," the elderly man replied with a distinct southern drawl.
Darnell's heart leaped. There was no mistaking the voice. Even though the face looked old beyond its years, the voice was unquestionably that of Elvis Presley. Darnell had often heard the tabloid-fueled rumors and cries of conspiracy theorists that the King of Rock 'n' Roll had not actually died in 1977, but he never believed them. He thought that people who claimed to have seen Elvis alive were just as likely to say they encountered aliens in Roswell, New Mexico, or Big Foot while hiking in the Appalachian Mountains. Yet here before his eyes—and, more tellingly, his ears—was proof positive.
Or could he be wrong? Perhaps the old man was nothing more than a close relative of the deceased singing idol.
"Do you come here often?" Darnell asked.
"Not as often as I'd like to."
The old man's responses were vague. Was he deliberately being evasive?
"Did anyone ever tell you that you resemble Elvis quite a bit?"
"Yes, but not as much lately as when I was younger."
With his camera now fully charged, Darnell nonchalantly walked around the circular pool, photographing the fountains and the grave markers. Then he furtively pointed the camera at the old man, zoomed in and took a candid snapshot of the person he believed to be Elvis. After taking another stroll past the graves, Darnell returned to the bench and resumed his conversation with the Elvis lookalike.
"Do you think there's any truth to the rumors that Elvis is still alive?" the young engineer pressed.
The white-haired stranger shrugged his shoulders.
"Or what about the story that Elvis was at one time an undercover agent for the FBI?"
"I've heard stranger tales."
The old man was definitely a hard nut to crack.
Finally, Darnell came straight out and asked, "You wouldn't be Elvis by any chance, would you?"
Surprisingly, there was no immediate denial.
"Why do you ask that?"
"Because you look so much like him, or how I imagine he might look now if he were still alive. And you sound like him, too."
The old man laughed heartily.
"Obviously, you've never heard me sing."
"You didn't answer my question," the engineer pressed after several minutes of silence.
"What question is that?"
"Are you Elvis Presley?"
Darnell was becoming impatient.
"And if I am?"
"What do you mean?"
"If I were to tell you that I am Elvis, what would you do? Run to The National Tattler or the nearest TV station?"
"I don't think so."
"That's smart because they wouldn't believe you if you did. They would think you were just another crackpot or publicity seeker."
"So you are Elvis!"
"I didn't say that."
"Well, who are you then?"
"I have a more important question, son: who are you?"
"Who am I?" Darnell laughed. "I'm ...."
Suddenly, he could not remember his name.
"Well?" the old man prompted.
"This is ridiculous. I know who I am. I just can't recall my name right now."
"Where do you come from?"
"I was born in ...."
Again, Darnell drew a blank, and he began to shake. What was wrong with him?
The old man put a steadying arm on the engineer's shoulder and gently advised, "Don't worry about who I am right now. You must first find out who you are."
"But I know who I am—or I did until a few moments ago."
Darnell took his wallet out of his pocket, hoping to find the answer there, but his driver's license and all other forms of identification were gone. As he tried to put together the pieces of his unraveling existence, the old man got up from the bench.
"The answer isn't here," he said cryptically as he walked away.
* * *
After he left Graceland and drove back to his motel, the young man regained his memory. His name was Darnell Blake; he was born in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania; he worked for Johnson and Richards Engineering Consultants; he was in Memphis on business. Furthermore, the driver's license, credit cards and ID cards were back in his wallet attesting to his identity.
"That was the weirdest experience of my life," he said as he drove his rental car to the nearest one-hour photo lab.
After careful reflection, he came to the conclusion that seeing the mysterious old man whom he had mistaken for Elvis Presley somehow confused him to the point of causing a temporary lapse in memory. Either that or he was suffering from some form of mental degeneration but, hopefully, nothing as serious as early-onset Alzheimer's.
While his photos were being printed, Darnell walked through a nearby shopping mall and grabbed a burger and fries in the food court. When the hour was up, he returned to the photo lab; however, it was not until he got back to the motel that he opened the envelope and looked at his prints. There was something odd about the picture of the old man. At first, Darnell could not put his finger on it, but after he stared at the snapshot for close to an hour, he realized what was wrong. The man in the photograph looked ten years younger than the man Darnell had seen at Graceland.
That guy looked about eighty years old, Darnell thought. His hair was pure white, yet here in the photo, there are dark hairs liberally mixed in with the gray.
There was only one logical answer: the technician in the photo lab must have touched up the image before printing the picture. But why?
* * *
The following morning Darnell met with the city engineer for the last time, thus concluding his business in Memphis.
As the consultant was putting his papers in his briefcase, the city engineer asked him, "What did you think of Graceland? Quite a place, isn't it?"
"It sure is," Darnell agreed.
Then he told the city engineer about the strange old man he had encountered there.
"You know, I honestly believed he was Elvis, alive and well and visiting his old home." Then he reached into his pocket, took out the envelope of photographs and said, "See for yourself."
"I'm not surprised you thought you saw Elvis," the city engineer remarked. "Hundreds, if not thousands, of Elvis lookalikes and impersonators come to Memphis every year and make a pilgrimage to Graceland."
"But who would impersonate Elvis as an eighty-year-old man?"
"I wouldn't say the guy in the photograph looks anywhere near that old. More like forty or forty-five to me," the city engineer commented as he handed the pictures back.
Darnell looked at the photo and concurred with his associate. The old man now had a thick head of dark hair with only a slight hint of gray at the temples, and his face was unmarred by signs of age. If he were dressed in a sequined jumpsuit, that man could easily have gotten a job impersonating the King in Las Vegas.
* * *
Darnell sat in Memphis International Airport, waiting to board a flight to Boston. Again, he reached into his pocket and took out the photograph of the old man he had encountered at Graceland—although he could hardly be described as old now. Once again, the image had changed. The stranger now looked like the "after" picture for a weight loss product. This was the Elvis of the early Sixties: dark, handsome, slender and well on the sunny side of forty.
What the hell is going on? Darnell worried, throwing back his head and casting his eyes heavenward.
Suddenly, he saw the sign displaying the estimated times of incoming and departing flights. One by one the city names changed. San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Miami and Boston now all read TUPELO. The significance of the Mississippi city did not escape Darnell. It was Elvis Presley's birthplace. Without bothering to retrieve his luggage, he went to the Hertz desk, rented a car and headed east toward Route 78, a road that would take him into Tupelo.
After crossing the Tennessee/Mississippi border, Darnell pulled into a rest stop to get a cup of coffee. With a trembling hand, he once again reached into his pocket for the photograph.
"When is all this going to stop?" he groaned as he looked down at a "Hound Dog"-era Elvis right out of the Fifties.
Darnell finished his coffee, went to the men's room and then stopped at the tourist information desk where he got directions to the singer's birthplace.
The entire trip from Memphis to Elvis Presley Park took only two hours, yet as he drove his rental car along Elvis Presley Drive, Darnell again experienced difficulty remembering his own name. In fact, the details of his life were fading more rapidly as he got closer to the two-room house where Elvis had been born.
* * *
With a growing sense of foreboding, Darnell Blake crossed the threshold of the small, two-room, shotgun house. Built in 1934 by Vernon and Vester Presley, Elvis's father and uncle, it has since been restored to its original condition and decorated with period furniture. One final time, the engineer reached into his jacket pocket and took out the photograph he had taken at Graceland. The image was no longer that of a man, but rather one of a child.
"What does all this mean?" he uttered with confusion.
Out the window, he spotted a young child—one who looked just like the photograph in Darnell's hand. The boy beckoned for him to come out of the house.
"Do you know who you are yet?" the lad asked.
Darnell shook his head.
"Come with me, then."
The engineer asked no questions. Instead, his mind and emotions numb, he silently followed the little boy. He had no idea how long they walked. Eventually, young Elvis led him to Priceville Church Cemetery.
"What are we doing here?" Darnell inquired, gradually coming out of his dazed state.
"This is where you belong," the child explained.
"That's not very funny. This is a graveyard."
"And you're buried here."
"That's insane. I've never been to Mississippi. I'm from ...."
Try as he might, he could not remember.
"You were buried here," the boy insisted.
"No! I'm not dead!"
"In a way, you're right. You couldn't die because you were never alive; you were stillborn."
Darnell shook his head, vehemently denying the boy's allegations.
"Your tiny body was placed in a shoebox that was tied with a red ribbon and buried here in an unmarked grave."
As he spoke, Elvis changed. He went from young to old again, the decades passing rapidly before his companion's startled eyes.
Finally, the octogenarian whom Darnell had met at Graceland said sadly, "Look at the picture of me in your pocket."
Darnell took out the snapshot.
"I don't understand," he cried when he saw that there was no one in the photograph. "It's just an empty bench."
"Of course, it is. I died in 1977. I am—or rather was—Elvis Aaron Presley, and you're my twin brother, Jesse Garon Presley."
"Sure you are," Darnell said sarcastically, "and I'm your dead brother. I'm buried somewhere around here in a—what was it? A breadbox?"
"A shoebox. Ma and Pa were too poor to give you a proper funeral and burial."
Darnell laughed uneasily.
"Okay, just supposing you are Elvis—and I'm not saying you are, but just supposing—why would you leave your twin brother's body in a shoebox in an unmarked grave? You had millions of dollars. You could at least have bought a decent headstone for him."
"I didn't want to call attention to your grave," the overweight Las Vegas-era Elvis in the gaudy jumpsuit explained. "I was afraid some crazed fan might deface it. I wanted you to rest in peace; apparently, you couldn't. You've been lost in limbo. When I saw you at Graceland, I realized that you had no idea who you were. You must have temporarily borrowed someone else's memories."
Darnell tried to argue, to prove that he was a living person with his own past history, but he could not remember one single detail of the life he had stepped into.
The Elvis of the early Sixties led the confused man by the arm to a car parked nearby. The two men, standing side by side, could see their reflection in the car windows.
"I look just like you," the bewildered young man told the "Hound Dog"-era Elvis.
"Of course, you do. You're my twin brother."
"You must be right," Jesse finally conceded, staring at the mirror images in the car window. "Seeing is believing."
Elvis, the child, then took his brother's hand in his own, squeezed it gently and led Jesse Garon into the light of eternity.
This story—although it includes factual references to Elvis and his past—is a work of fiction.
Elvis®, Elvis Presley®, and Graceland® are registered trademarks with the USPTO. Copyright © 2003 EPE, Inc.
The image in the upper left corner is of Gladys, Elvis and Vernon Presley. The image below is of Elvis.
Salem has been a fan of the King of Rock 'n' Roll—except for the song "Hound Dog." He once suggested that the lyrics be changed to "You ain't nothing but a black cat, meowing all the time ...."
