No Kin to Elvis

By Budd Harbis

The art of Southern humor is the art of caricature applied to memorable, delightful characters, and until now, no one has done it as well in the last fifty years as William Price Fox in his Southern Fried stories. Now we have Budd Harbis.
Terry Kay, author of To Dance with the White Dog and other memorable novels

Had Walker Percy grown up on Faron Youngs tour bus, hed have been... Budd Harbis!
Marshall Chapman, legendary singer-songwriter and author of the book, Goodbye, Little Rock and Roller

Budd Harbis carries forward the tradition of Lewis Grizzard. Like Lewis, Budd has a love and an appreciation for small town Southern life. Lewis would have loved Budds stories.
Dedra Grizzard, wife of the late humorist and author, Lewis Grizzard

Note to Budd Harbis:
I have spent a good and enjoyable part of the first week of 2012 reading and rereading and laughing at your fictional work of real humor and tragedy with enough redemptive force at the end to change the world or a readers view of it.
Dr. James W. Clark, Jr., author and Professor Emeritus, English, North Carolina State University

Leave it to Budd Harbis to come up with a book that is both imaginative and historically based. Budd knows the South well, and this book reflects a deep understanding of a fascinating time and place: rural Georgia on the cusp of the Civil Rights era.
James Harris, playwright, Civil War Voices

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481719766

Budd Harbis

Budd Harbis has written and produced short films and radio programs which have appeared on public broadcasting stations. Tonky (2007) and The Pointing Dog Social Club (2005) are two examples. He has performed at such prestigious venues as The Bluebird Cafe in Nashville and the Margaret Mitchell House in Atlanta with his comedy show, "Fish On! And Other Stories for Your Truck." He currently is developing media projects with a 50-year old regional theater in Tennessee, the Cumberland County Playhouse.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

The peddler, she thought. Who’da figured on him showing up at a time like this? Cold rain began to fall as she ambled down the sandy logging trail.

Sure enough, rumbling down crooked Fiddle Ridge among the red sourwoods, orange hickories, and white locusts, was Moses Ginsburg. A tan Welsh pony pulled his covered buckboard of drygoods, rugs, and ready-to-wear.

This was not an unusual sight in this part of the mountains. A person was more likely to encounter a T-model Ford or a CCC truck but horses, mules, carts and wagons were the best means of traversing these old craggy, hand-cut routes.

The wind was picking up. Moses reined in his pony to a slow walk as he drew near.

Howdy, Miss Emmer, said Moses. You going to town?

Emmer kept sauntering, not stopping, and barely glanced back.

Is this the way?

You ain’t never been?

No, sir.

Well, you’re pointed right.

How far is it?

Quite a ways…

Moses held the pony to a slow steady pace, his pink muzzle even with Emmer as she continued down the steep path. A spattered palette of hardwoods—roast sienna, ochre, sap, and vermilion—yawned hundreds of feet below in a dense and rocky gorge.

You mind if I ask you something? inquired Moses.

I don’t know ’til you say.

Are you alright?

What do you mean by that?

I mean is everything okay… at home, I mean?

That’s prying.

I ain’t trying to. I’m just concerned. You on the road by yourself and all… Is your daddy alright?

He’s fair.

Moses had received a good education in Montreal where his folks came to live when they migrated from Prussia but, over time, he had adapted his speech to that of his rural customers to such a point he was beginning to forget his genuine voice.

Emmer continued ambling and Moses rubbed his whiskers as the pony tugged on the reins. It was strange to see Emmer so far away from her cabin. Most of the folks around Panther Creek kept close to home, only walking to the store in Po Grab or the old church in Toll Station when they went anywhere at all. The rain began falling hard.

Emmer, get up on this wagon and get out of the rain, said Moses.

Emmer stopped and looked up at the gray skies that were beginning to drench her. She looked at the pony, then at Moses. Without a word, she walked back, put her left hand on the pony’s rump, her right foot on the wagon tongue and launched herself onto the bench next to Moses.

She set the canvas bag she was carrying in her lap and looked straight ahead, as if to say, I ain’t happy about accepting charity but I ain’t dumb enough to drown in a rainstorm.

Moses considered her for a moment, then slapped the reins. As the pony slowly picked his way down the precipitous sandstone path, Moses thought to himself. She’d be a right pretty gal if she could get to a beauty parlor, then maybe buy some store-bought clothes. She reminded him of Noel Francis, a long-legged and lanky co-star of Buck Jones in some of his best western pictures. He particularly liked her in the role of Betty Golden in Left-handed Law. I don’t know whether a mountain girl like her could ever be interested in a young man of the Jewish faith such as me, thought Moses. . . . a city dweller, to boot… Just look at that old scrubby pony. He ain’t nothing like Buck Jones’ pretty white horse Silver… How can a woman be impressed by a man who drives a shaggy-maned Welsh pony? I suppose it would be quite a stretch to imagine two people from such different backgrounds, religions, and cultures could…

I ain’t never going back, said Emmer.

What’s that you say? asked Moses.

I done left and I ain’t retracing my steps.

You’re leaving the mountains?

Yes, sir.

Well, that’s a coincidence.

"A what?’

This happens to be my last run up Fiddle Ridge.

You gonna peddle somewheres else?

I ain’t gonna peddle no more nowhere. I’m opening a drygoods store in Holly Ridge.

Where?

Over yonder beyond the mountains. On the coast of the ocean.

The ocean?

Yep.

How come you to settle there?

The Government’s building an army base on thousands and thousands of acres of pine land and swamps. They’re spending millions upon millions of dollars doing it. There will be a vast army of men swinging hammers building an entire new city out of the forest, not to mention all the troops that will be shipped in by train. I’m liable to make a fortune.

Dang. You got it all figured out.

I’ve been saving up and studying it for some time.

How in the world you ever get so smart?

I ain’t smart. I just get around.

There’s something to that.

* * *

Emmer Lee Prestley was a fifth cousin to Elvis but she didn’t know it. Many years after leaving Panther Creek, she heard Elvis sing over the radio on the Louisiana Hayride show and she went out and bought his record of I Forgot to Remember to Forget. When she read on the label how he spelled his name, she just assumed, since he left off the t in Prestley, they could not possibly be kin.

Yet, if she had known anything about her forbears past her daddy, she would have known Elvis’s and her stock went way back many years ago to a German grape grower, Johann Valentin Pressler, who had three sons who sailed from Rotterdam across the North Atlantic Ocean on a ship named Lydia to live on a big Carolina farm on the banks of the Rocky River. Over the next two centuries they were known as Prestlers, Priestleys, Prestleys, Presleys and by many other names.

Nevertheless Emmer, satisfied she was not related to Elvis, did not instantly disprove this assumption among others. In fact, one night at church shortly after Elvis’s Take My Hand, Precious Lord record was released in the Spring of ’57, and the songleader had led the congregation in singing it, one of the sisters punched her in the arm and asked if she was some kin to Elvis and she, in a moment of feeling particularly low and downtrodden, let it slip she’d heard they was. And, it was a terrible heavy burden on her heart to bear the guilt of that enormous white lie. Yet she asked the Good Lord to forgive her besetting sin.

Deep down she reasoned a woman of so few possessions—and none of them of value—needs some form of sparkle in her crown. Of course, the whole time God knew Emmer was honest, even though she was provisionally unaware.

Unfortunately, the proud Pressler bloodline of the rich Anson County river bottom soil had come to be watered down pretty badly by the time some of them wandered into the rocks and box elders and red sourwoods and hickories and hemlocks and copperheads of Panther Creek in Gidcombe County. Maybe watered is not appropriate. Because in the first 50 years or so of his life, Emmer’s daddy never was especially fond of it—whether for drink or for his daily toilet.

Columbus Bus Prestley made a fiery bucket of corn whiskey he sold on the rare occasions he had any left over, for all around him knew he was an abysmal sot who’d be falling off the wagon with the cool weather and turning leaves of every Fall. In that regard, he was deciduous as a sugar maple.

Compounding his worries was an affliction, the absence of a left arm, lost in a tremendous lightning storm. Emmer’s mother, a long suffering woman named Sumantha Searcy, grabbed hold of Bus to drag him away from his copper still during the height of the thunder only to be electrocuted when lightning struck her crapulous, semi-conscious spouse.

Her bare feet were on the soil. She was grounded. The resultant explosion tore off Bus’s arm and fried Sumantha where she stood.

Curious and peculiar as they were, the Prestleys had a service and burial for Bus’s arm right along with Sumantha’s charred remains.

This pivotal event occurred when Emmer was fourteen and marked the beginning of a particularly hard time of toil and strife as she assumed her late mother’s burdens of plowing the garden, cooking, cleaning the house, and skinning game that Bus would on rare occasions bring from the woods. The only comfort she had in life was humming and singing the old-time music she had heard her mother play on the banjo. Old songs like I Ain’t Got No Sugar Baby Now.

Ain’t got no use for that red rocking chair.

I got no sugar baby now.

He laid me in the shade.

Gave me every dime he made . . .

Mercifully, Emmer was the youngest of the children—the other four had scattered to as many winds—so she had only her daddy and herself to tend. Of course, that made her the only one to bare the brunt of his wild, obstreperous binges as he drunkenly mourned his late helpmate and lost limb.

Sumantha! Sumantha! I’ve lost you, darlin’, who was my right arm. And, also I is bereft of my left ’un. And, in place of all, is a whelp! A dang whelp of a ragged girl! And dumber than the coldest stove pipe!

Emmer thought to herself, Encouraging words such as that can really spur a girl on during her darkest days.

One evening, in the Fall of 1940, while Emmer was singing to herself as she cooked a skillet of field peas on the pot belly stove, Bus came stumbling into the house and instead of dragging in a dead possum or a coon he had a big round companion who was howling with laughter and wearing the ugliest snap brim dress hat the Dobbs Hat Company ever manufactured. It was a loud yellow, red, and green plaid model—which, nevertheless, fit the man perfectly because he was so loud and abominable himself. Both he and Bus were blind drunk and laughing like hyenas.

Emmer, roared Bus, this here’s a city man come hunting the best whiskey in the country! And I guess he follered the creek ’til he found me! Bus doubled-over laughing. He thought that was the funniest, most witty thing that had ever been said.

The big man was crying he was laughing so hard. That’s what I did! he said.

Emmer let the big man calm down a bit before asking a question.

What’s your name, mister?

His name is Tommy, said Bus. Tommy the Dutchman! With that apparently hilarious response, the men fell down in the floor and literally rolled with laughter.

When the man quit rolling, Emmer walked over and stood over him with the hot skillet of peas. You’re not the Big Law are you?

The man stopped laughing and grew stern. He tried his best to focus on her face. Emmer was not wearing a threatening look or speaking in a hard tone but, still, she was holding a hot black cast iron skillet of peas over him.

I’m a promoter, he said—and he spoke with a slight European accent.

The what? asked Emmer.

I promote acts. Musical acts.

Like Jimmy Rodgers? asked Emmer.

He’s dead, said Tommy.

Well who then?

Look. Move them peas. Your daddy brought me up here to sell me some whiskey.

You sure you’re not the law? asked Emmer.

Honey, the law’s been after me since I got off the boat.

Are you a sailor?

I have been… Say, when we were walking up the lane, was that you singing?

I don’t know. I guess so.

Suddenly, Bus scuffled up from the floor and stuck his face within an inch of Emmer’s.

If you don’t show our guest some proper respect, he snarled, I’m gonna snatch that skillet from you and knock your brains out!

Even later on, Emmer couldn’t explain to herself what happened, but something about the way Bus threatened her with his drunken tone, especially after she had milked the cow, fed the hog, cleaned the cabin, and now cooked dinner, made her snap. She swung the skillet like a shingling hatchet and caught Bus full-force on the side of his head.

Peas and grease flew everywhere while Bus went spinning and reeling into the homemade chifforobe, scattering Sumantha’s dresses and clothes-hangers and tin cans of face ointment and bug medicine all over the floor as he rolled onto his back unconscious. Tommy the Dutchman cowered and rolled up in a ball on the floor, speechless and, now, increasingly more sober.

Emmer looked at Tommy, then dropped the skillet. She calmly walked over to her simple bed and pulled a battered canvas bag out from under it which she filled with a couple of jars of preserves and canned tomatoes. Then she wrapped a ragged coat around herself and walked out the door.

The whole time she was packing, Tommy the Dutchman remained on the floor, rolled up and speechless.

* * *

After two solid weeks riding in the peddler wagon and camping out along the highway under the stars, amid the calls of the Chuck-will’s-widow and the mockingbird, Moses and Emmer decided to part. Moses was a very nice, enterprising young man but his incessant need to sing cowboy songs while he was driving the Welsh pony had become tiresome. If Emmer had heard Mexicali Rose once, she’d heard it a million times. As for, Moses, he had begun to think acclimating Emmer to city life would be much too challenging. In his head, he already had begun to map out his forthcoming business career and, by the time the pony’s hooves hit the cement streets of Camp Davis, he had decided that Emmer would be a detriment to his advancement. He would never become chairman of the Chamber of Commerce with Emmer as his helpmate. He might as well take a Zuni Indian squaw to wed as this backwoods home-body.

Moses parked the wagon in front of a large commissary building they were constructing on the post and waited for Emmer to go in and check on employment. After a few minutes she returned, beaming.

As she stepped on the wagon tongue, Emmer extended her hand and expressed her appreciation.

Mr. Ginsberg, I want to thank you for all you’ve done. If I’m able to make some money, I’ll be sure to trade with you.

Emmer, I wish you all the best. There’s opportunity all around. A resourceful young lady like yourself should prosper.

I’ll never forget you.

Nor I you, said Moses. Then he slapped the reins and rolled down the cement street toward Holly Ridge and his new venture. As Emmer stood in front of the commissary watching the receding shape of the buckboard, she could hear him humming Take Me Back to My Boots and Saddle.

Emmer’s job at the commissary was as a stock girl and she made a mighty impression on the Commissary Sergeant. She worked like a plow horse and hardly said a word. Such quiet diligence to menial labor was appreciated.

She had worked for several weeks when, one day, a 21 year-old Coast Artillery Corpsman, Private Elzo Broadleaf of Marlburn, Georgia, sauntered in while Emmer was unpacking boxes. Elzo was a tall, greasy, raw-boned, nut-colored man with a broken nose and an Adam’s apple that stuck out like a ball peen. Yet somehow in his uniform, to Emmer he vaguely resembled the movie actor Victor Mature, only not as well-fed. Emmer had just seen Victor Mature at the picture