"'I'm Having Elvis' Baby!' By Miss Janet Carter of Pope County, Arkansas"

Copyright 1994, Kevin Andrew Murphy

I know everybody thinks I'm crazy, but I swear it, I swear it to God! Not only did I see Elvis, but I'm gonna have his baby.

Elvis is alive. I know I was jus' a li'l thing when everyone says he died, but he didn't. No he didn't. That boozy ol' thing that snorted cocaine an' went shufflin' aroun' with the potbelly weren't Elvis. Nosirreebob. That weren't Elvis at all. That was jus' a fat old troll.

But I'm gettin' ahead of myse'f. The first time I met the real Elvis, I was workin' jus' outside town for Bob and Melba at the Jiffy J Diner (jus' off Route 7-- Melba said I'd get a raise if I mentioned that, and you should go there anyway, cuz the food's real good, 'specially the chili, which I help make). Anyway, Melba thought it might be an idea to get some live entertainment, like a band, since we needed sumpthin' anyway after the tv started shortin' out an' all we could get was Oprah Winfrey. An' she came in all squinched and purple.

Anyway, Melba'd hardly had the sign out for any time when the cutest li'l ol' thing came in, young, not much older than me even, an' didn't he look jus' like Elvis. ('Course he was Elvis, but we didn't know that jus' yet--I'm gettin' ahead of myse'f again). Anyway, he was dressed real nice, but simple, jus' bluejeans an' a T- shirt an' a ol' beat-up guitar. He bought a cup of coffee, then asked if me and Bob and Melba wanted to hear him sing. An' lord if he didn't sound jus' like Elvis when he did "Love Me Tender" and "Teddy Bear" and "Blue Christmas." ('Course he was Elvis, but like I said, I'm gettin' ahead of myse'f.)

Then he sang "Hound Dog" an' I knew. He was Elvis. He was the King. Other people might soun' like 'im or look like 'im, but nobody could move his pelvis that way--not Jon Bon Jovi, not Randy Travis, not even George Michael, though he tries real good. (And certainly not that ol' troll they showed waddlin' aroun' jus' before he died-- That weren't Elvis at all.) Watchin' him twitch his behind aroun' that floor of the Jiffy J, I jus' knew I'd found the real Elvis--an' I was gonna make him mine.

He said his name was Tommy. (It was Elvis, of course, but he was workin' undercover.) Melba gave him the job right away.

Anyway, after that, "Tommy" came into the Jiffy J every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night and sang while Bob cooked an' Melba tended counter an' I waited tables. An' after we got off work, Tommy came on back to my trailer, an', well, we did what we did, y'know?

An' everythin' was jus' great until the month I didn't get the Curse. I panicked, 'cause I couldn't go to my momma, an' I could tell Lori Beth (my best friend since junior high) or it would be all over town. (Lori Beth's great, but I swear, she's got that telephone attached at the ear.) So I went to Melba, an' she was real good to me an' sat me down an' 'splained all 'bout the birds and the bees an' all. An' after she was through goin' on (shoot--if I didn' know 'bout the birds and the bees in the first place would I have got myse'f into this fix?), Melba went to Walmart and got me one of those little plastic things, but lordy if it didn't turn blue.

"Tommy" came in that night, an' after I spilled the third pot of coffee, Melba gave us the evenin' off. I took "Tommy" behind the diner an' laid it out to him straight.

After a li'l while, he tol' me it weren't that he didn't want to marry me, but he couldn't. I asked why not, an' he says he already was married, an' I says, "To who?" and he says, "Priscilla Presley."

I tol' him he was full of it--He may look like Elvis an' soun' like Elvis, but the real Elvis was a fat ol' geezer who up 'n croaked more'n ten years ago. An' then Tommy says, "Forsooth, fair Janet, that was not me. That was a troll they had disguised with glamour."

I wanted to know why he started talkin' so funny all of a sudden, an' who was this "they" he was talkin' about, an' did he think I was a halfwit, 'cause there weren't no way you could use no fashion magazine to make a homeless person look like Elvis.

Then he got scared, and says that "they" was the elves, an' they kidnapped him like they always did with musicians they liked. An' to keep him from being missed, they found a fat ol' troll an' let him go live in Graceland with Priscilla.

Well that sure explained a lot of things, but I still didn't buy it. Then he asked me to come with him an' we got on his motorcycle an' lit outa town. An' lordy, didn' he feed me a line, all 'bout how the elves had stolen him away, and Jim Morrison too, an' a lot of others, then let a bunch of fat ol' trolls doll themselves up with some magic makeup an' take their places. I asked if they'd done that with John Belushi, but he said no, John Belushi had croaked hisse'f good an proper with his own cocaine an' the elves didn' have nothin' to do with it. They had certain standards.

And as Sheherezayd said, "Yet that is not the end of my tale...."