The House Where The King Hangs From A Tree

The man loved Elvis Presley. I mean, he loved him so much that he had a rustic looking wooden framed picture of him from the 60s hanging from the Cypress Tree in his front yard. I mean, I know that doesn’t make him a certified killer, but I’ll tell you when I came home from the mill that morning after working the night shift. A pain in the ass shift if there ever was one.

Riot quiet, they call it. You ever heard of that? Well, it’s a term they use in like maximum security prisons. It means when things are too quiet, that the shit’s about to hit the fan. Anyway, a couple guys got into a fight. The new guy broke his ring finger edging wood. And it was just one of those nights, man. One thing after another. You’re running from Point A to Point B, and you ain’t even at Point B before you’re hanging a hard left over to Point C, ya know? The guys told me not to take the promotion. It wasn’t worth it for an extra 50 cents an hour, but it just felt right. It’s like people always complain about not being noticed. Just like Tommy Hill, great worker, good guy, but he complains all the time that no one ever pats him on the back. No one says good job. But then he gets offered a supervisor job for doing so good, and he tells em to jam it up their ass. Me, I don’t talk to people like that. I got the offer, and I said I’ll give it a try. Won’t know unless you try it, right?

Anyway, sorry. I get sidetracked something awful sometimes. Too many things spinning around in this nogging. You wouldn’t wanna take a vacation in there I tell ya. Sorry. Sorry. Where was I? Oh yeah. Oh right. When I came home that morning after the riot shift, and I saw old Bernie Adams coming out of that creep factory, he called a house. I wasn’t surprised. No. No. Not one bit. The people on Hillside, I mean, they all gathered round, saying oh “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe he’d do something like that.” And I told em straight up. I can be a real straight shooter. Some folks don’t like that, but I mean, that’s just my daddy right inside me. Sometimes I feel like it’s his soul or something come out of the grave to give me a hand navigating this world. Cause sometimes I ain’t too good at doing it for myself.

So I told them, I said “You can believe it just fine. You don’t want to believe it because no one likes to know that there’s someone that sick living on their street. Living close to their kids and whatnot. But you all avoided this man like the goddamn plague. No one went near him. Never. Y’all told your kids to stay away from that house on Halloween.

Christ, Bertha brought that yellow police tape, ya know, the stuff they use on crime scenes. She walked up Bernie’s step on Halloween, I don’t know, two, maybe three years back, and she tapes the front door, and railings on the stairs, and she hollers, no one goes to this man’s house. So, again, I repeat, people might not have thought he did what he did, but don’t try to turn this man into no saint, either.

But yeah, I mean, I had my suspicions to a point. And now that I see that they were right, I feel like maybe I could have called the cops or something earlier, but I mean, you never do. Hillside is the first step above living on the street. We take in the strange, the deranged, the unwanted. Christ, the halfway house down by the highway. Those folks come here when the doctor tells em that they can live in society again. And the doctors only tell them that when they have too many folks and not enough padded rooms.

So, to say I was suspicious, or I saw some weird stuff, well it would be true, but it would also be true, to say I see weird stuff almost every day. I mean just last week. Jacob Hansen, 20 something years old, was walking down the street bare ass naked. Nothing but his iPod and his earphones. He’s singing some kid of shit, and no one bats an eye. I mean, Paula, just waves to him. She’s out knitting or crocheting or whatever, making mittens for some reason in the middle of July. She looks and sees this naked man singing and dancing, and she just waves, “Hey, Jake. How’s it going hun?” And goes back to her Iced-T. Probably a Long Island one, if you know what I mean.

So, this place is filled with strangeness. But yes, Mr. Delong, to answer your question, I think I became suspicious when I’d go for my evening walks along the railroad tracks with Pepper here. I’d take the dog down the street, and she’d eventually drag me down a little dirt path between Old Abe’s house, and Jimmy Johnson’s, and then we’d be on the tracks. But it ain’t bad to walk on that track anymore. There used to be twelve tracks, plus the mainline down there. Now there’s six, and the mainline only has one passenger train every three days, and it only arrives at 9:10 pm. Long after I’m gone to work.

The tracks go right behind Bernie’s house. I mean, they’re crazy close. Homes that close to the tracks go for dirt cheap. Or At least they did. Back in the 70s and 80s, I remember old Herbert Walker yelling at the midnight shunters to keep it the fuck down because he was trying to get some shuteye. Sorry, pardon my French, but boy was it ever funny.

But I don’t make it a mission of mine to go snooping, ya know? There're folks round here, they ain’t got no shame and looking into a window, boy, you could see some stuff. But Bernie would always be playing Elvis. Just a hunka-hunka Burning Love, and you know, uh, that one. Shit. Oh yeah. Well, that’s all right now, mama. You know? You’re young, but everyone knows the king. They’re great tunes, and naturally my ears would hear the sounds and I’d look over. And right in his living room, Bernie would be dancing. The whole thing, the swooning, the spinning, the stepping, all of it. He was dancing with some black-haired lady, but it looked weird, man. It looked wrong. She was so stiff. Like she was sleeping, or knocked out on drugs or something. It was like she was boneless or something. Cripes. Gives me the willies just thinking about it.

Bernie was quiet. You never saw much of him. He worked as a janitor down at the hospital, and he’d leave in the morning and come back at night. But I never saw anyone in there with him. I never saw him as a man with a woman or kids or anything. Just a man who, uh, worked his job, came back home, and I guess listened to Elvis.

But again, I mean. I tried not to think nothing of it. Like I told you, we don’t live in high society down here on Hillside. Strange happenings, well, are normal. You know? Like, if strange things weren’t happening, then that would be strange. I know I sound crazy, but I just want to let you know why I didn’t say anything sooner.

So, a few nights later, me and old Pepper are doing our walk again. Same route. Same everything. And I goddamn hear Elvis again. This time it’s Suspicious Minds. Loved that song, and now, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to listen to it again. I tell myself, I say, “Hey Reggie, just keep walking partner. Keep walking. Whatever is going on in that house, it ain’t none of your business. So, just keep on walking. You ain’t made it this far in life by sticking your nose where it don’t belong.”

But I can’t. I look in again, and there he is, dancing with the boneless lady. And this time, I go in for a closer look. I keep telling myself that now it’s getting too weird. I can’t walk by every night and just pretend that my eyes are playing tricks on me. My doctor always tells me I got 20/20.

And Pepper, she’s a good dog. I know she won’t make any noise. I just tell her to be quiet little girl. Daddy needs to check on something. I walk closer through his tiny little backyard that had blades of grass nearly up to my head. I make it to the window, and to my left, I see the back of the heads of what looks to be a couple of kids sitting at the couch.

Now I lived on Hillside my whole life. There’s no way this man has a wife and two kids. There’s just no way. But still, I don’t say anything. Once I get back home, I grab a bite to eat and get ready for my shift.

And it was on that shift that I asked Billy Boyd. Billy’s a strange kid. About 30 years old. Just walks around, sits at coffee shops, shoots pool with Cueball and the gang down at Dooly's. He just gets stories out of everyone. He knows things about people you wouldn’t believe. Anyway, he’s sitting in the lunchroom eating a cheese sandwich. Just two pieces of white bread with a square of processed cheese, nothing else. I says to him, I say, “hey, Billy.” Of course, his first reaction is to roll his eyes and answer, “What did I do wrong, mister boss man?” And I say, “no,no. It’s nothing like that.”

I ask him about Bernie. Like, what did he do before Hillside? The man is in his 50s, maybe early 60s and he’s been around for fifteen, twenty years, but he ain’t been around long enough. This man had another life before here. So, I ask, what the hell did he do?

Billy says he heard he worked in a funeral parlour or something. He can’t remember where, but he did the embalming or whatever it’s called. Like where they put the chemicals and all that in the body, so they don’t decompose right away or whatever. Hell, I don’t know anything about that. But when he said that, it was like these sirens went off in my head. I pondered it for a bit, but I ended up calling the cops.

The next morning when my shift is finished. I drive down Hillside and I see the striped boys taking old Bernie down his steps. The look on his face is cold. Like he doesn’t care one bit. Almost as if he wanted to get caught, eventually. I wouldn’t have believed that myself until he looked over at me before being put in the back of the cruiser, and he smiled. The grin sends chills down my spine, and I’m sure it’s telling me that he planned those nights of dancing. Planned them for when I’d be taking my walks. He was just playing me. Waiting to see how long it would take for someone to see enough to do something about it.

So, the story is that Bernie took three bodies from the morgue he worked at. Along with oodles of chemicals and makeup and everything else, and created a family. He had them in that house for almost 20 years. Dancing with them. Playing Elvis Presley.

Across the street from me. In the house where the king hangs from a tree.