The New Elvis by Wyborn Senna

the state of the yard.
    The first druggie punted a lightweight container a good twelve feet. “What the hell is this, an obstacle course?”
    The second meth-addled man kicked a stack of boxes that tipped over and spilled.
    “Bunch of shit,” he muttered. The sirens grew louder. “We gotta go.”
    “No, we gotta get the kid! He saw us!”
    The second man shook his head. “He doesn’t know what he saw.”
    They argued as they left the backyard, punching and kicking boxes as they went. Logan counted to ten before he crawled back into his own yard and then went out into the middle of the street, yards from the tangle of trucks there to fight the blaze. The killers backed away from the smashed Chevelle and peeled away without a backward glance.
    One of the firemen turned and saw Logan, standing alone in the middle of the road. In a daze, the boy clutched the deluxe limited edition Elvis album from 1957 as another fire engine roared down the street and navigated around Jarrod’s beloved and now battered ride, siren blaring.
    The fireman came and scooped Logan up into his arms. The boy’s dirty gray long johns were damp; he had wet himself.
    “You gotta get out of the street. Is that your house?”
    Logan nodded.
    As neighbors began to gather on front lawns, the firemen finished extinguishing the blaze. Logan glared at them.
What took you so long?
    “Who was inside? You have brothers? Sisters?”
    Logan shook his head.
    “Your mom?”
    Logan nodded.
    A nearby fireman waved to a paramedic on the scene. A team approached the house with a stretcher and disappeared through the dark, gaping hole that was once a front door.
    “Your dad?”
    Logan shook his head and wriggled to indicate he wanted to be put down. The fireman obliged, and Logan took the man’s hand and led him over to the wrecked Chevelle. Jarrod lay behind the door on the driver’s side, half in the car, half on the ground. He had taken a single shot to the head and several to the chest.
    “Is that—is that your dad?”
    Logan nodded. His lip trembled.
    The fireman checked for a pulse and frowned. Logan knew what that meant from television shows he’d seen. He turned toward the house and watched as paramedics carried the remains of his mother out. They labored to get her down the front steps. Logan wandered away from the fireman and went up to the stretcher. The paramedics paused and looked at him as he reached out to touch the sheet, the Elvis LP still clutched in his other hand.
    “The kid. Get the kid,” someone shouted.
    Logan felt himself being hoisted up again.

Chapter 28
    Mrs. Edwin called after Ryan got home from school the very next day to tell him Bea wanted to see him, so he took a shower, put on a clean, white dress shirt and khakis, grabbed his cell phone and a two-liter bottle of Diet Pepsi, and headed next door.
    With formal solemnity, Mrs. Edwin let him in. The flowers had been cleared away from the foyer table, and the air conditioning seemed to be set high. It created an icy atmosphere at odds with the fact Mrs. Edwin wore a blue wool sweater that had pilled along the arms and front. “I don’t know whether to take this old sweater off or keep it on. I get hot, then I get cold, and then I get hot again.”
    Ryan knew about menopause and suspected Mrs. Edwin was going through hormonal changes, which he certainly didn’t want to discuss. When she waved him toward the staircase, he nodded politely and headed up to Bea’s room.
    Her door was closed, so he knocked and waited.
    “Come in.” Her voice was slurry like his dad’s when he drank.
    He turned the knob and pushed the door inward. The room was no longer decorated with Disney princesses. Clocks of every shape and size now filled the walls, which had been repainted an inviting peach. In bed, Bea was flipping through an issue of
Marie Claire
. When she saw Ryan, she let the magazine fall shut and laid it flat on her legs, which formed two straight rails beneath the thin floral