Losing Graceland by Micah Nathan Page B

never did—always had someone else to bleed for me. Not this time. Not now. Ben, look me in the eye.”
    He did as the old man said.
    “I’ll bleed for you,” Ben said.
    “I know you would,” the old man said with a sad smile, and suddenly Ben saw blood pattering on the floor. He saw a pinky, small and silly, sitting all by itself on the silver coffee tray. He saw the knife with a crescent moon of blood clinging to the blade. He saw the two men sitting on the couch smile and thump their canes and the first man asked, “Is it done?” and the old man sighed and said, “Good Lord, yes it is,” and then Ben saw nothing.

9.
    en awoke in the back of the Caddy as the sun shot low through the forest, creamy orange washed over the pine needles and curled leaves. His shirt stuck to his skin. The back of his head itched, and when he touched it, pain blossomed.
    The old man looked over the front seat. He wore his aviators with the missing arm. He grinned. “You fainted like a little girl. Nearly split your skull on the coffee table. But that’s okay, because it gave me some time to think.”
    Ben sat up. He touched the back of his head again and scraped at the hairs, dark grains of blood flaking off. He looked out the window, at the forest. A bird swooped to the ground. It fluttered to a stop and pecked at the dirt.
    “We don’t have the goods for what needs to be done.” The old man held up his bandaged left hand, gauze soaked through with dark red. “I need pain medication. And cash. Plenty of cash. Hank won’t give her up for nothing.”
    Ben searched for something to say. Nothing came to mind except ridiculous questions. He felt displaced, as if half of his body was rooted in a former life—his apartment above Manchurian House, his nostalgia for Jessica, his crazy mom, his ghost of a dad—and here was a new life, a dizzying, dreamlike life, where a beautiful blonde with a scar above her lip had asked him to sleep with her. Where he ate, drank, and fought with bikers. Where blind old men gave prophecy in exchange for pinkies. Where Elvis had never died, but lived in a vinyl-sided box in a Polish suburban neighborhood ten minutes outside of Buffalo.
    Ben thought back to the crying boy in the orange shorts. One minute sitting in the sprinkler, holding his knee, tears mixed with sprinkler water, lips trembling. The next minute, eyes still red but now he laughed, back arched, hands overhead. Fingers spread, wedges of blue sky between them. My entrance into this world, Ben thought. Tears to laughter. Pain to pleasure. Just like that. The old man like a light switch. Dark to light. Insane to wise. Just like that.
    Ben leaned his head against the window and saw Delilah shuffling down the driveway toward them, carrying a pickling jar.
    “The oracle doesn’t take money,” the old man began, staring out the windshield. “Offer a million and they’d laugh in your face. I’ve known men paid with their lives to find out why their kids are fucked up or whether their wife ever cheated on them.”
    Ben laughed quietly. “The oracle. Are you listening to yourself?”
    “Course I am.”
    “You just chopped off your pinky. Doesn’t that, I don’t know—bother you?”
    “If chopping off my pinky means I can find where that sonofabitch took my granddaughter, then I got the better of the deal. It’sa pinky, for Christ’s sake. What the hell I need a pinky for, at my age?”
    “And here comes that crazy lady with a jar. Great. We have three more pinkies between us, so maybe—”
    “Calm down, son.”
    Ben rubbed his face. “The mall wasn’t so bad, you know. Or I could’ve worked at a summer camp. Cute counselors, playing with kids—”
    “This is more important. You understand. That’s why you came along.”
    “I came along because I needed the money.”
    “And because you understand.”
    “No.” Ben shook his head. “I don’t understand any of this.”
    The old man sighed. He stared out the windshield,