Summer of 1958, a decade before Charles Portis published his novel TRUE GRIT, he was a reporter for The Commercial Appeal, the Memphis daily, assigned to cover Pvt. Elvis Presley’s emergency leave from Fort Hood to visit his sick mother, Gladys:
Leaning on a windowsill in the hallway (of Methodist hospital) yesterday, he reflected moodily on the family’s pre-Cadillac days: “I like to do what I can for my folks. We didn’t have nothin’ before, nothin’ but a hard way to go.”
About that time a small fat boy appeared and asked Elvis for an autograph. He grinned and ran his hand through the boy’s hair and said in flawless diction, “You little rascal. You were standing there all that time and didn’t say anything. Let me see that pencil.”
He was talking to his public again. He was Elvis Presley again.
Portis was 24 — only about a year older than Elvis — but already he was good. That knack for telling details, those small moments that show us some larger truth. I wonder how many reporters, especially at that age, would have caught Elvis’s flipped switch to “flawless diction.” Even that description of the boy, the seemingly at odds “small fat,” which makes you stop and try to picture the kid in your mind. Well, I did. Also, that last line — a perfect walkaway.
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