A limited number of people who would be allowed to wait for a chance at an autograph. The passes for this line were separate from the show tickets. Marcus did not have one. He had not known when he bought his ticket that they existed and by the time he found out they were gone. But he had come early and he had watched the people arriving and he had seen how the line was being managed and he had made the calculation that a 16-year-old makes when he has come this far and is not ready to accept the boundary of the
thing he cannot have. He had joined the line. For 40 minutes he stood in the backstage entrance queue with the specific quality of someone who belongs somewhere and is not going to perform belonging because performing it would suggest it wasn’t natural. He had gotten to perhaps the middle of the line. The show was running.
The sound of it came through the walls of the auditorium in fragments. The specific muffled quality of music through brick. The bass frequencies carrying further than the rest. The crowd response arriving in waves. He was listening to a particularly loud wave of it when the security man reached him. The security man was not unkind in his manner.
This was one of the things Marcus would think about later in the years when he had occasion to think about it. The specific quality of a system that can be operated without unkindness. That has been so fully absorbed into the ordinary operations of a place that the people executing it do not experience themselves as doing anything that requires a particular emotional register.
“This line requires a special pass.” The man said. “What pass do you have?” Marcus showed him his concert ticket. The man looked at it. “That’s a general admission ticket.” he said. “This line is for pass holders.” “I know. I was hoping.” “Pass holders only.” the man said. Not cruelly, as a statement of operational fact.
Marcus looked at him. The man looked back. There were other people in the line behind Marcus, some of whom had turned to watch the exchange with the expressions of people watching something they recognize and have decided in advance how they feel about. There were other people ahead of him, some of whom had also turned.
Marcus understood the specific architecture of the moment. He had grown up in Jackson, Mississippi in 1956 and he understood it completely. The difference between what was being said, which was about pass types, and what was meant, which was about something else entirely, and which everyone in the immediate vicinity understood without it needing to be stated.
He understood it and he did not make a scene about it and he did not argue about it because arguing about it in this specific context in Jackson, Mississippi, in November of 1956 was not a productive response. And Marcus Webb was 16 years old and had come here by bus and was not going to give anyone a reason to make this worse than it was.
He stepped out of the line. He walked around the side of the building to where the wall met the alley, and he sat down on the ground with his back against the brick and his knees up. And he listened to the muffled sound of the show continuing inside. He did not leave. He was not sure why he did not leave. The bus ran until 10:00.
The show would be over by 9:30 at the latest, and he could be on the bus by 9:45 and home before 10:15. There was no practical reason to stay. He stayed because leaving felt like the wrong kind of completion to the evening. And he was 16 years old, and he had come here alone on a bus and was not ready to let the evening end on the note it had found.
So, he sat against the brick wall in the alley beside the Municipal Auditorium and listened to what he could hear of Elvis Presley performing through the walls. And the November night in Jackson was cold enough to make sitting on the ground uncomfortable, and he sat there anyway. The backstage entrance to the Municipal Auditorium had a door that opened inward, and when it opened, it created a brief rectangle of interior light in the exterior dark of the alley.
Elvis had been moving toward the door for reasons that had nothing to do with what was about to happen. He had finished a song, and the next required a guitar change, and in the 45 seconds of that transition, he had moved to the side of the stage near the backstage entrance and had looked through the gap in the door that someone had left slightly ajar.
The gap of perhaps 3 in that framed a narrow vertical slice of the alley outside. He had seen in that slice a boy sitting against the wall. Not clearly, not enough to read an expression or make a specific assessment, just a boy sitting against the brick in the November dark in the alley beside the municipal auditorium with his knees up and his back against the wall and the posture of someone who is staying somewhere they have been told in one form or another they should not be.
Elvis looked at the gap in the door for a moment. Then the guitar was ready and he went back to the stage. But the image stayed. He played three more songs. He played them with the same quality he brought to every song, complete, focused, the full weight of his attention on what he was doing. And in the part of him that ran parallel to the performing part, the image stayed.
The boy against the wall, the specific quality of the posture, not defeated, not collapsed into the wall, but settled against it with a kind of patient decision, the posture of someone who has chosen to remain and is committing to the choice. When the show ended and the lights came up and the noise of the dispersing crowd began its particular process, Elvis was in the backstage corridor and Joe Esposito was beside him and the next 10 minutes had a shape that had been established by many previous post-show next 10 minutes.
Where’s the exit to the alley? Elvis said. Joe looked at him. Why? Show me, Elvis said. Joe showed him. The door opened outward and the rectangle of light fell across the alley and Marcus Webb looked up from where he was sitting and the light showed him what the light showed him, which was Elvis Presley standing in the doorway.
Marcus looked at him. Elvis looked at the boy against the wall, 16 years old, sitting on the ground in the November cold in an alley with the patient posture of someone who had decided to stay somewhere after being told to leave and was not going to apologize for the decision. He came out of the doorway.
He walked to where Marcus was sitting and he crouched down, which put them at the same level, and he looked at him directly. You were in the line, Elvis said. It was not a question. Marcus looked at him. Yes, he said. How long did you wait? 40 minutes, Marcus said. Elvis was quiet for a moment. He looked at the boy’s face, at the specific quality of composure in it, the composure of someone who has processed something and decided not to perform the processing because performing it gives the thing too much power.
