An instant: Late summer, 1977, I was perched on the end of my mom's poolside chair--the kind with the wide rubbery blue and white slats that brand your behind in the Tennessee August--cracking open a nutty buddy. It was adult swim, the dreaded period when the kids get whistled out of the pool so that the adults might take a dip without getting their oversized sunglasses or oversprayed hair splashed by kicking floatied children or chubby teens belly-flopping off the high dive. No adults, it occurs to me now, ever swam laps; maybe that's not something people did in the 70s, or in Greeneville, and besides, adult swim could only last so long before the poolside concrete became a sweltering site of whining protest. Me, I had my nutty buddy to stem my impatience and the heat, so all seemed okay, until the music stopped.
The a.m. radio in the pool office, that dank, puddly, coppertone-smelling place where most of the teenaged lifeguards were breaking from the sun, switched mid-song to clipped and crackly words, but I didn't bother to make out what they were; I was too busy diagonally peeling the paper wrapping for phase 2 of my nutty buddy, the phase that comes after the hard chocolate/nut topping, but before the first bite of actual cone, the phase when the vanilla ice cream licks clean and smooth. I had to work quickly. It was melting fast.
A red-shorted lifeguard bolted from the office shouting something over and over, bumping kids waiting in the snack line. Someone's change clanked on the walk. Women swiveled from their mostly still spots in the pool to see what could be interrupting their sacred 'swim.'
I finally looked up from my nutty buddy at this lifeguard and his flailing arms, and made out the panicked words "Elvis died, y'all! ELVIS IS DEAD!"
Melted ice cream began streaming down my wrist, joining with the drying pool water for a race to my elbow. I'm not sure why, but people started to behave like they did at the first low rumble of thunder, quickly packing up their things, piling into searing cars, and heading home, in spite of the clear skies and the obvious fact that Graceland was clear across the state. On our way out I tossed the nutty buddy top-down in a barrel by the chain-linked gate and pictured the milky remains oozing between sandwich wrappers, coke cans, and empty cigarette packs.