Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [244]
They drove the rest of the night and all the next day, traveling through the panhandle of Texas, through New Mexico and eastern Arizona. As they approached the famous San Francisco Peaks, the home of the sacred Hopi Indians at Flagstaff, Larry suddenly realized they had gotten separated from the rest of the caravan.
“Uh, I think we’re lost,” Larry said. But Elvis was unfazed: “This is really good, because I needed to be away from everyone. I’m into something very, very important within myself.”
It was getting on in the day now, and the sky was electric blue, deep and unfathomable. Suddenly, Elvis called out. “Look, man! Do you see what I see?”
He pointed to a cloud, and Larry immediately knew what he meant.
“What the hell is Joseph Stalin doing in that cloud?” Elvis said, amazement in his voice.
Larry laughed. “I don’t know. That is really far-out.” He watched as the cloud dissolved back into a nebulous shape, and then he saw a change come over his friend.
“I looked at Elvis, and all of a sudden, his jaw dropped, and he gasped for breath. He said, ‘Ahhh,’ and his eyes were wide open, and he had a look on his face that was just full of revelation. He pulled the motor home over, and he jumped out into the desert and yelled, ‘Watch! Just follow me, man!’ He ran about thirty feet away, and he turned around and looked at me, and there were tears rolling down his cheeks. He grabbed me and he hugged me and he said, ‘I love you! I know now! It happened. It happened.”
Larry stood back. “I saw Stalin in the cloud. But what happened, man?”
Elvis struggled to regain his composure. “Larry,” he finally said, “I remember you said, ‘It’s not a thing in your head. It has to do with your heart.’ And I said, ‘God, I surrender my ego. I surrender my whole life to you.’ And it happened. That face turned into the face of Christ. It was like a lightning bolt went right through me! I know the truth now, and I don’t believe in God anymore. I know that God is a living reality! He’s within us!”
He was laughing and crying at the same time now, shaking with emotion, and wiping away tears. “You can’t understand it unless you get the experience,” he said. “Otherwise people will just think you are nuts, man!” Suddenly he was aware of cars passing on the highway.
“Man,” he said, “can you imagine what the fans would think if they saw me now and knew what I was going through?”
“Elvis, they would probably love you all the more, you know?”
Just then, the caravan caught up with them, and Red West stuck his head out the door.
“Hey, boss,” he yelled. “You all right?”
“Yeah,” Elvis yelled back, “don’t worry about it. I’ll be right there.”
Whatever he went through, “It was very, very meaningful to him,” in Larry’s estimation. “It was a classic rebirth, a confluence of religious feelings and perceptions of his earlier life in the church, and it impacted him deeply.”
When they got back in the motor home, Elvis was still so discombobulated he couldn’t drive, and he called for Red to take the wheel.
“Come on, man,” he said to Larry. “Let’s go in the back.” He laid on the bed and kept repeating, “Wow, wow,” softly, like a mantra. Soon Elvis would start talking about giving up his career and entering a monastery. And he would spend a lot of time with a woman named Faye Wright, better known as Sri Daya Mata, at the Self-Realization Fellowship’s Lake Shrine retreat in Pacific Palisades.
Mary Ann Mobley was Elvis’s costar on Harum Scarum, and she dropped by Colonel Parker’s office one day to sign her contract. Time magazine called while she was there. “They said they wanted to put Elvis on the cover, and Colonel Tom said, ‘Good, that’ll be $25,000,’ or some outrageous price. And Time said, ‘You don’t understand, it’s an honor to be on the cover of Time.’ And Colonel Tom said, ‘No, you don’t understand. We don’t need you.’ ”
Parker, still