Yellow Limo at Graceland Too

Sometimes I wonder if Paul Macleod was lonely. Sometimes I wonder if he was scared. Sometimes I wonder if he was the smart one. Sometimes I wonder if he was evil. Most of the time I don’t think about him at all.

When I made this photograph several years ago, I thought about how Paul Macleod lived in a small southern town I knew briefly as a young man. I thought about how my perceptions of him were changing. It may have even been on this visit that I first consciously recognized my own ignorance.

I won’t rehash here the myriad details of Paul Macleod’s story. I don’t actually know most of those specifics, and you can easily find articles online to help fill in the blanks. He lived a life that many might accept as southern gothic. So, for the sake of this essay, I’ll do my best in the following paragraph to provide a broad overview with a William-Faulkner-Yoknapatawpha-extended-sentence imitation. Then I’ll move on.

Paul Macleod didn’t live like others, and some people cheered him for that while others loathed him for it, but all seemed to accept that Paul’s was a life unlike any they’d encountered - he built a shrine to Elvis that attracted gawkers, inquisitives, and aficionados; which in turn became embraced and promoted by his local chamber of commerce - though his two failed marriages and by all accounts poor parenting were not entirely unusual nor was his love for Elvis or even the fact that he killed another human - those traits have existed in more men than just Paul Macleod, and will continue to exist in more men than just Paul Macleod - but when he was found on his front porch dead of a heart attack only a few feet away from where, just a day earlier, Paul shot David Taylor through the heart at point blank range, Mr Macleod ensured that the story of his skewed life would at a minimum be passed on to another generation and possibly even become southern legend. We in the south sure do love to glorify in death those we couldn’t stop gawking at in life. It’s a true tragedy that the gawkees rarely live long enough to see that celebration.

But I’m not here to tell you about that. Or maybe I am.

In between undergraduate and graduate school, I taught 7th and 8th grade English in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Graceland Too, as Paul’s shrine was called, had been opened for about five years at that point. I drove by it daily, and visited twice. Though I can’t remember specifically when those moments were, or what exactly happened, I am certain I toured Paul’s home more than once and less than thrice with the trips falling sometime between 1995 and 2002 (or maybe later. I cant recall). I know that I was amused by his apparent eccentricity and I was certain that my own existence was nothing like his.

In 2015 I was returning to the Delta after a work assignment in northeast Mississippi. I decided to drive around Holly Springs, revisiting locations that were familiar to me during my time there twenty years earlier. The tragic ending to Graceland Too had occurred in 2014. The structure was closed and sat lifeless, but still demanded attention. I made this photo, and one or two others, and thought more about my life in relation to Paul’s. At that time I could feel myself seeking change that I was unable define. I wondered if Paul ever felt the same internal tug-of-war.

In 2018, when my first major gut-punch-from-life came, I felt as if I had become the town weirdo. The noise in my head made it seem as if I was the center of conversation at every lunch table. I realized what it meant to build a persona to fight against that raging insecurity created by the toxic mixture of real and imagined conversations, interactions, and desperations. My ways of protecting myself involved retreating into a physical space that provided comfort, a mental space of self-reassurance, and a social space that kept most people at arms length. I didn’t want to repeat the mistake of trusting people that would then hurt me. I couldn’t bear that pain again, but I didn’t want to become a hermit either. I wonder if Paul raged in the same way.

When I found this photo in my archives I considered that I might be more like Paul Macleod than I ever realized. Then I wondered if all of us are more like Paul Macleod than we are capable of acknowledging. I mean, come on, who among us has not felt like fodder for country club chatter? If you are raising your hand you’re either lying or it’s coming for you. Either way, none of us escape this life unscathed. That’s just a fact.

Paul Macleod made people pay attention by the way he chose to navigate the world. Then he made us gasp at how he exited. In between he left in his wake several bombs of trauma, a house with no running water, a massive pile of Elvis paraphernalia, and a story of awkwardness that I just don’t think is as far removed from most of our own lives as we’re willing to admit. Of course, the key to admission first requires recognition.

I wonder if Paul Macleod recognized he was Paul Macleod. I wonder what he told himself in fits and furies. I wonder what he questioned when he was a boy. I wonder what he assumed when he was a young man. I wonder what he knew, but couldn’t admit, as his life was nearing an end.

And I wonder if any of those answers would have even made a difference. For him. For me. Or for any of you.