It’s been eleven days since my last entry. After getting out of Batman, Turkey, I headed for Tripoli to see an old friend named Lucy from my days in Baltimore. I first met her at the racetrack just after I had won ten grand on a horse named Ladybug Picnic. Lucy was also collecting a hefty sum at the window next to me when I noticed her. She was giving off pleasant chakras so I decided to introduce myself. We grabbed some drinks at the track bar and before we knew it, it was 3:00 am and the place was closing. She offered her couch to me for a few nights after I explained to her that I was “sort of on the run from the law” and couldn’t even think about checking into a hotel where my mug shot was almost certainly hanging above the front desk. We got into her beat up Volvo and drove across town to Druid Lake where she owned a small one bedroom house that sat right at the edge of the water.

I had originally come to Baltimore to stay with my old friend Logan for a few months. Upon arriving at his home, however, I found it now to be a pile of smoldering ashes, and Logan was nowhere to be found. I had nowhere to go and was too exhausted to get back on the road, so I headed for a place that I once frequented so often, I actually could have called it home: the racetrack.

My granddaddy Tiny got me hooked on the track when I was eight years old. He was babysitting my brother and me one weekend while mom was away on one of her “business” trips, and he brought us along to the track. The excitement of the gamble, the meshed smell of cigar smoke and hotdogs that lingered in the air, the smallness of the jockeys; it all burrowed a home in the same veins that pumped blood to my heart. That’s when I got hooked. From then on, I asked to be babysat my granddaddy Tiny and granddaddy Tiny only, and would pitch an awful fit anytime anyone else even tried.

I stayed for three weeks at Druid Lake with Lucy. We spent many nights discussing the perils and joys of our pasts. She spoke excitedly of plans of moving to Tripoli and beginning her own archaeological society. She showed me maps of all of Libya that she had drawn up during her several visits there and pointed out exactly where her future house sat, right at the edge of where Libya met the Mediterranean Sea. I felt like I had known her for a lifetime. She was a fantastically intriguing and spontaneous individual, and I was sad to leave her. Lucy and Megadeath bonded like siblings, and she was more than sad to see us go. But alas, I was on the run, and I couldn’t stay in one place for very long.

Once in Libya I headed to that tiny blip on the map that had been Lucy’s future Libyan abode. Digging tools rested against the side of the small concrete home, and I had a feeling that I was in the right place. Carved out, glassless windows held small red and green plants and a consistent light dust danced in the air. I walked up the steps and knocked on the door. No answer. I knocked again, this time adding a, “Lucy!” as I cupped my eyes and peeked through one of the small windows on the side of the house. Still nothing. I figured she must be out on a dig, so I pulled Megadeath out of my bag, and we sat on the steps patiently.

The sound of crushed gravel by moving car tires came up the driveway, and I saw Lucy pulling up to the house in a dirt-ridden jeep. She parked and walked over to me, pulling off dusty gloves with her teeth.

“Well, well, well… Shady!” She ran over and gave me a strong, friendly hug. She was thinner than she had been when I last saw her, and her skin was easily three shades darker. Hours of digging for ancient history while the sun beat down had given her skin that helped her blend in with the locals.

We headed inside and quietly cracked open a couple of ice cold beers. With Libya being a “dry” country, Lucy had to have all of her booze illegally imported from an acquaintance in Egypt who shipped three six-packs of beer each month in crates disguised as expedition findings. Each time she finished a beer she would take the bottle outside and crush every piece of glass until the entire thing blended in with the desert sand. She figured that in the six months that she had already been living there that most of the land surrounding her home was made up entirely of glass, which on windy days made it hell on the skin.

I caught Lucy up on my most recent experience with a midget named Fanti in Batman, Turkey and she told me all about her current dig. She and her team found several cave paintings in the Acacus Mountains that led them to believe that the tomb of the Pharaoh Zenes was near, so six weeks ago they began digging. Unfortunately, they had yet to have found anything more than a single tooth of a child. I asked her if she would mind me coming out with her to the site the next day.

“Of course! Now, let’s have some dinner,” she said as she stood and headed into the tiny closet that was her kitchen.

The house filled with the smells of lamb and curried couscous. I salivated as I watched her throw different spices into the pot and then stirring it all in, blending everything in to a delicious meal that I stuffed myself with half an hour later. After dinner we stayed up around one o’clock, talking and laughing.

Just three hours after having fallen asleep, I heard Lucy calling my name to get up. I looked at my watch which read 4:32 am and let my eyes slowly close again.

“Shady, get up if you wanna go out with us to the site today.”

I opened my eyes again and saw her putting on her quickly putting on her shirt. She was more awake than she had been the night before and for a second I wondered what planet I was on.

“We have to get out there early as the sun is just starting to come up so that we can get in some digging before it gets to one hundred and sixteen.”

“Before what gets to one hundred and sixteen?” I asked as I finally got the energy to sit myself up.

“Degrees, Shady. Here, wear this, it’ll help.” She threw me a tan cotton hat with a wide brim.

I told Megadeath that we were leaving and to just take it easy for the rest of the day and that we’d be back later in the evening. He popped his head out of his shell for a moment and looked at me, then headed back in to catch some more sleep.

We got into Lucy’s jeep and drove out of town for nearly an hour before I saw the Acacus Mountains in the distance. Just twenty minutes later we were at the dig site where several colored tents were set up with eight or nine people scattered around them.

“Who are they?" I asked Lucy, pointing to the scattered folk.

“They’re my team. Mostly native Libyans, except for William and Katherine; they’re Irish.”

The team members waved at us as they saw our jeep pull into the site. Several of them were washing their hair with jugged water or brushing their teeth. William and Katherine sat closely next to each other under the canopy of a red tent, sipping water and eating what looked like bread or cookies.

“Lucy, are they living out here, these people?”

“Just during the dig. Katherine and William prefer to stay here at the site instead of finding lodging back in town. They feel that it lets them be more 'in tune' with the surroundings and helps in finding the tomb. They both claim to have some type of psychic power or something that I don’t understand, but their money is funding the dig, so they can do whatever they want. The others are natives who make a living off of moving from dig to dig and don’t really have any place to call home. Any time a new archaeologist comes around, they move onto the next project, like squatting workers, I guess. They’re all good people and they’ve helped a lot since we started. C’mon!” She threw the jeep into park and jumped out.

Lucy introduced me to everyone and then we got right into the dig. Lucy showed me how to dig and what to look for. By 7:30am it was already eighty-nine degrees and I didn’t even want to imagine what it was going to be like at noon. William and Katherine seemed to be taking more breaks than were necessary, but like Lucy had said, they could do whatever they very well pleased since their money was funding her exploration.

By 11:00am I was completely exhausted and felt like I was going to burst into flame. I remembered reading in a science fiction magazine three months earlier that spontaneous combustion is actually quite common in humans, and I began fear for my life. I grabbed my bottle of water and headed to a nearby cave for shade. Just inside the opening to the cave I noticed red paintings covered the walls. A calming cool breeze blew from deep within the cave then retreated, almost physically pulling me further and further in. I pulled a small flashlight from my pocket and took a few steps further into the cave. It was amazing how quickly the sunlight disappeared, leaving me in complete darkness. The light from my flashlight shined on no more than a couple of feet in front of me, and for a second I questioned as to whether or not I should continue, but something literally began pulling me forward. The breeze turned into a strong wind that blew from behind me now and pushed me like a ball being pushed along by the nose of dog.

I came upon a dead end where the wall was covered in hundreds of paintings depicting what looked like people dancing and playing instruments. I just about jumped out of my own skin when I heard someone singing on the other side of the wall. I took a deep breath and stepped closer, pressing my left ear to the cold stone. Someone was definitely singing -- a man, just on the other side of the wall. I knocked twice, and the singing stopped suddenly. I knocked again, this time doing the ole “shave and a haircut” knock. I waited. Suddenly, right next to my ear, the finishing two knocks rapped. My eyes widened, and a tiny bit of pee escaped my body.

“Hello?” I said toward the wall, then pressed my ear back to it again.

An unusually familiar male voice said back, “Who’s there?”

“I’m, I’m Beth. I’m here with an archaeological team from America. Who are you?”

The ground began to shake, and the wall in front of me moved forward and up, like an automatic garage door. There was no one there on the other side, but there was an entire living space that had been arranged by someone. It was a regular Ikea showroom. I looked around for a minute then noticed the tall man standing in the shadows just feet away. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was him... The King. Elvis Presley.

We sat and talked for an hour or so. He explained that since he faked his death in 1977 he had been traveling around the world, living off of the land. He needed to get away from his life in America and experience the world around him. He had been living in a treehouse in a Costa Rican jungle before coming here to Libya. He mentioned that he needed to keep moving so that he would never be spotted, and a lump formed in my throat as I related so much to The King. I promised him that I wouldn’t tell anyone of his whereabouts, but he assured me that wasn’t necessary since he’d be long gone by the time I even returned outside. We said farewell, and as soon as I walked through the secret passageway it began to close.

On my walk back to the outside, what just happened really began to hit me. I paused for a moment and looked back, knowing I would never see Elvis again. A single tear ran down my face (not the one that was tattooed on me in prison). The sunlight began to shine, and I heard Lucy yelling to Katherine and William that they “have been taking a break for over an hour” and asking if they could “please help dig.”

Once I emerged from the cave, Lucy asked where I had been. I told her everything, but of course she didn’t believe me. We continued the dig until around 4:00 pm then said goodbye to the team and hopped back into Lucy’s jeep.

We arrived home to find Megadeath on the couch watching America’s Funniest Home Videos. Lucy and I cracked open two beers and sipped away as we again talked all night long. I knew that I was going to have to leave the next day. That I needed to keep moving, just like Elvis.

I hugged Lucy, and she kissed Megadeath, and we were on our way. As I walked down the road, not knowing where I was headed next, I knew that I’d be fine… just like The King.