1947. Instead of Memphis, the Presley family relocates to rural Kentucky and young Elvis meets a girl named Loretta Webb. They change each other's lives as well as the course of history. Elvis Presley/Loretta Lynn fanfiction.
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Leading up to their move from Tupelo to Paintsville, a black cloud loomed precariously over their home, like a bad omen signaling the impending doom that was on the verge of boiling over. It built steadily over many weeks and while Elvis knew that something was going to happen, he would have never guessed that his father would walk into his classroom and demanded that Elvis come with him right now because they were moving. At the apartment, his mother was already packing up their belongings with tears running down her face.
The car holding them and their meager possessions screeched out of the driveway when it finally occurred to Elvis to ask where they were going.
"Somewhere," his father snapped. "Texas. Freakin' Kentucky."
It did end up being Kentucky, but Elvis wouldn't know how that decision had been made because he was told to sleep in the back seat. He did lay down and close his eyes and somehow, after listening to his parents' heated whispered for a while, he drifted off to sleep—but not before he caught the fact that his father had done something that would land him in jail if he got caught.
Though they arrived a few weeks before the school year ended in Mississippi, he was not sent to school in Kentucky. At first, they stayed at a boarding house in Paintsville while his parents looked for work. His mother told him that it might be months, but only weeks passed until his father found them an abandoned cabin up in the hollers.
The size of the cabin was more than acceptable for the three of them, but they didn't have electricity nor running water, both things Elvis had gotten used to having at least some of the time in the cheap apartments and houses they stayed in. The cabin was sparsely furnished—four chairs, a table, an old double bed, and moth-eaten curtains Gladys threw out as soon as they moved in. Elvis was meant to sleep on the couch his father bought for the time being, but Gladys wouldn't have it. No, her growing boy needed to sleep in a bed. She and Vernon would take the couch and Elvis could sleep in the double bed. Vernon grumbled about how foolish that was, but Elvis slept in the bed. Having to sleep on the couch did prompt Vernon to produce a twin bed as soon as humanly possible. Since there was no money for a mattress, Elvis helped his mother gather straw, grass and hay for a makeshift one. Gladys covered the sacks with a heavy winter blanket before spreading the sheet over his bed.
Elvis spent most of his summer keeping his mother company. He didn't know any of the other children and was much too shy to simply walk up to them. Everyone knew each other, even seemed to be related to each other. He treasured the time he spent with her despite his climbing age, but the usually cheerful Gladys Presley cried a lot now. Elvis tried to cheer her up by singing or playing his guitar and, more often than not, he managed to at least coax a smile out of her. Still, he was pleased with the current arrangement.
The day it was to finally come to an end, Elvis awoke to the sound of his mother's disembodied voice calling his name. Thoughts of his first day of school, which had kept him up nearly all night, came rushing back to his mind. He expelled a groan and rolled over onto his side.
