Extract from Dashboard Elvis is Dead by David F. Ross

Today I'm hosting our final blog tour post of the year, an extract from Dashboard Elvis is Dead by David F. Ross who I previously hosted in a debut spotlight feature back in 2015. 

Renowned photo-journalist Jude Montgomery arrives in Glasgow in 2014, in the wake of the failed Scottish independence referendum, and it’s clear that she’s searching for someone.

Is it Anna Mason, who will go on to lead the country as First Minister? Jamie Hewitt, guitarist from eighties one-hit wonders The Hyptones? Or is it Rabbit – Jude’s estranged foster sister, now a world-famous artist?

Three apparently unconnected people, who share a devastating secret, whose lives were forever changed by one traumatic night in Phoenix, forty years earlier…

Taking us back to a school shooting in her Texas hometown, and a 1980s road trip across the American West – to San Francisco and on to New York – Jude’s search ends in Glasgow, and a final, shocking event that only one person can fully explain…

4th June 1983: 

It is my birthday. Sweet sixteen. Delphine Toussaint, my mom, has allowed me to stay home from school. Larry is driving a car to Dallas for his boss. So Momma wants some company, I guess. She is in a good mood. Sober too. That will make it particularly memorable. We sit on the porch. We laugh about Gonzo chasing a rabbit. And Gonzo’s fat hairy ass getting jammed in a gap in Ed White’s fence. 

Aw Jeez, Jude, Ed wails. I’m gonna have to paint that again now! 

But even he can’t prevent a smile at our big, dumb dog’s attempts to free himself. Mom and I shake so hard at this. That rare type of uncontrollable laughter where you can’t even speak. Your jaws ache. Tears fall, but they’re the good kind for once. I’m going to pee my pants if my pelvic muscles lose control too. 

Ed is a new neighbor. He came around and introduced himself when he moved in. He seems nice. The others around and across from us aren’t nice. Uppity niggers, I’ve heard whispered when out doing circuits. Mom’s boyfriend Larry … Larry Espinosa, a Mexican, is guilty by association. We have two paid jobs in our house: Larry’s, at the bar, and my weekend shifts at the local store. That is so unusual around here by itself it would attract opprobrium, but the even bigger issue for many of our neighbors is that I’m at Humble High School on an athletics scholarship. One of my grade-school coaches had gotten a job there and recommended me for one of a two-student program. My previous school still bore the old signs that segregated the public restrooms and the drinking fountains, yet this poor white-trash community we call home fixates on our limited social privilege because we aren’t white. 

We come inside. We sit on the sofa. My mom in her regular place, me on an arm. We eat ice cream. We watch an old movie. I am happy. 

And then the darkness comes. Stability gives way to confusion. Joy interrupted by tragedy. 

Sirens screaming past isn’t news. Only a month past, Al Havens took a shotgun and fired it at his neighbor over a disputed bet. The sirens were loud then too. They only stopped when Al Havens was dead. He’d tried to give himself up, Larry said, but the cops shot him anyway. Just to be sure. That happens a lot in our community. Doubt rarely benefits the Black locals. Thirty-eight people dead in five years, usually following domestic altercations. But this cacophony is different. It is something out of the ordinary. Something remarkable. By mid-afternoon, the sirens have escalated into an unhinged orchestra of chaos. Something big is happening downtown. A large fire, maybe. Or a multiple RTA on the highway. We remain sure that it is something accidental.

David F. Ross was born in Glasgow in 1964 and has lived in Kilmarnock for over 30 years. He is a graduate of the Mackintosh School of  Architecture at Glasgow School of Art, an architect by day, and a hilarious social-media commentator, author and enabler by night. His debut novel The Last Days of Disco was shortlisted for the Authors Club Best First Novel Award, and optioned for the stage by the Scottish National Theatre. All five of his novels have achieved notable critical acclaim and There’s Only One Danny Garvey, published in 2021 by Orenda Books, was shortlisted for the prestigious Saltire Society Prize for Scottish Fiction Book of the Year.