Driving the King

by Ravi Howard

  “I figured I’d say good-bye tonight without you knowing. Hugging and crying ain’t the way to start a trip. Plus Eleanor might try to feed me before I go in the morning. Have me nodding off to sleep and in a ditch somewhere in Mississippi.”

  I tried to make light of it, but I couldn’t say a proper good-bye to family I hardly knew. I had been a stranger to my brother’s children. I had heard family stories that were new to me. So many times over those days, my loved ones told stories that started with remember when. And for me, the answer was a silent no, but I listened, hearing things that were unfamiliar, painfully so. Every story fell into the hole left by the things I’d missed.

  “It’ll be good for you out there,” Dane said. “You’ll see some things. Might see Nancy Wilson.”

  “If I do, I’ll tell her Dane said hello.”

  “Autographs. The kids say they want some. Doesn’t matter who, just anybody famous.”

  “I’ll send as many as I can. Pictures, too.”

  Around the time the meeting let out, a delivery truck pulled up and left a bundle of evening papers in the box outside Parker’s Pharmacy. Dane got out and bought one. While he stood there, reading and flipping, a young man spoke to him. I’d seen him leave the bus meeting a while before. He was dressed like a professor in that tweed the teachers wore, but the clergy pin gave him away. He had a paper bag in one arm, and in the other, a topcoat and a briefcase with corner marks in the leather from a multitude of books.

  I could tell what they were saying without hearing a word. My brother pointed to the car, offering a ride, and the preacher pointed toward the corner, saying he was fine walking. Dane shook his head and took the paper bag and the young man followed. I leaned back and popped the door before Dane had to reach for it.

  “Martin, my brother Nathaniel. Nat, this is Reverend King. The new Improvement Association—the folks meeting across the street. Rev’s running it.”

  “It’s running me, I believe.”

  I turned to shake his hand. As young as he was, he looked just as tired. Saturdays could be hard on a preacher. Weddings and funerals, maybe both in a day. On top of that, figuring what to say the next morning. The day had caught up with him. New stubble covered his face along with the razor bumps that hadn’t healed all the way.

  “Welcome home,” he said, nodding into his hello. “I saw your picture on the wall in Malden’s. I saw you standing next to Nat Cole and thought you were a musician. Then somebody told the story. One said it was a trombone and the other said trumpet.”

  “In actuality, Rev, it was a microphone.”

  He settled back in his seat. “A microphone.”

  He wore the clothes that concealed a day’s worth of rumpling. Tie and a vest, that same sturdy wool, so the top layers of his clothes could keep him looking fresh long after he was spent.

  “They tell me Nat Cole’s father used to preach here.”

  “Over at First Baptist, matter of fact,” I told him.

  “Reverend Abernathy’s place,” he said.

  “Nat played piano fifth Sundays with the children’s choir,” I told him. “Couldn’t have been more than six years old. Had as many people showing up for him as they had for communion.”

  “I get on that upright every now and again, but I could never play like that. Good to calm the nerves,” Martin said.

  He was quiet for a minute, and then he pulled himself toward us with both hands, his arms resting on the back of our seat.

  “I need to ask you all something. I couldn’t ask any of the preachers or association folks. They might think I’m—well, unappreciative. Why do you think they chose me for this? All the people to put in charge, and they chose me.”

  We’d reached his house by then, and Dane pulled to the curb before he answered.

  “From what I heard, everybody thinks you’re smart. The white reporters love to quote some ignorant preacher. You ain’t that. That’s the first thing. Second, you’re from Atlanta. And I got to be honest, Rev. If the white folks run you out of town, you’ll have somewhere better to go.”

  “Not a thing wrong with honesty. Better to hear it to my face, I imagine.”

  I heard him gathering up his things then, and that satchel had some weight to it, too much to be carrying around all day. As much as folks talked about walking, they would have to learn to travel light.

  “Been in a few Packards, but I’ve never seen a pinstripe seat,” he said.

  “This is Nathaniel’s car. He always wanted a hat like this, but with a skull as large as his, it wasn’t feasible. Mama said if she bought that much fabric, she could just reupholster a car instead. He could roll his head around the headrest and the seat and be satisfied.”

  The young preacher looked at us like we were crazy, but that good kind of crazy that he preached about. Fiery furnaces and lion’s dens and that kind of crazy.

  “No shame in a big head. The sign of a thinking man,” he said.

  The porch light came on and his wife peeked through the curtain while she cradled a baby. All I could see of the child was an arm, a small hand around the mother’s thumb. The curtain moved like Mrs. King did, back and forth to keep the baby calm.

  “How old?”

  “Three weeks.”

  “Your first?” I could feel him smiling before I saw as much in the rearview. Smiling and saying yes.

  “The young girl who was put off the bus back in March, the Colvin girl, you all know her?”

  “Know some of her people,” I told him. “Good folk.”

  “I guess you don’t have to know her for it to be a shame.” He looked toward the house. “Well, next time. I figure we’ll be ready.”

  It was a neat little place, and it had been the parsonage for as long as I had been alive. The preachers had all been old before, so his was the first young family. The first baby born in that house.

  “Porch looks good,” Dane told him.

  “Had some paint left from the nursery. I thought the swing might be good for Yoki. They tell me it might not be a good idea, sitting on my front porch. Things might get ugly.”

  “It’s been ugly for a while, Rev.”

  Dexter Avenue Baptist Church was half a block from the State Capitol, but the parsonage was a mile away, on the last block of Centennial Hill. The distance made that house feel more like a home, no different than the ones of the doctors and professors who lived in the houses next door. It was quieter that I would have expected, even with Saint Margaret’s emergency room across the street.

  I looked back at the preacher, and I thought at first he was looking at his family. His house. But that tiredness had made its way to his eyes, and he was sound asleep just that fast.

  “Martin? Rev?”

  When he came to, he said something with a nervous chuckle, a bit embarrassed. “I appreciate the ride.”

  “Ain’t a problem. And remember what I said. Once the mayor sees we got the right man in charge, you’ll have the bus thing figured out in a week or two.”

  His nod was gracious if not certain.

  “Good luck to you in California,” he told me.

  “Good luck to you here,” I told him.

  With his door open, he paused for a minute, and said the rest of it.

  “I saw Nat Cole in Boston. Storyville. Shook his hand. He wouldn’t know me from Adam, but let him know he has friends in Montgomery.”

  “I’ll be sure to pass that along, Rev.”

  He waved his thank-you to us once his wife opened the door, and then it closed behind them. Once they were in for the evening, the twin porch light fixtures went dark.

  “How old do you think he is?”

  “They said he’s twenty-five. Maybe a little older, but young.”

  “God bless him,” I said. “Y’all need to tell him to be careful walking around at night. Especially with his name in the paper.”

  “Why you think I gave him a ride?”

  “Over in a couple of weeks,” I said. “That’s what
you told him.”

  “I had to tell him something. Felt bad after I told him he might get run out of town, as true as it is. I had to leave him on a good note, at least. It’s not your worry anyhow. You got to get up early and leave without saying good-bye. Just don’t forget my pictures. Nancy Wilson. Sarah Vaughan. Dorothy Dandridge.”

  He went on like that half the way home, turning the radio dial and calling that sweetheart roll.

  Chapter 12

  I lined up my nickels along the top of the pay phone across from the gas station. I didn’t know how much change me and Nat Cole would talk through. Beechum was the only one pumping gas on Sundays. He lived next door in the duplex, where he ran a fix-it shop out of the first floor. He dealt with typewriters, lawn mowers, sewing machines, mainly. Anything with a spring or a motor. He wore coveralls and black Stacy Adams shoes, and he sat in a chair under a tree that marked the property line.

  Skip Tate gave me Nat’s phone number along with a package of things I needed to look over before I made my way west. While Beech filled up the Packard and the two gas cans I left by the pump, I got on the phone. The voice of the operator was Sunday-morning sweet.

  “How may I direct your call?”

  “Los Angeles,” I said. “York 54981.”

  After her thank-you, three rings and then an answer.

  “Hello?”

  I was ready for someone else, but Nat answered.

  “Hello, Nat? It’s Weary.”

  “Good old Nat Weary,” he said. “Happy to know you’re back home.”

  “Sorry to call so early—”

  “Not at all. Been up for a while. This thing in my head, I needed to hear how it sounds.”

  The music behind him was low, and I only heard it when he was silent. Trying to hear that song, I was quiet for a little too long.

  “Weary? You there?”

  “Just wanted to call and let you know I’m about to hit the road.”

  “Good. There’s a room for you at the Dunbar. Elizabeth and Walter work for us, and they rent out a couple of houses around Avalon. Said they have a place opening up that you’re welcome to. First of December.”

  “I’m sure it’ll be fine. Better than fine. Want you to know I appreciate all this.”

  “We’ll be lucky to have you.”

  “But—”

  Didn’t quite know how to say it.

  “You don’t owe me this, you know. That man got what he had coming.”

  “But you. What’d you get?”

  Again the words didn’t come right off. It was easier to listen. I had missed years of his music, so much of it was new and classic at the same time.

  “What’s the name of the song?”

  “That’s the hardest part sometimes,” he said. “Maybe by the time you get here I’ll have one for it. Safe traveling.”

  I held the phone awhile after he was gone. I started to collect my unused nickels, but I decided to leave them. A little bit of fortune for whoever came next.

  Chapter 13

  I stood in Nat’s light, and I saw how that NBC stage would look to him once the first episode began. Beneath all that heat, a man couldn’t do anything but sweat. While Nat sat in his dressing room, the director asked me to stand in his place onstage. Bob Henry needed to get the lights just so, and he needed someone close to Nat’s color and his height to stand where he would and move through his marks from center stage to the piano. Instead of a spotlight, the television studio had lamps on a grid overhead, shining down at all kinds of angles. Some hit me directly, and others lit the spots I walked to, following the same steps that Nat would take that evening.

  The camera and the microphone, both on wheels with brakes and handles, trailed me and stopped just over my shoulder as I sat at the Steinway’s bench. I had followed the tape on the cement floor, hitting every mark. When Bob asked me to turn my head and look at the camera, I did so. Staring at the three lenses, and not knowing which was the right one, I just looked at the chrome carriage bolt in the center of them, and I ignored that microphone that dropped down, close enough for me to reach.

  “We need a level. Say a little something for us, Weary.”

  Bob leaned around that camera when he said as much, looking at me with the headphones pressed a little tighter to his ears. I had an audience of workers, a skeleton crew of apprentices setting up chairs for the orchestra. One wheeled in a cart of kinescopes. The fellow unrolling sound cable looked up for a minute, like what I was about to say meant something.

  “Give me a second, and I’ll think of something clever.”

  Someone behind the rack of monitors raised a thumb. I couldn’t tell whose it was, but that thumb gave way to wiggled fingers.

  “Need a read on the keys, Weary.”

  I’d be a fool to pretend like I knew what I was doing, but I remembered a little from the few music lessons I’d had. So I played for the NBC people a familiar sound, G-E-C, the three keys of that peacock’s call. I got a smile or two, and a little bit of that nervous laughing people did. The whole lot of them were anxious.

  Half of the sales department came in and out, and Nat told me to never miss a chance to eavesdrop, because any news, good or bad, would come from them. I heard the secretaries saying the salesmen had calls out to would-be sponsors, telling them to watch. Hearing about it wasn’t enough, but seeing it that evening would be enough to bring it home for Nat. A nervous-looking salesman was a sorry sight, and I hoped they’d have enough sense to stand a little farther from the camera line or else put a good face on.

  Walking the studio halls at NBC and passing other sets, I saw how far money could take somebody. That Texaco coin bought a top-notch backdrop, a blue-skied city with a filling station on every corner. In front of that canvas, they would roll out those shiny gas pumps, real ones, with a Texaco star made of red and white glass. That Buick money had bought Milton Berle a marquee, and Chevrolet had put plenty of sparkle on that sign of Dinah Shore’s. Burbank was too young a town for a full-grown skyline, so the closest thing to a cityscape hung from the rafters.

  Nat’s backdrop was simple but it did what it needed to. The black canvas had holes punched out of the line-drawn buildings, and the bulbs shining through the openings looked like bright windows on a clear city evening. Nat would sing from the valley of a make-believe Los Angeles, and the night sky would glow with gaslight crowns flickering behind him. With no sponsor and his own money, he built his city any way he could, and it looked decent enough considering.

  I had watched the shop apprentice jigsaw a piece of balsa wood, taking it from a sheet to a crown that Friday during rehearsal. It gave me something to do while Nat sat in a meeting that was an hour longer than the run-through. Mackie had been an apprentice for his father, who had worked at NBC since the radio days. Apprentices were all that Nat’s show could afford, but Mackie was one of those who jumped at it. A hit show would turn an apprentice into a full-timer that much faster, and put some money in his pocket at the same time. Mackie covered the crown in black shellac and painted the letters a pearly gloss, until that balsa had a candy apple shine.

  “You showed me something with that crown,” I told him.

  “Longboards. I made a couple, and my old man figured I might be a carpenter after all. Mr. Cole ought to do a beach episode. Surfers. The whole nine.”

  “He finds somebody to pay the bills, and he just might.”

  Mackie made a stand for the sign and covered the spindle in axle grease so the spinning would be as smooth as the finish. Once he’d screwed it on the post, he set it in a bucket of concrete. That would be Nat’s logo and signature until some sponsor put a name above his. Mackie gave it a whirl, and that crown spun like it would never stop turning.

  So Nat King Cole had a crown at least. He paid for it himself, but it was still a crown. When I walked past Mackie’s shop stall that day of the first show, he was still cleaning. The racket he was making that time was not the jigsaw but the vacuum, clearing a day’s wort
h of dust that had dulled the fixtures. I waited for the noise to die before I told him what I had for him, one of the 45s Nat wanted me to hold and pass to the shop boys.

  “A little something from Mr. Cole. Let you know we appreciate you.”

  His tools were still ringing in his ears, so his thank-you sounded like a shout, but sincere all the same. He sliced through the seal with a pocketknife, and he wiped his hands before he touched the record, careful of getting dust on the vinyl.

  “Won’t be in stores until the New Year most likely, so you and the boys will be the first.”

  Mackie took a little look at his record, one side and the other, before he returned it to the sleeve, the grooves shining like that handmade crown.

  “Say, Weary, some of the guys are getting chairs from the prop house. I’ll save one for you.”

  “I appreciate it, but I got a spot by the board where I can see everything. You boys stretch out and enjoy it.”

  With that he was gone, off to claim his seat in those last minutes before the show. Of course, they didn’t need seats really, because the show was all of fifteen minutes. Thirteen and a half minutes of singing and a little touch of small talk, because NBC wanted to give the people as much Nat Cole as they could in that time. The handwriting on the cue cards matched the rundown on the chalkboard. Even the banter was timed, never more than thirty seconds’ worth at a stretch.

  The only choreography was a cool walk from one mark to the next until Nat sat down at the bench, where he would let his fingers steal the show. He wanted anybody watching to see it up close. Mackie had done what Nat had asked for and prepped that Steinway for a star turn. He’d added a strip of mirror along the case so that the keys, their reflections, and a double of set of hands would fill the frame. So with that piano and a spinning wooden crown, Nat Cole was half an hour from showtime.

  My personal history with television had been brief. I had cut my teeth with the soundie box at the pool hall on Thurman Street. It was a jukebox with a little movie to go with the song. We’d watch the bands clown and smile at the front row girls who smiled and winked right back, showing all that leg. We’d go in together, Dane and our friends, pooling our money to make a nickel. My mother said those machines were indecent, a frog’s hair away from being a peep show. That was the whole point of it, standing back there in the darkest corner where the tube light shined brightest. That box disappointed as much as it thrilled, because the soundie machine was liable to cut off before the song was over, slice the picture in two, or blink so much that the picture was more kaleidoscope than anything else.