Driving the King

by Ravi Howard

  “You keep calling it home, Weary.”

  I wished what she said wasn’t true. My yearning had done me harm on occasion, taking my mind to old places. But I followed and let it be. On that evening in June when I left Mattie’s hotel room, the quickest ride home would have taken me right by Ivie’s. Instead of driving along Central, I took the long way around. That guilt took me blocks out of my way, because some mornings Lucinda worked the midnight shift that stretched until after sunrise and she might wonder why I would pass without stopping at that hour of the morning. I was not a man with lies at the ready, and I didn’t want to get caught trying. I had done that bit of backsliding, but I had put most of that old-time yearning behind me.

  “When are you leaving?”

  “Before the week is out.”

  My leg had fallen asleep while hers were on top of mine. And as the nerves came awake again, tingling and fire, I wondered if dreaming happened in the muscle and skin. I stayed on that seat, because I couldn’t stand up and trust my steps. It would be hard to walk with one leg slumbering and the other wide awake.

  The back porch shared a window with Lucinda’s bedroom, and the view was the same one we saw at night, listening to her songs when we made time. While the record spun she hummed along, on my chest and in my ear, and turned her live voice into a duet with the one on vinyl. Lucinda counted time on my skin, with a knee across my thigh, fingers on breastbone. I had hoped that morning might take its time getting there, stay back east for a while longer so we could fit in a few more hours of night. Sometimes on the patio she opened a window so the music that filled the house could join us outside. But on that afternoon, there was nothing but outside noise and the love seat’s creaking, which went away when I stopped it from swinging.

  “Your friend, the woman from the theater—”

  She didn’t ask a question, but I felt it there just as sure as the concrete under my feet.

  “She’s married.”

  “So was I. Doesn’t make you stop wondering.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “The years don’t matter as much as how they feel to you. You can hold on to a time and keep it close. Too close.”

  She did not ask me if I had seen Mattie, but if she did I would have lied. I might have told the front end of it, hearing that speech down at the Dunbar. But the rest wouldn’t have done either of us any good. Lucinda told me I didn’t know where I was yet, home or someplace else. I was still in the middle of getting right, so I could tell only as much truth as I was certain of.

  “I’m going back to put on the show, and then I’m coming back.”

  “I hope it looks different to you. Feels different. If it doesn’t there’s not much reason to come back at all. Guess you won’t know until you get there.”

  She had a question in the middle of what she told me, but I could only answer with speculation. The sooner I got down to Montgomery, the sooner I would know for sure.

  Chapter 30

  Montgomery

  DAY OF THE SHOW

  6:10 P.M.

  You all right, Mr. Weary?”

  I had not yet seen her in Montgomery, but Mrs. Lomax was there waiting when I got back to the Centennial, sitting with her Dictaphone in a case at her feet.

  “Look like you might have gotten a little winded,” she said. Saying good-bye to Mattie had tugged at me for a good long while, so I’d walked with it down the block and back, carrying that feeling. It still had some weight to it, so carrying that up the steps might have left me looking spent.

  “I believe I’m fine. Or I will be soon. I had a list of things to get done before the show. Making sure I leave here with no worries. I’m a little run-down, but I’ll be better.”

  “Don’t worry. I covered most of the musicians on Central Avenue; promoters, too. The nerves go away when the show starts. And by the look of that line outside, you did just fine. Of course, I can’t forgive you for keeping this a secret, but I think the consolation works just fine.”

  I had promised Mrs. Lomax an interview. True to her word, she was staying in Montgomery until the boycott was over, and we still weren’t there yet. She had been gone, but I’d kept up with her on her news pages. Before she had left Los Angeles, she had written about Jim Crow in Hollywood like it was the City Lines bus, and she had written up the boycotters like they were superstars. In her next paper, she could write about both.

  “Glad he agreed,” she said. “Candor can be hard in Mr. Cole’s business. For some of them the show never really stops. They can never turn it off long enough to tell me what I need to hear.”

  “When he’s got something on his mind, he’s careful about who he tells. Now seems like the right time. He wants to talk about what happened to the television show.”

  “Hiatus,” she said.

  I shook my head. “They’ve kept it quiet. Say he’s touring, but he’ll tell you the whole of it.”

  “You were right to call me then, Mr. Weary. I’m the one to talk to. I have a dozen papers that’ll pick up the interview in the morning.”

  She handed me a business card, Lomax Wire Service.

  “We’re looking for a buyer for the Tribune. I could either be there to run it, or I can be here. It was a hard call, but I have to stay. Three Negro papers in Los Angeles, and soon there’ll be two. There’s exactly one Negro news service in this city, and it’s mine.”

  “Have to start over sometimes,” I told her. “We both know that now.”

  “Being new here let me tell it right. Reporters from the white papers have been in and out, but they come for a few days or a week maybe. I couldn’t cover it like that. I needed to be here to understand.”

  She walked to the window and pointed toward the Dexter parsonage just down the block. The house had been repaired, but it was easy enough to see the damage. The new shingles were the same color as the old, but years of fading had given them a color hard to match. So the line was easy to see. The street light bounced differently when it hit the old tiles and the new.

  “I was here before they bombed it, so I saw that hole in the nursery wall. I sat in there with Mrs. King not a week before. It feels different when you know a place before the next round of trouble starts. This city is the same.”

  I had passed the parsonage enough times to know the swing was gone. Anything there when the bomb exploded—slats, carriage bolts, and the chains—would have been as deadly as a bullet if they’d hit the Kings. The worst kind of blast makes shrapnel of the simple, comfortable things. Mailboxes. Rocking chairs.

  “I met the preacher before I left here. Sad that his house had to burn to make a name for himself,” I said.

  The gardens at Saint Margaret’s Hospital ran the length of the block along Jackson Street. It stood to reason that sick folks or their families might find a little bit of comfort looking at the flower beds and birdbaths, but I wondered what they thought, minds troubled or bodies ailing, the night they looked out the window and saw a parsonage burning.

  “The hero business is a strange one,” Mrs. Lomax told me. “For every name I see somewhere, I talk to a dozen people who have to hide their work for all kinds of reasons. People I admire all have a little dirt on their shoes. Like you.”

  “I’m an ex-con. So I got plenty dirt on mine.”

  “I worked for a newspaper owned by a racketeer, one who bought a hotel and named it after Paul Laurence Dunbar. A so-called gangster with an ear for poetry. We’re complex folks. It takes more than the saints to handle trouble.”

  She rose then, because Skip was in front of Nat’s room with the door a bit cracked. He was close to being ready for her. Skip held up his fingers and signaled that she could come on down in a few minutes. I had one more question before she left.

  “This might sound strange, but I need to know. Have you asked anybody about me? I mean, I know people tell that story and have a little bit of fun with it, but what do they say when my name comes up?”

  “They’re sorry abou
t what happened to you.”

  “Sorry.”

  She nodded yes.

  “I came back so that won’t happen again. This time tomorrow when they hear my name, they’ll be talking about the show. Let that be my high point, and then I’ll be gone on home.”

  “I understand, Mr. Weary. Leave something behind you besides dust. Still, though. I heard you beat a man with a microphone. And in my work, I’ve beaten a few myself. It’s a good feeling, isn’t it?”

  All I could say was yes.

  “So long, Mr. Weary.”

  Mrs. Lomax picked up her Dictaphone and headed down the hallway. Skip tipped his hat and let her into the room. What she recorded I could only speculate on. It wasn’t my business to ask Nat. The back of her card listed the papers that carried her news wires, and I would pass through a few of those places on my way west. I’d find myself a newspaper. Nat had been so quiet and so careful, and he no longer had to be.

  Chapter 31

  Montgomery

  DAY OF THE SHOW

  7:45 P.M.

  The doors opened fifteen minutes ago, at seven thirty. When the time came, I went upstairs to watch the crowd enter and get their first look at the stage. The bandstand’s colors warmed the place, and the new wax on the hardwood spread the colors all over the floor. The elevator and the front stairs brought the crowd up from the lobby, filling the banquettes along the side. Their voices filled the place as well. In the studio, everyone was so careful of the least little sound that might kill a song, but on a live record the sounds let you know that music had been someplace, made in a room full of good times and laughter.

  The New Collegians would start the show with “Tuxedo Junction” until Nat came up the stairs and took the stage. The crowd would roar then, and with the transoms open, that sound would make it down the side of the building. Maybe some of the music would get into the copper rainspouts and spiral down to the sidewalk.

  I walked up and down the back staircase to make sure no one lingered. Skip had done the same with the front. Miss Vee and her people watched out for the front door, and Dane watched the back near the cabstand. The mob of folks who came for Nat last time would have nowhere to hide in the Centennial. So a locked door and a watchful eye would keep the show safe from interruptions. With that, all we needed was the music.

  When the interview was over, and Mrs. Lomax had taken her seat in the ballroom, I went back down to sit with Nat like we did on television days, telling him something or just letting him tell me whatever he had on his mind.

  He pointed to the ceiling.

  “Listen to your room, Weary.”

  The foot tapping worked through the brick and joists, the lathe and the plaster. The New Collegians changed players every year and mixed in some new sounds with the old, but the fanfares were staples, so the sound I anticipated came to me note for note.

  “I want to tell the folks a little story about Saint John Street and how I got my name. I want to make sure I get it right.”

  “Any way you tell it will be fine.”

  “They’ve been patient for all these years, friend. You along with them. I’ll give them what they came for.”

  The clapping came in time with the fanfare.

  “I need to thank you for bringing me back.”

  “No you don’t. All you have to do is give them a show. We do it right, then they’ll talk about it for years.”

  The knock on the door meant five minutes from showtime, and with that I walked Nat up the back stairs and to the steel door at the side of the stage. My chair sat in a corner to the left of the bandstand. And I took my seat before the spotlight came on. The audience got their first view of Nat Cole.

  Then came the sound that everyone should hear at least once, the roar of strangers cheering just because you showed your face. Nat thanked them and took a few minutes to say hello, and to introduce the New Collegians one more time. He was also giving Willie and Evelyn time. It was a smooth and unnoticed way to get the sound just so, because sound check or not, when a room fills, so many things change. Evelyn worked the levels, and Willie was on the reels.

  Nat started with a familiar question.

  In the evenings, may I come and sing to you?

  Someone shouted yes.

  All the songs that I would like to bring to you?

  And then it started. Willie checked the reels one more time. They moved like the first slow turns of train wheels, at the speed of anticipation. Three shows started all at once. The live show for the ones in the room. The live show on the radio. The show on the reels for future listening, the tomorrow show for all who would listen in the days that would arrive in time.

  And I considered the time between now and back then, the long-ago show that he never finished, and Nat standing there bruised singing “I’ve Got the World on a String.” He’d put that first on the set list. The years notwithstanding, he would pick up right where he left off.

  I watched two shows of Nat’s come to an end, one because of money and the other because of a man with a pipe. I prepared for both. As for men with pipes or anyone else, I placed my chair near the side of the stage, out of sight.

  I had reached the place where I looked forward more than back. I looked forward to the horn solos, the long, held notes. I always marveled at the kind of breathing going on underneath, the laboring hidden under a single sound. Instead of something cobbled together, the sound was woven tight like gabardine, so all to be heard was the one thing and not the pieces.

  Evelyn and Willie collected every note. Echoes had stopped chasing the sound. Maybe they’d decided to sit back and listen, or perhaps, instead of bouncing and mocking, they sang along in time.

  I watched people listening, wrapped in the right-now sound spinning all around us like it did on turntables and in that wind that carried the tide of radio waves. The sound pushed back the outside noise from the streets below, the rattle and whine of the emptiest busses. The people who came that evening had enjoyed either a walk or a ride to get from home to their seats. And the lights had gone low, except for the ones meant for the stage. I needed to see it, that look on their faces when that moment began. The waiting was behind them, because we had brought our people the show they had imagined for so very long.

  Acknowledgments

  I am thankful for the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Hemingway Foundation, PEN New England, Ucross Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Baton Rouge Area Foundation for funding and residencies that helped me to complete this novel.

  Thank you to the staff of the Rosa Parks Museum and the Davis Theatre for the Performing Arts for tours and notes on Montgomery history. Both facilities are entities of Troy University Montgomery, an important center of downtown preservation.

  I also appreciate the efforts of Alabama State University and those involved in the salvage and restoration of Nat King Cole’s childhood home. I am likewise grateful for the work of Mr. Edward Davis, owner of the Ben Moore Hotel, who granted me access to the facility and answered questions about Centennial Hill and Montgomery in the 1950s.

  I appreciate the work of the Paley Center for the Media, locations in New York and Los Angeles, where hours of Nat King Cole footage are available for public view and research.

  Thank you to the staff of the Emory University Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library. The collected papers of Almena Lomax provided deeply engaging insight into her work chronicling the civil rights movement.

  I have shared this work with my fellow Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop faculty, Maaza Mengiste, Gregory Pardlo, and Vievee Francis. Thanks to them and to Callaloo editor Dr. Charles Rowell for generous feedback, support, and encouragement.

  I am indebted to Sanderia Smith and Nelly Rosario for their generous notes on the novel. I also appreciate the good counsel of Dr. Kern Jackson and our conversations on Albert Murray and the Alabama blues aesthetic.

  I am likewise grateful for the support of Marita Golden
and the Hurston/Wright workshops for helping me to shape my voice. I continue to cherish the instruction I received at Howard University and the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Virginia.

  As always, I thank my wife, Laura, and our boys, Ellis and Cole, for their love, support, and patience. Thanks to my mother, Caroline Yelding; my father, Leon Howard; my sister, R. Jai Gillum; and my brother-in-law, Andrew Gillum.

  I am, as always, thankful for the support and good counsel of my editor, Claire Wachtel, and my agent, Dorian Karchmar, whose advocacy and feedback have supported and enhanced my journey through publishing.

  I am thankful to so many in my hometown, Montgomery, Alabama. Most of those who made the bus boycott successful did not become famous, but they shared their stories with younger generations. As a youngster I met some of the activists, and I surely crossed paths with the anonymous many.

  We can never know or call every name, but we can show them the work made possible by their efforts, sacrifices, and triumphs.

  About the Author

  RAVI HOWARD won the 2008 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence for his novel Like Trees, Walking. He was also a finalist for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. Howard has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Hurston/Wright Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the New Jersey Council on the Arts. Howard’s work has appeared in Callaloo, the Massachusetts Review, the New York Times, and on NPR’s All Things Considered. As a sports producer with NFL Films, he won an Emmy in 2005 for his work on Inside the NFL. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

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  Credits

  Cover design by Jarrod Taylor

  Cover photograph: © The Granger Collection, NYC (front)

  Also by Ravi Howard

  Like Trees, Walking