Driving the King Read Free Page A

time Nat finished a New York show and left the stage with a stomach full of blood. Leaving it half-done was unthinkable to the man. He only had two shows he didn’t finish properly, and both ate at him as bad as that ulcer did. One was on television, and there was nothing I could do to change that. But the other was the concert I’d witnessed, the mob rushing him and the band onstage. That one, live from Montgomery, we’d try one more time.
    Skip got in the passenger’s side, and I let Nat in the back. I walked around to the trunk while Claude loaded the bags.
    â€œYou just don’t know what’s bound to happen when you get up in the morning, do you, Mr. Weary?” Claude told me.
    â€œDamn sure don’t. That’s why I don’t save my good liquor. Neither should you. Top-shelf all evening.”
    Nat put his right hand out the window and gave Claude a shake, a good word, and another bill to add to his pocket. Then we were off, driving our quiet miles into Montgomery proper. I’d set up my Packard just like the Cadillac in Nat’s driveway, the car we made our way around Los Angeles in. I had filled the wicker box with staff paper, a handful of sharp pencils, and a couple packs of Kools. He liked to write while he rode. Maybe his hometown would spark something better than the memory.
    The last time Nat Cole was in Alabama, a mob tried to kill him. I stopped them, and paid for it with ten good years. I had brought him home, and I would make sure the show happened this time, from the first bit of handclapping when he took the stage to the last bit when the show ended. I would watch from my seat at the side of the stage, hidden in a nice bit of shadow where I could see everything.
    I had planned to give something to the folks in Montgomery, but there was some selfishness in it, too. The evening was meant for me as much as anybody else. I needed new songs in my head, because I had spent my empty years living in what could have been. That old, lonesome show that haunted me had been playing for much too long.

Chapter 2
    M attie kept straightening things that weren’t even crooked. Her hat. Her collar. No need for it, though, because she looked as beautiful as ever, as if not a day had passed during the war, as if we hadn’t fought a war at all. Maybe beauty was a private little miracle given to those who had been forced to love across the ocean. Time had been set backward, so that when we all got home, the world was waiting in the same place we had left it.
    â€œI hope he doesn’t mind a picture,” Mattie said. “He must get tired of people asking him all the time.”
    â€œI’m sure he’s used to it by now. He won’t mind at all.”
    She ran a finger around the camera’s lens, and flicked the dust from her glove. Of course there was no dust to speak of, because she had been running her fingers across that lens the whole time we sat in the back of my brother’s taxi, riding across town to the Empire Theater.Her camera was a simple, elegant thing, a red leather box that looked something like a gift.
    She had taken a picture of the marquee as we made the turn from Dexter Avenue. NAT COLE TRIO. He was the most famous man, black or white, ever to be born in my hometown, but that sign was a first for us back then. A Negro name with that much light behind it. In Montgomery that was rare.
    â€œYou’re sure he won’t mind?”
    Mattie smoothed her collar again and breathed her nerves away.
    â€œAbsolutely. He won’t mind one bit,” I told her.
    Nat Cole was a friend of mine. He was born in Montgomery a few months before me. When Miss McCarthy called the roll on the first day of kindergarten, I answered when I heard my name.
    â€œNathaniel—”
    â€œPresent.”
    â€œNot yet, Master Weary.”
    As it turned out, two Nathaniels sat in that classroom at Montgomery County Training School. The first on the roll was