Driving the King by Ravi Howard Page A

chair, rocking it on two legs while he looked at the Hill. I pointed toward Saint John Street, but we couldn’t see any of the narrow shotgun houses, much lower than the trees. No landmarks outside of memory.
    â€œMy father’s church?”
    â€œOn the west side. You can see the steeple. So many over there, it might be hard to tell which is which.”
    â€œI learned to play here. That piano at the house. One at First Baptist, too,” he said. “Can hardly picture it, but this is where it was. I wonder if they changed out the pianos.”
    â€œWe can take a ride and see if you want.”
    He didn’t answer right off, his face had a look full of caution and maybe.
    â€œWhat about the other one? The Empire piano. I’m sure it’s right there still.”
    He didn’t ask about the direction of the theater. If he saw it in his head the same way I saw it in mine, we didn’t need a window or map to find it. Thinking about that place put me right in the middle of it again.
    â€œCrazy thing is, as far as theaters go it’s beautiful,” he said. “Looks like the Palladium in London. A little bit smaller. One balcony instead of two. I wish the look of it was all I saw when I remembered it.”
    â€œTonight you’ll be upstairs. It’ll be different.”
    He nodded, but there wasn’t anything certain about it. Like he was making his head move, but his mind wasn’t following.
    â€œSammy’s singing ‘Route 66’ in his Vegas show. That’s where he had that car crash. He said singing about a road he almost died on takes the sting out of driving on it. I tried to write one about Alabama, but nothing worked. Maybe coming back might do the trick.”
    He returned to the seat, the best and newest of the chairs in the building. When somebody came to that suite in a year or two and saw his name beside the door, they’d know that he’d sat there.
    â€œI think about Montgomery and I don’t hear any music.I see a man with a pipe. You in prison. If I remember it like that, then I wonder if that’s how the homefolk remember me.”
    â€œThis time tomorrow all they’ll remember is the show. You can get last time off your back.”
    â€œAnd yours?” he asked me.
    â€œI let it go when I left here for California.”
    It was a lie, but a lie meant for good. It might help him to think that one of us had let go of that evening. Remembering put it out front again and all around, big and bright as that light that blinded Nat to the man rushing the stage.
    The third-floor suites gave the same views as the ballroom, so the people listening and drinking could walk around the place and see the whole city. My suite looked down on the alley where my brother’s car was, back from his midday runs. His cab sat at the end of the line. A new paint job had the orange and the checkers shining, but it was the same car he’d driven me to the bus station in when I was off to the army, the same car he’d taken me and Mattie to the Empire in, the one he drove Skip out to Kilby to meet me in.
    Every once in a while when I was out on the road crew, I saw a bright car on the highway. To see it was to dream about leaving. To have seen a spot of orange out on the highway fooled my heart into gladness, and sometimes I’d let my mind go along. And then the day finally came.

Chapter 8
    T he day they let me out of Kilby, Dane drove me home with one hand on the wheel and the other on my shoulder. When we took the first turn out of the parking lot and through the gate, he held on like I was liable to fly through the window and tumble back inside again.
    â€œYou look good,” he said. And for good measure he said it twice more.
    The access road curled through a pine grove before it hit the highway, so I had to see the prison once more as the road wrapped around the grounds and circled back toward Montgomery. I looked one last time,