Driving the King (6 page)

DAY OF THE SHOW
1:15 P.M.

I
wondered how many times I could come back to Alabama before I had to start calling it something other than home. Home from war and home from prison. A year in Los Angeles changed everything, or at least I wanted it to. I had a house on Seventy-Fourth Street in Los Angeles, and for that week I'd been back in Montgomery, I'd found my rest in a third-floor suite at the Centennial Hotel. My hotel room was two floors above the cabstand I'd pretty much grown up in. I had spent as many hours there as I had spent at my house. A hotel room was a place for strangers, and that's what I felt like. Maybe that was as it should be, so I could do the day's work and get gone.

My brother and sister had offered me a place to stay,
but they had families of their own. Besides, I wanted space and quiet to get everything ready for the show. Part of me, most of me, was fine with hotel living. With that corner room view on top of Centennial Hill, I saw my hometown as newcomers and travelers did, from the windows of a rented room.

I had reserved three of the four corner suites for the show. Each was named for the views it offered, College Hill, Riverside, Capitol Heights, and Centennial. Nat got College Hill, the southeast corner facing Bama State with its treetops and the copper dome on the bell tower. Skip took Centennial, the same one they'd given him when he visited me at Kilby. I stayed in the Riverside Suite, and it was nice enough. The best part was the sturdy walls that kept the room so quiet that the door knock I heard sounded more like a rumble.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Weary.”

Mrs. Varner stood there holding one of the hotel trays. I couldn't get used to her calling me Mr. Weary, because she'd been at the hotel since it opened and had known me all of my years. She had insisted though. We were both professionals, she'd told me, and reminded me that I was grown, half as long as she'd been grown, but grown just the same.

“I heard our secret guest has arrived safely.”

“Yes, ma'am. We got him situated in his room.”

“I wanted to greet him at the door. You said not to make a big show out of him coming, but it is a big show.”

“Yes, ma'am. But it'll be even bigger if we save the surprise until the time's right.”

“And when will that be?”

“His name goes on the marquee at three o'clock when the ticket window opens. Mr. Worthy will make an announcement on the radio at four.”

“It's a strange plan, but it's yours and we'll follow. I must say, I do like to see somebody with a plan in charge. Heart after my own. You might be tired of me saying so.”

“No ma'am. Not at all.”

She set the tray on the table between the high-back chairs in the corner. She put it down gingerly, but the weight of it still rattled the tea set and the water glasses already there.

“We got something for Mr. Cole.”

She leaned and picked up the edges of the cloth to show me the bronze plaque.
NATHANIEL ADAMS “KING” COLE SUITE.
It took two lines to fit every word of that name, the one he was born with and the one just for show.

“The white hotels downtown have presidential suites and the like, even if no president saw fit to stay there. Mr. Cole is our biggest guest and he's home folk, and we can say in all honesty he laid his head across the hall there. We might as well let people know.”

“He'll be happy to see it.”

“I figure we'll make a little fuss and show it to him this afternoon. Put it on an easel upstairs in the ballroom. If it was up to me you'd have one right alongside his.”

The bronze had been rubbed at the edges to give it a little gleam. Nat had a crown above his name just like the one on the spinning sign that had started every episode of his television show. Those signs had been made of balsa wood and painted to look like something more. Every prop was meant to fool you and look real, but they were all light enough to carry and cheap enough to throw away when the show was done. That plaque in the Centennial's hallway, on the door of the finest room, was meant to stay as long as the building did. Something heavy, bolted deep into the plaster and the frame.

“He'll try to be modest about it, but he'll appreciate you for doing as much.”

Before she covered the plaque again, she rubbed the crown and letters with the corner of that cloth.

“Thought maybe you were busy with everything going on, but I wanted to make sure I visit with you before you go.”

Those chairs were the same as the ones behind the desk in the cabstand. To see Mrs. Varner in one was to remember her visits with my mother. She'd bring two cups of something steaming, whatever the hour and season called
for, and they would sit and talk when they had a bit of time.

“They told me at the front desk you're leaving us tomorrow. But as long as it's for something greener, I'll try not to get sad all over again. I always wish young folks well. I didn't get to say it to you last time, but I'm saying it now.”

“I'm taking Nat to the airport in the morning, and then I'm heading back to Los Angeles.”

“That's a good piece of driving. You got somebody to split it with you?”

“Just me, but I been out there and back on my own. I make my money driving, so the road's the best place for me.”

She patted my hand one good time, and looked around the room. I kept it tidy, shoes lined along the baseboards and my hats stacked on the open shelf of the wardrobe.

“Catherine cleaned this floor today. I see she took care of everything like she was supposed to.”

Miss Vee lifted the glasses that hung around her neck to look at the windowsills and the radiator, the places where the dust liked to hide. As simple as the hotel was, it was never less than tidy. She used to clean the place before she became day manager, her title embroidered on her jacket in maroon and silver. The glasses hung on a chain of stones in those same colors.

“It's impolite to ask what the man's like, because you
work for him and wouldn't dare tell his business. But I know it's nice working for Negroes.”

Miss Vee was right. I had never worked for white folks, but I had been in the US Army and an Alabama prison. Working for my own felt more like kindred.

“I got to Montgomery when I was fourteen from down there in Lowndes,” she said. “That was the last time I ever worked for white folks. Give me Negro strangers. New folks to greet every day.”

Miss Vee worked the desk the day I checked in, and she gave me that hug that people do without speaking. Her quiet was as strong as somebody else's shout. It was the same with my mother's name. She had not once mentioned her during that week I had been in Montgomery, but I knew she would eventually. I had steeled myself, or at least thought I had.

“Your mama and I talked about what you'd do when you left here. I had told her New York or someplace. I knew that if I ever asked after you I'd hear good news.”

I didn't see Miss Vee before I left for California, and maybe I'd been hiding from folks. No matter how I carried myself, it took a while to get loose of that Kilby feeling. People didn't ask me how I was doing and where I had been, they just hugged my neck or shook my hand too hard. I felt the pity in everybody's touch.

“I'm glad you left here, Nathaniel. Glad you came back, too.”

She was my mother's friend, one of her best over so many years. She knew that I had to mourn my mother in prison, a place that hardly respected living, let alone death and grieving.

“When she died I was out there, Miss Vee. I can't get past it,” I told her, and my voice didn't fail me. Tears stayed too low to spill over.

“Nobody expects you to, son. You're not out there now.”

She left again then, and I was back in my quiet. It wasn't sound, but the place was plenty enough filled. Miss Vee and her people still sprinkled their mixture in the vacuum bag, a spoonful of nutmeg or chicory. Cinnamon. Satsuma and clementine peels when they were in season. All of that plus the baking soda they sprinkled on the carpets before they cleaned them. All of our steps across those floors stirred up something sweet. When I rubbed my feet on the carpet, I breathed it into my lungs. Holding in that good dust and trying to let go of all the rest.

I stepped out my door, and Skip stood down the hall on the pay phone, shuffling through the nickels in his palm. Once
he finished his call, he dropped the handful of change back into his pocket and waved me over.

“Everything's set for when we get back to Chicago. New York on Thursday, then London Friday morning. Carlos had Nat booked through New Year's, but they sold every seat. Might add a few more shows. ‘Twelve Nights of Nat Cole' or some such.”

“He'll like some good news.”

“He could sing about Christmas in July, and they'd still pay good money. I wonder if he ever gets tired of that song. But a hit record is a hit record.”

“That's his money.”

“Ours, too.”

“Miss Vee left a plaque in my room. They're naming the suite for him. It's not sellout show news, but it'll be good for him to know.”

“It's nice, I suspect, get your name on something. You see how they started busting up the sidewalk down on Hollywood Boulevard? Walk of fame, my ass. Got it looking like a cemetery with a bunch of headstones. Name on a room is different. People pay big money for a suite, so they might as well see somebody's name on it.”

The windows faced High Street, and the Christmas displays had people stopped and looking. Gray's Electronics and Records had a display in the window, a fake fireplace with a flashing jukebox where the flames would
have been. On the record covers in the window, singers wore red and green, and album titles were spelled out in letters the color of the tinsel and ribbon wrapped around the streetlights up and down the block.

“How's it feel, old man. Back in Montgomery?”

“It looks small. This hotel. The houses. The sidewalks look too narrow. Leaving changes everything.”

“Didn't know what to think of this place when I came looking for you. When Nat sent me out here, that was the first time he'd ever told me about that show. I'd heard all kind of stories, but never from him. He told me he wanted to do right by you.”

“He already did. I made more money in a year out there than I would have in five here. Hell, maybe ten.”

“That's well and good, Weary. But still. His pride. With the show cancelled and all. If he puts some money in your hand, you can put up a little fuss, but then you fold it in your pocket. Just call it meantime money. Until he comes back to Los Angeles.”

“How long?”

“Carlos might book New York when Nat comes back. The road's been better to him than television, so who knows.”

“If he needs me when he comes back, that's fine. But he doesn't owe me.”

“He knows that man was liable to kill him if not for you
whipping his ass. If he puts money in your hand, put it in your pocket.”

He pointed out the window at the southbound bus that let out a dozen or so nurses at Saint Margaret's Hospital, the last stop for white riders before Centennial Hill.

“I think I figured out how to solve the bus problem down here. Double-decker busses. That way if anybody can't stand sitting next to you, they can carry their ass up the stairs.”

“You can see about bringing one back from London.”

“I'll look into it.”

Skip took another handful of change and started to dial a new number, and he reminded me of his warning about a man's money and his pride.

“Take what he puts in your hand.”

“Mr. Adams, it's Weary.”

Whenever we knocked on Nat's door at any hotel, we used the name he checked in under, his middle name, in case somebody in the hallway overheard. The hours before a show need to be anonymous ones, so he had to be somebody else. Nat opened the door without showing himself, and closed the door behind me. He had changed out of his traveling suit, and he wore a red sweater and the round glasses he didn't like people to see him in.

“I know you don't care for surprises, so I'm telling you.
This suite's about to get a new name. Miss Vee made a plaque for you, with you being famous and all.”

“Boy from Saint John Street with his name on the wall.”

“About to be out front in a little while, too. They'll have you on the marquee and the radio after that. Then everybody'll know.”

“All my time in show business, Weary, and this is a first. A show nobody knows about.”

“Every other week you had a surprise guest, and folks loved it.”

“Good for ratings, they told me. Right, too. Ratings were never my problem.”

One of the property rooms at NBC held doors for all the shows. Offices, mansions, hospitals. Cardboard elevators. One door used for
The Nat King Cole Show
had a question mark, and he opened it to reveal mystery guests. In Montgomery Nat and I had been on the wrong end of a surprise that his attackers had kept secret until they were ready.

“You can't dwell. You said so yourself.”

“Turns out I was wrong. I can dwell, but there's no future in it.”

“Skip got good news about London. He wanted to tell you himself, but you and surprises.”

“I'd bring you along if I could. I hope you know that.”

“You got Skip looking out for you. You can hire somebody to drive when you get there.”

“You've never been just a driver, Weary. Anyway, after this evening, you can call yourself a promoter. The world can always use a good one. I ended up in Los Angeles when one ran off with the money and left me stranded. I guess that worked out, so television shouldn't worry me like it does.”

Nat had rearranged the furniture. The narrow table, no longer against the wall, was in front of the winged-back chair, turned into a workplace for the stack of staff pages. He'd made more room by moving the water pitcher and bowl and one of the lamps, placing them on the bottom shelf of the wardrobe. The red velvet chair's seat cushion was dimpled from the bit of sitting he'd done while he worked.