Driving the King (10 page)

“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.

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.

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 worth 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.

Our first real television experience wasn't much better. On colored night at the Alabama State Fair, half of the carnies had the night off, so the television in the Future World booth wasn't even on. With no picture and no power, the television was only a piece of furniture, half wood and half glass. The line moved quickly with nothing there to see. The world seemed better off with our radios and speculation.

Television had always been a small thing. I could find a better picture at the movie house, and the music sounded better on a 45 or the radio. Watching music on a small screen had been a young idea before I went away. Ten years later every house I'd been in had chairs gathered around a television like they once did fireplaces. And on that first evening of
The Nat King Cole Show
, I couldn't imagine any seat empty. Showtime was close, so the viewers were surely gathering to see him just as I walked toward the dressing room.

NBC covered the walls with posters of the stars. Milton Berle and Steve Allen. Next to him, the host of
General Electric Theater
, Ronald Reagan. A framed picture of Nat hung between Steve Allen and Loretta Young, just outside
his dressing room. Beneath the star his placard filled the slot, his name spelled out in those thick, glossy letters.

The lights continued to make me sweat. When I opened his dressing room door, he saw a few beads still on my forehead and the bit that darkened my shirt. He handed me a cloth from the stack on the makeup table.

“Lights are something else, aren't they?”

“Like that kind they put on a brisket,” I told him. “I did your sweating for you, so you'll be fine.”

After Nat lit a cigarette, he almost put the lighter in his jacket pocket, then remembered, and placed it on the counter. The shape of anything in his pocket would show on camera and the lights would pick up a bad line. His suit was shinier than the ones he usually wore, and his lapels caught a little more of the light. That way the cut of his shoulder wouldn't get lost against the backdrop. He wrapped his pocket square around a piece of cardboard, because they couldn't have it falling in the middle of a song. Nothing could be out of place in front of a live camera.

Nat was on edge. He didn't look nervous, but he didn't quite know what to do with his hands, and the fingers gave him away, shuffling something nobody could see.

“Tell me something, Weary.”

“Tell you what?”

He shrugged. “Anything at all. Just tell me something.”

I stole a mirror glance, making sure I looked as relaxed
as we both were supposed to be. Skip talked about this part of things, keeping him cool on the way to the show. Keep as much of the worry in my pocket and out of his. I didn't say a word, only remembered the ones that Skip had put in my ear.
Keep him cool, Weary
.
That's as much a part of your job as anything else.

“Heard a rumor going around that your Dodgers might leave Brooklyn, head out this way. You won't have to watch the Hollywood Stars and pretend like it's real baseball.”

“That'll be a sight. Los Angeles Dodgers.”

“You can sing the national anthem. Maybe they'll have an organ like your team back in Chicago.”

“I'll leave that to a youngster. I'll be on the third-base line somewhere watching.”

His hands started to get quiet, and that was a good thing. They'd be on that piano soon enough.

“They keep saying I'm making history, Weary. Strange thing to call it when it's still in front of me.”

“The kind you make for yourself, though. The best kind.”

People kept telling him he was the first of us, and that he made them proud. I think he'd heard “the Jackie Robinson of television” one time too many. People meant well, but that was a lot of weight to carry, especially for a showman who needed to have some bounce in his step.

“Come a long way from Montgomery, say friend?” he said.

“You and me both.”

He did that last bit of humming then, and the sound came through warm vocal cords, neither tight nor nervous. He looked at that clock one last time, aware of how close he was, so that when the knock came he was good and ready to go.

The National Broadcasting Company proudly presents
. Then the drumroll took over and the crown began to spin.
The Nat King Cole Show.
And the applause loaded up on the reel-to-reel flowed out of a speaker and into a microphone. We had been told not to clap along, so the applause filled a room of silent gazers. The show started in the shadows, and then the lights came up and caught the edges of Nat's suit first and then his face. Once his new city was alive with lights and stars falling all around his mountain, he started with his questions.

In the evenings may I come and sing to you?

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

His first show played out like
This Is Your Life
in reverse. He started at the microphone, where he'd gotten famous, with the swell of his orchestra coming from the wings. When his singing was done, he ended where his
career started, on the piano. The mirror did exactly what they hoped it would as the camera tightened on that flurry Nat made with his fingers.

The monitors showed us what anyone watching would see, and television could give the viewers what a live show could not. No front-row ticket in any theater could have gotten us that close. His hands filled the frame. Anybody watching saw those notes rising the very second they left his fingertips.

When his hands were finished it was our turn. We held our clapping until he was off the air and the mike was cold. Applause felt too simple an offering after a show like that. Two hands together over and over didn't square with what his fingers had spun for us. Some whistled, and the seated folks rose, as all of us stretched that applause until Nat, with a bow and thank-you, brought it to a close.

With enough applause a show might keep going, but television had no encores. NBC had sales meetings that lasted longer than the show did. They had disappeared into the office suite, the lot of them, Carlos Gastel, Bob Henry, Nat, and all manner of NBC folks.