Driving the King (3 page)

At seven years old, Nat Cole threw curveballs with either hand. His left coming at you like Big Walker, and that right like Satchel Paige. And when it wasn't baseball it was marbles, where Nat Cole could put enough English on a cat's-eye to send us all home empty-handed and head scratching. We should have known from the sound of the strikes and the clink of marbles in keepsies. It didn't occur to us that all of his winning ways, a left hand as good as the right, came from that same piano playing he did when he sent “Old King Cole” out of his window, floating down the street and carrying that nickname. Maybe it was a stretch to say we gave it to him, when he gave it to us first.

After Mattie and I exited through the side door, we took our place in the second of the two lines on the
Montgomery Street sidewalk. The first line started near the marquee, and the white patrons were damn near close enough to touch the letters, stretched over the walkway as big as war headlines. The value of the marquee, outside of telling who's playing and when, was that it gave a little shelter if it rained.

It could have been raining on us in the other line, which led to the little box office with that sign in the window,
COLORED SEATING
, that let us know we were in the right place. Above our heads was nothing but three stories of brick wall, the fire escape, and the sky. We waited beyond a rope that, exposed to the weather, had not been velvet in years.

The black cabbies knew which end of the block to leave their fares, and three of our orange cars were among them. My mother and father both drove their Hudsons, and my brother, Dane, drove the Studebaker. At that time of night, he could make it from the Empire to Centennial Hill in six minutes. Another minute and a half would get him from the Court Square Fountain to the capitol steps and that statue of Jefferson Davis. A few more turns got him over to Union and south on High Street all the way across town to Jackson and the cabstand. There the city became ours again, where the State Theater marquee did for us what the one above the Empire could not, keep the rain off our heads while we waited for a show.

I had been raised to believe that if I timed it just right in my taxi, I could outrun Jim Crow. He was not fast or skillful, because he did not have to be. He could always corner us somewhere and make us wait. If I moved quickly and kept to schedule, I could leave him somewhere looking at my taillights. When I drove that cab, the elusiveness was possible. But standing still in the other line, Jim Crow had me where he wanted me. Nat's plan was enough to elevate me for a while, but then I felt Jim Crow's ass while he sat upon my shoulder, sweating out the starch of my army uniform, leaving creases where they didn't belong.

We stood beneath the heroes in the wall posters, matinee specials of soldiers old and new. John Wayne and Anthony Quinn, and, for good measure, they had brought back old Howard Hughes and his
Hell's Angels
. Hollywood had sent its armies to sit sentry, keeping watch over Saturday night. Those of us below them—sailors, nurses, a pilot or two—wore the wartime colors that we'd saved Europe in. We had gotten as far as the Empire and its velvet rope, where we waited for somebody to open the door.

When Nat Cole played the 1941 Autumn Ball, he had filled the Centennial Ballroom. We hadn't seen that kind of commotion since Erskine Hawkins came back from Harlem. Nat was not altogether famous, but famous enough. That
was the first time I had heard him play since we were children. One hand was Chicago fast, and the other nice and slow, like some country boy straight out the woods and in no hurry to go back home.

During a break, Mattie and I eased up close to the piano, where I had thought that I might say hello to “my old friend Nat” to impress my date. I thought better of it, because so much time had passed. People changed, as they should. If I had left Montgomery for Chicago, then left Chicago for Los Angeles, my birthplace might feel small and distant. I didn't expect him to recognize me, but I was sure glad he did.

“Good ol' Nat Weary!”

“Good ol' Nat Cole,” I said. Mattie looked at me like I was on a whole different shelf right then.

You could still hear a little bit of Alabama in his voice, secondhand by way of Chicago and California, but it was there just the same.

When I introduced him to Mattie, he greeted her with a smile and nod. They talked about “Honeysuckle Rose,” and she told him she liked what he did with “Song of the Wanderer,” different than what Erskine Hawkins and Count Basie had done. She spoke as calm as could be, the whole time her hands dug into my arm, strong enough to pull the elbow clean off. Once Nat started the second set, I felt the lighter touch of her fingers, practiced on pianos
since she was a child. She played notes down my arm, “Dream a Little Dream of Me” and a little of the song that came after, a medley that ended with her fingers in mine.

Mattie whispered the names of the songs I didn't know, and as the evening went on, she whispered all manner of preludes to the night that was our beginning. We'd met in a lecture hall, and what had started as talk across desk rows had taken on a new form. It had turned into a long-felt touch in those weeks that led autumn into winter, as we enjoyed the wonders of articulated love.

Then came Pearl Harbor. As a part-time student and part-time cab driver, my number had come up among the first. Mattie and I were left with the bits of each other that could fit in the white frame of photographs we sent across the ocean. Every so often, a wartime radio was close enough for us to hear a Nat Cole record and that faint sound of home. Victory brought me back. On either end of my war years were those two shows of Nat Cole's. That old one at the Centennial and the one I waited for with Mattie's hand on my arm and her ring in my pocket.

Nine of them would play the show. Nat at the piano. Oscar on guitar. Johnny on bass. The rest were horns, six of them, their positions set on the bandstand at the back of the stage. They were local players who marched with the
Bama State band. The New Collegians, they called themselves. The piano was separated from the bandstand by a screen decorated with autumn leaves in red, white, and blue, matching the bunting that lined the stage. During the shows I'd seen at the Empire, the thin fabric of the screen revealed only the shadows and lines of the bandstand. Once the music started, the screen would show them as it rose, lifting the music and applause right along with it.

From the first row of the colored balcony we could see most everything. Too small a consolation. After Mattie set her camera on the floor, she nudged me. The seats in the front row downstairs were filling, including the two that we'd sat in after we left the dressing room. Perhaps the starlight had emboldened us, and with no ushers around and the outside doors still closed, we made ourselves comfortable in the forbidden row, if only for a few seconds, before we eased back outside. A young couple took the same seats, with the man unfolding my A4 for his lady friend and then taking A3, where Mattie had been. I'm sure he found his cushion sunk a little bit lower because of the beautiful crater left by Miss Mattie Green, more lovely and buxom than Jean Harlow, Betty Grable, or the young lady who held his arm. Mattie had run her hand along my collar and my ear, and then down the back of the downstairs seat, collecting army green and red velvet
lint on her gloves. She'd rolled it between her fingers and released a bright little tornado that spun to the floor.

Our actual seats were worn, but sturdy enough. Besides, once the music stopped, everyone in that theater would want to be in my place, AA17. That ring had been with me for the seven hours since I'd bought it, but I had lived with the notion for years. People had rushed to altars all over Montgomery before the war, but I didn't want to.
In case I might die
wasn't the way I wanted to start things. I needed it to feel like forever instead of maybe.

“I wonder what song he'll play first?” Mattie said. “I guess it doesn't matter, because I want to hear them all.”

I just squeezed her arm. I didn't want to say much until I said the most important thing. The nerves had started working, and I needed the last few minutes to get collected. No fumbling with the pocket button or dropping the ring.

On my way out, I'd told Mr. Cartwright about the plan me and Nat had made, and then I'd given him three more half-dollar coins, one more for him and two for the stagehands above our heads, moving on the catwalk that ran down the center of the theater, their own little alley high above us. One turned right and the other left as they took their places on the twin spotlights that flanked the stage. One looked across and nodded my way.

The blinking of the house lights came and went, and the place got showtime dark. The New Collegians came on, and the applause started, polite from downstairs and heavier in the balcony, where some of the folks probably knew the band members. As the horn players took their seats on the bandstand, Johnny, Oscar, and Nat came on to roars and clapping from the top and bottom of the theater. As soon as Nat took his place at the piano, the band started with a little of the local flavor with “Tuxedo Junction.” Then Nat leaned into the microphone and told us what we already knew.

“Good evening, Montgomery. We are the Nat Cole Trio and we're pleased to be here tonight with the wonderful New Collegians ensemble. It's good to be back home.”

Hearing him say “home” brought more cheers. When he lifted his hands from the piano, the band stopped as well. One of the two spotlights left the stage and swung around to me.

“Montgomery,” he sang. “Let me tell you 'bout a friend of mine . . .”

And then it was my turn.

Mattie watched me drop to a knee. My back foot stepped onto the folks beside us, but they seemed to understand. I took Mattie by both hands, and everything about her said yes. People downstairs were on their feet. A few from
the rows beneath the balcony had walked into the aisle to see. Sweet murmurs came from the seats all around us. I was never one who liked being the center of things, never craved the attention of anyone beyond my loved ones and friends, but that feeling was something else, the whole world knowing the good news I'd held in my pocket for too long.

I froze before I could reach for the ring. My heart beat faster than it had since the war. It was not because of love, marriage, or the fear of either. Through the brass railings along the balcony, I saw the trouble coming. The usher moved down the far-side aisle, walking faster than any usher needed to. He was already five rows from the stage. He didn't search out seats, and he had no patrons behind him. He looked at Nat, who didn't see him because he was looking at me like everyone else in the Empire.

“Nathaniel,” Mattie said, more a question than my name.

By then she was looking over the rail, seeing what I did down below, just as that usher jumped the stage. His flashlight hit the floorboards as he pushed himself up. The spotlight showed that it wasn't a flashlight at all. It was a foot and a half of lead pipe.

Nat and the band played softly, “Somebody Loves Me,”
but it was loud enough to mask the footsteps of the man crossing the stage.

Mattie saw it, too. “Somebody—”

That's when I shouted and jumped over the railing. I was again at the foot of the stage, pain running up both legs from the jolt of that fall. I stumbled up the stairs, trying to get to the piano before the man with the pipe did. But I didn't. Nat by then had turned and stood, moving just enough so that the pipe meant for his head hit his shoulder instead. The thud, more flesh than bone, sent both men to the ground.

The band shouted in the middle of the ruckus going on behind the screen. The attack stopped the show before the screen lifted, and a half-dozen men, some with pipes and some throwing punches, had rushed the bandstand from the back. Nat was alone in front of the piano, grabbing at the man's shirt, the cotton so thin that it ripped, freeing the attacker to rear back with the pipe again.

I got in front of him before he could hit Nat, but he was quick enough to catch me in the side of the knee. Not a good shot, but good enough for me to stumble. Before he could square up, I grabbed the microphone that had fallen to the floor against my foot. I swung, and the first blow sent him back against the piano. I kept swinging, and the sound of the steel against his skull went through
the Empire, and the screaming from the place got quiet. I swung some more, beating him until the microphone broke to pieces and went dead.

The police had poured in, and two of them pulled me off him. I stood in the middle of the stage with cops on each arm. By then, the attacker was on his feet, squared up with me. I had broken his nose, and his right eye was already swelling. In spite of all that, he smiled and puckered his lips to spit a long bloody shot that caught my ear. The rest hit one of the police. And as the officer raised his hand to his face, he let go of my right arm, so I swung again. I leaned into that punch enough to free the last of his teeth and send him off the stage headfirst.

As the police led me to the side door, the applause started, because Nat was walking to the front of the stage. Though he favored his right side, he was upright. He looked toward me, not a nod or a smile, but just a look that said as much. He took a long breath, or at least tried to. An army corporal set the piano bench right and moved it toward Nat, but he said thank you and no. Seemed he had something to say, and everybody got quiet to hear. But he didn't talk. He waved his good arm and began to sing. “Got the world on a string . . .”

Behind the screen, the band picked up the instruments and started playing. As raggedy as the whole affair had
been through the free-for-all, the music was clean again and moving straight ahead. The New Collegians were outnumbered by the audience, drowned by the murmuring of folks still stunned. Once the band started playing, it was like a new kind of wind rolled in and the ruckus that had clouded the place cleared out. Nat had no microphone so his hands carried the song instead.