Read Online Driving the King by Ravi Howard - Free Book Online Page A

figuring whatever he had to say he’d get to.
    â€œSorry to take your family time, but I came to talk business.”
    â€œI got no business.”
    â€œWell, Mr. Weary—”
    â€œDon’t call me mister. No good getting used to it in here.”
    â€œNo, sir. I’ll call you Mr. Weary. I owe you that much. Wasn’t for you I wouldn’t have a job. See, I work for Nat Cole. He sent me to talk to you.”
    I had not heard that name in so long. Nat had sent letters, asking about lawyers and legal bills and whatnot. He was like all the rest of the folks who meant well and thought that something could be done. I told my people to tell him no. He didn’t owe me a thing. All he did was mind his business.
    â€œWasn’t for you, I might not have a job,” he said. “I’m his driver and his bodyguard.”
    â€œYou can’t do much guarding sitting right here.”
    â€œYou’re right, Mr. Weary. We’re thinking ahead, getting something lined up for a few months from now. He needs to have one more man he can trust, and your name’s top of his list.”
    â€œLong way to come to hire a man.”
    â€œA man we can be certain of. Every Negro singer in America knows what happened to Nat Cole in Alabama. They started hiring prizefighters and gangsters and ex-cons to do what you did. Stand in there if the time comes. You put more folk to work than Roosevelt.”
    He had meant it as humor. But those reflexes, the laughing and smiling, I didn’t use much anymore. So all I could muster was a nod.
    â€œThe thing is, Mr. Weary—”
    â€œJust call me Weary.”
    â€œWeary, you can pay an army of fighters and the like, but you never really know what somebody’s liable to dountil it’s time. Except for you, of course. We know exactly what Nathaniel Weary will do.”
    â€œLike I said, I did what I had to.”
    â€œNo. You could have watched him get his head knocked in.”
    The sound of a guard turning a window crank interrupted us. The blue cobwebs fell, and I would have thought that during my time inside the last of it would have rained down already. Some of the dust fell on Augustine Tate, who wore the clothes meant for better places, like the Los Angeles he spoke about, where looking respectable meant something. I could not see myself in Los Angeles, because my eyes had dimmed to such things.
    â€œYou can tell Nat that me being in here ain’t his doing. Appreciate the gesture but—”
    â€œIt ain’t just gratitude behind all this, Weary. Nat’s got a television show that starts this fall. They wanted to whale on him for being onstage, imagine when he’s sitting in everybody’s living room? He sent me to make an offer, and to listen to you say yes.”
    â€œI got a job waiting for me here.”
    â€œI talked to your brother. Told me an ex-con can’t get a taxi shield. Best you can do is be some shade-tree mechanic.”
    â€œI don’t need a license to pump gas.”
    The look on his face then. Like he’d just heard thesorriest thing a man could say, but I didn’t care. I had to stop yearning for the world. There was no place left for ambition. So after all those hollowed-out years, pumping gas in a filling station five miles from Kilby was dream enough. It was damn near heaven.
    â€œYou got better waiting for you, Weary.”
    â€œBetter than prison? Tell me what ain’t.”
    â€œYou’re right. If I was in here, suspect I’d feel the same.”
    He took two cigarettes from his shirt pocket, lifted them in his hand as he looked toward the guard. The screw walked over.
    â€œHope you got a third one,” I told him. “Got to pay your tithes in here.”
    Skip turned toward him, and the guard motioned for him to lay them on the countertop. He looked back at me and shrugged. Pulled one more cigarette so the guard got his, too.
    â€œTithes my