Free Driving the King by Ravi Howard

visitors, I allowed myself to see a better future. Pumping octane at the station my sister and brother-in-law owned was too humble. I saw myself driving through Los Angeles in a car longer than my cell, and it had already become real.
    As soon as my visiting time was through, I walked across the yard to the church. My brother stood by his cab, looking at me. I moved slowly, trying to hold on to myfreest minutes as long as I could. We were not allowed to wave at anyone beyond the fence line. The guards in the tower might think we were signaling, a prison break in the works, and that was reason enough to shoot somebody dead. In five months the gate would open for me to leave that place. Augustine Tate had given me a taste of the free-side world. When I closed my eyes in that prison church, I paid no mind to the chaplain, I took a little trip to the place that waited for me when I got out.

Chapter 7
Montgomery
    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.
    â€œGood 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.
    â€œI heard our secret guest has arrived safely.”
    â€œYes, ma’am. We got him situated in his room.”
    â€œI 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.”
    â€œYes, ma’am. But it’ll be even bigger if we save the surprise until the time’s right.”
    â€œAnd when will that be?”
    â€œHis 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.”
    â€œIt’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.”
    â€œNo 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.
    â€œWe got something for Mr. Cole.”
    She leaned and picked up the edges of