Driving the King Read Online Free PDF Page B

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.
    â€œNathaniel,” 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 throughthe 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 hadbeen 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.
    I looked for Mattie in the balcony, but the upstairs audience had crowded the railings. And the police moved me out the door and toward one of the squad cars parked every which way in the alley.