Driving the King by Ravi Howard Read Free Book Online Page B

living had pushed Polk’s face closer to the bone, and the work left the muscle thin and twisted. Since the place had no mirrors, it would be years until I saw my face again. I saw what the future looked like on the faces of the men all around.
    Polk was half Uly’s age, but he was a trusty boss because he knew how the place worked. We didn’t say anything to the guards outside of yes, no, sir, and boss. He spoke for us all.
    â€œHey, boss. How ’bout this one? Got the boys pulling good and well today. Good and well.”
    We had twenty yards of kudzu between us and the guards, so he yelled and held up a just-pulled root like it was a channel catfish. Polk worked that shine talk just like he worked that machete. He had learned to put on a show for the guards. Uly didn’t say much, just nodded mostly, like everything Polk said needed a second.
    It hurt me to hear it, worse than the ringing in my ears that still came and went. Men did that “yes sir, boss” talk and loved it. Polk did it to make the work go faster, because the trusted men got the sharpest tools. Our bosseshad all kinds of ways to shame a man. I would learn that in time. A man who stared too long, or spoke out of turn, or even looked like he was about to, got the worst of it. The quartermaster might hand him something made with splintered wood and twisted iron.
    Polk said something to make them laugh, and before they finished, he had his back to them again, his smile dropped back to nothing. I looked up to watch the two guards, carrying on, warming themselves around the barrel where the burning root crackled.
    â€œYou need to stare, stare at that shovel,” Polk said.
    My face showed too much. It always had. I was in a place where it might do me harm. Maybe the guards would know where my head was, swinging a shovel at them instead.
    â€œI keep something on my mind when I’m out here. Something I saw back home. An undersheriff got kicked by a horse he wanted to ride in the parade. He the one threw me in jail that first time. That horse kicked his ass in front of everybody that side of Buckaloo Mountain. See, I think about something to bring a smile to my face, that way I don’t have to kill somebody, my own self included. You—you ought to think about them ten crackers you whipped with a bugle. That’s what it was, right?”
    For a second I felt that microphone’s steel in my hand, but I had nothing but the wood and knots on that handle. I figured I’d let my mind make something new.
    â€œTrombone. That’s what it was.”
    â€œValve or slide?”
    â€œBoth. One in each hand.”
    Uly looked over smiling then, letting a line of that kudzu spit fly.
    â€œSee there, Polk. Showstopper was switch-hitting like one of them Black Barons.”
    Polk looked over at the guards, the fire too low in the barrel to see much flame. They’d be looking over again soon, barking this and that, calling us something worse than what they’d called us before, and that would start that burning inside me, a feeling worse than the aching that had spread from my back, everyplace except my hands and feet, too cold from that winter and thin clothes to feel anything but the shovel and the ground.
    Folks were meant to feel a certain way on Friday evenings, when a week of working was behind them. But Fridays in Kilby mattered for the worst reason. That was execution day. As we marched along the roadside, cars rolled past with plates from the wiregrass, the foothills, and the delta. Some of the cars had the lights on top and others just a county seal, but they were district attorneys and sheriffs ready to watch their man take his turn in the electric chair. They called it Yellow Mama, but the prisoners didnot, because the kind of man to name something like that was the kind who’d never have to take his turn in the seat.
    The executions started at five o’clock, and some days they killed two or