Driving the King by Ravi Howard Page A

visiting stall. My feet had the worst of it, though. The cardboard soles of the brogans couldn’t do much to keep me warm. But the cold killed the stench at least. When they’d handed me those shoes, they still smelled like the last man’s feet.
    I did all I could to look my best. I gave the laundry trusty a month’s tobacco rations and a handful of starch clay I’d brought in from the road. He said he’d mix the starch with water and soak my collar before he put the iron on it. I wanted to make my creases right and bring a little bit of order to myself. As for my face, I had to make do. Regulations said a Kilby man had to be clean-shaven, but we weren’t allowed to use razors. All I had was a wooden spatula, lye, and whatever I could find to cool the burn. No matter if we cut the lye with potato or mashed kudzu root, the paste took off as much skin as it did hair, and the slick scars on a man’s face stayed with him. With no glass mirror, just a scratched bit of metal nailed to the wall, I shaved blind and trusted the sting to tell me my face was clean.
    We got one shower a week, and a man expecting visitors took it on Saturday, trying to scrub off six days of funk in that two minutes between the water bells they rang. I used that same lye soap I shaved with. Even getting clean, cold water or not, felt like burning.
    When Mattie walked in, I wanted to stand. Notions of what was right and proper, what a man would do out of courtesy or love, had to be forgotten in favor of the rules. I couldn’t raise a hand or leave my seat in the visitors’ room, so I lifted my head and came as close to a smile as I could.
    She said my name, but it was more breath than voice.
    Seeing Mattie sitting across from me was a new kind of pain. She put on a good face for me, but she clinched her hands so tight that the veins kept rolling. With all of that straining in her smile, she surely felt like I did every hour, Kilby troubling me down to the root.
    She put her hands along the edge of the chicken wire, as much of a touch as they would let us have. With the gauge of the mesh as tight as it was, we could barely find space that didn’t have a piece of that wire on our fingertips.
    â€œWe’re doing everything to get you home,” she said, pushing a little harder.
    â€œJust wanted to take you to a show. All I wanted.”
    â€œWhen we get you out of here, we’ll go somewhere. Maybe we’ll stay for good.”
    When she talked about getting me out, I smiled because I loved her and everything she was doing for me. But I knew full well nothing would open the Kilby gate before I’d done every day of my time.
    â€œAnd you? What about you?” I asked her.
    I knew the answer. I could see the strain in her face, andthe throbbing in her temple. That’s what that prison did to anybody sitting where she was. Like everyone on that side of the visiting stalls, she wanted to be a rock. But a rock could do only so much. We had a prison yard full, and men spent their days busting them down to gravel.
    â€œI’m holding on. Thinking about getting you home,” she said. “Dr. Burk gave me the rest of the term off. She wrote letters trying to get some lawyers down here. She met Charles Houston when he was down here for the Scottsboro trial. I wrote to William Lewis in Washington. He worked for President Roosevelt. Lots of people are working to get you out.”
    I knew all about the Scottsboro Boys, and thinking about them made things worse. People had come from all over to help the nine of them, sent to prison on a bald-faced lie. One of them was still on my tier. His face was scarred where they’d shot him when he tried to escape. They couldn’t give that man his years back, and they couldn’t give him his right mind when Kilby broke him.
    â€œThey’ve been throwing soldiers in jail all over. People are talking, trying to get something done about it. We have