Driving the King by Ravi Howard

that had started somewhere in my gut had not made it to the outside yet. And I wanted to be alone when it did.
    As Pop drove away, he circled around on the Lincoln grass and gave a wide berth to the graves. When he stopped for Mrs. Adair, he set her box in his trunk while she shook the dirt from that quilt she’d knelt on. They left Lincoln slowly, careful of scattering the gravel. Then it was just me.
    I would need that walk when I left Lincoln. It was a good two miles back to the Hill, almost a straight shot. My legs were too used to turning at a fence. A straight line from Lincoln back to the Hill would be the longest walk I had made with free legs in ten years. Until then I sat on that grass in front of my mother’s stone, my legs outstretched and my arms out behind me, the way she had seen me so many times when I sat and listened.

Chapter 9
    A fter I left Lincoln Cemetery, I walked to the garage over on Hall Street. My brother-in-law was under the hood of a Studebaker. Pete stared down, with a shop light close enough to his face to burn him. Marie stood on a ladder inside, hanging fan belts on the empty hooks. Marie had covered her clothes with a smock that matched the coveralls Pete wore. The stitching above the pocket read JEFFRIES AUTOMOTIVE , written in the same green as the Esso sign out front.
    â€œAnybody working today?”
    â€œBe right there,” Pete said without looking.
    â€œAin’t got all day,” I said.
    Then he brought his head from under the hood to see who it was.
    â€œMarie.” The first time he said my sister’s name, it was a whisper. Then came the shout. “Marie! Baby!”
    Pete had my shoulders by then and was shaking me.He had a good thirty pounds on me, so him grabbing me was something indeed. He shouted for Marie again, but by then she’d come outside and was calling my name. Her voice sounded so sweet, because this time it wasn’t choked off from the crying and it wasn’t drowning in that Kilby noise. Pete let me go, and my sister’s hands were on me then.
    â€œI told you. Wouldn’t be long before you got home,” she said, something she’d been saying for years. “Told you.” She kept saying it, against my shoulder and my cheek and my ear— told you —until it was just above a hum that I needed to feel against my ear before it could truly be so.
    In most of the baby pictures, Marie was holding me, even if she was just then old enough to carry me on her hip. When I was too big, she settled for punching me dead in my shoulder or thumping me on my forehead. I’d watched her cry too much on our Sundays in the visiting room. On that first day home, the tears were fine, because they were the last she would ever have to cry for me.
    She let go of her hug long enough to put both hands on my face.
    â€œYou look good.”
    â€œBetter than I looked yesterday,” I told her. “Didn’t sleep last night, so ready to get out.”
    It had barely been a month since the last time she’d seenme, but on the outside with nothing between her eyes and my face, everything looked different.
    â€œGot something for you out back.”
    They called it a surprise, but it was a secret that had been talked about for a good long time. We walked through the garage into the backyard, where ten cars lined the fence. My car sat under a cover between a Ford truck and a Mercury. The lines were unmistakably Packard, and the tarp was thin enough to see some of the light flashing on the chrome underneath it.
    Pete whipped back the cover, and the wind helped him to bring it free. It was my first time seeing it. The car had been on back order and had arrived two months after I started my sentence. My family painted it the Centennial colors and hired a couple of part-timers to drive. Marie kept the oil changed and the tires good, and always told me the mileage and how much money I had on the books. For ten years it had