Velva Jean Learns to Drive (13 page)

The school itself was a one-room building, painted white, that sat between Deal’s and the Baptist church. The classroom was one large room with a blackboard along one wall and desks for thirty-six students, ages six to fourteen, in eight grades. Our teacher was Mrs. Avery Dennis, and her husband was Charles Hampton Dennis, nicknamed Dr. Hamp because he was a doctor, but a doctor of books not medicine. They lived on a hill above Deal’s General Store, in a house that Dr. Hamp had built himself, filled with bookshelves floor to ceiling and old books from the library in Philadelphia, where Dr. Hamp and Mrs. Dennis were from. Everyone on the mountain was allowed to come in and borrow what we wanted and take the books home or read them right there in the fat overstuffed chairs that could fit three of us if we sat close and snug.

On the first day of school, Johnny Clay found a seat in the back with Daryl and Lester Gordon and Hink Lowe and the other boys who were older and liked to stretch their legs out into the aisle and stare out the windows, and I sat up front behind Rachel Gordon and Alice Nix and the others in the sixth-grade class. Everyone buzzed and chattered and Mrs. Dennis let us talk on and asked us how our summers were.

Then she walked up and down the aisle and passed out lined pieces of paper, laying one on every desk. “I want you to write down your life dreams,” she said. Some of the kids just sat there staring at the paper, like Davey Messengill, who never thought much beyond lunch or recess; and Janette Lowe, who couldn’t read or write even though she was a year older than me; and her brother Hink, who couldn’t seem to pass the seventh grade and who everyone knew would be a down-and-out just like his daddy. The Lowes had been mountain trash for generations and, according to Sweet Fern, they weren’t about to change when it suited them so well.

At the back of the room, Johnny Clay was bent over his paper, writing. When he was old enough, I knew he planned to hitch a ride on the rails and travel around the country, picking fruit and mining gold. He was going to be a cowboy out west, and when he got to California, he was planning to look up Tom Mix and William S. Hart and get a job riding horses in films. Johnny Clay said Mr. Hart would have to hire him because we had the same last name and were probably family. When I asked to go with him, he said I was too young but that maybe he’d send for me one day.

Rachel Gordon and Alice Nix sat side by side, as always, matching blue ribbons in their hair. I guessed they would write something about being dutiful wives and mothers. And I guessed that aside from my brother, I would be the only one who didn’t write “to be married and have children,” or “to help my daddy with the farm,” or “to buy that new bait line I saw down at Deal’s.” Personally, I thought these were stupid dreams, but Daddy Hoyt was always saying that what was ugly to one was beautiful to another, and it was a good thing or else we’d all want to live in the same place and do the same kind of work.

I picked up my pencil and wrote, “I would like to one day be a singer at the Grand Ole Opry.” Afterward, I crossed it out and wrote, “I
plan
to one day be a singer at the Grand Ole Opry.”

I sat and reread the line over and over again. It was one thing to dream it; it was another thing to write it down where someone else could read it. By now everyone knew I had been to the Alluvial Jail and that I was a bad and wicked person, that I had backslid so far that it didn’t matter if I was saved or not and that I was surely going straight to hell, just like my daddy had warned me. I wondered what Mrs. Dennis would think of what I’d written and if she would laugh at it. I thought of Mama and how she never laughed, no matter what I said. I thought of writing something else instead, but I didn’t know what it would be. I folded up the paper and shoved it into the pocket of my dress.

Everyone else passed their papers forward and then Mrs. Dennis told us what a good class we were and how much she was looking forward to the months ahead.

One week later, as school let out for the day, everyone ran for the door and freedom. I collected my pencil and my lunch bucket and hurried to catch up with Johnny Clay, who was already outside with the Gordon boys.

Mrs. Dennis called to me. “Velva Jean? Do you mind staying after?”

I watched the others leave, running out into the sunshine, screaming and wrestling, those that could afford it heading over to Deal’s for candy or an ice cream. I searched for my brother and saw him go off with the Gordons without even looking to see where I was.

Mrs. Dennis asked me to sit down at my desk, and then she sat down next to me. “Velva Jean,” she said, “why didn’t you hand in your paper?”

“I wasn’t sure what to write,” I said.

She tilted her head to one side. In a few moments, she nodded. “I see.” I was now used to her voice, which had a slight northeastern twang to it, but when she’d first arrived we all thought she sounded very strange. Her dresses were always neat and nicely starched and she had a smart-looking nose, long and straight with a bump in the middle.

I glanced at the open doorway and beyond to the sunshine and the crowd of my classmates gathered at Deal’s. I saw Johnny Clay come back out from the store, holding an orange Nehi and wondered where on earth he’d got the money to pay for it or if Mr. Deal had given it to him for free.

“I’ll let you go in just a minute,” Mrs. Dennis said. She stood up and walked to her desk and then came back. She set a blank piece of paper down in front of me and tapped it with her fingers. Her nails were painted a soft pink. “I’d like you to write something down for your life dreams.”

I stared at the paper. “What if I don’t know what I want to do?”

“I’m sure there must be something you’ve thought about.” Her voice was bright and she was smiling, but she was looking at me the way Granny did when she knew I was lying.

“What if I write something down and then I change my mind later and decide on a different dream?”

“If you change your mind later, there’s no harm done. It’s never too late to change your mind.”

She left me alone then and returned to her desk. She sat down behind it and picked up a book and began to read. I pulled out my pencil and held it over the paper, rolling it round and round between my thumb and fingers. I thought about writing something simple and acceptable like “to one day get married and have ten babies,” or “to be a missionary and help save the heathens.” But I didn’t want to write those things when they weren’t true.

Although I still wasn’t sure what my mama had meant about living “out there,” I was beginning to think it had something to do with not making my life’s dream buying the new bait line down at Deal’s. Ever since Mama died, I’d felt the need to do something outside myself, so that people would know I had been in the world and so that they wouldn’t forget me. Mama had made an impression. Everyone still talked about how good and how special she was. I wanted people to remember me like that. But my daddy had gone away without anyone paying attention. We never mentioned his name and we never discussed him. I figured he was as good as dead, and now he was forgotten. I didn’t want that to happen to me.

“I plan to be a singer at the Grand Ole Opry,” I wrote. “And play Hawaiian steel guitar as good as Maybelle Carter. And wear a costume of satin and rhinestones and high-heeled boots. I plan to go to Nashville just as soon as I save up enough money.”

I sat back and reread it and considered folding it up and slipping it into the pocket of my dress, just as I had done with the first one. I read it again, and then I stood up and walked to the front of the room and handed it to Mrs. Dennis. I didn’t even look at her, just turned around fast and walked out of school as quick as I could. By the time I got out, Johnny Clay and the others had already gone.

I avoided being alone with Mrs. Dennis in the following weeks, running out of school just as soon as she dismissed us, not even waiting for Johnny Clay. One Saturday in October, I got up early and did my chores, and then I crawled under the porch and read the books I’d brought home from Dr. Hamp’s:
The Little Prince
, which was written by a Frenchman, and
Roughing It
by Mark Twain. When I got tired of reading, I watched Beachard. He was carving “Where Is God?” on a rock the shape of a pumpkin that he had dragged out of the woods.

“What are you going to do with that one?” I called to him.

He didn’t even look up. “Carry it to the top of Old Widow’s Peak and leave it there where everyone can see it from three states.” He had just come back from the peak not two days ago to report that he’d met a man up on the mountain named Getty Browning who had walked from Virginia across the mountaintops. Mr. Browning told Beach he’d had some help when he first walked that route from a man from our mountains, a man named Lincoln Hart. Beach didn’t tell Mr. Browning that Lincoln Hart was his daddy. He just shook the man’s hand and left.

“God’s in heaven,” I said.

“How do you know?”

“Because it says so in the Bible. He lives there with Jesus.”

Beachard didn’t say anything to this. He just went on carving.

“They live up there with Mama,” I said, although I secretly wondered if this was true.

Beach’s chisel went
tap tap tap
,
tap tap tap
. His hair caught the sun and looked more red than brown. “Are you sure?”

I hesitated. I wasn’t sure about anything that had to do with God or Jesus anymore. But where else could they be? I said this aloud now.

Beachard stood up straight, tapping the chisel against his leg. He stared up at the sky and then off toward the woods. He rubbed his eyes with his free hand and then he bent back down over the stone. “They could be anywhere, I guess. If they’re anywhere at all.”

“Well where do you think God is?” I asked. I felt a slight creeping in my heart. It was one thing to know where God was or Jesus, and to know they just weren’t listening to your prayers. It was another to think they might not be anywhere.

“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s what I’d like someone to tell me.”

I watched him for a while until I couldn’t think about it anymore, and then I lay on my back under the porch and thought about my life dreams. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure about these either. What if, when all was said and done, I didn’t have what it took to sing at the Opry? What if, when it came down to it, I wasn’t that special and had an ordinary voice and was normal like everyone else?

What would happen to me if I got to Nashville and discovered that I wasn’t very good? What if I returned home “ruined” like Lucinda Sink? Would I have to live at the Alluvial Hotel and rouge my bosoms? What if I never grew any bosoms big enough to rouge? I felt my chest where my bosoms should be, but where there were only two little bumps, barely bigger than quarters. What would I do if I couldn’t sing? What would my life’s dream be then?

EIGHT

By November the air was turning cool and dry, and the floor of the mountain was covered with leaves and then snow. The sun went down a little earlier each night, leaving us in darkness. My bedroom turned cold from the new chill in the air, which came in through the cracks in the walls, and every night I heated up one of Beachard’s cast-off stones in the fire, putting it at the foot of the bed to keep me warm.

When I went to sleep, the Wood Carver was all I dreamed about. It was the same dream over and over. In it he stood so tall that he blocked out the sun, turning the sky as dark as night. His hair was wild and almost touched the ground, and he would pick me up and hold me over his head so that I was as high as the trees and the clouds and the stars, and then he would spin me around and around. I never saw his face.

I wanted to get a look at his face. I wanted to watch him and study him just like I’d been studying my own face in the mirror ever since Mama died. Was I marked? Could people look at me and tell that my mama had died and my daddy had just as good as killed her? I figured the Wood Carver, of all people, would understand what it was to lose something precious, like the people you loved most in the world.

I hadn’t said a word to Johnny Clay about meeting him. It was the first thing I ever wanted to keep completely to myself. So when I decided that I was going up the mountain to spy on the Wood Carver—in the bright light of day—I didn’t tell Johnny Clay that either.