Velva Jean Learns to Drive (21 page)

There was a dark patch of woods in the center of the forest where the trees were especially thick and completely blacked out the sky. I knew home was on the other side of them, but I was always nervous walking through there, and until now I’d only been there in the daytime. This was where Spearfinger lived, the witch woman. Sometimes you could hear her shrieking in the distance, up above the wind and the treetops. She took on the shape of anything she liked—a bird or a fish or a person you loved—but underneath it she was made of stone. She roamed the woods looking for children, hoping to touch them with her bony finger and steal their souls.

As we stepped into the thick of the woods, I walked a little closer to Johnny Clay and tried not to look about me. I thought it would be just my luck, after all those years of wanting to see a haint, to finally see one now.

“What was that?” I asked again. Somewhere behind us, there was the snap of twigs, the crunch of leaves. I was terrified to look, sure I would see a ghost or maybe the Wood Carver roaming the woods on all fours. Would he remember me? Or would he even recognize me in his animal form?

“Nothing, Velva Jean. Jesus.” Johnny Clay liked taking the Lord’s name in vain. He thought it made him sound grown up. With my free hand, I held on to the back of his shirt, light enough so that he wouldn’t feel it.

“Great Holy Moses!” he yelled, so suddenly I jumped straight into the air. He slapped at his face and chest. “They got me, Velva Jean! The cannibal spirits got me!” He danced up and down and laughed like a donkey.

I slugged him good and hard across the back. “Johnny Clay!” But it got me thinking about the Nunnehi, the moon-eyed people. Sometimes they played tricks, but more often than that—according to Granny—they protected wanderers lost in the mountains, guiding them home with their drums and their lanterns. I started to pray in my head for them to help us and guide us home safely.

And then we heard it—a kind of high-pitched scream that made us both jump. I knew what panthers sounded like—“painters,” Granny called them. They sounded just like a woman being murdered. I’d heard them all my life, way up on the mountain, and Granny had always told us tales of the panthers that lived in the woods and hunted at night. Sometimes, she said, they waited in trees for people to pass by and then they would drop on them and carry them away. Sometimes they reached in the windows or doors of houses and stole human babies and dragged them off to their dens. Sometimes they would follow a person for miles until you didn’t know where you were, and then you would turn around and there they would be, and they would drag you off and bury you in the leaves.

There came another howl, this one close by, somewhere to the left of us or the right of us, we couldn’t be sure in the dark. We froze.

“Holy shit,” Johnny Clay said, very low, and I knew now it was okay to be scared. I was trying to remember what it was we were supposed to do if we saw a panther. I couldn’t remember if we were supposed to stand still like statues, like when you saw a mad dog, or if we were supposed to run. I knew Granny carried around a small ax whenever she went out midwifing, just in case she ran into one, but all we had was Johnny Clay’s flashlight.

To the side of us, there was the sound of four legs, of pacing back and forth, first to the right of us, then to the left, suddenly in front, then behind. There was a flash of light red-brown—the color of the earth—the thud of leaves being crushed, of heavy breathing. There was a low growl, almost a hum. Then, it lunged, and I felt the hem of my dress tear right off and something cold and wet on my leg.

I screamed and we ran, crashing into trees and limbs. Johnny Clay was faster than me, but my legs were long and I ran hard behind him, keeping my eyes on his back and on the light bobbing in front of us. When it all of a sudden went completely dark, I smashed right into him so that we both almost fell over.

“Light’s dead,” he said. He clutched the flashlight with his hand like a weapon and grabbed my hand with his other one. There was a scrambling behind us, a scraping of nails, a pounding of feet. “Throw something at it,” he shouted. “Hand me that mandolin.”

And then I remembered something Granny had told us. “Take your clothes off, Johnny Clay! Granny said to take your clothes off and throw them at the panther cat so it’ll attack the clothes instead!”

Johnny Clay tore off his shirt, throwing it backward over my head. I didn’t look back at the sound of ripping cloth, just kept right on running. All I had on over my underclothes was the ugly green-brown dress Sweet Fern had made me last summer that was already too short in the arms and the hem. I tried to decide what was worse—being killed by Sweet Fern for coming home without that dress, or being killed right there in the woods by that panther.

“Throw something else, Velva Jean!” Johnny Clay yelled. We could hear the panther coming along again behind us, faster than it had before.

I decided that dress or no dress Sweet Fern was already going to kill me. I pulled that ugly green-brown dress over my head and let it drop behind me. Then I tore off my slip and threw that too. I ran, feeling terrified—but also light and free—in my undershirt and shorts.

Together, Johnny Clay and me ran as hard and fast as we could, my hatbox banging into my bare leg and my side. I ran blindly and by instinct, my free hand reaching out in front, trying to slap away the tree limbs that were hitting me in the face.

Because I couldn’t see with my eyes, I tried to see with my ears, my nose, my memory. I could hear the running, the beating of four legs, of eight, if you counted Johnny Clay and me. And in the distance—very faint—I couldn’t be sure, but it almost sounded like drumming.

“You hear that?” Johnny Clay said, his breath coming in gasps.

“Yes.”

“Run toward it,” he said.

We ran toward the drums. For one instant, I closed my eyes so that I could hear them more clearly. They seemed to grow louder, and we chased them. They faded and grew louder again, faded and grew louder. All the while, I could hear the panther beating down on us. Suddenly, the drums grew so loud that I wanted to cover my ears, and then they stopped altogether.

“There!” Johnny Clay shouted.

There were flickers of light up ahead, like lightning bugs or lanterns—here and there, lighting a path. A light would flash and then go out, and then, feet away, another light would flash. Somewhere I heard voices—from up high in the trees, from down low on the ground—close by, but too far away to make out the words. We ran for the lights and didn’t stop until we passed the edge of the woods and Beachard’s rock and reached the front porch of home.

We raced up the steps and fell into a heap, swearing (Johnny Clay) and crying (me). We were weary and frightened and hungry and half-naked and thankful to be back. I could feel the cold sting of blood running down my leg where the thing tore at me with its claws. I suddenly felt light-headed and swoony, and I lay back and tried to breathe.

“You’re bleeding,” Johnny Clay said, and I could hear the admiration in his voice. “It got you, Velva Jean!”

Sweet Fern was sitting there in the rocking chair waiting for us, a lantern on the floor beside her. I saw the whiteness of her face and the vexed look in her eye. There were lines around her eyes and her mouth that I’d never seen before, and I saw that she had been crying and that her cheeks were still wet. I knew at times like this she wanted to curse Mama and Daddy for leaving her with us children. I knew she nearly hated them for it. But I wanted to throw myself at her feet and wrap myself around her ankles. I wanted to tell her I was sorry, that I’d stay home without complaining, that I didn’t need to go to the National Singing Convention, that I’d be good and obedient and I’d help her however she wanted me to—even if she had twenty babies—if only she wouldn’t let me die.

“I been beside myself all day,” she said, jumping up, “tramping around to neighbors’ houses, having to ask about you two.” She looked down at us and I knew we must have looked a sight, all tangled up and out of breath, and Johnny Clay lying there wearing only his union suit and me in my underthings. “And look at you. Just as naked as jaybirds, just as wild as mountain trash.”

By this time, everyone had come running—Daddy Hoyt and Granny, Danny, Linc and Ruby Poole, Aunt Zona, the twins, Aunt Bird, who hobbled along as best she could, and even Uncle Turk, who had come up from the river to look for us. I knew Sweet Fern was mad enough to spit but she also looked like she might cry again. “I could kill you both,” she shouted. Danny stepped forward and laid a hand on her shoulder. She brushed it off and stalked inside the house, and then, not even a minute later, she came right back out and bent down over Johnny Clay and me and hugged us so tight that we couldn’t breathe.

I’m home, I kept thinking after we got done eating. Daddy Hoyt stitched up my leg where the panther got me, and I didn’t even cry because I was so happy to be home and not dead in the woods somewhere. I didn’t even cry at the burning when he rubbed spirit turpentine and brown sugar on it to help it heal. Afterward, while Granny helped me get ready for bed, Danny and Linc went out into the woods with their shotguns and their lanterns, hunting for the panther.

Sweet Fern said our punishment was to do extra chores for two months. I had to use every last cent of my Nashville money, including the five dollars I won singing at the Alluvial Fair, to buy some new material so she could replace that ugly old dress I’d thrown at the panther, and I wasn’t allowed to work for Mrs. Dennis anymore, and now I would most certainly never be going to the National Singing Convention. Johnny Clay had to take an afternoon job down at Deal’s until he earned enough to pay for the shirt and pants he threw away. This put Johnny Clay in a bad mood, but not me. I was still so happy and grateful that I would have done anything Sweet Fern said.

Thank you, Jesus.
The moment we started running through the forest, I began praying to help me make it back.
I promise you
, I’d told Jesus in my head, so that Johnny Clay couldn’t hear,
I promise you that if I get home I will never turn my back on you again. And I promise that I will never leave home until it’s time for me to go be a singing star at the Grand Ole Opry.

At this point, I wasn’t sure who had saved us—Jesus or the Nunnehi. I tried to conjure the sound of the drums Johnny Clay and I had heard in the woods, or what we thought were drums. For some reason, I couldn’t hear them anymore, even in memory. Whoever had saved us, I was grateful.

I lay on my stomach in my own safe bed with my face turned toward the window. I heard a shout from the woods and a gunshot followed by another and another. There was a scream like a woman being murdered. I pulled the covers tight around me and buried my face in the pillow and started to cry. My leg throbbed where the panther had got me.

The next morning, I got up early to do the extra work Sweet Fern had laid out for me. My leg was sore and I limped a little, just like Red Terror. “You’re going to have a pretty good scar,” Johnny Clay told me, admiration in his voice.

I pulled the corner of the bandage away to examine it. “You think so?” I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Maybe one day I wouldn’t mind wearing dresses.
Prettiest face on Fair Mountain. Fair Mountain or anywhere.

Sweet Fern didn’t say a word to us throughout breakfast, and afterward she disappeared into Mama’s room and shut the door. “You children worried her to death,” Aunt Zona said and clucked her tongue. “And her, four months pregnant.” Aunt Zona was over at our house helping out because she said Sweet Fern needed the extra set of hands. I looked at her, my mother’s older sister who was not at all like Mama, and wondered when her hair had gone gray.

There were beds to be stripped and wash to be done, fruit to be canned, and green beans to be strung. And for Johnny Clay there were pigs to be slopped, cows to be herded and milked, and a list of things to be fetched from Deal’s. But the two of us went outside and crawled under the porch to let our breakfast settle. I rested on my stomach, chin in hands, and Johnny Clay lay on his back and stretched out his legs, folding his arms under his head. I looked at my brother and he was long and tall and still growing. There was a layer of stubble across his jaw and upper lip that I had never noticed before. I thought of the place on my leg where the panther had gotten me, and I hoped—really hoped—that it wouldn’t make a scar so I could wear stockings one day. I wondered if we were getting too grown to crawl under the porch and the thought made me lonesome, although I wasn’t sure for what.

Linc came out of the woods then, frowning, his rifle over his shoulder. It hit me that he was a man now, tall and grown up and handsome, and that he looked a lot like our daddy, only more serious. Everyone looked new to me since we were home.