Velva Jean Learns to Drive (38 page)

To prepare for all the people that would come, Harley moved services to Sunday mornings and added services on Monday and Wednesday nights. On Sunday, Harley preached to the Harridays and the Swans and Mr. Finch and me, and on Monday and Wednesday Harley and the Harridays and I waited in the little church, oil lamps burning, mosquitoes and moths fluttering in and out. When no one came, we held service anyway.

Afterward I said, “Maybe we should cut back and just stick to Sunday. That would leave us time to travel during the week.”

But Harley was stubborn. He said, “They’ll come. Just give them time.”

He and Mr. Harriday cleared a wide trail leading to the church so that people could find it easier. Sister Gladdy and I planted flowers, making a path right up to the church steps. While I planted, I prayed in my head.
Thank you, Jesus, for showing Harley this church. He’s always needed to believe, and now he does, and that’s a wonderful thing. Please let people come and fill these seats. But if they could just come only on Sundays so that we could travel during the week, I surely would appreciate it.

One Sunday morning, Janette Lowe walked down that path and climbed up the steps to the church. I could not have been more surprised if Jesus himself had walked in because, as far as I knew, no Lowe had ever set foot in church except for Janette’s mama, who used to dance with the Spirit for hours back in the day before she met Frank Lowe and had fourteen children and was forced to take to her bed.

Janette appeared in the doorway of the Little White Church, looking lost and nervous. Her feet were bare and dirty, and her dress was the same one she always wore, an old one handed down from her sisters Marvel, Praise Elizabeth, and Jewelette. But she had made an effort. Her hands and arms looked like they’d been spit washed, and her yellow hair was combed back and tied with a ribbon at her neck.

The next Sunday, Buck Frey and his family appeared, all the way down from the top of Devil’s Courthouse. The following Sunday, two more families came, making their way from Bearpen Creek. Somehow word was spreading throughout the valley—Harley Bright was an inspiring preacher. Jesus himself had called him to reawaken the Little White Church, which had sat empty for so long.

Harley was beside himself. At home he was nicer to his daddy and sometimes he walked around singing. He’d sing right out—when he was washing the car or working in the field—like he couldn’t help himself. As guilty as it made me feel, I kept up my prayers.
Jesus, thank you for bringing us all these people. Can you please, though, if it’s not too much trouble, make sure they come only on Sundays so that Harley and me can go on the road again during the week?

But together Jesus and Harley couldn’t be stopped. Within a month, the benches of the Little White Church were filled with men, women, and children—some I knew and some I didn’t—dressed in their very best clothes. They came from Hogpen Gap and Panther Hole, from Laughing Holler and Snake Hook Den, Sleepy Gap, Alluvial, and Devil’s Kitchen. They showed up for service on Sunday, on Monday, and on Wednesday.

When there were too many people to fit inside the church, we opened the windows and they stood outside or sat on the grass. Standing up at the pulpit, Harley looked like a movie idol. They hung on his words, and they sang along with us while he played guitar and I played mandolin. During services they stood up to testify. Sometimes they wanted to be prayed for, sometimes they wanted to give thanks, and sometimes they wanted to say something about the world we lived in, like Mr. Harriday, who feared for the spiritual welfare of young people, especially now with the new road coming through, making it possible for them to go anywhere.

All the while the Virgin Mary looked down on us from her stained-glass window—the one Gladdy Harriday’s granddaddy never could get right to suit him—and seemed peaceful and pleased that we were there. The little church was, at last, alive.

On the last Monday night in June—four months to the day since the train wreck—Harley stood at the front of the church, skin tan from working in the sun, handsome in his white shirt, dark hair waving, green eyes shining, white teeth flashing. He said, “I want to talk to you about choice.” He laid his hands, broad and calm, on the pulpit. “That night in Terrible Creek, I didn’t have a choice about what happened to me. Neither did the thirty-four people that died in that accident. Some would say Straight Willy Cannon was the only one with a choice that night, and he made it when he took that curve at sixty miles per hour instead of forty-five. I guess you could say he chose for all of us.

“But now it’s my turn to choose what I do with the rest of my time. I could sit at home and give up. Or I could get up and say that maybe I lived for a reason; maybe Jesus spared my life so I could do some good and come here today and talk to folks like you and help you just like the Lord helped me.”

Harley’s voice was growing stronger. I could hear the fire starting to burn beneath the surface of it. “There’s a woman from Hamlet’s Mill that lost her husband and her mother in the train wreck. And now she’s turning tricks over in Civility, a scarlet lady.” Harley thumped the pulpit with his hand. “That’s her choice.

“There’s a man from right here on Fair Mountain that broke some ribs and lost a finger in the Terrible Creek wreck. Now he’s serving time down there in Butcher Gap.” He thumped the pulpit. “That’s his choice.

“Well I was in that wreck, too, but you know what my choice is? I’m choosing to go toward life.” He banged the pulpit and several people jumped. “That’s my choice.”

I suddenly forgot to look at the Virgin Mary and I forgot to look at the women looking at Harley. Instead I looked right at my husband. He was pacing back and forth. He looked angry and happy all at once, like he could barely contain himself. The Hurricane Preacher.

“You’ve made choices, too, and that’s why you’re here, not down in Butcher Gap Prison. But maybe you need to hear that someone believes in
you
for a change. After my accident, I just laid up on my settee and felt sorry for myself. I kept thinking, why did this happen to me? Why me? Well, you know what? The Terrible Creek train wreck didn’t happen to me. It happened to all of us, especially to the thirty-four people who died. But it took my wife—that woman right there,” Harley pointed to me and I sat up straight, “to believe in me before I would get up off that settee and believe in myself.” People craned their necks around and stared at me. “Maybe what all of us need is for someone to believe in us like Tonto believed in the Lone Ranger.”

Harley held up his Bible and closed his eyes. “ ‘I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing . . .’ Amen.”

Sweat was beading down his face, dripping onto his white shirt. His hair was curling and his eyes were blazing and his cheeks were flushed pink. He looked like a hellcat, all taut and pent up and ready to dance.

I wiped my eyes and thought: The Lone Ranger rides again.

TWENTY-FOUR

Harley and I were the perfect family, running the perfect church. Our world, the new one Harley was building for us, stayed in perfect order until the fourth of July. But on the afternoon of the fourth, Levi was arrested for carrying whiskey down the mountain on a wagon bed covered with a load of fruit. He was taking it to the train so he could send it to Civility, to a man there who shipped it for him to New York City, when Deputy Meeks caught him and locked him up.

Sheriff Story arrived at our door, looking worn out. He said, “Harley Bright, I should really take your daddy down to Hamlet’s Mill this time and lock him up. We should put him on trial and send him over to Butcher Gap for a while.”

Harley said, “What if I promise to look after him, Sheriff? Keep him out of trouble? I know I can keep him on the straight and narrow.” Harley looked as fierce as a wild dog.

The sheriff sighed and scratched his head. He said, “It’s late and he’s an old man. You can come down and get him, take him home. But don’t let me see him back there again.”

The sheriff got into his car, and Harley and I got into the DeSoto and we rode down to Alluvial and found the old man sitting in the same cell Harley had once sat in himself, back when he was Clyde Barrow, leader of the bad Barrow gang. There was the same bench Johnny Clay and me had sat on while we waited for Sweet Fern to come and fetch us home.

Then Harley sent me over to Deal’s to get him some cigarettes because he wanted to have a word with his daddy in private. The night was warm and alive—the sounds of tree frogs, firecrackers, shouting, music. As I walked up onto the wide wooden porch of Deal’s, the music got louder.

From inside there was a sound like a dog howling, like a panther wailing. Folks were scattered everywhere—on chairs, across the floor, in windowsills, on the counters. They were all staring at Johnny Clay’s friend Butch Dawkins—half-Choctaw Indian, half-Creole—who leaned against the cold potbellied stove, guitar in hand, playing the meanest blues I’d ever heard. Mean, low-down, roll-around-in-the-street, get-down-in-the-gutter blues. Boys from the Scenic were gathered all around, stomping their feet, clapping their hands. Some of the local boys were there, including Johnny Clay. Some of the old men were there, too, people like Mr. Gordon and Hink Lowe’s daddy. There were a few women, but I didn’t recognize any of them.

I’d never heard music like that. It was raw and angry and sweet all at once. It made me think of a thunderstorm and lightning and the way I felt after a good cry. It made me think of the bad women who lived in cities—women who rouged their bosoms—of hobo jungles, of riding the rails. It made me think of mean corn liquor that didn’t leave a hangover. It made me think of running from a panther, of blood streaming down my leg, of a train wreck in the dark, dark night. I saw Danny Deal’s body lying cold under a blanket. I saw his bright yellow truck and me behind the wheel.

That music stirred me up inside, all the way down to my feet. It made me want to shout and run and sit down and listen and sing along—if there had been any words. It made me want to make up words. I wanted to find Harley and kiss him hard and long and do other things with him, out in the night, in the open, not just in our bedroom. I wanted to dance and dance and dance. That music just stirred me up, both good and bad.

The whole time he played, Butch never once looked up. He closed his eyes or he looked right at that guitar, his hair hanging down around his face. It was a steel guitar, the most gorgeous one I’d ever seen—nickel-plated brass as shiny as Three Gum River on a sunny day. He was playing it like a slide guitar, holding it up against him and not horizontal, and he worked the fingerboard with a slide made from a broken bottle neck. His work shirt lay on a nearby chair. He had stripped down to a white undershirt, and I stared at the tattoo on his arm—a guitar with writing on the neck and flames shooting out of the pegbox. “The Bluesman,” it said.

Then he started to sing—it was soft and low, like a growl; then it got louder, stronger, still a growl; then a moan, then a howl, like it came from somewhere private, where all his feelings were stored up. I felt strange and unsettled, like we shouldn’t be listening to him, like we were all of us witnessing something too personal. All the time, his eyes were closed or he sang to that guitar. The hairs on my body stood up. I wanted to yell at him to stop it, to stop it right then and there. I wanted to take that guitar and smash it.

I felt a hand on my arm. I turned to find Harley standing there. I blinked at him, trying to focus. He said, “Let’s go home, Velva Jean.” Levi was standing just beyond, sleepy, rubbing his eyes. I followed Harley to the car and helped him put his daddy into the backseat. We drove home, the three of us, not talking the whole way.

Harley was madder than I’d ever seen him. When Levi went up to bed, joints cracking, Harley yelled after him, “We’ll deal with this in the morning, old man.” He walked into our room, and I followed him and he slammed the door behind me. Then he opened it and slammed it again.