Velva Jean Learns to Drive (48 page)

I turned around and looked back up the road to home. It wound so much that you couldn’t even see where we had come from. I couldn’t tell which of the mountains was Fair Mountain. It just blended in with all the rest.
Who can find a virtuous woman?
I looked at the road in front of me.
Darlon C. Reynolds is looking for musical acts—fifty dollars per record to the best hillbilly talent he can find.

I looked at Johnny Clay. I looked down at my daddy’s mandolin, and then at my wedding ring. I looked up at the trees, at the sky, at the sun. And then I said, “Let’s just keep driving.”

Waynesville was beautiful. It sat at the bottom of high mountains that swept away and upward from its downtown. Main Street was one long block of storefronts and churches with steeples that reached up toward the mountains. The theater was on the corner of a downtown street. Folks spilled out of the double doors and onto the sidewalk, winding down the street through town. They carried instruments and some of them were dressed like they were from Atlanta or New York, in fancy clothes bought at department stores. I wished now that I’d worn my dress with the bolero jacket after all. I felt silly in Mama’s homely, worn-out dress, and Johnny Clay in his overalls. We looked like hillbillies. We looked like exactly what they were expecting.

“There are so many of them,” I said. We were cruising down the street, past the line of people. There were young people and old people and people in between. They came in buggies, on horseback, in automobiles, on foot, carrying their guitars and fiddles and banjos. Suddenly, I wanted to turn around, but we were here and we had come a long way and Johnny Clay was parking the car and we were staying.

After an hour waiting in line—wet and freckled from the blazing sun—I said to Johnny Clay, “I don’t think we’re going to make it. This line moves so slow and there’s more folks waiting inside, and at this rate we’ll never get in there. I can’t be late home or Harley will have a fit.”

Johnny Clay was standing behind me with his guitar slung over his shoulder, his arms crossed over his chest. He narrowed his eyes at me and then at the line ahead of us. Then he grabbed my hand and said, “Come on,” and he stepped out of line and dragged me around toward the side of the building.

“Johnny Clay! Now we lost our place!” I watched as the people behind us moved up.

He said, “Come on, Velva Jean.”

There was a door on the side of the building. Johnny Clay kept one hand on my arm and tried to open it. It was locked. He pulled me with him and went around back. There were some rickety, rusty iron steps and a door at the top. He let go of me and sprinted up the steps, which made a sound like a saw waving back and forth—a spooky, metal sound of wind and rattle. He tried the door and it opened and he waved at me, “Come on.”

“No,” I said.

“Get up here.”

“I will not. I don’t want to do this the wrong way, Johnny Clay. I only want to do this the right way.”

“Who’s to say this ain’t the right way?” He shifted his guitar. “You want to sing, don’t you? Or do you want to get back in the car right now and drive home and think for the rest of your life about what might have happened if you’d just walked in this door?”

I was standing in the middle of a tall patch of weeds, on a mound of red clay. All around me back there was nothing but weeds and overgrown grass and red spots of earth. The paint on the sides of the theater was crumbling. It looked like it hadn’t been used in a while, like maybe it had sat abandoned till Darlon C. Reynolds came along and decided to pack it full of hillbillies. That was how I felt up on the mountain sometimes, like I was sitting empty, my voice going to waste. I set my foot on the bottom stair and my hand on the railing and climbed up after my brother.

We came out in the second-floor balcony. Down below on the stage were three girls and a boy. Two of them had guitars and the boy had a banjo, and the three girls were singing “Cotton-Eyed Joe.” It was just awful—slow and flat and out of key. There were two men running the recording machine and a round man, with round glasses and thin brown hair, sitting in the front row.

Johnny Clay and I stood still as we could till the bad singers were done, and then we moved down to the edge of the balcony. I fanned myself a little and held my hair off my neck and then fanned my neck before I dropped my hair back down. The round man didn’t stand up. From his seat he said, “Thank you. But I’m afraid we can only use original tunes.”

The boy said, “We got an original tune. One I wrote tother day.” The boy’s voice was halfway between a bark and a wheeze. He sounded like he had the croup.

The man said, “I’m afraid we can’t use you. Thanks for coming in though.”

Suddenly, a woman appeared—also with glasses and light blond hair piled high up on her head. She was wearing a smart green suit and green high-heeled shoes. She smiled and guided the singers off the stage. Johnny Clay’s guitar shifted then and bumped against the balcony railing and the round man looked up. He said, “What are you doing up there?”

Johnny Clay said, “That line was too long. We got to get home soon and you need to hear her before we go.”

The man said, “You have to wait in line like everyone else.” He stood up and stretched his arms and rubbed his neck. He was short with only four or five strands of hair combed over his head. Underneath that hair, his head shone just like he had rubbed it with a cloth. He said, “I’d be in a fine mess if everyone decided to cut in line.”

Johnny Clay looked around. The theater was empty except for us and the three men. Johnny Clay said, “Yeah you would. But you’re not because we’re the only ones that are doing it.”

The round man crossed his arms and leaned with his rear end against the seat back. He looked at the other two men, a look that said watch me mess with this hillbilly. He said, “Let’s hear her then. But stay right up there. Don’t even bother coming down. I may need to send you out as quickly as you came in.”

Johnny Clay looked at me and said, “Well. Go ahead.”

I said, “What do you mean ‘go ahead’? Why don’t you go ahead?”

He said, “You’re the one he’s waiting to hear.”

Down below, the men started laughing to themselves. That made me mad. I was mad at them and mad at Johnny Clay. I pulled out my mandolin and started playing. I played the song I’d written about the panther because that was one of the maddest songs I’d ever written. After I was done, I looked at Johnny Clay and said, “I ain’t speaking to you anymore today.”

The men were standing up and staring. They were all three looking up at me. The round man said, “Young lady, do you have any more songs like that one?”

 

I said, “Yessir. All I got is songs.”

The song I ended up singing on the front side of the record was “Yellow Truck Coming, Yellow Truck Going.” The one I sang on the back side was “Old Red Ghost,” which I’d rewritten some with Butch’s help.

I stood right up next to the microphone and directed my voice into it, and on “Old Red Ghost” Johnny Clay stood at his own microphone and accompanied me on guitar and sang harmony.

When we were done, the round man, who turned out to be none other than Darlon C. Reynolds, said, “I’d like you to stay over for a couple of days and record some more songs. I’d like to give you a recording contract.”

I said, “I have to be getting home. If I’m not home tonight in time for supper, my husband will pitch a fit. He thinks I’m at my granny’s right now.”

Darlon C. Reynolds looked at me like he couldn’t understand a word of what I’d just said. He said, “I will pay you fifty dollars per song. I want to put you on the radio.”

I said, “I have to get home to cook supper.”

Mr. Reynolds looked at Johnny Clay like he wanted some help. Johnny Clay just shook his head. He said, “You’d have to meet her husband to understand.”

I said, “Will you be paying me now?”

Darlon C. Reynolds smiled. He nodded at Lesley Hall, his secretary, the woman in the green suit. She brought out a checkbook and a fancy black pen. “What is your full name, dear?” she said.

“If it’s all the same,” I said, “I’d prefer cash. I don’t have any place to put that check.”

Miss Hall and Mr. Reynolds looked at each other and he nodded. She said, “Of course.” And then she counted out one hundred dollars and stood up and handed it to me.

“Thank you,” I said. I handed twenty-five of it to Johnny Clay for his half of “Old Red Ghost.”

I said, “Can I have a copy of my record?”

Mr. Reynolds said, “Of course. You give me your address and I’ll have it sent to you.” Then he said, “You ever come to Nashville or New York, you look me up. We could use someone like you—someone with actual talent. We’ll make more records. There’s no telling what we’ll do.” He handed me a card. I looked at it and there were all sorts of numbers and his name in slanting letters, just like Harley’s on the little white cards he liked to carry around and leave for people.

I said, “Thank you.” Then I sighed. For one afternoon, I’d been a singing star. I had let myself think of rhinestones again. I had pretended my worn black shoes were high-heeled cowboy boots and that Mama’s old dress was a satin costume.

Then I shook Darlon C. Reynolds’s hand and asked to borrow a pen and paper. I wrote down my name “c/o Deal’s General Store, Alluvial, Fair Mountain, North Carolina.” I handed it to Miss Hall. Then Johnny Clay and I picked up our instruments and walked out of the theater and into the sunlight, which blinded us for just a moment after being inside for so long. Then we ran for the car, fast as we could, past the long line of people still waiting to be seen.