Velva Jean Learns to Drive (49 page)

“How was your day, Velva Jean?” Harley asked that night. We were sitting on the porch after supper. It was still so hot out that the tree frogs were barely humming. I had gotten home late, in a panic that I would be found out. But Harley got back just after me and Levi after that. By the time they walked in, supper was on the table.

“It was fine,” I said. “Hot.”

“Yeah,” he said. “This heat is bound to break sometime.”

“You would think,” I said. I wondered when I had stopped talking to him or wanting to try. I wondered when I had started keeping everything inside of me. I wondered if it was his fault or mine or if it was both of ours.

We sat there for a while in silence. He had already told me the latest news of the Scenic and the fact that he was pushing the revival from August to September. He said, “I think I’ll go on up to bed. Are you coming?”

I said, “In a minute.”

He stood up and kissed me on the head and then he went inside. I sat there, staring out into the dark across to the mountains—to my mountain, the one named for my family—and thought about my actual day, not the one I’d told Harley about. The first thing I’d done when I got home was open the family record book and write it down in there: “Velva Jean records her songs.” I never wanted to forget it. I thought it was just about the best day I ever had.

THIRTY-TWO

Suddenly, all I could think about was Nashville. And rhinestones. And high-heeled cowboy boots. And Hawaiian steel guitars. I was letting myself dream about the Grand Ole Opry again. I carried Darlon C. Reynolds’s little white card around in my apron pocket and took it out when no one was around and stared at it. “Darlon C. Reynolds, Decca Records, New York, New York; Nashville, Tennessee.” I memorized the numbers that were printed there, and sometimes, when I was down at Deal’s doing the shopping, I thought about asking Mr. Deal to use his telephone. I imagined placing a call to Mr. Reynolds himself to tell him I was on my way to Nashville, that I would see him soon so we could record more songs. I would just leave the grocery bags with Mr. Deal and hop the train and go. Or, better yet, I’d go back up the hill and climb in that yellow truck and drive to Nashville myself.

It was getting harder and harder to sit still. On the morning of June 20, Harley was at the church and Levi was up in the woods. I climbed behind the wheel of my yellow truck and headed to Alluvial. I could make it ten times around the house now without stopping and I figured I was good enough to drive down the hill.

I felt such a thrill that I could hardly breathe. I thought Harley might kill me if he found out. I thought Sweet Fern might faint if she saw me. Heaven knew what people would say. But I didn’t care. The thought of shocking everyone only made it more exciting. It was my truck and I was going to drive it.

I changed my mind the minute I started down the hill. It was too soon. I still didn’t know how to drive. I wasn’t ready to leave the yard. Going downhill was a lot different from driving on flat ground. But once I got started, I couldn’t stop. The truck went faster and faster, picking up speed till I couldn’t feel the ground anymore. I kept slamming my foot on the brake, but that truck just took off like it had a mind of its own. It acted like it couldn’t wait to get back down there to Alluvial, back to where it used to live. I closed my eyes and prayed to Jesus to let me live to see the bottom. Then I opened my eyes and saw the blur of trees and sky and green, green, green go flying by.

I shouted, “Old truck, you are not in charge here!” There were too many things in charge of me. I was not about to let some truck be in charge of me, too. I grabbed hold of that wheel and started wrestling with it. I grabbed on to the gearshift and pumped the brake and finally the truck slowed down.

I came to a stop just outside Deal’s, the breath knocked out of me. I turned the truck off and put the keys in my purse and climbed down to the ground on shaky legs. A few of the boys from the Scenic were standing outside Deal’s, loading up with some sort of supplies that I guessed they were taking back up the mountain. A couple of old-timers sat on the porch, chewing tobacco and reading the paper. They stared at me like they had never seen a yellow truck before or a girl driving.

I walked past them, trying to make my legs go straight. One of the Scenic boys whistled and another boy called out to me, but I ignored them too and went right into Deal’s.

Jessup was stacking boxes toward the back. He was wearing a blue shirt that turned his green eye almost blue, almost the same color as the other one. “Hey, Velva Jean,” he said. “You just missed your brother.”

“Which one?” I said.

“Johnny Clay.”

I looked out the window. There was his Nash parked in front of the Alluvial Hotel. I picked up a basket and pulled out my list and began to collect things. I walked very calmly, like I hadn’t just driven all the way down the mountain in a truck, and like my own brother wasn’t at the local whore-lady’s house in broad daylight for everyone to see, probably just this minute getting a venereal disease that would leave him blind.

I paid Jessup for the groceries and walked out of Deal’s. I meant to go back to my truck and back up to Devil’s Kitchen, but I was barely down the steps of the wide-open wooden porch when Johnny Clay and Lucinda Sink came out of the hotel. They were carrying suitcases, which Johnny Clay threw into the back of the convertible—powder blue suitcases with white trim. Lucinda was wearing a green satin dress with high-heeled shoes and a hat. She was wearing white gloves, just like a lady. Johnny Clay held the door open for her and she climbed into the car. He leaned down and kissed her and she kissed him back.

I threw the groceries down in the back of the truck and started right over to him. He wasn’t even around to his side of the car before I was there, beside him. I said, “Where are you going?” I didn’t look at Lucinda Sink, even though I could feel her looking at me. “Where are you going, Johnny Clay?”

He said, “We’re getting married, Velva Jean. We’re going down to Hamlet’s Mill to the courthouse and then we’re leaving on our honeymoon.” He picked me up and spun me around and then he put me down. “Sorry I didn’t come up to tell you. We been so busy. Velva Jean, this is Lucinda. Lucinda, this is my favorite sister, Velva Jean.”

I looked at her then—the whore-lady. Her skin was so pale you could almost see through it and was lightly dusted with freckles, like she had sprinkled them there with powder. Her hair was more of a deep cherry brown than a red, and her lips were painted to match. She had blue eyes and long lashes and little lines around the corners of her eyes where her age was showing. She was softer and prettier than I’d expected. She leaned over and held out her hand and she said, “How do. It’s nice to meet you.” Her accent was foreign to me—southern, but like no accent I recognized. It was an accent that sounded like sea air and swamps and the low country.

I told myself to take her hand. Johnny Clay was watching me, a grin on his big dumb face. The sun was catching his hair and lighting him up from the outside, and love was lighting him up from the inside. I didn’t think I’d ever in my life seen him look happier, which only made me mad. I kept hearing his words from when we were young: “I’ll never leave you, Velva Jean. Don’t you ever worry about that.”

I said, “If I hadn’t come down here when I did, you would have been gone without ever telling me. You’re rotten, Johnny Clay Hart.”

I had never in my life been so mad at my brother. I could have killed him. Instead I turned on my heel and walked away. He shouted after me, over and over, but I walked right back to Deal’s, right back to the truck. I slammed in behind the wheel and turned the key and started on up the hill before I even thought about it. I didn’t know how on earth to drive uphill. I didn’t have the faintest idea. I just put my foot on the clutch and my foot on the gas and my hand on the gearshift, and I climbed right up the mountain. I was so mad that I didn’t even stop to think about what I’d done until I got home. I went all the way up that hill and then I came to a stop back behind the barn and I sat there and thought: Look at what you’ve done. You just went to Alluvial. You just climbed up that hill all by yourself. You just got yourself back home.

I marched into the house, up the stairs, into my bedroom, and opened the family record book. I took a breath. I calmed down. And then I wrote: “June 20, 1941: Velva Jean learns to drive.”

I lay awake all night. It was too hot to sleep covered up, so Harley and I slept flat on the bed with the blankets and sheets folded down at the bottom. Every now and then he’d throw an arm across me and I’d pick it up by a finger or wrist and give it back to him. It was too hot to be touched. I could barely stand my own body heat, much less his.

“Can’t you sleep, Velva Jean?” he said at one point, his voice muffled and his face against the pillow.

“No.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “He’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. He loves you.”

I was surprised—but grateful—that Harley was being so nice about Johnny Clay, considering how he felt about him. I lay there listening to him breathe and I stared at the ceiling, at the way the moonlight moved across it, and I thought about my brother and That Woman, as I was calling her in my head. I tried not to think about how pretty she was or how happy he’d looked or the way they’d gazed at each other.

I wondered what Mama would say. She’d always had such a soft spot for Johnny Clay. He could always make her laugh, even when he was driving her to distraction. I called up the image of Mama, of her cornflower blue eyes with the sunflower centers. I felt her hands rocking me, holding me, soothing me, making things better, heard her voice singing me to sleep until eventually I drifted off for just a little while.

The next morning, I was still stewing over Johnny Clay and Lucinda Sink. When I came downstairs, I heard unfamiliar voices. Harley stood out on the porch with a man of about fifty, built thick like a washtub. He wore little spectacles and a brown Stetson felt hat, a blue button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and blue jeans rolled up over rubber work boots.

When he saw me, the man took off his hat. He had a thick head of hair, one of the thickest I’d ever seen, and a no-nonsense face that had seen too much sun.

Harley said, “Velva Jean, this here is Getty Browning from the Scenic. He’s come to invite me to go up top to Devil’s Courthouse and see what the boys are doing.”

Mr. Browning said, “We thought someone like your husband might be a good influence in the community and might help the people understand the benefits of this road. We’ve had some trouble and we’re anxious to put that behind us.”

I looked at Harley and lifted one eyebrow, but Harley wasn’t looking at me.

Mr. Browning said, “We’ve asked some of the preachers and community leaders from the surrounding valleys. Reverend Bright’s name came recommended.”

Harley was beaming like he’d been asked to meet the president. I said to him, “Are you going to go?” After what you did to that road?

He said, “Of course.”

Mr. Browning was looking at me. He said, “I know your daddy. Before there ever was a road or a plan for a road, back when we were still trying to figure out what we were doing and where we were going, I walked these mountains with him. He was very helpful.”

I didn’t say anything because I was remembering a long-ago conversation on my old front porch: “I walked from there to Virginia, across the top of the mountains, with a man who’s building a road. He’s building it right across the mountains, right across the tops of them. That road is going to reach from Virginia all the way down here, right down through these mountains we live in. It’s going to be the greatest scenic road in the world. A road of unlimited horizons.”

Mr. Browning said, “He’s a good man. I’d like to see him again, to thank him for what he did.”

I said, “He’s not here anymore. He hasn’t been here for a long time.” I thought of the man I had seen at the CCC camp, the one with the long legs that danced and the way he’d walked away from me even after I’d called to him.

He said, “I’m sorry,” and I could tell he thought that Daddy had died. I felt bad about this, but I wasn’t going to correct him because to me it felt like the truth.