Velva Jean Learns to Drive (54 page)

Toward the end of July, I spent nearly every day at Berletta Snow’s, leading a prayer circle for her wayward daughter Merry Ashley, who had run away from home to join the Mormons. I came home one afternoon—worn out, sick and tired of Berletta Snow, Merry Ashley, Jesus, and myself—to find Butch Dawkins sitting on my front porch, smoking a cigarette, guitar by his side.

I sat down beside him.

He stood up and shook his head. “Uh-uh.” He stuck the cigarette in his mouth, picked up his guitar, and held out his hand. “Come on.”

He led me up the mountain to the Devil’s Tramping Ground, that barren circle of earth where no plants grew, where the devil himself was supposed to walk nightly, forming his evil plans. Butch said it was an inspiring place for a blues musician always searching for good material. He said the tramping ground was almost as inspiring as the cross-roads in Rosedale, Mississippi, where bluesman Robert Johnson had sold his soul.

I had only been here once, years ago with Johnny Clay, and it was a place that still terrified me. But I pretended to be brave as we sat on a dead log and Butch plucked at his guitar, and sang some of a new song.

The song was blistering and sexy. It made my mouth go dry just hearing it. He said, “That’s all I got. The words aren’t coming out right.”

I said, “Who are you writing this for? Some girl back in Louisiana?” For some reason I hoped not.

He said, “It doesn’t matter.”

I said, “It does. You need to know who this is for. If you don’t know who the words are about, how do you expect to find them? No wonder you’re having trouble.”

He said, “It’s for a girl I know. She’s about the loveliest girl I ever met. She’s as loving and loved as she is lovely. But sometimes I think she’s got no idea. I want to write a song for her.”

Something about the way he said it made my heart race a little. After a moment I said, “I like myself best when I’m writing songs or singing. I like the feeling of being lost in the words and the music. Anything can happen because I can make it up. I can go anywhere—far away from Devil’s Kitchen—I can be anything, not just me.”

Butch was quiet. He picked out a melody on the guitar. He strummed a few chords. Then he said, “Johnny Clay told me you’re going to Nashville. Or you were. He wasn’t sure which.”

I could have killed Johnny Clay. I thought about Darlon C. Reynolds and my songs. Then I thought about Harley and Levi and the Little White Church. “Things change. Now I’m not so sure.” I sighed because I was remembering what it felt like to stand in front of the recording microphone.

Butch played a little more then stopped, his hands resting on the guitar. “I’ve been on the road a while now. Before that, I sat at home for a long time and waited for something to happen to me, but nothing ever did—not the big things I expected or wanted. I knew what I wanted my life to be, but it wasn’t turning out that way. Then I figured it out—if my destiny wasn’t going to come to me, I had to go to it.”

I said, “So now you’re on a journey.” Something about this made me sad. He would finish his work on the Scenic and move on one day, maybe to Chicago or New York, some place far away from Devil’s Kitchen.

He didn’t say anything, just played a few more chords. Then he handed me the guitar. He said, “Why don’t you play me something?” The guitar was heavy—it weighed a good ten pounds. I opened my arms up wide and rested it on my knee. It felt big and awkward. I plucked the strings and tried to pick out a tune. “The music’s in there, same as in your mandolin,” Butch said. “It just feels different at first.”

And then I started to play. I played “Yellow Truck Coming, Yellow Truck Going,” and I did it without a broken bottle neck or pick. When I was done, I handed the guitar back to Butch, and it looked right on him—it fit him like that white suit fit Harley. I could still feel the pulse of the strings deep inside my fingers, still feel the thump of the guitar on my legs, against my chest. I thought: I can’t wait to get my own just like it.

“Maybelle better run like hell,” he said. He played a lick. The guitar sang for him in a way it hadn’t for me.

I handed him my record then, wrapped in the brown paper it had arrived in. I didn’t say a word as I passed it to him. I watched his face as he opened it.

He read first one side and then the other and then he looked at me. He said, “When did you do this?”

I told him about Darlon C. Reynolds advertising for hillbillies and about going to Waynesville with Johnny Clay. I told him what Mr. Reynolds said about wanting to make more records with me but how I told him I had to be home for supper. We laughed at this and then he looked at the record again and whistled. He said, “Girl, you up to somethin’. You going in search of your destiny yet.”

Then he set the record down and stood up and held out his hand. He helped me to my feet. He spun me around and pulled me close—so close the breath almost knocked right out of me and I could feel the medicine beads he wore around his neck pressing against my chest—and we danced there on the Devil’s Tramping Ground while Butch sang my yellow truck song in a get-down-in-the-gutter blues style. I rested my hand on top of that tattoo—“The Bluesman,” it said—and held on to him hard and fast.

Suddenly, there was the sound of leaves underfoot, of twigs snapping. We both turned. There was no one there, no one I could see, but I let go of Butch and stepped away, my back as rigid as Hunter Firth’s when he got to tracking. I picked up my record and wrapped it up tight. I said, “I’d best get on home.” I almost whispered it. We walked back down the hill, not talking. I walked far away from Butch, putting as much distance as I could between us.

Harley was quiet during supper, barely saying a word. After the meal was over, he followed me upstairs to the bedroom and watched as I washed my face and pulled on my nightgown. He leaned against the closed door, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked wired but worn out, like he hadn’t slept in a week.

When he spoke, his voice was calm and low and it sent a chill right through me. He said, “Do you have something to tell me, Velva Jean?”

I got into bed and sat up against the pillows. I said, “What do you mean?”

He said, “I need to know what’s going on with that Indian friend of Johnny Clay’s.” I felt a cold panic rising in my chest. “Because I’m hearing things that I don’t like, and I’d rather not believe them. I’d rather hear what you have to say before I go making up my mind about this.” He sat down next to me. He was smiling a little, but it was a dangerous sort of smile, the kind he smiled when he was trying to protect himself.

I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know what to say. I had sudden flashes of Butch and me at the Devil’s Tramping Ground or down at Deal’s or here at this very house—Harley’s house—working on my songs. Had someone seen? But there was nothing to see. We’re just friends. Just friends.

Harley said, “I don’t want you seeing him. I don’t even want you thinking about him.” His smile was gone. He said, “I know you wouldn’t betray me, Velva Jean, that ain’t in your nature, but I don’t want you thinking about that man and I don’t want you seeing him when I ain’t around.”

I finally spoke. I said, “Who’s saying these things? Where is this coming from?” My voice sounded far away. I could barely hear it.

Harley said, “That don’t matter. What matters is that I don’t want that man coming around here anymore.”

I opened my mouth and closed it. I told myself to tell him he was wrong about all this. But nothing came out.

He said, “I don’t want to know why he’s coming around, but I can imagine. On his side at least. I’d like to kill him, and don’t think I haven’t thought of it.” He smiled again, a horrible smile. He stood up and walked to the chest of drawers. He picked up my hairbrush, my comb. He played with the hair ribbons that lay there, the few pieces of jewelry I had. “I want to trust you, Velva Jean. And I do. But part of the trouble with you is that you trust other people too much. That can be a fault. Too much of anything can be a fault.”

I said, “He’s my friend. Nothing would ever happen. Nothing could ever happen.” I suddenly felt ashamed and silly and stupid, like a little girl. What had I been thinking, having Butch up here while Harley wasn’t around?

He sat back down on the bed. He said, “I don’t aim to share you, Velva Jean, not even for a minute.” He touched my head. “Even in there.”

When I could find the words, I told Harley he was crazy to talk that way. I heard myself saying all the things you were supposed to say—“I love you. I only love you. I only think of you.” But I felt upset and unsettled, like he had somehow seen into my private thoughts. I didn’t like it. And what did he mean, “part of the trouble” with me? I burned hot on the inside and prayed it didn’t show in my face. The truth was, I didn’t know how I thought of Butch, but I did get excited working with him on a song and I liked being with him. I liked talking to him about music because he understood what it was to put yourself down on paper and because he listened. Did this make me a bad wife? A bad person?

Harley moved in close then, kissing me so hard and holding me so tight that the breath went out of me. I thought about that first time, on our honeymoon, when we were just like a couple of animals rooting around in the bushes. He was like that again, reaching for me, like he couldn’t quite find me. I kissed him back, my eyes closed, not because I wanted to but because I felt like I owed it to him for causing him so much pain, and then Butch’s song started up in my head. I opened my eyes, trying to stop the song, and instead of Harley, with his green eyes and dimples and straight white teeth, there was Butch’s face—the dark eyes, the high cheekbones, the crooked, gap-toothed smile. I felt the medicine beads against my chest. I heard him sing,
Moving here beside me, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
.

I blinked hard and there was Harley again. He said, “What? What’s wrong, Velva Jean?” I wrapped my arms around him and held on.

That night, while Harley slept, I lay in bed and thought about Butch. He was just my friend. Only my friend. He and I never talked about anything outside of music. And with Harley there was more than that. When I was sick, it was Harley I wanted. When I was scared or sad, when the ghosts of my daddy or mama got too much to bear, it was Harley I needed to send them away because he had been there from the beginning.

How dare Harley make me feel bad about Butch and make me doubt myself and accuse me of being too trusting, like that was some sort of sin he needed to wipe out of me. Butch cared about my talent and my voice. Butch had helped me write down my music when Harley wouldn’t even listen to it. Harley told me not to sing, but Butch was helping me write down my songs.

And then, because I didn’t want to think about any of it anymore—Harley or Butch or my own mixed up self—I thought about the Scenic. Instead of picturing myself up on it in Johnny Clay’s convertible, I put myself there in my mind in my yellow truck. I was driving and there was no one in that truck but me. No Harley, no Butch, no Johnny Clay. Just me. The entire road was paved, from Big Witch Gap near Cherokee on up into Virginia. I drove the length of it, along the mountaintops, the whole world spread out below me.

THIRTY-FIVE

On August 19, the day the trouble happened, a dozen of the boys from the Scenic came down the mountainside for the afternoon, including Blackeye and his brother and some of their friends. At first no one looked twice at them, except me, hoping to see my daddy. We were used to the Scenic boys hanging around in the late afternoons or weekends, sitting or standing on the steps of Deal’s, smoking and drinking, flirting with girls, rocking on the porch of the Alluvial Hotel.