Velva Jean Learns to Drive (56 page)

I told Harley we needed to go see Daddy Hoyt right now, right this minute, that there was no telling what Johnny Clay might do, but Harley would not be hurried. He wanted to finish his supper and eat every bite.

Long after Levi and I were done eating, I watched Harley scrape the crumbs off his plate and wipe up the last bit of gravy with his soda biscuit. I watched him drink it down with sweet tea and then wipe his mouth with a napkin. I knew now he’d want an after-dinner cigarette, even though he liked to pretend he didn’t smoke. He’d stand out there on the porch and stare off at the mountains and he’d drift off to someplace else in his mind and there would be no talking to him for a while.

“Harley,” I said, after he threw down his napkin, just as he was standing. “Let’s go now.” I wanted to see if Johnny Clay was home or if he had gone off, like I was worried he had, to the CCC camp.

“I got to digest first,” Harley said, which meant he wanted that cigarette. He looked at me, cold and hard, before walking away from the table.

Just then there was a banging on the door and I thought for one minute it might be Johnny Clay—that he had come to his senses. But when Harley opened the door, it wasn’t Johnny Clay at all but Mr. Harriday and Sister Gladdy. Sister Gladdy was crying. Right away, she moved past Harley and came into the house and threw her arms around me and just heaved and heaved, her enormous bosom moving up and down. My first thought was oh, my Lord, Johnny Clay has got himself killed.

I said, “What is it?” I looked right at Brother Jim.

He said, “Preacher Bright, there has been a tragedy up at the church. Sister Janette Lowe was up there laying flowers at the pulpit. She was all by herself.” He pulled the glasses off his face and started fussing with them, rubbing at the lenses with a handkerchief. He wiped his eyes quick with the back of one hand. His head was bowed. He said, “Someone came after her. They found her up there alone. He had a knife. He held it to her throat. She began praying and he said, ‘It’s all right if you pray, but don’t pray too loud or I’ll kill you.’ She said it was her prayers that saved her.”

Harley was saying, “Who found her? Who came after her?” His face had gone white. Levi was standing in the doorway to the dining room, his mouth working like he was talking to Jesus.

Brother Jim said, “Sister Lowe didn’t know the man. She said he was an outlander. Preacher Bright, that man attacked her.”

Harley said, “As preacher of that church, you can be sure I’ll get to the bottom of this. I’ll find out who did it. I’ve got some ideas. That man Blackeye or one of the other Scenic boys.”

I said, “You can’t blame all the Scenic boys just because some of them are rotten.”

Harley looked at me. He said, “How do you know not all of them are rotten, Velva Jean? Since when can you speak for each and every one of them? Or is it just one in particular you’re concerned with?”

I didn’t say anything to this. I didn’t trust his expression, the meanness in his eyes.

Brother Jim said, “Hink Lowe and her daddy and her uncles and the sheriff are on the hunt for that man right now. We thought you could come with us. There’s fixing to be some trouble in town. This has got folks worked up. We need you.”

Harley said, “Velva Jean, I want you to stay inside and lock the door. Daddy, you’re not to leave her. That man could be anywhere.”

Levi was already heading up the stairs, muttering under his breath. I knew he was on his way to his room to fetch his Luger.

I waited for Harley to kiss me, but instead he just walked through the door and went with the Harridays out into the night.

In my dream I heard hammering, like someone pounding a nail. Then the hammering got louder until it felt like it was in my head, and I woke up and heard the knocking at the front door. Harley still wasn’t home. I felt a moment of panic. What if it was the outlander? The one that attacked Janette Lowe? I lay there in bed, my heart beating wildly. The hammering continued.

Slowly, carefully, I raised myself up on my knees and peered out the window. There, down below, was Johnny Clay’s Nash convertible parked in our front yard.

I slipped out of bed and found my old bathrobe and ran down the stairs. He was banging on the door now, just as loud as could be, slapping his whole palm against it.

I threw the door open and said, “You’re going to wake the entire holler. Are you drunk?”

He looked drunk. His hair was messy and his clothes looked like he’d thrown them on in a hurry. He was acting like he had the fidgets, looking over his shoulder and glancing all around. He leaned one hand on the doorframe and said, “Velva Jean, I got to go.”

I said, “Go where? Why’re you waking me up in the middle of the night?” I leaned in to smell his breath.

He pushed me away. He said, “I want you to listen. I didn’t kill him, but I hurt him good. They’ll be after me.”

I said, “Who did you hurt?”

He said, “Blackeye.”

I said, “Why would you do something so stupid?”

He said, “Because he tried to hurt the woman I love.”

I said, “Is he dead?”

“No. And he ain’t going to die. But he’s as close to dead as I could make him without killing him, although I wanted to kill him. And you better believe they’ll come after me. That’s why I got to go.”

I said, “Where? Where will you go?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe New York. Maybe California. Somewhere I can get lost. I’ll send you a postcard, let you know where I end up.”

I was standing there, in my bare feet, trying not to cry like a baby. “You can’t leave,” I said. I knew that if he left the most important part of my world would be gone. I knew that if he left nothing would ever be the same again.

He said, “I got to, Velva Jean. I did a bad thing, but it was a thing I had to do. No one’s got the right to touch her if she don’t want them to.” Standing there, he looked like the best of our mama and daddy. He looked gold even in the moonlight. He said, “I brought some things to give you. I been saving them for you.” He handed me a green box, the kind you put recipes in, and a folded road map. He said, “This should get you where you need to go.”

Then, before I could stop him, he pulled me close and hugged me tight and then pushed me away so that I went spinning into the door and had to throw out my arms to catch myself. He was gone then, in a cloud of dust, one arm waving like the queen as he disappeared from my life and into the night.

I sat down in the front room with the things Johnny Clay had given me—the map and the green recipe box. I opened the box and looked inside, but it smelled so much like Mama—like lavender and honeysuckle and lye soap—that I closed it right back up again. Opening that box made me want to cry, and I was already wanting to cry over Johnny Clay leaving. But I wouldn’t cry. I knew that if I started I might not stop.

I picked up the map. It was an Esso gas-station map. I unfolded it and there was the state of Tennessee with part of North Carolina next to it. I found a little dot that said “The Alluvial Valley.” Johnny Clay had circled it. From there, he had marked the route to Nashville along the only road that came anywhere near us—the Blue Ridge Parkway.

I put my head down and started crying, and I didn’t stop for an hour. I cried so hard that my eyes swelled almost shut. All the while, I rocked myself back and forth on the settee, my arms wrapped tight around my knees. Finally, when I had cried myself out, I lay back and tried to breathe. I thought how strange it was that you could cry like your heart was breaking and then all at once feel like stopping, even when you were still so sad and lonely that you weren’t sure you would ever be happy again. I held up that map and looked at the route and tried to figure out how long it would take to drive from here to Nashville.

THIRTY-SIX

The next morning, just after breakfast, Brother Jim came to the house to talk to Harley. There were other men with him—I couldn’t hear who they were. Harley was needed in Alluvial and while he was itching to go, I could tell he didn’t think he should leave me. I was still lying in bed, long after the rooster crowed and the sun had rose over the mountains and into the sky. I didn’t want to be awake, because being awake meant that I would have to face the day for the first time since Johnny Clay had gone for good.

Downstairs, the men argued with Harley. When he came upstairs to check on me and bring me some water, I said, “If you need to go, go. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be safe.” I was beginning to get tired of lying there, but I felt so heavy and worn down that it was hard to get up.

Harley studied my face. He had taken to doing this lately—taking it in with long looks, not saying a word, as if he was trying to get to the bottom of things, as if he didn’t quite trust what he saw there. Downstairs, Brother Jim coughed and cleared his throat impatiently.

Harley was a hundred miles away from me. Finally, he said, “All right, Velva Jean.”

As I lay there, I made myself stop thinking about Harley and Johnny Clay and I thought instead about Janette Lowe. I thought about the first time she came to the Little White Church and about the day that she was saved. I thought about dancing with her after she’d received salvation, about the way the two of us danced up and down the shores of Panther Creek.

The more I lay there, the guiltier I felt for lying there and feeling sorry for myself after what had happened to her. So I got up out of bed and got myself dressed. I washed my face and brushed my hair, and then I walked into the canning room at the end of the hall and chose three of my nicest jars of fruit. I put them into a basket and tied the handle with a bow and then I walked down the hill toward Alluvial.

The Lowes lived way up in Sleepy Gap, up past Mama’s and Daddy Hoyt’s. There was a trampled-down path that wove under the tree cover. I picked my way over and through this and about six hundred yards or so later I came to the house, which was set back in the trees so you could barely see it. The house looked like it might fall down any minute. It had the look of being just barely propped up. Here and there in the yard lay wide rings of leaves and tree limbs and animal bones and the gray-black dusting of ashes, leftovers from the fires Hink and his brothers liked to burn.