Velva Jean Learns to Drive (62 page)

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Authors: Jennifer Niven

BOOK: Velva Jean Learns to Drive
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By the time I climbed into that yellow truck and drove back down toward Alluvial, the lump in my throat felt permanent. Daddy Hoyt was going to say good-bye to everyone for me. The fewer good-byes I had to say, the better.
I held the money in my skirt. Twenty dollars and fifty-five cents. I couldn’t get over it. Money from my own daddy. Money he’d earned and sent for each of us over all these years.
The train had pulled into Alluvial. From every door, boys came down off the steps and lined up together—the boys from the Scenic—and this time there were guards with them. Men with guns to make sure no one hurt them or got near them. I sat and watched as the boys finished spilling off the train, as they grouped together and stood glaring at Deal’s and at the locals who were there, and then as they started marching up the mountain, up to the camp at Silvermine Bald and back to their work at Devil’s Courthouse and beyond, guards surrounding them, protecting them from us. Butch Dawkins was nowhere to be seen.
I leaned out the window and called to one of the boys I recognized, a colored boy who’d come to church with Butch once. “Hey,” I said, “Did Butch Dawkins come back?”
The guards moved in closer to him, protecting him from me. The boy yelled, “Nah. He’s long gone by now.”
I sat there watching those men march up the mountain, wondering where Butch was, wondering if wherever he was he was playing his steel guitar and singing our song, my song, the one he wrote for a girl he knew. I wondered who was singing it with him. I hoped, wherever he was now, that I had mattered to him. Somehow that was important to me, to know that I had meant something—even a little something—that I wasn’t just another stop on his journey, just another person he’d met along the way.
I looked down at the books I’d borrowed from Mrs. Dennis and Dr. Hamp, the ones I still had on the floor of the truck. I wondered what would happen to their library, to their home, and if they would be allowed to come back, too.
As I drove past Sweet Fern’s, I slowed the truck. For a moment, I thought about stopping. After all, she had raised me like her own. She was as good as my own mama. She had been my mother almost as long as Mama had. Sweet Fern was standing on the porch. Dan Presley and Corrina were playing in the front yard, running round and round, being chased by Justice and little Hoyt. I almost stopped the truck and got out. Then Coyle Deal walked out onto the porch from inside the house and stood next to Sweet Fern and she smiled up at him with her painted pink lips and he smiled down at her. He wasn’t as lean as Danny. He was more solid and square. But he looked at Sweet Fern the same way Danny had. And she looked right back at him.
I kept on driving.
The house was quiet. Levi was gone. Harley was gone. It felt like no one had ever lived there. I let myself in and went up the stairs to the bedroom. The lump had settled in my throat—it was still there, but not as big. I could swallow now. I had to. I had to be able to think and to plan. I reached into the chifforobe and pulled out the green recipe box that Johnny Clay had given me. It was just a small box—an old, green
American Home
recipe box. I sat on the bed and held that box in my lap and opened it.
Suddenly the room was filled with lavender and honeysuckle and lye soap.
Mama.
Inside was a handkerchief and two little hair combs that Mama had worn—Bakelite with pale blue stones. And then Mama’s wedding ring and two folded pieces of paper. I slipped the wedding ring on the ring finger of my right hand. It fit perfectly. I opened the first piece of paper. It said:
Dear Velva Jean,
Daddy left this in the message tree by Mama’s grave. He’s come back now and then over the years, I guess to check on her and us, only he never wanted us to know. Did you ever feel like you was being watched? That was probably him. It was him that killed the panther that chased us, that twisted its neck till it died. Him that found Danny’s blue hat in the train wreck. I saw him out in the woods one night and caught him and he said the ring was for you. I’m going to give it to you sometime when the time is right. Whenever that is, I guess it’s now because you’re reading this. Don’t be too hard on him. He’s been working on the new road that’s coming into the mountains. So you see, depending on how you look at it, I guess he’s done at least one good thing in his life. As Daddy Hoyt likes to say, it’s an incoming road, but it’s an outgoing road too. Anyway, the ring is yours. Daddy looked exactly the same as ever, just older.
Love,
your brother,
Johnny Clay
P.S. I found these other notes hid in the house where Sweet Fern must have put them years ago.
I folded the note away and put it back in the box. Then I opened the other notes, which were folded together. The first was crumpled and the writing was faded and hard to read. It was written in pencil in a loose, slanting hand.
Dear Beebee,
I am going up the mountin to git som work. Don’t you wurry. Soon you will be in the Hospitial and on the mend and gitting along all right. You will see. I’ll be home wen I can.
Yurs furever,
Old Mule
The other note had writing on both sides. On one side, in neat printing, it said, “July 29, 1933. Dear Uncle Lincoln, Enclosed please find the sixty dollars. I hope Aunt Corrine feels better soon. Your nephew, Toss Bailey.” On the other side, in my daddy’s slanting hand, was the following:
July 16, 1933
 
Dear Toss,
I hope you are well. I shur am having a time. I don’t know hardly what I will do. Corrine is sick and poorly. I think she needs to go to the Hospitial so that she can get on the mend. If she does, hir bill will be about $200 if she gits along all right. I can pay $50 on it. Linc is getting me $25 mor tonight tho he don’t know what it’s for. Corrine don’t want the family to know. She don’t want anyone to wurry. Now I am going to ask you to send me $60 and charg me with enerst. If you need the
before then I can pay it. I am taking Beach out of school and he is helping me. We both make $9.50 per day so you know we can pay you back most any time. I am taking a job in Weaverville also, leeving next week. You can male the money to Sleepy Gap c/o my oldest son, Linc Jr. Don’t say why you are sending it. Just say it’s for me.
Your uncle,
Lincoln S. J. Hart
I read it over three times and then I reread his note to Mama. I read both letters again, searching for the answer to Mama’s sickness, for the reason I was sitting here on this bed right now, getting ready to leave my husband and my home. There was so much I hadn’t known back then. Mama sick and needing a hospital. Daddy going to earn money to make her well. Beach leaving school. Linc giving them money. Daddy writing to a nephew to borrow money to help Mama get better. And then—later on—Daddy sending money to Sweet Fern and to Daddy Hoyt to keep for me.
All those hours and weeks and months I had worried about that note and blamed my daddy for killing my mama. All those years I’d put into hating him for making her sick and then leaving her to die. After all that, Daddy had been trying to save her. And I had sent him away.
I crumpled up the notes and stuffed them into the box. I was crying angry, hot tears. The lump in my throat was loose. It was sliding away. I was so mad, but there was no one to hear me—no one anywhere.
That afternoon I stood in the yard outside the house, a knife in my hand, and thought I should mark the trees just in case I ever needed to find my way back. I was thinking about the Cherokee who were forced to leave their mountain home for the Trail of Tears and how they bent and shaped the trees along the trail so they could find their way home someday and how they called them “day stars” because they could see by them.
I looked at the old oak where Beachard had carved his message. “You Are Loved.” In my mind, I walked past this to the field where I taught myself how to drive; past the trickling end of Panther Creek where Harley had saved Janette Lowe and where Johnny Clay and I had once collected fairy crosses. I saw my way down to Alluvial and Sweet Fern’s house, past Deal’s and Lucinda Sink’s, up the hill to Sleepy Gap and home—a place I would never forget as long as I lived, a place I would never need any help finding.
I decided my trees were already marked. I had plenty of day stars to see by. ~
For supper that night, I served fried chicken and angel flake biscuits and stewed tomatoes and for dessert we had half-moon pie. Harley was in a good mood because the sheriff and the Lowes had caught the outlander—the one they called the German—coming out of a house just outside of Murphy. Harley said the Lowes had wanted to string him up right then and there, but the sheriff had sent him to Butcher Gap Prison for safekeeping. Harley said, “He’ll be kept under heavy guard so nothing happens to him.” Harley called this a waste of time. He said everyone knew the boy would get the chair.
When he was finished eating, Harley had to undo the top button of his pants. He said, “That was some meal, Velva Jean.”

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