Velva Jean Learns to Drive (53 page)

“Where were you today, Velva Jean?” Harley’s voice came out of the dark and nearly made me jump out of bed. I had thought he was sleeping. He said, “Lally Hatch saw you go up the mountain this afternoon. She said you came back down sometime later and that she heard you singing.”

I lay still and quiet, trying to think of what to say. He said, “I been trying to think who’s left up there now that the Toomeys and the Freys and Aunt Junie are gone.” He leaned up on one elbow and looked at me. “Did you go up to the Scenic? Were you visiting someone up there? That friend of Johnny Clay’s maybe?”

I said, “Of course not. I went up to see the work they’re doing and then I came back home. I guess I just forgot myself and sang along the way. The day was so pretty.” I prayed that would be the end of it. I closed my eyes and finally he fell back against the pillow. We lay side by side, not talking, not touching. I said, “Harley?”

He said, “Good night, Velva Jean.”

THIRTY-FOUR

Johnny Clay stood in back at Daryl Gordon’s funeral, dressed in his work pants, the ones with the holes in the knees, and one of Daddy’s old shirts with the sleeves pushed up. His feet were bare. His hair had grown long and hung in his eyes, and every now and then he shook his head hard so he could see.

Harley and I stood right up at the front. It was a simple service—just the Gordons and Lou Pigeon holding Rachel’s hand and Alice Nix on her other side, and Johnny Clay and the Lowes and Daddy Hoyt and Granny. Harley said we needed to be there, that it was good in a time like this to show our support.

It was a snakebite that killed him. By the time Lester found Daryl, he was barely breathing. Daddy Hoyt said it was most likely a rattlesnake, that their poison killed the quickest. Mr. Gordon talked about what a good hunter Daryl was, how he could shoot a deer at two hundred yards and never miss. Mrs. Gordon cried and Rachel cried and Alice Nix cried and Janette Lowe, standing by her family, cried and offered up prayers for Daryl and the rest of his family.

Afterward, while Harley was shaking hands and passing out his little white calling cards, I ran after Johnny Clay. He was already headed home, beating a pathway through the grass with a stick. I fell into step beside him.

“Listen,” I said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened between you and Lucinda Sink, but I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

He said, “You could have shook her hand.”

“I guess I should have. But I was mad. You were going off and leaving me without even saying good-bye.”

He beat the grass hard with the stick. Then he stopped suddenly and said, “I was wrong to do that.” He was blinking up at the sky. His skin was tanned, his nose freckled. His hair fell down into his eyes again and he left it there. “I love that woman, Velva Jean. I love her with my whole heart. I wanted to marry her and make her life easy. I wanted to take care of her and make her happy. She was going to marry me. I’d finally convinced her, after all these years.” He looked at me and smiled. “But we got down to Hamlet’s Mill and she said she couldn’t do that to me. She said I have my whole life ahead of me and she’d never forgive herself for holding me back. She said, ‘I’ve made my choices and I have to live with them. People can’t change that much. They have to own up to who they are.’ ”

His eyes grew wet and he rubbed them hard with the backs of his hand. “She made me bring her back up here. She wouldn’t even let me touch her. She wouldn’t even look at me. I brought her back here and dropped her off and I haven’t seen her since.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Nothing
to
do.” He started walking again, beating the grass as he went. “Just go on, I guess.”

We were almost to Mama’s house. I laid a hand on Johnny Clay’s arm. “I’m glad you’re home,” I said. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too,” he said, but I wondered if it was true.

We walked on in silence. I thought how right it felt to be back in Sleepy Gap, how good and familiar. I knew that place better than any other place. I knew its sounds and colors. I knew the feel of the earth and the slope of the land and the shade of the trees and the pattern of the light as it slanted through the leaves and then hit the ground. I knew every trail and every cave and every stream and flower. I was home. For a few minutes, I could believe that I was Velva Jean Hart again and Mama was still alive and Daddy hadn’t left and Beachard wasn’t off somewhere. Johnny Clay wasn’t twenty, almost twenty-one, and I wasn’t eighteen, almost nineteen. We were young and our hearts were fresh and innocent. No one had touched them or hurt them. Any minute now we would play spies. He would be Red Terror. I would be Constance Kurridge. We would go on our next daring mission.

“My record came,” I said.

“How about that? Does it sound any good?”

“Not really. I don’t think so, but everyone says it’s good.”

“You’ll have to play it for me,” he said.

I was so glad he was home. Now that he was back, I didn’t know how I ever stood him being away.

“Guess what I did?” I said. “I taught myself to drive that yellow truck.”

Johnny Clay whistled.

“I drove all the way down to Hamlet’s Mill and back.” I didn’t tell him that I’d come down there looking for him.

He threw his arm around my neck. “Well now that’s fine,” he said. “That’s about the finest damn thing I ever heard.”

The next day, I was under the hood of the yellow truck, going over the engine—checking the oil and the radiator fluid. I wanted to make sure the truck stayed in good working order since it wasn’t being driven. Suddenly, there was the crunch of rocks and the honk of a horn. And there was Johnny Clay in his Nash convertible. I jumped ten feet and banged my head on the hood. He hollered, “Come for a ride, Velva Jean!”

We left the Alluvial Valley on the old cattle road, heading out toward Hamlet’s Mill, and then we cut across to the brand-new dirt road that Johnny Clay said had been made by the government for the Scenic workers. The access road cut up Silvermine Bald, which was just one ridge over from Devil’s Courthouse.

The trees grew heavier and fuller the higher we climbed, a dark midnight green. Here and there, a splash of bright yellow lime. In just three months the leaves would catch their glory and the colors would come alive and the mountains would look completely different. As we drove, we sang “Keep on the Sunny Side” and “Girl on the Automobile” and “Red River Valley.”

As we made our way to the Scenic, we came out onto a wide-open space, half a mile long, curving along the top of Silvermine Bald and Devil’s Courthouse. There was nothing soft about the land here. The high, sheer faces of the mountains were craggy and clifflike, and they seemed wild and overgrown, like no person had ever set foot here before. We could see where the workers had blasted through the mountainside and started work on the Devil’s Courthouse tunnel. The trees were cleared and the earth was cleared and for part of the way there was a road.

Johnny Clay said, “Welcome to the Blue Ridge Parkway, Velva Jean. The road of unlimited horizons.” He pulled the Nash onto the road and we drove as far as it was paved. At the end of the pavement, we sat and looked out over the valleys and the mountains that lay beyond, layer on layer. I wanted to hate that road for all it had done to us—for the worry it had caused, for taking Daddy away, and for changing the lives of people like Aunt Junie and the Toomeys and the Freys, who just wanted to stay in their homes and not be bothered.

I looked to the west, over toward the Indian nation, where I knew the road was reaching. I looked to the east and to the north, and the road wound up and onward, as far as the eye could see. I looked directly to the north—just below me—and tried to pick out my mountain, to see Alluvial and Sleepy Gap and Devil’s Kitchen. Sitting up on that road, with the whole world spread out around me on all sides, I couldn’t hate anything.

And then it hit me. I said, “This was what Mama meant when she said to live out there.” ~

Johnny Clay drove me home just before dark. The convertible top was down and the air was fresh and cool. The crickets were humming and the night was alive. Johnny Clay was back—the storm had passed. Maybe that would be it. Maybe that had been all there was ever going to be. Maybe I had worried for nothing.

“Let’s keep driving,” I said. Harley would still be at the church. He wouldn’t be back for hours. I wasn’t in any hurry to get home. Suddenly, all I wanted was to run away like we had when I was twelve and Johnny Clay was fourteen.

My brother was quiet as we passed through Alluvial. He kept his eyes straight ahead as we drove by the hotel and didn’t look back once, but I could feel him thinking and churning and I could feel his anger. You always knew Johnny Clay’s anger was there, even if he didn’t show it.

“Where you want to drive to?”

“Anywhere,” I said. “Anywhere in the world.”

“What about Nashville?”

“Nashville’s as good a place as any.” Yes. Let’s go to Nashville. Let’s go.

“Used to be it was the only place.”

I got quiet then. I didn’t know what to do about Nashville. What if Johnny Clay was right all those years ago? What if I really couldn’t be Mrs. Harley Bright and be a singing star too? I was beginning to think that maybe you couldn’t do both. But who said I needed to? I had an actual record with my name on it—Velva Jean Hart—even though Harley had made me promise not to sing. If I never did another thing, I thought that was something. Besides, I was happy driving my truck and writing my songs. Maybe that could be enough.

“I been thinking about what to do. I might sign up for the army,” Johnny Clay said.

I said, “What?”

He said, “I can’t stay here all my life. I think I might be a paratrooper and jump out of airplanes.”

I said, “Johnny Clay Hart, why would you go away from here?” It was one thing to dream it—it was another to do it. In my head I thought: Why would you leave me again? You only just got back.

“There’s nothing for me here. I need to get out there and see what I can find. It’s a great big world, Velva Jean.”

“You sound like Daddy,” I said. I meant it in a bad, mean way.

He said, “That’s about the one thing Daddy was right about. I don’t plan to stay here on this mountain for all my days and only know the same people and the same places.”

I looked away from him. I tried to pretend he didn’t exist, that he had already gone.

“Okay,” I said after a while. “Let’s go to Nashville.”

“Velva Jean,” Johnny Clay said, “if I thought for one minute you were serious, that you really and truly meant that like you used to, I would pack up all my money and my zoot suit and you and me would hit the road right now. I’d forget all about the army and turn this car around so fast your head would spin. And Harley Bright would be out of luck and out of a wife for good.”

I tried to picture myself in Nashville, wearing my rhinestone suit and playing my Hawaiian steel guitar. For some reason it seemed funny now, just a funny little faraway dream.

I said, “Or we could just go to Asheville.”

Johnny Clay sighed. He said, “Hang Asheville,” and started up the hill toward Devil’s Kitchen.