Velva Jean Learns to Drive (16 page)

Sweet Fern was so on edge, all you had to do was walk up behind her and say boo and she jumped about ten feet. She did not believe in trucks or cars or driving, especially since she had heard about a woman in Swain County who was run over by a car that was “out of control.” The very fact that a car could run out of control was enough for Sweet Fern. She would have none of it, especially with young children to think of. She told Danny he had another think coming if he thought he was going to bring that truck up there to her house.

It was the first time I ever saw Danny stand up to her. He said, “With all due respect, I am getting this truck, Sweet Fern,” and then he just walked out and left the front door wide open and walked right down the hill to Deal’s. Johnny Clay and I ran after him, fast as we could. We didn’t want to miss a minute. Danny banged on into Deal’s and hollered to his daddy that he was ready to go, and then he banged on out and stood there, hands on hips, squinting off into the distance.

“The train’s not even here yet,” I said to him, and Johnny Clay punched me.

Danny looked down at me like he didn’t know who I was. “It’ll be here soon,” he said finally.

“She’s a piece of work,” Johnny Clay said to him, and I pinched him hard because I thought he was talking about me.

Danny looked at him and one corner of his mouth crooked up like he was trying to keep it back but couldn’t help it.

Mr. Deal appeared, and I looked instantly at his hands for candy or soda pop, but all he had was a rough brown satchel, which he pulled up over his shoulder. In the distance, we could hear the train coming.

Coyle Deal stood in the doorway, the oldest and not as good-looking as Jessup, the baby, who had one green eye and one blue eye. Coyle smiled. Maybe we could get some candy out of him. I could hear my mama’s voice: “All those Deals are nice boys.”

The next morning, Johnny Clay and I got to Deal’s early so as to have good seats. We woke up at dawn and left the house before Sweet Fern could catch us. First we sat on the edge of the porch outside the store, and then on the Coca-Cola cooler that was pressed up against the window, then on the bottom step, and then finally on the middle of the top step.

Little by little, everyone started coming. Almost everyone on the mountain came out to wait for Danny Deal and his daddy to get back with that truck. Everyone but Sweet Fern.

I was tired of sitting, but I didn’t want to move for fear I’d lose my seat. I had the feeling that something very big was about to happen, and everyone else seemed to feel it, too. It was a warm April day, clear and blue. Birds. Butterflies—yellow on blue sky. Except for where my hair was heavy and hot on my neck, except for where my right butt cheek had gone to sleep, except for where my leg was itching from an early mosquito bite, I felt I could sit here forever.

The truck was the brightest yellow you ever saw. It was the color of goldenrod or dandelion or black-eyed Susan or the burnt gold of birch leaves in fall. Granny said it looked like Aunt Bird’s secret mustard recipe, but Martha True said it made her think of summer squash.

“That’s the damnedest color I ever saw,” Dell Haywood said.

“Why is it painted like that?” Mr. Lowe said.

“Because Len Philpot is a man prone to the blues,” said Mr. Deal. Danny kind of hung around the truck, like he didn’t want to leave it. He leaned on the front end like he was saying, Hey, this is my truck. “When he bought the truck, it was a dark navy, the color of the reverend’s shirt.” Mr. Deal waved at Reverend Broomfield. “He tried to live with it, but it just depressed him. He’s not a cheery man to begin with, and he said he needed something to snap him out of his funk, to keep him happy.” Everyone was staring at the truck, afraid to touch it, afraid to run their hands over it. Danny was grinning fit to beat the band. I’d never seen him look so full of himself. Sweet, nice Danny Deal. Shy and quiet. He was as puffed up as a balloon.

“That’s the damnedest color I ever saw,” Dell Haywood said again.

“He wanted a truck you could see coming or going,” Mr. Deal said.

“Well,” Granny said. “He got it.”

Behind me, Johnny Clay snorted. I turned to look at him. He was snickering and shaking his head like an agitated horse. He looked like he was about to get carried away with himself.

“What’s wrong with you?” I said.

He pointed at the truck. “Sweet Fern is going to have a fit.”

Along about four o’clock, Danny climbed into the truck and said it was time to be getting home. Johnny Clay and I stood there and stared at him until he waved us over. “You want to take a ride first?” he said.

I climbed in and sat in the middle, tight between Danny and Johnny Clay. Inside, the truck was navy—the seats and the dash. Everything looked so shiny, I was afraid to touch anything. There were some dials on the dashboard and two long sticks coming up from the floor.

“That’s the shifter,” Johnny Clay said. “And that’s the hand brake.” He was resting one arm on the door. He had a smug look on his face because he’d been driving Linc’s farm truck for years.

“Where you want to go?” Danny said.

“Anywhere,” I said. “Let’s go to Waynesville.” Or Nashville, I thought.

“Before supper?” Johnny Clay rolled his eyes.

“Hamlet’s Mill then.” I wanted to go someplace far. Now that I was in the truck, I didn’t ever want to leave. “Let me sit by the window, Johnny Clay.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“My legs are too long to sit in the middle. I got to stretch them out.” He stretched his legs out in front of him as much as he could.

Danny started the truck and I nearly jumped out of my skin. For one moment, I thought about that car that ran out of control, killing that woman in Swain County. Then we started to drive. I gripped on to the seat with both hands. “Whoa,” I said. Johnny Clay leaned around and waved to everyone still standing outside Deal’s. I stared at the road ahead—just an overgrown cattle road with weeds and grass growing over it—concentrating on staying alive. I thought if I concentrated hard enough, that yellow truck wouldn’t go out of control.

Danny picked up speed. Johnny Clay rolled the window down halfway and his hair started whipping around. Danny went faster and faster down the hill till the speedometer said thirty. We flew past Lucinda Sink’s, down around the curve toward Hamlet’s Mill. I shut my eyes and started to pray to Jesus right then and there to get me off the mountain safely. The truck rattled and bumped and at one point it flew up in the air a little and kept right on going.

“Open your eyes, Velva Jean,” Johnny Clay said. “For criminy’s sake.” He swore under his breath.

“Shut up,” I said. But I opened my eyes and kept them open. We hit level ground then. Trees raced by, a green blur, and streaks of dark black-brown, the railroad tracks. I watched them till I got dizzy. We left our ring of mountains and came out into a valley, and suddenly there were our mountains behind us and we were surrounded by little houses and barns and cows dotted here and there. The road became dirt and I liked the feel of it under the wheels. There were other valleys, other hollers—like ours, only out here in this other world—sweeping up toward the mountains, our mountains, as we drove around them from this other side. The land out here was wider and more open and the mountains looked different, sheer and steep and wild and sharp. I felt a sudden rush of homesickness. I wanted to go back.

Then suddenly we were in Hamlet’s Mill, which was a pretty little town of old brick buildings, just three blocks long. Danny slowed down and the needle went to fifteen, and we cruised through at a respectable pace. The main street—with its drugstore, diner, café, bank, grocery, two churches, motion picture theater, and department store—grew up around a neat town square, and in the center of that was a courthouse.

Everyone on the street stopped and stared at the truck. Their mouths fell open and their eyes popped wide, like they were looking at a naked lady or a man with three heads. Danny slowed down to ten so they could get a better look. I picked up one hand, leaving the other gripping the seat below me, and waved. I waved at everyone the way Ruby Poole said the queen of England did, moving only my hand back and forth, but keeping my arm perfectly still. I turned from side to side and waved to everyone and not a single person waved back.

“Well,” I said.

Johnny Clay started laughing then and wouldn’t stop. Soon Danny got started, and that got me started—the sight of my quiet brother-in-law behind the wheel of his bright yellow truck, just laughing till the tears rolled down his face. We all started waving. We just waved and laughed, waved and laughed, driving through town. And then we turned around and headed on up the mountain, back on up toward home.

When we got there, Sweet Fern said, “Daniel Deal, what on earth?” And then her mouth fell open so wide a bird could have flown in there and made a nest.

Johnny Clay laughed so hard he fell down. He rolled and rolled all over the ground until Sweet Fern noticed him.

She snapped her mouth shut and ordered us both inside. Then she held out an arm and pointed at the truck. I noticed that her finger shook a little. “Park it behind the barn,” she said to Danny. “Out of sight of the house.”

That night I couldn’t sleep a wink. I had decided Danny Deal’s truck was the most exciting good thing to ever happen to me, more exciting even than almost going to jail. I lay in bed and thought about a Greek woman from the fifth century that Mrs. Dennis had told me about. Her name was Hypatia and she was a philosopher and an astronomer who dressed in men’s clothing and drove her own chariot through the streets of Alexandria. I thought about a story I’d read about a woman named Genevra Mudge who, in 1899, became the first woman driver in the entire United States of America, and another story about Bertha Benz, wife of Karl Benz, the father of the automobile, who was the world’s first woman driver and the first person to drive an automobile over a long distance, more than sixty miles in Germany in 1888.

I was going to be just like all of them, I decided, only instead of men’s clothing I would wear my costume with rhinestones, and instead of a chariot I would drive a car or, even better, a truck. That way I could leave whenever I wanted and go far away from Fair Mountain and, most of all, Sweet Fern. I could come and go just as I pleased, like Beachard, who disappeared now and then and wandered like our daddy. I could see the world and there wouldn’t be anything Sweet Fern could do to stop me.

TEN

Every June folks came down from each of the five mountains for the three-day Alluvial Fair. They arrived in buggies, on horseback, in trucks, or on foot, carrying baskets of food, which the women spread on tables with white tablecloths, underneath a tent in the grassy area between Deal’s and the Baptist church.

On the third day of the fair, the day of the singing, I put on the only pretty dress I owned. It was one of Ruby Poole’s hand-me-downs, almost too small because, at twelve, I was already as tall as her. It was pink with a green sash at the waist and a green satin collar, and inside the collar there was a label that said “Bon Marche.” While Sweet Fern was getting the children ready, Ruby Poole dusted my lips with lipstick and squirted my neck with Irresistible Perfume (“It stirs senses . . . thrills . . . sets hearts on fire!”), and then I sat in front of her mirror, looking at my reflection from different angles, and decided I didn’t look half-bad, even if I did have freckles and curly hair.