Velva Jean Learns to Drive (18 page)

We all went back to Daddy Hoyt’s to churn ice cream. He and Granny lived in an old log house connected by a dogtrot—one side of the house for cooking and eating, the other for living and sleeping. We sat outside—on the porch, on the steps, in the grass—and Granny and Sweet Fern and Ruby Poole served the food. Dan Presley and Hunter Firth played chase while we watched, and Corrina, who had just started walking, picked flowers, her bottom up in the air.

I sat on the steps, drinking Cheerwine and ignoring Sweet Fern. Every now and then I patted the Gold Queen crown that sat atop my head. It was made of wire painted yellow. Little gold nuggets shone like stars at the very tip of each point.

Rachel Gordon had sold greeting-card subscriptions to earn enough money for a china doll she saw down at Deal’s. It cost $2.75 and she made enough in two weeks to pay for it. I was thinking I might start selling greeting-card subscriptions to earn money to get to the National Singing Convention, no matter what Sweet Fern said. If there was any left over, I would buy that Hawaiian steel guitar and save up for my trip to Nashville. The guitar cost fourteen dollars and was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen. Once I could afford to buy it, I planned to get rid of Daddy’s old mandolin for good.

“One day when I get out of school,” I said, “I’m going right up there to Nashville and get me a job at the Opry.” I didn’t feel one bit shy anymore. I felt like I couldn’t wait to sing again, and not just in front of people here on Fair Mountain.

“You don’t even need school,” said Johnny Clay from where he sat on the porch railing. He didn’t think school was worth anything, even though he was so good at it. “Granny didn’t go to school, did you, Granny?”

“Not like you children do,” she said, setting her glass of sweet tea on the floor by her foot. She rocked back and forth in her rocker. “But I still had lessons.”

Johnny Clay waved his hand at this like he was slapping away a bug. “You don’t need school if you’re going to be a famous singer like Velva Jean.”

I liked wearing a crown. When Mama died, I never thought I would feel happy again. A part of me felt guilty, like I had no right to feel happy now, with Mama gone. I hoped she knew that I was still just as sad over her death and that I missed her just as much. I hoped she understood that this good feeling didn’t have anything to do with not missing her.

After the last pie was eaten and we all went home, I slipped up the stairs to my bedroom and opened the family record book and wrote down the date followed by: “Velva Jean sings at the Alluvial Fair. Wins first place. Crowned Gold Queen.” I slid my hatbox out from under my bed and added my new five dollar bill to the money I was saving for Nashville. I wrapped it up, good and tight, in the handkerchief and closed the hatbox away. Then I stood in front of the mirror that hung over the chest of drawers. Was I really the prettiest girl on Fair Mountain?

I knew that vanity was a sin, but I leaned in close to the mirror over the washstand and examined my face. This time I didn’t look for the marks of being an orphan or losing my mama. I tried to see past them and past the freckles and the hair that got too curly in the summer heat. I tried to look past the fact that my nose was straight and didn’t have a bump on the bridge and that my eyes were more the color of Three Gum River than sunflowers against a blue sky.

I looked up and Sweet Fern was standing in the door, watching me. “You sounded real good today, Velva Jean,” she said, and her voice was so low that I almost didn’t hear it.

“Thank you,” I said. I was afraid to move because I was afraid if I did she might take it back or change her mind and go away.

She touched the back of her neck, which was clean and bare because her hair was pinned up on her head like it always was. “Mama would have loved that song. I remember when she taught it to you.” Her face was closed up and hard to read.

I felt the tears spring up then, and all of a sudden I forgot about being mad at Sweet Fern. I wanted to run to her and wrap my arms around her. But I stayed still, barely breathing, because she didn’t like people flying at her and surprising her. “It was just a few months before she died,” I whispered.

Sweet Fern nodded and then looked up at the ceiling. She blinked several times, like she had something in her eye. “We’ll be having another baby next year,” she said finally. She rested her hands on her stomach. “This house is too much for me to keep on my own as it is. I’ll need your help with the babies and the chores.”

I said, “Is that why I can’t go to Atlanta?”

“That and other reasons. I was thinking that this next year of school should be your last. You already got a good education, more than most, and I need you to stay home and help me here. You can finish the seventh grade, but after that I need you home.”

“The convention is only two days,” I said. “Plus one day there and one day back. I’ll be home long before you have the baby.”

She picked at a loose thread on her dress and then she smoothed it flat. She cleared her throat. “Sometimes you got to learn, Velva Jean, that not every dream is supposed to come true. Mama and Daddy coddled you so much that you think you got more right to dream than anyone else, but you don’t.”

I didn’t know what to say. I felt like I’d just been slapped across the face, like the time Johnny Clay accidentally hit me in the nose with his elbow and gave me a black eye.

“It’s nice to dream, but you can’t dream too big,” Sweet Fern said. “It was a real nice dream to go down to Alluvial to sing at the fair. But it’s unreasonable to think you’re going to ride a train to Georgia.” She sighed so deep that it was like all the breath went out of her. “And it’s unreasonable to think you’re going to go all the way to Nashville to sing at the Opry.”

I felt the handles of the dresser pressing into my backside. I thought they felt just as cold and hard as Sweet Fern.

“Besides, there’s other kinds of dreams,” she said. “Someday you’ll meet a nice boy and get married and have a family of your own. Then you’ll see what I mean.”

“And get old and die here on Fair Mountain without ever having seen anywhere else,” I said. “That’s not
my
life ambition.”

“Don’t be dramatic, Velva Jean. Mama’s not here.” Her voice had that final tone that meant she was done discussing it. “But I am. Daddy left me in charge of you, and as long as I am, you’ll listen to me.”

I was mad. Good and mad and hurt. I said the only thing I could think of. “You’re not my mother!” Sweet Fern’s face turned as red as Ruby Poole’s lipstick. And then I pushed past her and ran down the stairs and out of the house.

“I wish to God that was true,” she shouted after me, and her voice sounded tired. “More than you know, Velva Jean!”

“So Sweet Fern doesn’t understand your dreams.” The Wood Carver stopped in front of a tall balsam fir. He tipped his hat back and studied the tree, and then reached out and chopped off one of the long and knotted limbs. He patted the trunk of the tree and then walked back to his house, the branch over his shoulder, and I followed him. For the first time, I noticed that he favored his left leg and walked with a limp. We sat down and I tried not to stare at his leg.

“No,” I said, “she don’t. She don’t even want to. I’m so sick and tired of her telling me what I can and can’t do all the time. I want to run away and be a hermit in the woods, just as far away from her as I can get. Just as far away from everything and everybody.” I glanced at his face. I was hoping he might invite me to come live up here with him. No one would bother us and he could teach me to carve and I could teach him to sing. We would be two bad, evil outlaws, out of everybody’s way.

“And you think running away will fix it?” the Wood Carver said. He picked up his knife and held it over the branch.

It was the kind of question Daddy Hoyt liked to ask, one I knew I had to be careful answering because it had a hidden meaning. “No, but it will help me feel better. I’m not sure I’m fit to live down there.” Ever since I was saved, I thought to myself. Ever since Mama. Ever since Daddy.

He looked at me, and I wondered if I’d answered correctly. “ ‘And I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth.’ ” I waited for more, but that was all he said. He held the balsam branch this way, then that. He had told me how important that first cut was, finding just the right place to start carving the wood. He was quiet for a long time.

“Nature doesn’t deal with straight lines,” he said finally, setting down his knife. “Everything is a curve. Nothing is what you expect. There are no straight lines anywhere, and that goes for pathways too. You can look and look for them, but they don’t exist.”

I sat staring out into the laurel thicket where I used to hide and spy on him. I thought how long ago that seemed. “ ‘Whenever God closes a door, he opens a window.’ Mama used to say that. Is that what you mean?”

“I’m just saying look at this piece of wood.” He handed it to me. “Look at the way it twists back and forth and goes this way and that. Some people might think there’s only one way to make a cane or a crutch—the straighter the better because you have to be able to lean on it. And if I handed them something like this, they’d say, ‘Oh, that can’t be a crutch! It’s too crooked! It’s not at all what a crutch should be.’ Because they think there’s only one way, you see.” He took the branch from me, “But I say you have to expect nature to curve and have bumps, and that’s the thing you can count on. Life is that way, too.”

Like when I was born again and thought it would make everything right forever, only it didn’t—it made things wrong. “Are you saying that I could still get to the Opry?” I said.

His fingers rested on a knot in the wood. He wore a gold band on the ring finger of his left hand. It was nicked and scratched, but it shone like the sun. I wondered where his wife was and what had really happened to her.

He picked up his knife again. “I’m saying there are plenty of other ways to get there.” He touched his knife to the balsam branch, and I watched as he made the first cut.

ELEVEN

The day after the fair, Beachard got up at dawn and did his chores and ate his breakfast. As soon as he was finished, he picked up his plate and glass and carried them into the kitchen, and then he told us he was leaving. He had packed a small bag, which he threw over his shoulder. He walked to the doorway and even when Sweet Fern hollered at him, he didn’t raise his voice. He said, “I’m going to make sure the men building the Scenic don’t do anything horrible to these mountains.”

Sweet Fern followed after Beachard as he set out across the porch and into the yard. She said, “When will you be back?” I stood behind her and from what I could see of her face, I was worried she was going to cry. Beach was sixteen, almost seventeen. He was getting old enough to be on his own, but he was still her responsibility. Already I wanted him to come back. I wanted Sweet Fern to do something, but I knew there was nothing she or any of us could do because once Beach made up his mind about something there was no moving him.

Beach said, “I don’t know. I’ll write if I can. This has nothing to do with you, Sweet Fern.”

Her face fell in on itself then and she covered it up with her hands. I crept forward and laid my hand on her back, light as could be, and watched Beach go. He had the bag up over his shoulder and he was heading down the hill toward Alluvial, where I guessed he was going to meet Stanley Abbott and the rest of the men from the Scenic.

“Beach will be okay,” I said. I was still wearing my crown, which was bent from where I had slept on it. Johnny Clay and Danny came out onto the porch and I looked around at them. I patted Sweet Fern a little, but not enough to make her mad. I said, “He’ll be back.”

She took her hands away and her eyes were wet. Her face was fixed in anger, and she stared off toward the mountains and didn’t say a word. I knew it would be a bad day for the rest of us.