Velva Jean Learns to Drive (19 page)

That night, Johnny Clay came to my room and sat on the foot of my bed. The moonlight fell on his face and the gold-brown hair hung down over his eyes. “We got to run away from here,” he said, low enough so as not to wake Dan Presley and Corrina, asleep in the other bed. Sweet Fern and Danny had turned in an hour ago. “I can’t stand it anymore, the way she treats us.”

I laid my book aside and propped myself up on my elbows. I was almost too upset to read
The Motor Girls on Waters Blue
, which I had borrowed from Dr. Hamp’s library. The Motor Girls was a wonderful series of books. In each one, Cora Kimball and her friends drove off on different adventures in their automobiles. Cora Kimball also had an older brother named Jack who drove a red and yellow racing car that Cora called “giddy and gaudy.” I wished Johnny Clay had a car. I wished I had one too, just like Cora. We could drive far away from Sweet Fern and she would be sorry.

“Where can we go?” I said. I’d never been anywhere in my life except down to Hamlet’s Mill. I wasn’t sure what all was out there, but I knew I wanted to go see. Maybe there were other ways to get to the Opry, like the Wood Carver said.

Johnny Clay considered. He was even more fed up than me because he was almost fifteen and already thought of himself as a man. “We could just jump the train and see where it takes us. Beachard used to do it all the time. Hundreds of kids our age and younger are riding the rails from one state to another.”

I liked the sound of jumping a train. It sounded wild and dangerous and in keeping with the wickedness I felt inside. I thought briefly of Jesus and how I’d pledged myself to him two years ago. Then I thought: Where was Jesus when I was shelling the corn and scrubbing the floors and parboiling the hog, all of which I did before supper? And where was he when I prayed for him to save my mama? And where was he when I asked for this one thing—just to let Sweet Fern say yes to the National Singing Convention? I was as sick of Jesus as I was of Sweet Fern.

The next morning, while Sweet Fern was on the back porch, giving the children a bath, I packed up my hatbox with all my treasures, including the little wooden singing girl, the money I was saving for Nashville, the emerald Daddy had given me, my Motor Girls book, and the dress I’d worn to the fair. I figured I could mail the book back to Dr. Hamp once I finished reading it. I slipped the mandolin strap across my chest, and then Johnny Clay and I said good-bye to Hunter Firth and went down to Deal’s and jumped a freight train.

Johnny Clay pulled himself up first, kicking open the door, and I ran beside him, on the ground, holding out my free hand. The train was going too fast, and I was scared to death of being left behind. “Johnny Clay!” I yelled and felt the train starting to outdistance me. The hatbox and the mandolin made it hard to run. Then I felt Johnny Clay’s hand lock with mine. He pulled me in, and my feet swung above the moving ground, and then I was sitting next to him with my hatbox in my lap.

It took me a minute to realize that the car wasn’t empty. There were three old men and seven or eight boys of various ages sitting back against the sides of the car, hands resting on knees or curled on their sides as they slept. Most of them looked dirty and tired, and I tried not to stare. I wondered if they were train robbers or bandits, just like the ones Granny had told me stories about, or if these were the kids Beach had spoke of to Johnny Clay, the ones riding the rails from one side of the country to the other.

“Someday we’re really going to ride this train, Velva Jean,” Johnny Clay shouted above the noise. “Not in the freight car with the hoboes but as real passengers with tickets and a destination and people knowing we’re going and coming to tell us good-bye.”

When the train picked up full steam, I forgot about whether the hoboes were outlaws and whether I would get sent to prison if the train detectives caught me. I even forgot about how much I was going to miss Daddy Hoyt and Granny and Ruby Poole and the rest. Instead I just concentrated on the landscape whizzing by. I hope Sweet Fern is happy, I thought. I hope they realize this is all her doing.

I held tight to the door and to my hatbox and sat cross-legged beside Johnny Clay, watching the trees and hills whir past. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the feel of rushing air on my face, and then opened them again so I wouldn’t miss anything.

 

“Let’s just keep going,” I said. “Let’s go as far as we can.”

We got off seven or eight miles later in the next town over, a place called Civility, which looked a lot like Hamlet’s Mill, only much bigger. It was the biggest city I’d ever seen. There were two diners, two cafés, a bank, a beauty shop, a grocery, a hardware store, three department stores, a doctor’s office, a law office, a soda shop, a flower shop, a drugstore, a courthouse, three churches, and a movie theater.

Johnny Clay and I went to the theater and read the marquee:
Top Hat
starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Johnny Clay emptied his pockets and found enough for two tickets, and as I lowered myself into the seat I thought: This is my new life. Picture shows every day and not a soul to tell me no.

After it was over, we stumbled out into the daylight, singing songs from the film. When we couldn’t remember the words, we made them up. I danced along the street like Ginger Rogers. I swung my hatbox back and forth by its string and thought how happy I was that I would never have to see Sweet Fern again or have to listen to her ordering me around or telling me what I could and couldn’t do. I thought how nice it was to be free from Sweet Fern and to have the whole world opened up to me so that anything was possible.

“Okay,” Johnny Clay said as we walked. “Since we’re starting a new life, I say we make some new rules.”

“Rules? You have lost your mind. Why do you think we ran away?”

“But these are good ones. Like, we eat ice cream before dinner.”

I thought for a moment. “And we don’t wash our hands.”

“And we always keep our elbows on the table.”

“And chew with our mouths open.”

“And stay up as late as we want.”

“And go to the National Singing Convention,” I said.

There were four or five automobiles parked on either side of the street. Johnny Clay paused at each one, shielding his eyes with his hand so he could see the dashboard. I covered my eyes and peered in the windows, too, but all I saw were dials and buttons that I didn’t understand.

I said, “One day when I’m a famous singer, I’m going to have a shiny automobile, and I’m going to let anyone who wants to ride in it. When I drive past everyone’ll say, ‘There goes Velva Jean Hart. Just look how fancy.’ ”

We walked and danced down the street to the soda shop and sat on stools at the counter and ordered milk shakes and potato chips. I set my hatbox and my mandolin on the seat next to me and we propped our elbows up and made sure to chew with our mouths open. I felt very grown up.

“Get out of here now,” we heard the man behind the counter say. He sounded angry. We looked up to see one of the hobo boys from the train standing at the counter.

“I’ll work for it,” he said.

“I don’t have any work for you, kid,” the man said. “Now get out of here.”

The boy had that hungry look about him that dogs got when they came round after Granny’s hens—the kind of dogs that were all bones and skin, not fat ones like Hunter Firth. The boy looked no older than fourteen, with ears that stuck out and arms he hadn’t grown into yet. I stared down at his shoes and saw that they were full of holes.

“Give him what he wants,” I heard Johnny Clay say. I looked at my brother and he was staring at the man behind the counter, the man who had been so nice to us when we ordered our food and paid him money up front for it.

“He with you?” The man said. His face was closed up like Sweet Fern’s when she didn’t believe you.

“That’s right,” Johnny Clay said.

The man eyed Johnny Clay and then the kid. He sighed. “What do you want?”

The boy barely even glanced at Johnny Clay. He looked like he wanted to die right there on the spot. “A hamburger,” he said, just like a mouse.

“Make it a cheeseburger,” said Johnny Clay. “And a vanilla milk shake.”

The man turned without a word and began to fix the food.

“Thanks,” the kid mumbled. He said it into his hat, which he still held in his hands.

Johnny Clay shrugged. “Where you from?”

“Ohio,” the kid said.

“Where you headed?”

“California.”

Johnny Clay nodded at me to move my things so the boy could sit down. I handed them to my brother and he set them on the stool next to him. The boy sat on the stool beside me.

“I’m Gary,” he said.

“I’m Johnny Clay and this here’s my sister, Velva Jean.”

“Hey,” Gary said.

“Hey,” I said back.

“Why’d you leave?” Johnny Clay said to him.

Gary set his hat on the counter and rubbed his hands on the legs of his trousers. “My dad lost his job and told me they couldn’t feed any more kids. He said I was old enough to look after my own self now.”

I said, “What’re you going to do in California?”

“Pick fruit. I heard there’s jobs out there.”

Johnny Clay and I had finished our drinks by the time the cheeseburger came. We sat there with Gary while he ate, and Johnny Clay paid the man behind the counter what he owed him and not a penny more because he said the man didn’t deserve it.

I’d never seen someone eat so fast in my life. Gary ate like he hadn’t eaten in months. After he was done, Johnny Clay told the man to make one more cheeseburger and to throw in a bag of chips and to put them in a paper bag.

“We don’t have that kind of money, Johnny Clay,” I whispered.

“Hush,” he hissed back. “We got more than he does.”

Gary took the paper sack and rolled it up tight and placed it inside his hat. The three of us walked outside. He said, “You all got a place to sleep tonight?”

Johnny Clay shook his head. “Not yet.”

“There’s a hobo jungle just up the track from here. You can’t see it from the track, but it’s about a quarter mile up from where we got off, on the left-hand side, hid in a grove of trees. You’re welcome to stay there tonight if you want.”

“Thanks,” Johnny Clay said.

“If I ain’t there, just tell them I said it was okay. But watch out for the buzzards.” He kind of half smiled and then he turned around and headed back toward the tracks.

“What’s a hobo jungle?” I whispered. It sounded like a terrible, dangerous place. I pictured a wilderness with buzzards circling overhead.

“It’s where the hoboes camp,” Johnny Clay said.

I watched after Gary. He was almost out of sight. “He kind of walks like a dog that’s been kicked, don’t he?” I said.

“Yeah.” Johnny Clay sighed. “It makes you think.”

“About what?”

“That things could be worse, Velva Jean.” With a dead mama, a daddy who didn’t want me, a Lord that betrayed me, and Sweet Fern for my new mother, I really didn’t see how.