Velva Jean Learns to Drive (29 page)

I swung my feet over the side of the bed. On one wall, there was a cherry chest of drawers and a cherry chifforobe, Li’l Dean’s pride and joy. On the wall closest to the bed hung three baby pictures, which looked like they were of the same baby in different poses. Harley, I guessed, lying in his crib. But when I looked closer I could see it wasn’t a crib at all, but a coffin—three coffins, three babies. Of course:
I had three brothers that died before I was born.

I pulled back and looked close at the photograph of Harley, age ten or eleven. His tie was crooked, and his wild hair was slicked into place. A young-old boy. He looked itching to burst out of the frame, to come to life.

I stared hard at the picture of Li’l Dean. She was young in the picture but she looked just the same as when I’d seen her sitting on the porch in her rocking chair. She peered out of the photograph with eyes the size of dimes. Her lips were pursed up so tight it looked like she’d swallowed lemons. I leaned in close and said, “I am not afraid of you.”

Then I unpacked the record book from my suitcase and wrote down: “November 20: Velva Jean moves to Devil’s Kitchen.” After a minute I added, “Heart breaks.”

The trees and the sky were starting to close up for winter, and this felt right because just as soon as my life had opened wide, it felt like it was closing. The first day in Devil’s Kitchen was long and lonely. Harley worked a short train down to Sylva while I milked the cows, separated and stored the cream, gathered eggs, fed and watered the hogs, and swept and straightened the house. As I worked, I sang, just so I could hear the sound of someone’s voice, even if it was my own.

It was a song Johnny Clay and me wrote years ago to pass the time while we worked. When we were little, we used to sing it on purpose as loud as we could because it made Sweet Fern mad to hear it. I thought about Johnny Clay over there in Mama’s house now, all alone. It made me sad to think of him, and I wondered what he was doing.

I was used to my big family and all their noise. It was too quiet at Harley’s house—no radio, no laughing, no singing, no shouting or talking over each other, no babies crying. I almost missed Sweet Fern. I didn’t see hide nor hair of Levi. He had disappeared into the woods after breakfast. I thought that I didn’t need to find a mountaintop or a hill to sing on like I used to do back on Fair Mountain, because I could hear myself just fine right here.

When it got on toward supper, I went into the kitchen and rolled up my sleeves and started cutting up vegetables for soup. For some reason, it was the only thing I could think to make.

There was an actual icebox, not just a springhouse, but the stove was the same—an old comfort stove just like Mama had and just like Ruby Poole had. Granny still used a Dutch oven. I tried not to think of what Granny would be fixing over at home. Here there were sauce stains on the stovetop and biscuit crumbs on the counter. Levi had been living on his own for almost two weeks and, by the looks of things, not cleaning up after himself. I walked into the front room and looked at the matching green and ivory settee and chairs, the rocking chair, the bookcase, the side table, the framed pictures of Jesus on the wall.

Above the fireplace, there hung a portrait of Li’l Dean that Harley said she had ordered herself from a traveling artist. Her fat, disapproving face stared out of it like she could see and hear everything and didn’t appreciate any of it. That picture gave me the spooks.

Levi’s house was bigger than anything I was used to. Besides the bedrooms and kitchen and front room, there was Harley’s office (an old mudroom off the back porch), a dining room off the center hall with a long table, and a screened porch in the back, where Harley kept his shaving table and mirror. The dining room was dark as a cave because it faced out onto the wraparound porch. That room was so dark, it made me mad. It made me feel like I was being buried alive.

“Soup for supper?” Harley said when he walked in the door. I jumped and nearly dropped the carrots, and then he picked me up and twirled me around and kissed me for a good five minutes. “How did you know that’s what I wanted?” I knew he was lying, but I loved him for it. He put me down. “What was that you were singing?”

“ ‘Outlaw Joe,’ ” I said. “Something Johnny Clay and I wrote a long time ago. I’ve been singing it all day so I wouldn’t go crazy. It’s so quiet up here without anyone to talk to and no radio to listen to. Your daddy’s been up in the woods all day and I got no one but your mama’s picture for company. I had to sing to myself just so I could hear the sound of a voice.”

Harley didn’t say anything, just went into his study and sat at his desk and stared at the wall. All during supper he didn’t say more than five words, and after the meal was over he walked onto the porch and smoked cigarette after cigarette. When I went out to check on him and call him to bed, he said, “I’ll be along in a while, Velva Jean.”

Harley was gone the next morning when I got up. When I walked downstairs, Li’l Dean’s picture was missing and nowhere to be seen. When I walked outside, the car was also missing and there was no note to say where Harley had gone off to or when he’d be back.

I worked all day just like the day before, and I sang every song I could think of. In the afternoon, I wandered outside, across the stream and through the woods and up and down, until I found a hill where I stood and sang for a while in a bright patch of sunlight, just to hear myself. Then I walked back to the house and sat out on the porch in Daddy Hoyt’s rocking chair because it felt like home. Harley had said, “We’ll put it here on the porch so you can sit and watch the sun rise or set,” but I knew he didn’t want the chair in the house because he thought it was ugly.

Late that evening, supper was already on the table when I heard Harley’s car pull up outside. I was trying not to be mad, trying not to wonder where he’d gone to all day. I promised myself I wouldn’t fly off the handle and get angry at him as soon as he walked in the door. Especially not in front of his daddy, who sat spreading butter on the gin gerbread even though it didn’t need it.

The door flew open and all I could see was a large brown box standing on one end. Levi didn’t even turn around, just kept on eating, but I set my napkin down and walked into the living room. The box was actually a kind of cabinet. It stood as high as my waist and was made of a rich brown wood. It was the largest, most beautiful radio I had ever seen. Harley was pushing it into the room. I just stood and watched him, my mouth hanging open.

When the radio was all the way in, he said, “Where do you want it, Velva Jean?”

I tried to say something, but nothing came out.

“It’s a radio and a phonograph,” he said. “I didn’t know which you’d rather have, so I got one with both. Had to go all the way to Hamlet’s Mill for it.” He squatted down and wiped it off with his handkerchief, rubbing at the wood, making it shine. “How about over here?” He waved to the wall by the door and pushed the radio up against it. He turned a knob and there was the scratchy sound of static. “It runs on battery.” He kept turning the little knob till there was the faint sound of music. He turned the volume up loud so that the music filled the house and went out into the night.

He wiped his forehead with the handkerchief and then wiped his hands. “I don’t ever want you to be lonely.” And then he took me in his arms and we danced right out onto the porch.

NINETEEN

At the end of the large upstairs room where Levi slept was a little room, directly over the kitchen, that could fit exactly five hundred canned-food jars. There were shelves all the way around and the flue came up through the room to keep the food from freezing. There was a window in there that faced due west and got all the afternoon sun.

Sometimes when Levi was up in the woods, I went into the canning room and stood at this window and looked out. Standing there felt like being at the top of the world, far away from everyone and everything else.

A week after I moved in, I was in there looking out when I saw Johnny Clay come walking toward the house. From where I stood, he looked like Huck Finn or Heathcliff, someone brave and bigger than life, come to rescue me.

Just then he looked up and saw me. He raised one hand and waved. “This is the goddamnedest place I ever saw,” he shouted. “Goddamn briars and brambles and shit. Miles away from anywhere. I don’t know how you live here, Velva Jean.”

Johnny Clay stayed for supper, which gave Harley a chance to ask him what he knew about the Scenic. Johnny Clay didn’t like Harley and Harley didn’t like Johnny Clay, but Johnny Clay always knew everything about everything, and there were things Harley wanted to know and things Johnny Clay wanted to tell.

Harley started right in. “Are they cutting through Silvermine Bald?” He had strong opinions about the Scenic, which he didn’t believe in.

“Not yet, but they’re setting up camp there,” Johnny Clay said. “They’re starting construction soon between Seniard Mountain and Reinhart Gap.” I set down my fork. Seniard Mountain was just to the east of us, Reinhart Gap to the west. Our mountains and the Alluvial Valley were right in between. It was one thing to see little green flags along those mountains. It was another to hear that construction was starting.

Johnny Clay laughed. “It’s going to be the worst section of the road to cut. Good luck, I say.”

Harley said, “They’ll need it.” Then he swore to himself. “What did they expect, coming here?”

I said, “If they’re running that road from Seniard Mountain through to Reinhart Gap, that road must be coming right through our mountains.” Even after the flags on Devil’s Courthouse and Beachard coming to measure and make his maps, I hadn’t wanted to believe it. I had told myself it wouldn’t happen, that—in the end—Stanley Abbott and his road would stay away.

Johnny Clay said, “They’re going just south of us. Kind of winding around past us in a half circle.” Then he asked Levi to pass him the biscuits, like nothing else was happening in this world. He soaked one in gravy and took a bite. “They’re bringing men in from all over. Stone masons from Italy and Spain. Men from up north and from the Midwest and from other parts of the South. Everyone wants to work on this road.”

Harley said, “Idiots.” He swore again.

Johnny Clay said, “I don’t know. Some of the work they’re doing is exciting.” I couldn’t tell if he was baiting Harley or if he meant it. I suddenly wished I hadn’t invited him to supper.

Harley glared at him. Before he could say anything, I leaned over the table and said, “Don’t you think for a minute you’re going to be one of them.”

Johnny Clay didn’t say anything to this because he was leaning over his plate to study the table. He was looking at the sweet potatoes. He said, “Could you pass me those? Whatever they are, they sure look good.”