Velva Jean Learns to Drive (35 page)

I wrapped myself in Mama’s shawl and walked outside and stood on the porch, and it was then I saw the tree—a large oak standing directly across from the house. There on the trunk, scratched into the wood, it said: “You are loved.” And I knew Beachard was gone again.

One week later, Harley was propped up in bed, still weak but beginning to get his appetite back. I stood in the kitchen, pouring coffee and stirring oatmeal in a bowl. I got out some bread from the bread box and some butter from the icebox and added them to the tray. I was just wondering if I should slip out back and pick a few wildflowers, maybe put them in a little vase to give the tray some color, when I heard a rumbling from outside.

By the time I got to the front door, the rumbling stopped. I opened the door, and there sat Johnny Clay, looking like the cock of the hen-house, behind the wheel of Danny Deal’s truck.

I walked onto the porch. The window on the driver’s side was rolled down and Johnny Clay’s elbow was hanging out. There was someone with him. It was a long-haired boy who wasn’t one of the Gordons or Hink Lowe. He sat beside Johnny Clay, loose-limbed and easy. He was Indian, maybe Cherokee. He was saying something to my brother and my brother was laughing. I felt a sharp stab of jealousy.

Then Johnny Clay leaned his head out and grinned at me.

I climbed up on the running board and held on to the side. I said, “What are you doing with Danny’s truck?”

“It ain’t Danny’s truck. It’s mine. Sweet Fern gave it to me.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Said she didn’t want to look at it anymore. Couldn’t stand the sight of it. She told me to take it away and never let her see it again.”

The long-haired boy leaned forward a little and looked at me. He had sleepy dark eyes; wide, high cheekbones; and an unshaved face. I didn’t know what to make of him at first because he sat there staring, like he was taking everything in, running his eyes up and down our house, our yard, me. He wore beads around his neck—burned red beads like the ones Daddy Hoyt offered to the earth when he took his plants. His hair was brown-black, the color of chestnuts, and almost reached his shoulders.

Johnny Clay said, “This is Butch Dawkins. He’s from Louisiana. He’s working up on the Scenic. He’s a blues singer.”

I looked at Johnny Clay, thinking he was pulling my leg. Who ever heard of an Indian singing the blues?

I said, “Hey.”

Butch said, “Hey.” He didn’t say, “How do you do,” or “Nice to meet you, ma’am,” like the other southern boys I knew.

I said, “Are you Cherokee?” He didn’t look like any Indian I’d ever seen.

Johnny Clay laughed. He said, “Jesus, Velva Jean.”

Butch said, “I’m half-Choctaw, half-Creole.” He sounded lazy when he talked, like he’d just woken up.

I said, “Why did you come out here, all this way?”

He said, “I’m on a journey. This is part of it.”

I said, “Where’re you headed?”

He said, “I figure I’ll know when I get there.”

Johnny Clay said, “He’s going to Chicago, home of the blues. Or maybe New York City.” Butch didn’t say anything to this. He took something out of his pocket—a dark brown paper the size of a small square—and began rolling a cigarette right there on his leg.

I wanted to ask him other things, like did his family know where he was and how long had he been on this journey and did he play guitar or harmonica or both.

Johnny Clay said, “Velva Jean has the prettiest voice in the valley.”

Butch looked at me for a long moment. Then he nodded like he’d been thinking this over and decided Johnny Clay was telling the truth. He stuck the cigarette in his mouth and lit it. He took a drag. Then he flashed me a smile. A slow and lazy grin that brightened up his whole face. It was like he’d been saving up for it all this time. His teeth were a little crooked, which made his smile look crooked, too. He had a gap between the two front ones. He said, “You’ll have to sing me a song sometime.”

Johnny Clay let go of the brake and rolled the truck forward a little. I held on tight. I forgot about Butch Dawkins right then and started thinking that even though I didn’t know how to drive and even though Harley and I already had a car, I wished I could have this bright yellow truck. I thought of Cora Kimball and the Motor Girls and all their motoring adventures. But then I thought about poor Danny, and I felt horrible.

“Don’t it make you feel bad to drive it?” I said to Johnny Clay.

“No,” he said. “Because Danny loved this truck and it was meant to be driven. He wouldn’t want it just sitting there, and Sweet Fern will only let it rust.”

“Where are you off to?”

“I wanted to see if you want to go for a drive.”

I wanted to more than anything. “I can’t,” I said. “I have to take Harley his breakfast.”

“How’s he doing?”

“Better. I wish I could go for a ride.” If I had a truck, I thought, I wouldn’t walk anywhere ever again. I would drive everywhere, even if it was only from the house to the barn.

“Some other time,” he said. He turned the engine back on and it sputtered and shook.

“It sure is loud,” I said. I thought it sounded wonderful. I wanted to write a song about it right then and there, all about a man with the blues who paints his truck yellow and then gives it to a brave and lovely boy who dies. Something about how you could see it coming and going, and how that truck was still here to cheer us, even after Danny was gone. I stepped off onto the ground.

Johnny Clay backed up the truck and turned it around. He waved his hand out the window to me—just like the queen of England—and drove on down the hill. I stood there with the tears running down my face till I couldn’t see the truck any longer, and then I picked some daffodils—not quite as bright as the truck but almost, nearly—and took them inside to put them in a vase for Harley.

TWENTY-TWO

Harley didn’t heal quick enough to suit him. By March he was strong enough to come downstairs. He would hop down on his one good leg and lie on the settee and try to write in his notebooks, the ones he used for his sermons. I would walk through the room to bring him some coffee or tea, and he would usually be staring into space or sleeping or listening to the radio, the pages blank, the wastepaper can filled with others he’d thrown out. He tore whole pages out of his notebooks, and then ripped the notebooks in half and threw them in the garbage. He said he wasn’t inspired.

By April he didn’t even bother picking up his notebooks. He just sat in the living room, listening to radio shows—
Hour of Charm
,
Life Can Be Beautiful
,
Burns and Allen
,
The Jack Benny Program
. His favorite was
The Lone Ranger
. He would lie there and talk to the radio, just like the people inside could hear him, just like they were real. He loved the story of the Lone Ranger—that he was the only one of six Texas Rangers who had survived a deadly ambush. That nearly dead, the Lone Ranger was nursed back to health by the Indian who found him. That, when the ranger woke up, he asked Tonto what happened and Tonto said, “You only ranger left . . . You lone ranger.” This got to Harley because that’s how he felt. As far as he could see, he and the Lone Ranger had a lot in common.

The railroad made it clear that his job was waiting for him anytime he wanted to come back. He told them he’d be back as soon as he was strong enough, as soon as he could move around on both feet. He needed all his strength to be a fireman. But I could look at him and see he didn’t have it in him. He didn’t have much of anything in him anymore.

Clydie and Marlon and Floyd came to check on him one day, bringing along the map they’d marked up with places to preach. I could tell they were worried about Harley, too, just lying there, not even thinking about the Glory Pioneers. He told them not to spread out that map in front of him, that he wasn’t up to looking at it.

“If it’s the distance you’re worried about,” Clydie said, “we can just stick you in the back of Floyd’s truck. Hell, you can preach from there, sitting on your ass, for all I care.”

“I ain’t worried about the distance,” said Harley. But I thought that was part of it. He didn’t seem to want to be far from home. He didn’t even want to go outside much, not even to sit on the porch or to check on the DeSoto. More and more, he just lay there on that settee and listened to the radio until, one by one, the stations signed off for the night.

Harley had given up, but I didn’t know why. Right before my eyes, he had just given up. It was a side of him I hadn’t seen before, a whole new self. It was as if the burns from that train wreck had burned some of his old selves away and left others behind—wounded Harley, hurt and resentful Harley, angry Harley, and new versions of him I didn’t recognize: weak Harley, scared Harley, mean Harley.

For the very first time in my life, I wished I was a boy—a man. If I was a man, I would teach myself to drive, and then I would go out preaching and singing and spreading the word of God for all to hear. You wouldn’t catch me lying around on some settee listening to the radio. You wouldn’t catch me with the blankets pulled up over my legs, thinking I was the Lone Ranger.

On Sunday morning, April 7, I got up early and walked down to Alluvial to meet Sweet Fern and the children at the catalog house. Sweet Fern said she was too tired to go all the way up to Sleepy Gap Church, so instead we were going to Free Will Baptist. There was a knock on the door as we were getting the children ready, and it was Coyle Deal, come to walk us there.

After the service, Sweet Fern had us back to the house for coffee and sweet bread. We walked up the steps and wiped our feet on the mat, and then we went inside and the rooms seemed empty, even when the children began running through them.

“Please,” Sweet Fern said. “Mama can’t hear herself think.”

Coyle and Sweet Fern and I sat at the kitchen table, which was neat and tidy with a pretty blue cloth, pale like a robin’s egg. The children went outside to play and suddenly it was quiet.

Coyle cleared his throat. “That was a nice service,” he said.

The house was too quiet. I kept expecting Danny to walk in, smiling his easy smile, shaking the sandy blond hair out of his eyes, coaxing a laugh out of Sweet Fern. She was always softer around him. Now she was closed up, so far away from all of us that I didn’t know how to talk to her.

“The sweet bread is delicious,” I said.

“This coffee is good,” Coyle said.

“Thank you,” said Sweet Fern. Her eyes were tired. There was gray in her hair. The color of it—just a dusting of gray on brown—reminded me of the man at the CCC camp. There were lines around her eyes, underneath and in the corners. She looked thinner. She wasn’t even eating, just watching Coyle and me, and every now and then sipping at her coffee. She looked too thin.

“Are you eating?” I said. “Do you eat anymore?”

She looked surprised. Then her face gave a little and she cleared her throat. “When I remember to,” she said.