Velva Jean Learns to Drive (46 page)

I was breathing hard. Sailing past the house was exhilarating. It was like hanging upside down from the chinquapin trees or spying on the Wood Carver and feeling like I was about to be discovered and killed only to find out I was being saved instead. It was like singing in front of strangers and having them clap for you. It was like writing the words to a song and seeing them on paper for the first time.

I sat there trying to catch my breath and then I started over from the beginning. I steered my way around the other side of the house. I made it all the way around without stopping, and then I started at the front of the house and circled it again. I thought: I’m “harnessing the engine!” It was something I had read in one of the books.

I drove around the house five times in all, and each time it got easier; each time I stopped and stalled less. Finally, on the last trip, I made it all the way around without stopping. I put that yellow truck in gear and set my foot on the gas and laid my hands on the wheel, and I just sailed around the house, finding the rhythm of the clutch when I needed to shift gears, feeling the rhythm of the truck, the rhythm of the land beneath the tires. I thought: Driving is like music. You just have to feel it. When you drive there’s no such thing as counting steps or worrying about money or feeling alone.

After I made it all the way around once without stopping, I thought I should quit while I was ahead—let myself end on a high note. I told myself that next time I would go around the house five times without stopping. And then I would drive down the hill. One day I would drive down to Alluvial and maybe even as far as Hamlet’s Mill. But I thought: That’s enough for now. You can stop here. You don’t have to do it all today.

Half an hour after Harley left for church, Butch came ambling up the hill, guitar over his shoulder. I met him outside on the porch and we sat in the dusk, side by side on the steps—just like Harley and me years ago when he used to come calling. Butch laid his guitar down beside him and took his time rolling a cigarette. Even in the fading light, the guitar gleamed. I wanted to ask him where he got it and how much it cost. I wanted to hold that guitar and play it myself. When he was done, he offered the cigarette to me, and I shook my head.

“How long you been smoking?” I said. I was nervous. I had a nagging feeling I was trying to ignore, like I was doing something wrong having him up here with Harley gone. I wanted to make conversation. He had me on edge. I thought: I don’t know anything about this boy.

He said, “I can’t remember.” He put the cigarette in his mouth and lit it, taking a drag. He shook out the match and said, “Show me what you got written down.”

I brought out my papers even though I didn’t want to show him. I felt shy. I thought: What if he laughs at my words and these sad little notes that are running all over the page? The notes looked like they wanted to escape, like they couldn’t wait to get free. I thought he might tell me I was crazy for trying to write my songs down at all.

He took the pages and thumbed through them. He wore a large silver ring on his left hand. It was shaped like an eagle. On his right wrist he wore three strings of beads, the color of the earth, and on his left wrist he wore a band of old, worn leather. Around his neck, he still wore those beads of burned red. Harley didn’t wear any jewelry except for his wedding band. Sitting close to Butch, I smelled the heavy green smell of woods and the smell of tobacco, sweet and bitter. I tried not to think what Harley would do if he came back and saw me sitting here like this, even though I wasn’t doing anything wrong. After all, Butch was a friend of Johnny Clay’s, even if I didn’t know much about him.

I said, “Who’s coming to the sing tomorrow? Is that man that picks the guitar with his teeth going to be there?”

He said, “I’m not done reading.”

I got quiet. Finally, he was finished. He tapped the papers against his leg so that they stacked back up and then he handed them to me. He said, “These are good songs. You write exactly what you know, which is what you should do. You write the truth, Velva Jean.” I didn’t tell him that one reason I did was because of him, because of the song he’d played at Deal’s. “The words are there. But the notes aren’t working for you. I want you to close your eyes right now and sing me one of these songs. Just pick one. Don’t look at the page. Don’t worry about the words. If you can’t remember them, just sing anything that comes to mind. It doesn’t even have to be a real word—just sing
la
or
so
or sing
stump weed
over and over. I just want you to think about the music.”

I sat there and didn’t sing because I was embarrassed. I wasn’t about to sing anything in front of him, much less anything as ugly as “stump weed.”

He said, “What are you waiting for? I’m not going to laugh at you, girl. I’m here to help.”

I said, “If you laugh at me, I’ll kill you.”

He laughed and held up his hands. I thought how nice he looked when he laughed, even if his teeth were uneven and not straight like Harley’s. “I’m not going to laugh at you. I swear. Go on.” And he rearranged his face so it was serious.

I took a breath and began to sing. It was a song about living up on Devil’s Kitchen, all closed up and quiet, about how I used to go places like my daddy but now all I did was hang up the laundry and serve the food and dream of riding that road of unlimited opportunity, when I dreamed at all. I didn’t think it was very good.

When I finished he was staring at me. I said, “What?” He was making me nervous.

He said, “Your brother’s right. Your voice is something special, Velva Jean. I wonder if you know how good it is. Song’s good, too. Now let’s put it down on paper.”

I could barely breathe. I said, “But I don’t know how.”

He said, “Yes you do. You felt it when you sang it, didn’t you? You just got to put those feelings on the page. Don’t worry about the notes.”

He set the cigarette down, its end burning off the porch, and took the paper and pencil from me. He said, “Sing.” I sang. While I sang, he drew. He drew big sweeping lines and low lines and soft lines and hard lines, all following the ups and downs, crests and valleys of the melody. When I was finished singing, when he was finished drawing, he held it out to me and said, “You can put the notes in later. But this right here? This is your song, Velva Jean.”

I looked at the paper and he was right. I said, “How did you know to do that?”

He said, “It’s just something I taught myself. Sometimes you got to not overthink things. Sometimes you got to just feel, especially when it comes to music. Notes, scales, they can just get in the way.” He leaned toward me and for one minute I thought he was going to touch my chest, right over my heart. I stopped breathing then. He gave me one of those cat-swallowing-the-bird looks. I couldn’t read him at all. Then he sat back and picked up his cigarette and stuck it between his lips. He took a smoke. He knocked himself lightly in the chest. He said, “This is where it comes from. The trick is getting it from here,” he tapped himself again, “to here.” He touched the paper.

We worked a while longer and then he stood to go, picking up his guitar.

I said, “Did you ever know a man who worked on the Scenic name of Lincoln Hart?”

He leaned against the railing. “The name ain’t familiar. Why?”

 

I gathered up my papers—my songs. “No reason,” I said.

It got to where I couldn’t wait for Harley to leave and for Levi to leave and for the Rayfords to go on home after they were done with their work. I would watch them walk off and then I would write down my songs. I covered pages and pages with words and lines. When I was done, I would run for the truck.

I drove backward and forward and over the hills and around the trees. I drove round and round the house. I bumped and bounced all over the meadow, mowing down the flowers. I felt bad about that, but the field was perfect for driving. It was flat and wide and open. I drove in straight lines and circles. I backed up and drove forward again and again.

I got to know that truck like the back of my hand. I learned that once it got going, you almost couldn’t hear yourself think for all the wind noise. I learned to be careful turning corners because you could catch your pinky between the steering wheel and the door. I learned that the truck had a tendency to wander from side to side if you weren’t careful because the kingpins on the front axle were worn down. I learned that if you got to going above twenty miles per hour, it took on a real serious shimmy.

The one thing that had stuck in my head from the driving manuals was that I needed to know how the truck worked. What if I was out somewhere on the road by myself and something happened? What if I had to change a tire or change the oil or the radiator fluid? I decided to teach myself about the engine. So I studied the books. I took
How to Drive
with me when I crawled underneath the truck to learn about what went on down there. And I propped it up next to me when I opened the hood and studied each and every spark plug and connecting rod. I laid it on the ground while I took off one of the tires and put it back on again, just to learn how.

I sang while I worked on the engine and I sang while I drove. I sang old songs but I also sang the new ones I had written myself. Sometimes on days or nights when Harley had a meeting, Butch would come over to Devil’s Kitchen when he wasn’t working, and we’d meet up on the hill where I liked to go and sing—the one where I could really hear myself. There, he would help me put my songs down on paper and we would sit and talk about music, about what it meant to us. I tried to ask him questions about where he came from, about where he was going, about his family, his work on the Scenic, his guitar, his tattoo—but he never answered. Instead he sang me songs he had written and taught me to play the blues on the mandolin. I taught him to pick the guitar like Maybelle Carter and showed him how to buck dance. Sometimes he sat beside me in the truck and played me a song while I drove us around and around. Sometimes we sang together.

Emily Post said, “Is there anything more exhilarating than an automobile running smoothly along?” By now I knew exactly what she was talking about except that I would have added “and writing and playing your own music” to that, too.

It was hard not to mention my driving or my music to Harley. At supper we talked over our days and I listened to him go on about the work he was doing over at the church, about Brother Harriday and the revival they were planning or the homecoming they were planning or the money they were trying to raise or the cow they had rounded up for Berletta Snow.

When he asked me about my day, instead of telling him I had taught myself to drive the truck in reverse or to turn the truck around without stalling or that I had learned to change the oil—something I was especially proud of—or that I had written a new song and learned a mean, low-down blues riff on my mandolin, I told him about doing the shopping or working in the barn or mentioned that it was almost time for a new broom, that the bristles were wearing down on our old one.

THIRTY-ONE

By the second week in June, the heat was all anyone could talk about. No one could remember it ever being so hot in our mountains, especially so early. Harley said we were being punished for something, that something was brewing and we were all paying the price. It was the Lord’s way of reminding us who was in charge.

The Rayfords worked with their shirts off and I tried not to stare. I thought: So that’s what it’s come to. You’re as bad as Lucinda Sink. You might as well go down there right now to the Alluvial Hotel—if only you had the energy to move—and ask her if you can just come live with her and start up business.

I turned on the radio, bored with the heat, bored with my life. I sat on the porch with the mending and rocked and fanned myself and I thought about what Ruby Poole had said about how she would live in a tree as long as she could be with Linc. I wondered now if I could live in a tree with Harley. I could barely live in a nice house with him lately, what for the heat and the feeling so stuck and alone.