Velva Jean Learns to Fly (38 page)

On the morning of April 3, I typed a letter to Major Blackburn and a letter to Colonel Wells, asking them to investigate the rumors about Sally’s plane. Each of the girls—there were twenty-three of us now—signed it. We delivered copies to their offices, and then I went back to my bay and wrote another letter, this one to Jackie Cochran. In it I thanked her for the experience of being a WASP and told her I needed to resign. As much as I loved being a WASP, I couldn’t be part of a program that didn’t look after its people. This was not the way I wanted to serve my country. Flying for Jackie Cochran was starting to feel a little like flying without a parachute or a safety belt. I listed every awful thing that had happened since I’d been there—the oil draining out of my engine, Ruth, the tear gas, Sally—even though she already knew it all too well. I wrote: “Flying is dangerous enough without feeling like a target. I might as well join our boys overseas and drop bombs on Germany because I wouldn’t be near as scared as I am here.”

Janie and three of the other girls wrote letters too, all telling Miss Cochran that they were leaving the program and why.

That afternoon I went up in the sky for the first time since Sally’s accident. I was in an A-24, but I was by myself. The air was so rough that it shot me up from nine hundred feet to twelve hundred feet and then back down to eight hundred. I thought: I could die just like Sally. I could be gunned down or I could lose an engine or the engine could catch fire. Each time I go up, there’s no guarantee I’ll come down in one piece. Every single time I fly from now on, I am on my own.

I was taking chances, but they were small chances compared to the ones taken every day right now all over the world. Beach in the Pacific. Linc in Italy. Johnny Clay who knows where. I could be at home on Fair Mountain and be caught in a storm or slip down the hill. I could fall in the bathtub or be run over by a car going out of control. I could lose my way in the woods and be attacked by a panther cat. I could drown in Three Gum River. I could choke on an apple or trip over a tree root and hit my head or be bit by a mad dog. I figured there were a lot of ways to take chances in this world, that every single day was a chance. It wasn’t up to us to say where or when.

My landing was bumpy. As I taxied in I looked over my head at the safety latch. I flipped the latch with just two fingers of one hand. It opened quick and easy.

Five days later I got a telegram from Miss Cochran saying, “Resignation denied.” That night, I sat at the desk in my empty room and typed out a will. I wasn’t sure how a will was supposed to read, but I thought it was a smart thing to do.

I, Velva Jean Hart, being sound of mind and body, do make this my last will and testament.

I don’t have a lawyer and haven’t ever made a will before, so I hope that this will be good enough and that all my wishes will be carried out.

I don’t have much in this world, but what I do have I want to leave to my family: my mandolin, my Mexican guitar, my hatbox of treasures, my clothes, my record. I leave Sally’s banjo to her mama and daddy. Maybe they can learn it someday so that it doesn’t go dusty.

I leave all my songs to Butch Dawkins. Of all the people on this earth, he’ll know what to do with them.

I don’t have much money, but I leave what I have to Sweet Fern to help with the children.

I don’t want anyone to wear black for me. I want to be buried beside Mama. I want “The Unclouded Day” played at my funeral. Get Johnny Clay to sing it, if you can find him. And tell him he’s worth more than Lucinda Sink. Tell him he’s worth the whole world.

Know how much I love all of you, each and every one, and how much I’ll miss you. And know that I died doing what I loved most.

Sincerely,
Velva Jean Hart

Butch and I sat side by side on the steps of the control tower. It was Sunday and the airfield was quiet. He’d shown up after breakfast, just like a haint, to tell me how sorry he was about Sally. The sight of him—the brown-black hair, the sleepy dark eyes, the unshaved face, the crooked smile, sadder today—made me start to cry even though I’d promised myself I’d never cry again. He said, “I know.” And then he pulled me in and gave me a hug—right in front of everyone—and I breathed in the smell of woods and tobacco. He was the closest thing I had to home right now, and I held on to him.

I could hear his heartbeat, could feel him breathing. When we broke apart, he said, “You know what I like about you? You are one down-home girl, Velva Jean.” He said it soft and lazy, his voice scratchy as sandpaper. The way he said it sounded sweet and sexy.

I was still breathing him in. I said, “What’s that mean?” I wondered if it was a good thing or a bad thing.

He said, “You got the strongest spirit I ever did see. I think I’m gonna write a song about that and dedicate it to you.”

I didn’t feel strong. I felt small and sad and weak. I felt just like I was inside one of Butch’s songs—one of the angry, mean, deep-down-in-the-gutter songs that made me want to run and shout and cry and take his guitar from him and smash it. But I also felt like I was lost in one of the heartbreak songs—the downhearted, bluesy ones that made my hair stand on end and filled me with a deep, way-down sadness I couldn’t shake for days.

Now we sat with our knees almost touching, working on a song. His guitar rested against his leg as he played. I was trying to put my mind into the music, but it kept spinning away from the words and the tune. Every time I got back to focusing, there would go my mind, flying away like a butterfly.

Butch strummed the guitar. He was humming. I said, “I don’t know anything about you.”

He said, “Yes you do.” He kept humming. He sang a couple of lines. I said, “I don’t. You know everything about me but you won’t tell me anything about yourself.” I pictured a black box inside Butch, locked up tight, where his heart was. I wondered if anyone had ever seen inside it.

He plucked at the guitar and then was quiet for a second and then he grinned, but it wasn’t a real kind of grin, the kind that lit up his face. It was the kind someone gives you when they don’t know what else to do. He said, “You can add me to your list of conquests, girl. Is that what you want?”

My heart was racing. I was suddenly mad. I said, “Don’t be like that.”

“What? Isn’t that enough?”

“Don’t be one of them. Some normal boy. Don’t do that when it ain’t you.”

He said, “Why don’t we just work on a song? That might be the best thing to do, sho ’nough.”

I didn’t feel like talking or writing a song. I wanted him to do the talking for once. I said, “I need you to tell me something.” I pictured aiming a thermite gun right at his black box.

He said, “What?” He didn’t sigh or roll his eyes or sound impatient. He sat there waiting to hear what I had to say.

I said, “Something. Anything. I’m tired of doing all the talking.” I thought: I’m tired of talking through music. I was as stirred up as a hornet. I told myself, Calm down. This isn’t about him. This is about Sally and Harley and Ty and your daddy. Don’t do this to Butch. Remember who you’re talking to. He never did anything to you. Be quiet, Velva Jean. Stop it right now. I said, “I need you to tell me something about you or I’m going to get up right now and go back to the barracks.”

Butch got quiet and part of me thought, Oh no. Now I’ve made him mad. But the other part thought, He’s got to learn to speak up sooner or later.

We sat there a long time, and then he said, “I grew up in Louisiana. Little place called La Coupe in Lafourche Parish, down on the bayou, down by the Mississippi, but we call it Cut Off. About two thousand people. My mama was Choctaw. My daddy was French Creole. I don’t have brothers or sisters, none that I know of, but with my daddy you can’t be too sure. I grew up with music—Indian chants. Hymns. My mama was religious. She said God was in nature. I left home when I was thirteen and earned my way as a ranch hand. I went up through Louisiana and over to Texas, one dusty small town after another. Then Oklahoma, then New Mexico, where I lived with the Comanche and then the Navajo, one of them my great-granddaddy. I learned guitar in the Mississippi Delta from a famous old bluesman.”

I looked down at his arm where his tattoo was. I said, “What was his name?”

He smiled and there went his whole face, lighting up. He said, “I can’t tell you that. I promised him not to. But he was magic. I never heard anything like him.”

He started to roll a cigarette, then put the paper back away. He rubbed his hands together and stared out toward the horizon. Little drops of rain started falling, but I kept sitting there, not wanting to break the spell.

He said, “I played the rodeo circuit, riding bulls, roping cattle, sleeping in the back of my truck, and when that broke down, hitchhiking between border towns. I hitchhiked all the way to Knoxville . . .” He kind of drifted off here and it seemed like he was remembering something he would rather not remember. I thought about his black box again and wondered if somewhere in Knoxville there was a girl who’d seen inside it. Maybe she was the reason it was shut up so tight.

He closed one eye and then the other and said, “I was there for a while, and then I came down through Virginia, thinking I would go to Nashville, and that’s where I heard about that road being built in the mountains. The Scenic. I was out of money by then and needed a job pretty bad, so I went to the CCC and applied.” He stopped talking.

I waited for more, but when he didn’t say anything, I said, “And that’s how you got to North Carolina.”

“That’s how I got to North Carolina.” He seemed restless, like talking so much was making him itchy. I wanted to ask him where he went after North Carolina, after Harley drove him out, but I didn’t.

I said, “How old are you?” I didn’t know why this seemed important, why I thought it would tell me anything much about him.

He seemed to be counting. “Twenty-five, I guess.”

“What about your talisman? The bottle neck?”

“Let’s just say it’s a reminder to me of the kind of life I used to lead. And the kind I don’t want for myself anymore.” He seemed to be done talking.

Then, because I could—because he was there and alive and real—I reached out my hand and laid it on top of his. I let it sit there, light as could be. I looked out at the horizon. I thought, If I never learn another thing about Butch Dawkins, he told me these things for me. Because he knew I needed to hear them. Like a gift.

Sitting there with him made me feel peaceful and good, down in my whole self. It was a different kind of feeling than sitting with Harley or even Ty. I felt like Butch and me were sitting here side by side, each going halfway, on the same level, believing in the same things, loving music, understanding music, understanding and knowing sorrow and loss but also knowing how to pick yourself up out of that loss and keep going. I could look at Butch and know that he saw me—not just my hair and face and figure—but the inside me that not everyone could see.

I thought about the Navajo hero twins, how they fought the monsters and saved the world by speaking their own special language that only they could speak. We had a language like that, Butch and me. I didn’t know what it meant or what we were to each other, but sitting there side by side, looking forward, felt good.

April 5, 1944

Dear family,

Thank you for all your notes and thoughts. Camp Davis isn’t the same without Sally. We’ve been together since Sweetwater, and I don’t know what it’s like to be a WASP without her.