Velva Jean Learns to Drive Read Online Free PDF Page A

it across her chest to ease the pain, and when that didn’t work he made one out of comfrey root and cornmeal.
    While Johnny Clay and Beachard worked with Linc out in the yard and the chicken house and the barn, I sat outside Mama’s door and waited to go in. Linc was tall and handsome and looked like a darker, quieter version of our daddy. He and Beachard had gotten a touch of Cherokee, both of them brown-eyed and lean, but Beachard’s hair was copper instead of black, exactly the color of North Carolina dirt. At twelve Johnny Clay was nearly as tall as Linc, but he was bright gold from his skin to his hair. None of them had freckles like me.
    Finally, Daddy Hoyt came out and said I could go in for just a few minutes and hold Mama’s hand or read to her. Inside the room, Mama lay still with her face turned toward the wall. I wanted to ask her what was in that note Daddy wrote that made her take to her bed, but I was worried that asking about it might make her worse. So instead I opened the Grier’s Almanac , which I’d taken down off its nail by the fireplace, and read her the weather forecasts. And then I read her a story from Farm and Home .
    Mama didn’t move or say anything, so I went over to her chest of drawers and got the family record book, which she kept displayed on top, right beside her brush and comb and the silver-plated hand mirror Daddy had bought her years ago. The record book had a red leather cover and listed every important date and event to ever happen to us. It went as far back as Ireland, to the family of Nicholas Justice who first escaped France from the Huguenots. It was a complete history of our family on Mama’s side.
    I read some of my favorite entries to Mama: “1766: Nicholas Justice and his wife move to the United States. 1781: Ebenezer, fourth son of Nicholas—Revolutionary War soldier, hero of Kings Mountain—is run through with a sword at the battle of Cowpens and nearly dies. 1792: Ebenezer Justice arrives in the Alluvial Valley of North Carolina and names Fair Mountain.”
    I couldn’t get over the fact that if Ebenezer Justice had died way back then, none of us would be here—not me or Johnny Clay or Mama or Daddy Hoyt. I loved to read the family record book. It told about modern things too, like when Mama was born and when she and Daddy were married and when all of us children came along.
    I was just reading about Linc and Ruby Poole’s wedding day, when Mama rolled over a little and looked at me. Her eyes were kind of half-open and she said, so soft I could barely hear her, “That’s enough, sweet girl. Why don’t you sing me a song?”
    I said, “Mama, what’s wrong with you? Why don’t you get up? Do you have a headache?”
    She said, “Sing me something you wrote. Have you written any new ones I don’t know, Velva Jean?”
    I said, “I wrote one about a giant that lives in a cave.” This was based on Tsul ’Kalu, the giant that lived at the top of Devil’s Courthouse. His mother was a flashing comet and his daddy was the thunder. He could drink streams dry with a single gulp and could walk from one mountain to the next. His voice could make the heavens rumble and his face was so ugly that men ran from him in terror.
    She said, “Sing that one.” And she closed her eyes.
    I sang:
    He comes out when you’re sleeping
Creeping on all fours
Creeping down the mountain
Bar the window, block the doors
Sad and lonely giant
Living all alone
Steal you from your bed
So that he can take you home . . .
    I sang the whole song, and when I was done I felt a hand on my shoulder. Daddy Hoyt was standing there and he said, “Let’s let her sleep for a little while, honey.”

    After supper Johnny Clay and me ran off to play along the tree line, where Granny and Sweet Fern and Ruby Poole could see us. We gathered the leaves that always seemed to cover the ground, even in summer, Johnny Clay kicking them into a pile, while I collected them in my dress and threw them