Velva Jean Learns to Drive Read Online Free PDF Page B

his house except at night when he crept down the mountain to climb on rooftops and scratch on windows, looking to rob from widow women and steal babies from their cribs. He was known only as the Wood Carver because he carved things out of wood with his killing knife all day long and he still had blood on his hands. Granny said it would always be there, try as he might to wash it off, because once you’d shed the blood of another, you could never wash your hands clean again.
    She had also told us about Aunt Junie, the witch who lived alone in the woods, up on Devil’s Courthouse, raising sheep and bees, and conjuring spirits. Me and Johnny Clay used to dare each other to go up there and spy on the witch. Everybody said she could look at you and say a spell, and if you were bleeding, the bleeding would stop, and if you had a headache, it would go away. They said she could turn people into sheep or dogs and that the bees she kept worked magic.
    People said this Aunt Junie looked about a hundred years old, maybe older, and I knew that she probably was at least as old as that because witches lived longer than regular people. And now Daddy Hoyt had let that witch woman into my mama’s room.
    “Velva Jean can stay,” Daddy Hoyt said to Granny.
    Granny just shook her head at him and stomped out. I knew she didn’t trust her baby to this witch woman either, and I didn’t blame her. What if the witch turned Mama into a sheep or an old brown dog like Hunter Firth?
    Daddy Hoyt waved at me to come over, and then he pulled me onto his lap. I sat rigid and waiting, ready to jump up and knock that witch down if she started saying spells. We watched as she fluttered her hands in the air above Mama. She closed her eyes, and then she began moving her lips with no sound coming out. I jumped then, but Daddy Hoyt drew me back and wrapped his arms around me tighter.
    “How do we know she won’t hurt Mama and make her worse?” I said. I was thinking I could knock her down if I had to, and then I would yell for Johnny Clay. While I waited for him, I would say an old Cherokee spell that helped you kill a witch.
    “Because she won’t, Velva Jean. She saves people like I do, only she can do it without plants and herbs. She can do it all on her own because God gave her a special gift.”
    Aunt Junie bent over Mama, her hands hovering above her, her eyes closed. Her mouth was moving but there was still no sound.
    “There is a verse in the Bible that only healers know,” Daddy Hoyt said in my ear, “and that they never reveal to others for fear that their powers will be lost forever. That’s why she doesn’t say the words out loud.”
    I sat very still and watched her. I knew that normally Daddy Hoyt didn’t hold much stock in faith healers, but he trusted this woman, and I trusted him.
    “There,” Aunt Junie said several minutes later, nodding at Mama. “I done what I could for now, Hoyt.” She sat back, staring at Mama’s face. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.” Her voice faded off.
    “Can she heal everyone?” I asked Daddy Hoyt, very low so that Aunt Junie wouldn’t hear.
    He sighed and his arms tightened around me. “Not always, Velva Jean. Not all the time.”

    That night Johnny Clay and Beachard and me were sent over to Linc’s house to eat supper with him and Ruby Poole. Usually, this was cause for celebration because Ruby Poole—who was born and raised in Asheville and looked just like a doll, with her lips painted red and her dark hair curled so that it bounced on her shoulders—would let me try on her perfume and her lipstick and let me read her movie magazines, but I knew this time they were just getting us out of the way so that the witch lady could sit with Mama.
    “You want more slaw, Velva Jean?” Ruby Poole got up and carried the bowl over to me herself instead of just passing it down.
    “No thank you,” I said. I couldn’t eat a bite. I just sat there thinking about Aunt Junie and the way she had