Velva Jean Learns to Fly Read Online Free PDF Page B

here without something happening to my truck. I wished for maybe the ten thousandth time that I had the patience of my mama or Daddy Hoyt.
    I told myself I’d walk the length of Church Street—down one whole side and then back the other—looking for a rooming house or hotel, somewhere I could sleep just for that night. Folks were walking in and out of soda shops, five-and-ten-cent stores, and movie theaters. They all looked fine and handsome, the men wearing hats, the women wearing hats. At the corner of Church and College Street, I saw the smart-looking girl from the Opry—the girl that had given me the fifty-cent piece—hurrying through the crowd.
    I followed her, thinking I would give her money back. She was probably my age, maybe a few years older, and she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Other than me, she was the only girl walking by herself, and there was something about her that seemed brave and free. She was exactly who I wanted to be in my new life.
    I lost sight of her now and then, only to find her again seconds later. Two old men stood on the sidewalk playing the banjo and the guitar. Just past them a short lady in overalls was singing her heart out, a hat at her feet. Every now and then someone would throw money into it as they walked by. I tried to stay closer to the girl with the purse. Two blocks later she turned down Fifth Avenue.
    She walked faster than me, and I knew how to walk fast because Johnny Clay had the longest legs and practically ran when he walked, and I always tried to keep up with him or even beat him. This girl was taller than I was, but my legs were almost as long.
    Fifth Avenue was just as busy as Church Street. People talked and laughed and ate popcorn and peanuts out of bags. I thought that it seemed almost like a carnival. I passed a hat shop, a dress shop, a shoe store. I expected the girl with the purse to stop at one of them. We passed a tobacco shop, the Orange Bar, Rex Theatre, the Fifth Avenue Theatre, and the Arcade, which was majestic and beautiful and full of shops and restaurants. I almost forgot about the girl and turned in, but I kept going.
    Suddenly the girl stopped. She pulled a cigarette from her purse and lit it with a lighter that gleamed silver in the dark. She stood there, the cigarette to her lips, inhaling and blowing out delicate rings of smoke. I pulled up short in front of her, and before I could say a word, she said, “Why are you following me?” She sounded like Katharine Hepburn.
    I took fifty cents out of my change purse. “I wanted to pay you back.”
    “No offense, honey, but you look like you could use it more than me.”
    I stared down at my clothes. I looked just like one of Hink Lowe’s sisters, the ones Sweet Fern called mountain trash. I said, “It’s money I earned myself. I’ve got more. Please take it.”
    She threw the cigarette on the ground and crushed it with her heel. She took the fifty cents from me, dropped it into her purse, and then pulled out a stick of gum and tore the wrapper off. She stuck it in her mouth, and then she offered me one. I took it from her without opening it.
    She said, “Where’re you from?”
    “North Carolina. I just got here. I left home yesterday.”
    “What are you doing here?”
    “I’m a singer.”
    “Where are you staying?”
    “I don’t know yet.”
    She blew a bubble and then sucked it right back in. She said, “Come on, then.” She marched off through the crowd, and I followed her until we stopped suddenly outside a place called the Lovelorn Café. The downstairs windows were bright and warm—inside, customers sat in booths or at the counter. Upstairs there were four or five more levels and the windows were smaller, more narrow. It was a great big house, right there in the middle of the city. She marched on in through the front door.
    I stood there on the street, studying the house—there was music coming from inside. I walked up to the window and looked in. Suddenly I felt all alone