Velva Jean Learns to Fly (2 page)

For John Ware,
who helped give Velva Jean her wings,
and who always encourages me to fly
And for Mom, as ever
And in memory of Mabel Rawlinson,
Betty Taylor Wood, and the thirty-six
other WASP who lost their lives
in the line of duty

I was happiest in the sky . . .
Think of me there and remember me.

—Cornelia Fort, January 1942

Acknowledgments

P
eople often ask if I ever get lonely while writing a book, to which I reply, “Even when I am sitting alone at my desk, I’m surrounded by people who are a part of the journey.” My dynamite agent and friend John Ware has been on that journey from the start, as wise as the Wood Carver, as funny as Johnny Clay, as encouraging and supportive as Daddy Hoyt. As usual, I could not have done this without him. My brilliant editor, Carolyn Carlson, has my eternal gratitude for believing in Velva Jean, not once, but twice now, and for helping to shape and hone and strengthen her story with her magical and insightful editorial notes. Deepest thanks to her and to all the wonderful folks at Plume—Clare Ferraro, Kathryn Court, John Fagan, Liz Keenan, Amanda Brower, Katie Hurley, Milena Brown, Eve Kirch, and the terrific sales team—who have been a part of this story. And thank you to Melissa Jacoby for once again creating the perfect cover.

Enormous thanks and gratitude to my first readers: Penelope Niven, Scott Boyer, and Valerie Frey. Their thoughts and feedback were invaluable. Extra special thanks, as always, to my dear mama, Penelope Niven, who is not only a wonderful editor but my very best friend in the world. She was the person—along with my father, Jack F. McJunkin—who first taught me to fly and who has, ever since that first lesson, encouraged me to keep flying. Thanks to my sacred circle for love, laughter, silliness, and support: Joe Kraemer, Lisa Brucker, Angelo Surmelis, Christos Sourmelis, Ed Baran, Dan and Magda Dillon (and Daniel too), and last, but in no way least, Louis Kapeleris, who may have arrived late in the process, but who has been such a part of it just the same, filling my days with love and sunshine and dreams come true (as well as sage feedback and a rock star author photo), and who has given me the happiest writing space I’ve ever known. And thanks to my wonderful family and friends: all my McJunkin and Niven kin, Lynn Duval Clark, Judy Kessler, Beth Shea, Binnings Bent, Vanessa Vaughn, Tate Whitney Parker, Fred Tyler, John Hreno, Brian Stone, Tabitha Marsden, Jamal Farley, Jack Meggers (for teaching me that rattlesnakes like ragtime), Ian Fraser, Jan Ricci, Shawn Kowaleski, and Lynda Boyer, for making me feel so welcome at Ruth’s Oasis, where so much good writing was done.

Thanks again to my mom, who is not only a brilliant writer of books but a brilliant writer of songs. Velva Jean and Butch Dawkins are both indebted to her skills. Heartfelt thanks to Curtis Duncan (and his family), a boy I once loved who died too soon, for writing me a song called “You Make Me Happy” before he went away.

As always, I could not have written this book without the devoted and energetic help of literary kitties Satchmo (who diligently protected the house so no stray cats could get in and disturb me while I was writing), Rumi (who purred at and around me constantly, stopping only to attack each page as it was printed), and Lulu (who insisted on sitting on my lap while I wrote and oftentimes on the computer itself).

I’m grateful to the National WASP World War II Museum in Sweetwater, Texas; Nancy Parrish and WASP on the Web (
wingsacrossamerica.us
); Texas Woman’s University; the Palm Springs Air Museum (where I toured a B-17!); the Marietta Aeronautical Museum and Education Center; the Kennesaw State University Oral History Project; Marion Stegeman Hodgson and Edward Hodgson for romantic inspiration (anyone craving a great adventure/love story should read Marion’s book
Winning My Wings
); and to Bernice “Bee” Haydu and Jean T. McCreery and all the other brave and daring members of the Women Airforce Service Pilots. How I wish I could have been one of you.

Finally, I couldn’t have written the book without Carole Lombard,
Supernatural
, the Jonas Brothers, Bootcamp LA,
Rescue Me
, the Silver Lake Reservoir, Robeks,
90210
, the ArcLight, Mind-Body Fitness, Mark Wahlberg, Griffith Park, Vitaminwater,
The Bachelorette
, Liberation Yoga, Palermo Ristorante Italiano, the BigFoot Lodge, and Ryan Bingham. I created Butch Dawkins before I knew who Ryan Bingham was, but it’s like he walked off the page—right down to that face, that hair, the tattoos, those songs, and the whiskey-and-cigarettes voice. Mercy.

Last of all, thanks to the loved ones who are no longer here but who live on in my heart and, in part, on these pages: my grandmothers Eleanor Niven and Cleo McJunkin (who together make Granny); my grandfathers Olin Niven (Daddy Hoyt) and Jack McJunkin Sr. (Johnny Clay); Charlie Kelly; Charles McGee; Phil Clark; Mary Martin; Mary Ellen Boyer; literary kitties George and Percy; and, most of all, my father.

~ 1941 ~

When the shadows of this life have gone,
I’ll fly away.
Like a bird from these prison walls, I’ll fly,
I’ll fly away.

—“I’ll Fly Away”

ONE

E
ver since I was a little girl, I knew that singing at the Grand Ole Opry was my life’s dream. Now I was driving myself from Alluvial, North Carolina, to Nashville, Tennessee, in my old yellow truck and I was planning to sing the whole way. I began with “The Unclouded Day” and from there ran through my favorite hymns before I started in on the mountain folk songs I was raised on and, finally, songs I’d written myself.

Yellow truck coming,
bringing me home again.
Yellow truck going,
I’m on my way . . .

I’d decided that when I got to Nashville I was going to drive straight to the Opry before I went anywhere else, before I even found a room to rent or a place to work. I wanted to touch the building where Roy Acuff and the Smoky Mountain Boys had been discovered, and where I knew I would sing someday. I might even kiss the building, depending on how dirty it was.

On my way to tomorrow
and dreams come true,
leaving my yesterday . . .

The day was bright and blue, and the sun beamed down on the old yellow truck and on my arm hanging out the window. I’d kicked my shoes off long ago. I wanted to feel the pedals under my feet.

I’m driving this truck to Nashville,
home of dreams come true . . .

I was writing a new song as I drove with one eye on the road, the other on the rearview mirror. The mountains—my mountains, the ones where I was born, where I was raised, the one named for my mama’s people, the one where I’d lived with Harley Bright after we got married, the ones I’d just up and left hours before—were slipping away.

where I’ll wear a suit of rhinestones
and play a guitar made of jewels . . .

Just east of Sylva, I turned off the Scenic and onto Route 23, and I saw the first sign for the Balsam Mountain Springs Hotel a mile or so later. I tried not to remember my honeymoon, back when I was sixteen and had never been anywhere and had to rely on Harley Bright to take me places. I tried not to think about an orchestra under the moonlight, about the night Harley made me a woman, and the morning after when I looked at myself in the mirror and decided I really didn’t look any different after all.

I tried not to think about Harley coming home tonight from the Little White Church, expecting his supper, expecting me. I tried not to picture him walking in the door and not finding me—that first moment when he realized I was gone really and truly, and not just to my sister’s or to Granny’s. I tried not to think about what might happen if he found out where I was and decided to come looking for me.

It was August 22, and the air was still heavy with summer. In my rearview mirror, the mountains were full and green. I sang till I almost couldn’t see them anymore, till I was surrounded by new mountains, strange mountains, ones I didn’t recognize. And then, just before the very tip of Fair Mountain disappeared, I pulled that truck over to the side of the road and got out. I left the engine running because I wanted to hear the rumble of it while I stood there with my back to it, looking off toward home.

I stood with my hands on my hips and stared at Fair Mountain and tried to imagine what everyone was doing at this very minute. It was still morning, but barely. Granny would be out on Mad Maggie, her mule, off to deliver a baby or tend to a new mother. My granddaddy, Daddy Hoyt, would be gathering plants for his healings. Ruby Poole, my sister-in-law, would be fussing over baby Russell and giving him his morning feeding. My oldest brother, Linc, would be rounding up the cattle or working in the barn. Sweet Fern, the oldest of all of us, would be cooking something and shouting at Corrina to stop teasing her brothers. Harley would be at the Little White Church.

My other brothers, Johnny Clay and Beachard, were off somewhere, just like me. Beachard was working on the Blue Ridge Parkway—we called it the Scenic—the new road that stretched across the mountaintops from Virginia to North Carolina, right up to the border of Tennessee. But Johnny Clay could be anywhere. He might be in California by now. He might even be in Mexico, running far, far away from home and the man he almost killed.

I stood there and blinked at the mountains. A stranger would have thought they all looked the same, but I could tell them apart from here: Devil’s Courthouse, Witch Mountain, Bone Mountain, Blood Mountain, Fair Mountain. Fair Mountain was mine.

I stood there a long time, very still. I almost stopped breathing. I felt myself start to fade into the air, into the road. I lost track of my feet and legs and arms and hands.

Suddenly I could hear that truck. It was saying, “Get back in, Velva Jean. Come on. Let’s keep going.”

Yellow truck coming,
bringing me home again.
Yellow truck going,
I’m on my way . . .

I turned around and walked to the truck and climbed back inside. I pulled out into the road, and as I started on toward Nashville, I didn’t look in the rearview mirror again. I just stared straight ahead till I could breathe.

By the time I crossed the Tennessee state line, I’d stopped singing. I felt like I’d been driving for days, but it had only been hours, and I still had miles to go. I thought I would never get to Nashville, not in five years.

I pulled into an Esso station in Calderwood. The attendant shuffled when he walked and went slow as could be, as if he had all the time in the world. He looked at me funny and then leaned past me and kind of peered in the cab of the truck like he was looking for something or someone. He said, “Afternoon, ma’am.”

“Afternoon. Could you fill it up please?” I counted out my money from the coin purse that held every penny I had in the world—$121.11. It suddenly didn’t seem like much.

“Yes’m. Sure thing.” He frowned, looked past me at the empty seat, and then shuffled over to the gas pump.

As he filled up the tank and then cleaned the windows, I pulled out the map and looked at the line I’d drawn from Devil’s Kitchen—which wasn’t even a dot on the page—to Nashville. It was a long line. It was miles and miles long. Why hadn’t I noticed how far it was when I was setting out?

I thought, Velva Jean, maybe you should just turn back, girl. You got no business being on this road by yourself. You’re a married woman. You got a home and family. What are you doing out here in this great big world?

I sat there for a moment and really thought about this. The attendant said, “Where you headed?”

I said, “Nashville.”

“Where you coming from?”

“Up near Waynesville.” I picked a town he might know. “Over in North Carolina.” I felt a stabbing in my heart as I said it. For the first time in my life, I was in another state. I was in Tennessee. I was getting farther and farther from home and from everyone I knew in this world.

He narrowed his eyes, and then he nodded. “Well,” he said. “You got a long way to go.”

I passed the hitchhiker east of Loudon. He was young and dusty with a crew cut and a bag over one shoulder. He held his thumb out like he expected everyone in the world to stop, like that was all it took. He waved at me as I drove on past, turning to stare at him. I wondered if he was a murderer or a thief or a person in search of his destiny, like me. I tried to picture myself hitchhiking, thumb out, suitcase and hatbox at my feet, waving to everyone going past.

There wasn’t another soul on the road for a mile or two, but I rolled up my window just the same. I wondered if there were thieves who hid in the bushes, waiting to jump out at single lady travelers. I hoped I didn’t see another person till Nashville.

I drove till just after seven o’clock, and then I pulled into a town called Sparta and found a motel. In an hour the sun would set and the sky would turn black, and I wanted to be off the road before then. The motel parking lot was empty except for my truck, which made me feel like the only person in the world, next to the manager, who asked me to fill out a card and pay cash up front before he handed me the key.

I went into the room and turned on all the lights, every single one, because it made me feel less alone. I carried in my suitcase and my hatbox, and then I stretched myself out on the bed and opened the Esso map and figured out how much farther I had left to go.

Afterward I got out the little card Darlon C. Reynolds had given me—the one with his address and telephone number—back when I recorded my songs for him in Waynesville the time Johnny Clay and me went to audition. By now I knew those numbers by heart. Then I unpacked my framed picture of the Opry.

There was a telephone in the lobby of the motel. The man at the desk said I could use it as long as I paid him for the call. I stared at it for the longest time, and then I picked up the phone and asked for a long-distance operator. When she came on the line she said, “Where are you calling to?” Her accent was thicker than mine.

I said, “Deal’s General Store in Alluvial, North Carolina.”

She said, “Asheville?”

I said, “Alluvial.”

She said, “What’s your name, please?”

“Velva Jean Hart.” I left off the Bright without thinking.

She was quiet for a minute, though I could hear a shuffling of papers. And then she said, “Hold, please, dear.”

The word “dear” was enough to do me in right then and there. I couldn’t even think about Nashville and all that lay ahead to do—finding a job, a place to live. What if Darlon C. Reynolds didn’t remember me? What if the Opry didn’t want girl singers who also played mandolin and had run away from their husbands without a word of good-bye? I blinked the tears back in.

In a moment there was a flat, loud ringing on the line. It rang five times, and then a voice, thin and crackly, on the other end said, “Deal’s.”

The tears sprang back. The operator said, “Velva Jean Hart calling from Sparta, Tennessee.”

“Velva Jean!” It was Coyle, the oldest Deal boy. He said to someone, “It’s Velva Jean!”

I started crying then and couldn’t stop. I said, “Coyle?”

He said, “Velva Jean, is it really you? Where you at, girl?”

I said, “Tennessee! I’m in Tennessee.”

Coyle whistled. Suddenly the phone crackled and I heard a woman’s voice. “Velva Jean?”

“Sweet Fern?”

Sweet Fern was my sister, ten years older, who’d been left to raise me and my brothers after Mama died and Daddy went away.

“Where are you?”

Even though Sweet Fern and I never did get on well, the homesick feeling I’d been swallowing ever since I left rose up again and made my throat freeze so that I could barely say “Sparta, Tennessee.”

She said, “Why didn’t you say good-bye?”

I said, “Because I never would have left.”

Sweet Fern got quiet at this, and then she said, “You be safe, Velva Jean.” And I could hear the tug in her voice. Then Mr. Deal was on the line, and then Jessup Deal—the youngest of the Deal boys—and then Hink Lowe’s daddy, and finally Ruby Poole, who’d just walked in with baby Russell. She said, “Velva Jean, are you wearing your lipstick?”

I said, “Every day.”

She said, “Listen, you be careful and just know that all of us up here are rooting for you. We can’t wait to see what you’re going to do.”

I said good-bye then and hung up the telephone and paid for the call and went on back to my room. I lay down on the bed and looked at my Opry picture. I imagined all the songs I’d sing, and then I started in on them, one by one, until I sang myself to sleep.

I wasn’t far past Watertown, where Highway 26 got ready to merge with Highway 70, when the truck started wobbling. I drove on, hanging tight to the wheel, and suddenly the truck veered off toward the roadside, and I had no choice but to bring it to a stop under some trees. I was shaking as I sat there, checking all my windows and the rearview mirror for hitchhikers.

I took a breath and got out of the cab. The truck was leaning over to the right, looking as worn out as Elderly Jones—the old Negro who lived in Alluvial—without his cane. That front tire was flat as a quarter. I stood there in my bare feet and said all the bad words Johnny Clay had taught me. Then I sat down on the side of the road and said, “Well, Jesus, I hope you’re happy.”

Jesus and me hadn’t been on good terms for years, ever since he took my mama away, made my daddy leave, and got me tangled up with Harley Bright, my husband—moonshiner’s son, tent preacher, and the most unspeakable man I ever did meet.

I sat there, dust in my hair, gravel poking me about the legs and bottom like mean little pinches, and told Jesus exactly what I thought of him for letting this happen. I said, “Lord, all I asked from you when I started on this trip was that I make it to Nashville safe. I didn’t ask for a recording contract once I get there. I didn’t ask for a job or money past what I got saved up. I didn’t even ask you to help me find a decent place to sleep. All I asked—the only thing, after all we been through, and good gracious knows that’s a lot—is that you let me get there without anything happening to this truck.”