The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis (12 page)

VELMA'S APPEARANCE at the edge of the cemetery, arms crossed, face red, was definitely not serendipity. It was much closer to vicissitude. Her livid wrath was like sparks, shooting from grave to grave, from tree to shrub, from Popeye to Elvis.

Popeye wished he hadn't connived and cajoled. He should have listened to his qualms. Then maybe he wouldn't have been standing here all shamefaced in the middle of a coonhound cemetery beside a girl with butterfly wings and Elvis with his so-what? face.

Velma stomped over to Popeye and gave him a little whack on the arm when she asked him what in
the world had gotten into him. Then another whack when she asked him if he had plumb lost his mind. And another whack when she told him she'd been traipsing through the woods for an hour looking for him. And one last whack when she asked him if he was trying to worry her right into the grave.

Then she spun around and glared at Elvis. “And you!” she hollered, jabbing her finger at him.

She lit into Elvis while he peered up at her from under his shaggy hair. As she hollered on and on about how he oughta be over there helping with that motor home and nobody even knew where he was and did he want to grow up to be like Dooley and Shifty and all those other no-accounts, his so-what? face began to change. By the time she was done with him, he was wearing a pretty good I'm-sorry face.

Then the quiet drifted down and hovered over them until Starletta shattered it like glass.

“These are all dead dogs,” she said, throwing her arms out. “And they live here.” She pointed to each grave, reading off the dog names like she was taking roll. “Jasper, Connie, Big Tick, Rollo . . .”

“Who are you?” Velma interrupted.

“Princess Starletta Rainey.”

“Rainey?” Velma's eyes narrowed. “Where do you live?”

Starletta pointed toward the woods.

Velma looked over at the path that zigzagged through the trees. “Is your daddy T-Bone Rainey?”

Starletta skipped in a circle around one of the graves.

 

JAY BOB
BEST DOG EVER
JUNE 16, 1955

 

“Yes, he is,” she said.

“I know him,” Velma said. “His daddy used to deliver firewood to me when he wasn't no bigger than you.”

Starletta kept skipping, not even looking at Velma.

Popeye felt the wrath-filled air swirling around Velma.

“I
know
,” Velma snapped, “that your daddy would not approve of three younguns running wild and unsupervised in these woods.”

Starletta stopped skipping and thrust her chin up. “That is most definitely
not
true,” she said.

Popeye's insides danced with delight at little ole butterfly-winged Starletta standing up to Velma, something he had never done in all his born days and never intended to do, not even when he was old.

Velma's face twitched. Her hand fluttered up and pushed at her thin gray hair. Popeye could tell that all she wanted to do in the whole world, at that moment, was find herself a rolled-up newspaper and swat Starletta's skinny legs.

But, of course, she couldn't.

So she turned to Popeye and said, “Let's go.”

THEY TRUDGED SILENTLY down the path in single file.

Popeye, Elvis, Boo, and Velma.

Starletta skipped along behind them, humming.

Every now and then, Velma whirled around and told her to go on home, but Starletta ignored her.

They turned left at the Indian pipes and followed the creek until they got to the dam the boys had made. By the time they reached the field behind Popeye's house, they could hear the folks up at the Holiday Rambler.

“A little more to the left!”

“Give her some gas!”

“On the count of three . . .”

And then, just as they rounded the curve, the Holiday Rambler drove out of the hole in the road with a roar, sending up swirls of dirt and gravel.

A cheer rose into the warm summer air.

Prissy, Calvin, Walter, Willis, and Shorty whooped and clapped.

Dooley and Shifty high-fived each other.

Glory and Furman Jewell grinned down at everyone from the window of the motor home.

Elvis yelled, “Hot dang!” and ran over to join the others.

Velma nodded at Dooley with the teeny-tiniest little smile at the corners of her thin lips.

Starletta skipped over to the motor home, her wings flapping so much it was a wonder she didn't lift right up into the sky like a bird.

It seemed like everybody was just as happy as happy could be.

Everybody except Popeye.

When Popeye saw the shiny silver motor home drive out of the hole in the road, a wave of melancholy settled over him.

melancholy:
noun
; a deep sadness

If the motor home wasn't stuck anymore, then the motor home could drive away.

If the motor home
could
drive away, the motor home
would
drive away.

And Popeye would be left behind.

Left behind with nothing but the shed and the mailbox and the weeds and the ditch.

“Come on, y'all,” Glory called from the window of the motor home. “Let's go for a ride.”

When the door of the Holiday Rambler opened and everybody piled in (even Boo), Popeye's melancholy followed him like a rain cloud. He sat in the diner booth squished between Elvis and Calvin, across from Walter and Willis and Shorty. Velma and Dooley and Shifty sat on the fold-down bed. Star-letta and Prissy hopped around in circles, holding hands and giggling until Glory told them to sit down and behave.

Then the motor home began to move. It bounced and squeaked and rumbled up the gravel road, but when it turned onto the main highway, it settled into a steady purr. A warm breeze blew through the
open windows, sending napkins and candy wrappers swirling around them.

As Popeye watched the road signs and telephone poles whiz by him from his seat in the diner booth, a little buzz of excitement began to stir inside him. He thought back to that day when the rain had left rivers of muddy water in the driveway and he had seen that tilted motor home gleaming in the morning sun for the first time. And now here he was, zooming up the highway in a silver dollhouse jammed with kids and paper plates and sneakers and notebooks full of country-western songs. Before long, Popeye's cloud of melancholy began to lift, higher and higher above him, until it drifted right out the window and disappeared into the Carolina sky.

When they got to the shopping center out by the interstate, Furman turned the motor home around and drove back toward Popeye's house. As they rumbled down the gravel road, Popeye looked out the window. There was his little house with the shed and the drainage ditch and the rusty trailer in the backyard. Tomorrow he would wake up to see the heart-shaped stain on the ceiling of his bedroom and
hear the
tick, tick, tick
of the clock in the living room.

Tomorrow, Velma would recite the kings and queens of England in chronological order and holler at Dooley.

Tomorrow, Boo would snore on his quilt by the woodstove.

Tomorrow, everything would be the same.

But different.

Because tomorrow, Popeye could reminisce.

reminisce:
verb
; to think about past events

He could reminisce about the Holiday Rambler with the howling coyote and the glittering lightning bolts.

Where would it be?

Zipping along a highway somewhere?

Bouncing up a gravel road?

He could reminisce about that passel of wild kids. Prissy and Calvin and Walter and Willis and Shorty—and most of all, Elvis.

What would they be doing?

Playing cards and eating sandwiches?

Jumping on the fold-down bed?

Fussing and fighting while Furman drove and Glory wrote country-western songs?

And tomorrow, Popeye could start his very own Spit and Swear Club (and he could be president).

Tomorrow, he would have a few great insults to use, if he needed them.

He could even be a Royal Rule Breaker, if he wanted to.

And long after the hole and the tire marks in the gravel road were gone, long after the summer wild-flowers had yellowed and died, when the mossy rocks were slippery with frost and the edges of the creek were crusted with a thin layer of winter ice, Popeye could look for the path where the Indian pipes had grown that summer. He could whistle for Boo to come with him to find Starletta, and the three of them could go visit the place where dead dogs live.

Popeye and Starletta sat on the big rock on the bank of the creek with Boo snoring beside them.

They unfolded and cut and unfolded and cut all afternoon.

After they had a whole pile of Yoo-hoo boats, Popeye tore a strip of notebook paper and wrote with a blue colored pencil:

The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis

He folded the strip of paper.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

He tucked it inside one of the boats, then stepped down into the creek and set the boat on the water. He moved the branches and pushed aside the rocks and mud that he and Elvis had used to dam the water.

The little boat began to drift slowly down the creek. Before long, it picked up speed, dipping and bobbing in the flowing water. It bumped against rocks and slid over tiny waterfalls while minnows darted in curious circles around it.

Farther and farther it drifted, growing smaller and smaller, until it was a tiny yellow, brown, and blue dot that rounded the curve in the creek and disappeared.