Miss Julia Takes the Wheel

by Ann B. Ross

  “She might not want to ride with me,” Lloyd said. “I mean, I might really make her nervous.”

  “We’ll put her in the backseat where she can’t watch you. But,” I went on, “we have to have your mother’s permission. I just wanted to be sure you’d like to do it before asking her.”

  “Man, yes! I just hope I don’t hurt your car. And,” he said, then stopped. “I’ve never driven a car like yours—what if I can’t drive it?”

  “If you can drive your big car, you can certainly drive mine. They’re about the same size, only mine’s a little newer.”

  “Yes’m,” he said, laughing, “about a decade or so.”

  “Well, if your mother says it’s okay, be ready to go about three-thirty today. And we won’t say anything to Miss Mildred. We’ll just surprise her.”

  Lillian’s eyes rolled back in her head, and Sam’s eyebrows were up around his hairline. But I was tired of having my afternoons taken up with chauffeuring Mildred to visit her husband and waiting alone in the car while she did it. Besides, while waiting I’d already read everything worth reading, and she was fully capable of driving herself.

  * * *

  —

  “Absolutely not!” Hazel Marie had said. “No way are you going to drive Miss Julia’s fine car until you’re more experienced. And maybe not even then.”

  Lloyd reported her decision to me as I took note of his disappointment. Actually, it didn’t really surprise me, and in one sense I was relieved. I wasn’t all that eager to turn over an expensive vehicle to a novice driver, although it was nice to have the credit of having offered it.

  “That’s all right, Lloyd. You can drive it just as soon as you get your real license. But for now,” I went on, “I would still like to have your company and I want to help you get the experience you need. Would you mind driving Miss Mildred and me in your car?”

  “My car? Really?”

  “Yes. I’ll buy the gas.”

  “What about Miss Mildred? She might not like riding in a car like mine.”

  “If she wants to be driven, which she does, she’ll have to like whatever arrives.”

  “Well,” he said, grinning, “okay, then.”

  Chapter 32

  *

  Since Lloyd could not drive alone—not even the four blocks to my house to pick me up—it took some doing to get us both in the same car. I had to drive my car to his house, park it out front, transfer myself to his car, then oversee his driving the same four blocks to pick up Mildred.

  Half expecting Mildred to cringe at having an inexperienced driver, to say nothing of being relegated to the backseat of an ancient Bonneville, I directed Lloyd up her drive and to a stop at the front steps. But it was Ida Lee’s eyes that widened at the sight of a pumpkin instead of my fine coach. Mildred didn’t turn a hair. With Ida Lee’s help, as well as a little of mine, Mildred settled herself on the backseat and buckled her seat belt, then she looked around the interior.

  “Well,” she said, as if she rode in an aging chariot every day, “how nice to have a chauffeur. Thank you, Lloyd, for being so kind. Now, Julia,” she went on as I slipped into the front seat and refastened my seat belt, “I’m still torn as to what to do about Horace. They tell me he’ll be discharged in a couple of weeks, so I need to make some decisions.”

  And she listed some possibilities having to do with employing a gentleman’s gentleman versus round-the-clock nurses, then switched to considering the merits of a Mercedes E Class versus a Cadillac Escalade. As her monologue didn’t seem to require a response, I kept my attention on Lloyd’s driving.

  To tell the truth, I was wondering if I’d outsmarted myself by entrusting three lives to a driver with limited time behind a wheel. I was beginning to feel—now that we were committed—just a little anxious about Lloyd’s level of skill. But of course that was one of my purposes—to provide an opportunity for him to gain more of the skills required of a good driver. Another purpose was to encourage Mildred to begin driving herself again.

  And another one was to divert her from the subject of Horace and his needs, about which I’d heard a gracious plenty. I was concerned about him and I sympathized with her, but when you’ve heard the same complaints and the same rhetorical questions over and over for days on end, you’re more than ready to change the subject.

  Lloyd had easily navigated the wide streets of downtown Abbotsville, so I leaned back, feeling more confident in his driving. At my direction, he’d turned onto Staton Mill Road, which took us southwest of town and out into the county. Traffic had thinned considerably, and so had the road—with hardly any shoulders, it was as narrow as a ribbon. I sat up and began to take an active interest in how Lloyd was managing the change of conditions. He had both hands on the wheel and a frown on his face as he stared straight ahead.

  “Lloyd,” Mildred sang out from the backseat, “I like your car. It’s quite roomy and comfortable.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said without shifting his eyes from the road in front of us. “Thank you.”

  As a panel truck zoomed past in the opposite lane, I lowered my voice. “Stay as far to the right as you can, Lloyd, but don’t run off the road.”

  “Yes’m, I’m trying.”

  “You’re doing fine,” I assured him. “It’s just that some people don’t know what the yellow line means.”

  “Lloyd,” Mildred called again from the backseat, “this may be the most comfortable car I’ve ever ridden in, but I do wish you’d gotten leather seats. You can’t move around very well on this fabric upholstery. I mean, you can move, but your clothes don’t.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, leaning forward as his eyes stayed peeled on the road. “I’ll remember that.”

  I murmured, “Just watch for oncoming traffic and stay over. You’re doing fine.”

  “Okay,” he said, nodding, then with a heart-stopping yelp, he jerked the wheel to the right as a horn-blowing farm truck loaded with firewood pulled out behind us. Streaking up beside us, leaves and bits of bark swirling in the air, the truck filled the opposite lane and swerved perilously close. I grabbed the armrest and stiffened as Lloyd jerked the wheel too far, running two wheels along the weed-filled shoulder.

  “Keep going!” I yelled, straining against my seat belt, as the truck raced along beside us, then, with a puff of diesel smoke, zoomed on ahead. “Stay on the shoulder, Lloyd! Keep going straight! It’s all right. Now ease back. Don’t jerk the wheel, just ease back onto the road.”

  He did, and he couldn’t have done it better. Unnerved, I leaned back, shaken but relieved that we’d avoided a roll into the ditch or, even worse, a crash into oncoming traffic.

  “Oh, man,” Lloyd gasped, “I didn’t see him!”

  “He came up behind us, and he was speeding,” I said, but my heart was racing, and I had trouble keeping my voice steady. “Just stay at the speed limit and on your side. You’ll be fine.”

  And still, Mildred talked on, not at all unsettled by the truck’s passing. I turned and glanced through the back window, seeing a file of cars and pickups lined up behind us. Then I looked ahead and saw a series of curves before us. Both spelled trouble, but Lloyd was hunched over the wheel, gripping it tightly, and chugging along at the posted thirty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit. Apparently, though, anyone familiar with the road—which seemed to be every last driver behind us—was unwilling to curtail their speed. One vehicle after another began pulling out and passing us—and on the curves, too! But, then, I’d heard more than one native-born western North Carolinian say, “Curves is the onliest place you can pick up any speed.”

  I wanted to close my eyes, but I dared not. After a long, additional half hour of driving past unrelieved fields and clumps of scrubby pines, I saw The Safe Harbor sitting on a well-landscaped knoll a little way in front of us. A welcoming sign was posted out front along with a sign forbidding smoking o
n the grounds—a dueling message, if you ask me. Some were welcome, some were not.

  “Up there on the left, Lloyd,” I said. “Turn in at the sign.”

  “Yes’m,” he said, barely moving his mouth. “If I can.”

  “Turn on your blinker,” I said, speaking in a low voice with hardly a quiver, “and wait till the lane clears out. If anybody’s behind us, they can just wait.”

  “Just ten cars and a ’mater truck,” he said, and I had an urge to laugh at his remembering the punch line of a silly joke.

  Finally, the road was clear enough for him to turn into the driveway, and I directed him to pull up under the porte cochere by the front door. Mildred, with a short struggle during which she thanked Lloyd profusely and worried aloud about Horace, climbed out. “I won’t be long,” she said.

  “Let’s find a place to park,” I said. “She won’t be ready to go for half an hour at least. But we’ll have time to drive around a little more if you’d like to.”

  “No’m,” Lloyd said, as he eased the car into an empty space, “if it’s all the same to you, I think I’d rather rest awhile.”

  He turned off the motor, leaned back, and heaved a great sigh. “That wasn’t as much fun as I thought it’d be.”

  “More traffic than I’d thought, too. We must’ve hit it just as people were going home from work, although where they all live, I don’t know. It should be cleared out by the time we go back.”

  He didn’t reply and, to tell the truth, he did look wiped out, making me wonder if I’d given him more responsibility than he was ready for. “I can drive back if you’d like,” I said.

  “Oh, no’m,” he said, sitting up straight. “I want to. Unless I scared you or something.”

  “Well, not really,” I hedged, then, as our eyes met, we started laughing.

  “Whew,” he said, relieved or pretending to be. “I was afraid you might never ride with me again.”

  “You didn’t cause it,” I assured him, “but you handled it quite well. I might’ve had us bounding across the fields. Or upside down in a ditch.” Then after a few minutes of silence, I decided one more small driving lesson was in order. “You know, Lloyd, the natural reaction to running off onto the shoulder is to swerve the car back on the road—and jerk it too hard or too far. Overcorrecting probably causes more wrecks than we know because we do it without thinking. You’re to be commended for not doing it.”

  “Maybe,” he said, “but I sure wanted to.”

  I’d gotten my nerves under control enough that I was able to smile and give his shoulder a pat. We sat for a while, our windows cracked, and listened to the silence of the wide fields on each side of The Safe Harbor.

  After several minutes, Lloyd said, “This lot would be a good place to practice parallel parking. The spaces are marked, and nobody has driven in since we’ve been here.”

  “You want to try it?”

  He shook his head. “Next time, maybe. I’m just thinking ahead.”

  A few more minutes passed as I began to wonder what was keeping Mildred. I put my head back and closed my eyes. Lloyd, however, squirmed in his seat, wiped his face with his hand, and sighed again. I thought he might be reliving our close call, and wondered what else I could say to encourage him.

  “Miss Julia?” he said, lowering his voice although no one else was around.

  “Um-m?”

  “If you saw something you shouldn’t have seen, what would you do about it?”

  Hearing the change in his voice, I came fully awake and considered my words carefully. “Well, I guess it depends. Were you where you shouldn’t have been when you saw it?”

  “No’m. I was minding my own business, and they just . . . well, it just happened right in front of my eyes, and I couldn’t help but see it.”

  Not wanting to push, I immediately thought that he had seen something untoward at school. School was where he spent the majority of his waking hours, so I assumed he’d seen somebody cheating or smoking or skipping class or engaged in some other nefarious activity.

  “Well, Lloyd,” I said, “you know that some people will do whatever they think they can get away with, and if you just happened to see it, you’re put in an awkward position. You don’t want to be a tattletale, and yet you know they’re breaking the rules. Maybe just talking to the culprit yourself would help. Warning of the trouble they could be in.”

  He twisted his mouth, drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, then said, “I don’t think—”

  “Yoo-hoo, I’m back!” Mildred opened the back door and hefted herself inside. “Sorry to take so long, but Horace was in therapy and I had to wait. He looks so much better—he even walked by himself back to the room. Tired out, of course. I wonder if they’re making him do too much. I must schedule a conference with the therapist and find out.

  “Well, Lloyd,” she went on, jumping from one subject to the next without taking a breath, “I’m ready to enjoy a nice ride back. You’re an excellent driver, and I may put you on the payroll this summer.”

  “Thanks, Miss Mildred,” Lloyd said, as he turned on the ignition and shifted into reverse. “I’ll try to chauffeur you in style.”

  That, of course, was the end of any private discussion. If Lloyd was hesitant to tell me the details, he certainly wouldn’t divulge them to a third party. I was left alone, therefore, to cogitate on the various kinds of worrisome activities that he might have observed. The topic kept my mind occupied and off any and all driving hazards the whole way home.

  Chapter 33

  *

  We let Mildred out at her front steps where we’d picked her up, and after thanking Lloyd and me several times, she made her way inside. Lloyd drove the two of us on to his mother’s house where I’d left my car.

  Thinking that he would continue what he’d started, now that we were alone again, I waited to hear what Lloyd had seen that was weighing so heavily on his mind. And while I waited, other possibilities flitted through my mind. The spring months almost always lent themselves to pranks, scuffles, threats, and other means of mischief at the schools as students longed to be free for the summer. It almost never failed that as the sap rose in the trees, so did it in long-enclosed students.

  Girls, I thought. He’d only recently gotten himself out of a tangle with three of them, and done it quite deftly, too. Maybe some one of the three had captured his heart, and he was suffering from an unrequited adolescent crush.

  But, no, I told myself, that couldn’t be it. If he was having girl trouble, he’d talk to his father or to Sam, not to me.

  Maybe something to do with the house on Rosewood? He might well talk to me about that since he knew my interest in it. But what could have put such a worried look on his face? Was Mr. Pickens cutting corners by using lower-grade materials? I mentally shook my head. Mr. Pickens was a thorn in my side, that was for sure, but he was an honest thorn. Besides, Lloyd didn’t know enough to make a knowledgable judgment about anything having to do with construction—regardless of the grade.

  “Here we are,” Lloyd said as he pulled into the driveway at his mother’s house. “Thanks for letting me drive, Miss Julia. Maybe next time I’ll do better.” He opened the door and began to step out.

  “Already?” I asked, realizing that while I’d been mulling over springtime mayhem on school grounds and other possibilities, he’d had a change of heart about confiding in me at all. Not wanting to pry, I climbed out and started toward my car parked at the curb.

  “You keep doing as well as you did today, Lloyd,” I said, “and we’ll have you driving my car soon. Sam’s, too, I expect. And Lloyd,” I said, stopping on the front lawn, “anytime you want to talk . . .”

  “Yes’m, I know.” He turned away, keeping to himself whatever was on his mind. “It’s okay. Thanks again, Miss Julia.”

  He went up the porch steps toward the front door, and I got
into my car and went home. Of course my curiosity was aroused, but my concern was far more than simply wanting to know what he’d seen. He was troubled by it, whatever it had been, and when Lloyd was troubled, so, too, was I.

  On the other hand, teenagers were prone to emotional ups and downs. They were known to be moody and standoffish one day, then be perfectly normal the next. I recalled how worried he’d been about the Sadie Hawkins dance, yet that had worked out fine. So, even though Lloyd had decided to keep his concern to himself, I had to trust that his great good sense would keep him on an even keel, and that this, too—whatever it was—would pass.

  * * *

  —

  As I walked into the kitchen at home, Lillian looked up from what she was stirring on the stove. “Well, I’m glad to see you walkin’ on your own two feet, an’ not comin’ in on a stretcher or something. How’d Lloyd do?”

  “He did fine. He scared me only once, and it wasn’t his fault.” I sat down at the table, ready to talk to somebody. “I don’t know, Lillian. I may have expected too much too soon from him—we were almost run off the road, but he handled it well. Mildred, now, she was oblivious. That woman can surely talk when something’s on her mind. She’s ready to hire him this summer to chauffeur her around.”

  “I thought he already have a summer job, messin’ with that house with Mr. Pickens.”

  “He does. She’ll have forgotten about it by the time school’s out.” I looked around, then started to rise. “Where’s Sam? How’s his back?”

  “Upstairs in the sunroom. An’ he say his back’s as good as new. He’ll be down in a minute ’cause he’s watchin’ for your car an’ I’m about ready to put something on the table.”

  “Then I’ll just sit here and wait,” I said, settling back and unbuttoning my jacket. “I declare, taking these drives with Mildred just wears me out. It’s past time for her to start driving herself.”

  “Uh-huh, I ’spect it is.” Lillian busied herself with removing pans from the oven and the stovetop, then she turned to me. “Um, Miss Julia, I think I better ast you something ’cause word’s gettin’ out ’round town.”