The class roared. “A church organ emergency?”
“It’s probably a funeral,” Doria explained, embarrassed. “Funerals can’t be scheduled. Probably they couldn’t find an organist. Probably they’re desperate.”
“It’s a little thoughtless not to plan your funeral in advance,” said one of the boys.
“But good to know that Doria can come to the rescue.”
“Doria! Church organ hero!” Everyone laughed.
Doria was laughing too, and did not explain—because it was impossible—that she was already looking forward to playing an unfamiliar instrument. An organist cannot carry her instrument with her like a trumpet player. She has to work with whatever is in the church. No two organs are alike. Each sanctuary is different. Does it echo? Is it dead? Will the congregation belt out the hymns or just stand there?
The principal met her in the foyer. Sure enough, it was a funeral. “The minister will pick you up out front,” he said. “I’ll walk you out. I know him; I’m not sending you off with a stranger.”
The final bell rang. A thousand kids poured out, paying no attention to anything in their path. Doria and the principal barely made it outside.
“Over here!” The man waving wore a clerical collar, unusual in this part of the world. Pale red hair, freckles, looked twelve years old. “Dane Haverford,” the minister introduced himself. “You come highly recommended, Miss Doria.”
“What happened to the regular organist?” she asked, expecting to hear that the regular organist couldn’t leave work or had the flu.
“A horrible accident!” cried the minister.
Kids turned, wondering if they knew the person who had been in a horrible accident, and just how horrible it had been.
“The poor man was opening a tin can,” said Dean Haverford, “and the lid slipped and he sliced his palm right down to the bone. He’s at the hospital right now with surgeons trying to reattach the tendons.”
Everybody flinched. Except one. Train mimed a slice through his own palm, let his hand and wrist dangle uselessly, and then laughed.
Lutie Painter was horrified.
Train had been handed a new idea. One quick slice and he could cripple somebody. An organist, a football player, a chef—well, anybody, when you thought about it—needed both hands.
Train grabbed the hand of some poor kid standing near him, and played Slice the Tendons. The kid tried to laugh. Train’s friends did laugh.
Train might do it, too. Think what he had done to poor Nate. Well, sure, he claimed that he’d only cut the wire and that DeRade had cut the boy, but did anybody believe that? DeRade had had his brother in tow. Train would have been only steps away. And Train certainly had done nothing to prevent it, or he’d have barbed wire scars too.
DeRade had given himself a big gaping wound in his right palm. He’d been proud of it. Showed it to people. Didn’t want a doctor. Didn’t want stitches. Left the wound open.
What with the hole in his own fence and the hole in his own hand and the threats he’d made toward Nate to start with, the police didn’t have to work all that hard to find the perpetrator. First thing they did was take DeRade to the ER for a tetanus shot, and after he started bragging about how Nate had learned a lesson now, DeRade was history. He went to prison grinning.
Doria Bell got into the car with the little-boy minister and drove away.
Train turned and caught Lutie’s expression of contempt before she could wipe it off.
But maybe that’s a good thing, thought Lutie.
He needed to know that he was despised.
The organ in Dane Haverford’s church was in a pit, so the organist could see what was happening out in the church only by looking in mirrors. Doria edged down three tiny steps and maneuvered herself onto the organ bench. She opened her Mendelssohn.
Nobody would actually listen. People had important things to think about, like the dead person, and his life. Their own future deaths, and their lives.
What they wanted from Doria was filler. Something soothing and harmonious.
Bach could be grim and dark and intellectual. With Bach, you had to choose carefully. But Mendelssohn was always just right.
“We expect several hundred people,” said Reverend Haverford.
How wonderful. Doria loved an audience.
She checked the rows of organ stops, chose an eight-foot flute and a four-foot flute for her right hand, a krummhorn for her left, what she hoped was a soft pedal stop (although she wouldn’t know until she heard it), and a sixteen-foot diapason, and began playing the Mendelssohn G-major prelude, with its comforting lilt.
“Perfect,” whispered Dane Haverford.
But it was not Mendelssohn she found herself playing. Chords formed, soft and round, rolling and repeating. Mama, you sleep. She moved from one key to another, changing manuals and stops. She segued into “Ain’t Got No Sword,” making it sad and slow, and wrapped up with “Take Me Home, Lord.”
Afterward, the family came up to thank her for the beautiful music. What were the hymns? they asked.
“Um. Mendelssohn arrangements,” said Doria.
When the funeral was over and Doria and Reverend Haverford left the church, the air had changed. The day was almost chilly. It smelled and tasted of fall. There was no hint of summer left in the brisk wind.
She had him drop her off in town. At the bank she cashed her check and smiled at the crisp bills. Who didn’t love money? You felt as if you could go anywhere, do anything.
The weather said that Thanksgiving was coming, and frost, and that the time for jackets was here. Doria felt energized. She even felt athletic, as if she could have tried out for any varsity team and done well. But enough of all that fresh air. She let herself into First Methodist to practice.
Fridays were not a busy day at the church. Meetings were not held. Classes were not taught. The secretary and the minister had gone home.
She practiced a huge Bach prelude in C. It opened with a short pedal solo that required a leap of two octaves. She didn’t look down at her feet, but got the right notes by memorizing the distance her knee and foot had to travel, putting the toe of her shiny organ shoe against the adjacent black note, and then pressing down on the correct white note.
She would never play this at St. Bartholomew’s. They liked short little flutey things and quick sprightly trumpet things.
It was the most difficult piece Mr. Bates had given her. She worked and worked, while outside it grew dark and inside it was darker.
Her cell phone rang but she couldn’t hear it. She had set it on top of the organ and saw the blinking red light. “Hi, Mom,” she answered.
“Doria, honey, where are you?”
“Practicing.”
“Doria! It’s seven-thirty!”
“Oh. Sorry. Do you want to come get me?”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” said her mother, although it would take her ten.
Doria turned off the organ and rolled down the wooden lid. She slid off the bench, unlaced the black ribbons of her patent leather organ shoes, dropped them into their velvet shoe bag, slid her music into the ugly yellow plastic case and left the sanctuary.
Outside, it was very dark. The black asphalt of the parking lot reflected no light. The nearest streetlamp was far off.
The air was so crisp Doria felt as if she could see through the universe. She remembered what Mr. Amberson had said to Lutie’s class, about stars and harmony. She stared up at the first handful of winking stars and thought of Mabel Painter, child of God.
Out on Hill Street, a car slammed on its brakes. Then it honked and turned hard into the church lot. It didn’t slow down. Doria was caught in the headlights, frozen as a deer.
Her mother would never drive like that. She couldn’t have gotten here that fast either. Doria made a fist around her key chain, so that an inch of shiny metal stuck out from between her knuckles.
The car braked hard and lurched to a stop. The window came down. “Doria
Bell,” yelled Mr. Gregg. “What are you doing here, alone at night?”
“You scared me!” she shouted.
“Good. You ought to be scared, hanging out here by yourself. I thought you had half a brain, even though teenagers as a rule have only ten percent of a brain.”
“I thought you liked teenagers.”
“I do. That’s why I work with them. Step one, I try to keep them alive.”
“I’m perfectly fine,” said Doria irritably. “Anyway, this is a nice town.”
“With the usual allotment of scum. Get in. I’m giving you a ride home.”
“My mother’s on the way.”
“Fine. I’ll stay until she gets here and then I’ll let her know that her daughter is standing around in an unlit parking lot in a lousy part of town.”
“No! Don’t say that to her. Anyway, it isn’t a lousy part of town.”
“Doria, you think crime and violence are jokes? You think a half inch of house key is going to stop a rapist or a mugger? Of course I’m going to tell your mother!”
Doria hated being corrected. “It was just you,” she said sullenly.
“Doria, you know the boys in my Music Appreciation class? The ones taking it just to give me a hard time? You know anything about them? Train, for example. Formerly known as Cliff Greene. His older brother murdered somebody and got away with it, because there wasn’t enough evidence to bring him to trial, even though DeRade boasted all over town. But DeRade’s in prison after all because he blinded some little middle-school kid. Who knows why? Who cares why? DeRade likes to hurt people. And who do you think Train wants to be just like? You think Train looks at you and says, I wanna be like her—straight As, straight arrow. Guess what, Doria. Train wants to be just like his big brother, only worse.”
“Okay, fine,” she said. “I get the point.”
“No, you don’t get the point. It’s a Friday night. Train and his kind are out in the dark, prowling, like any other kind of predator. He lives in Chalk, and Chalk is just down Tenth.”
“There are fine people in Chalk,” said Doria.
“That doesn’t make it safe for you to be alone at night out here.”
She was sick of all these people who didn’t want her to practice alone.
Her mother turned into the parking lot. Mrs. Bell’s headlights illuminated Doria chatting with somebody in a car. “Hi, honey!” she called. “Let’s go! Daddy’s worried. He doesn’t like you practicing alone after dark.”
“See?” said Mr. Gregg. But he didn’t get out of his car after all, and he didn’t talk to Doria’s mother. Doria didn’t have to lie about not doing it again.
Saturday
Morning and Afternoon
CHALK
Train gets in their face.
Saravette calls.
Lutie lets it go.
Doria walks worthy.
Kelvin half notices.
9
The taste of autumn was gone by morning. Saturday was hot, but not summer hot, when the air seemed to pull the marrow out of your bones and all your energy leaked away.
Lutie stood at the top of the hill in the shade of thick green magnolia leaves. The tiny chain-linked yards and grimy houses of Chalk spread out below. On a red clay lane, its surface as hard as pottery, sat Miss Kendra’s dented old Ford Explorer. The big rear window was open and on the high shelf of the back were big metal casserole pans filled with chicken and rice, and a huge vat of green beans. A white plastic clothes basket packed with loaves of cheap white bread sat beside a cardboard box overflowing with homemade saucer-sized iced cookies.
The first time Miss Kendra served food in Chalk, people figured she was an undercover cop or else crazy. What kind of normal white woman drove right into Chalk, rolled down her car window, and yelled to the men sitting on their front porch playing cards and drinking beer, “Hey, y’all! Good evenin’! Got a hot dinner here. Want a plate? Chicken and biscuits.”
“Yeah?” “Why?” “Who you?” were the usual responses.
It was kids who first began eating the meals, and only because they wanted the cookies. Miss Kendra would say, “Your mama want some dinner too? You want to take her a plate?”
They always wanted to take their mama a plate.
One Saturday Miss Veola came out to meet this intruder, and when the women ended up praising the Lord together, people relaxed.
Sometimes being relaxed in Chalk was a bad idea.
This neighborhood had crack houses, houses with crime tape across the front door, houses abandoned to rats, houses where anybody could be doing anything. And yet mostly it had houses full of sweet kids, a mama trying hard, and a baby-daddy stopping by now and then. It was a bad neighborhood but also a good one. People knew each other, and liked each other. They knew who to be scared of, and when. They knew who to check on, and when.
In Chalk, you always wanted company. And you always wanted fresh air, so the lawn chairs were gathered up close. Kids flowed from house to house and yard to yard like kids in the halls at school.
But Chalk could change in an instant. A gang moving down the lane wanted action. The sure way to get action was violence, or taunting that led to violence.
Gangs didn’t care about a nine-year-old babysitting his little sisters. They didn’t care about a ten-year-old practicing free throws to a netless hoop. They didn’t care about an old lady on her front stoop, reading the obituaries. When you wanted action, you needed bystanders. If nobody saw it happening, it wasn’t half as fun.
Chalk knew how to duck, but knowing didn’t always save you. You could misjudge how long to lie low.
Today Chalk looked meager and tired. It had no vibe. It was just there, poor and crowded. Most strangers coming into Chalk today would want to dig in and change everything. But Miss Kendra wasn’t trying to rework anybody’s future or remodel anybody’s choices. She had just been listening to the Lord one day, when he’d told her to take Matthew 25:35 seriously. “I was hungry, and you brought me food,” Jesus had said. “Every time you feed a stranger, you are feeding me.” And to Miss Kendra, he had added, “Start now. In Chalk.”
In a minute, Miss Kendra would finish serving. The volunteers would get back in the Explorer and Miss Kendra would drive around the corner. It was safer on the next block. Mainly grandmothers. Although a fine grandmother could have a grandchild gone bad.
Lutie stood on the hill, thinking of grandchildren gone bad.
Doria Bell was having a wonderful time. She felt useful and good.
The speech of Chalk streamed around her like a slow-moving river. She felt like a turtle sunning itself on a flat rock, sweet water flowing by. She wanted to compose Chalk music, the music of voices in the dusty grass.
She separated a paper plate from the stack balanced on the edge of the open rear of the car. She took a big scoop out of the fifty-serving pan of rice. With a slotted spoon she scooped green beans from the hot water in which they sat. She arranged a big pink-iced cookie where it would not get damp from the beans and handed the plate to a towering black man with a gold tooth and swirling tattoos.
His face fell.
“More rice?” said Doria.
“No,” he said, embarrassed. “No, ma’am, this is fine. Thank you.”
“What? Tell me,” said Doria. “This is my first time serving.”
“I kinda wanted the yellow icing.”
They both laughed. She traded the pink cookie for a yellow one.
A giggling kid whispered, “That pink one is a used cookie now, Miss Doria. Can I have it?”
She was so pleased to be called by name. She studied the little boy, realizing he was one of the kids who had been playing in Miss Veola’s yard the other day. “You aren’t the four-year-old,” she said.
“I’m six. I’m Jayson.”
“Jayson, I’m having a special on used cookies.” Doria handed over the pink cookie. “But why are we whispering?”
“Miss Kendra doesn’t let anybody have a cookie that
didn’t have their vegetable.”
Jayson’s brothers popped up. They wanted hot dogs and applesauce and were disappointed to find that Doria didn’t have any. They looked suspiciously into the rice and didn’t like the look of the herbs and sausage bits. And could that squishy thing be a mushroom? “We’ll just have cookies,” they said.
“Boys!” shouted Miss Kendra. “You march around here and let me see you eat those good vegetables first.”
Doria gave them each a teaspoon of beans alongside a tablespoon of rice.
The boys ran around the Explorer to eat a bean or two in front of Miss Kendra. “Don’t run out of cookies!” they hollered at Doria.
“I won’t!” she hollered back.
Doria drank in the scent of sweet shrubs nearby, blossoming like prom corsages. She served three more plates. Wiped her hands on a towel. Wiped her sweaty forehead with the sleeve of her T-shirt. And was badly startled by bright hard popping gunshot.
“Quander’s family,” said Miss Kendra. “They line up jars on the fence and shoot ’em.”
Doria was shocked. “Isn’t that dangerous? The houses are so close together! Is it even legal?”
“I don’t think Quander’s family cares whether things are legal. And it’s only dangerous if you stand between the jars and Quander,” said Miss Kendra.
Train waited for Doria to notice him.
First Doria had been distracted by the Waitlee boys and the cookie rules. Now she was standing with her shoulders tucked in, as if that would prevent Quander from thinking she was a jar.
Last month, Quander and Jerdoah Williams had been arrested on gun-related charges, but were out almost immediately on bail. Quander and Jerdoah thought the bail amount was a riot. They earned that much in a minute, selling drugs.
Now Miss Kendra was praying with a mama whose son was in the army.
The army was the best ticket out of Chalk, but you could get sent to a war zone. On the other hand, a son was in danger here in Chalk too, and didn’t get paid like he would in the army. Miss Kendra was asking the Lord to watch over Wayne, and she and Wayne’s mama were holding hands and swaying. When Miss Kendra prayed, people often sneaked a look at the clouds, because Miss Kendra was some pray-er.