The Lost Songs

  Train followed Lutie toward Miss Veola’s.

  Since there was nothing Lutie liked more than visiting Miss Veola, and since she was Mr. Gregg’s pet, Train had expected her to dance right up, sit right down.

  Instead Lutie stopped short in the middle of the road, caught in long shadows.

  A dude in a suit was yelling at Miss Kendra. A minute ago, Train had hated her for driving in here all white and show-offy: You can’t cook your own food, you losers. You need me. But now he liked her, yelling back at the man in the suit instead of being all prayer-y and Jesus-y.

  Who was the guy? An inspector?

  Train despised authority. If the guy was here to shut Miss Kendra down, Train just might have to slash his tires. He might do it anyway. He hadn’t done it in a while.

  A silver Audi was parked by the corner. Definitely the suit guy’s car. It cried out for vandalism.

  “I’m so sorry,” said the suit guy to Miss Kendra. “I did not mean to touch a nerve.”

  Come on, you totally meant it, thought Train.

  Raw nerves grated like crickets in the grass. Doria did not want this beautiful afternoon ruined. She would wait in Miss Kendra’s car. She eased back to the gate and put her hand on the latch. Down the tiny twisting lane, the sun slid away and children danced in the dust, watching their shadow selves cavort.

  She thought of Miss Kendra’s prayer. They want to walk worthy.

  So she walked back. “Professor Durham? I am proud to be allowed to volunteer for Miss Kendra. I didn’t do any work, I just put food on plates. But people smiled. I think dinner was just the right temperature. It was the temperature of—well—being neighborly.”

  Rats. I have to be friends with her now, thought Lutie. Burden or not.

  But she couldn’t move. Couldn’t join Doria and second the motion. Her relief that none of the visitors was Saravette made her flimsy.

  If Miss Veola had produced the Laundry List for him, Professor Durham would not be discussing bacterial food poisoning. So the Laundry List still belonged to Lutie Painter.

  In her pocket, her cell phone vibrated. She checked it. She and her girlfriends were in touch every few minutes.

  But this was no girlfriend.

  It was Saravette.

  Stop it! thought Lutie. Don’t call me! I don’t want you. Not here or anywhere else.

  Footsteps.

  Hard-soled shoes, tapping evenly on the surface of the road.

  Not a kid. Kids wore sneakers or Crocs or flip-flops.

  A cop, thought Train.

  He stayed motionless, well behind Lutie.

  But it was only Kelvin, as big and noisy as any intruding adult. Well, he was intruding. Kelvin didn’t live in Chalk. His daddy moved out before he was even born, and Kelvin was slumming here, just like Doria. Just like Lutie, for that matter.

  “Hey, y’all,” said Kelvin, his voice as fat and thick as his body. Probably still wanted to be a preacher and listen to his own voice all day.

  “This is one of my baritones, Professor,” said Mr. Gregg. “Kelvin.”

  Doria turned to greet Kelvin. The lowering sun gleamed on her pale face. Everything showed, as if Doria’s skin had come off.

  That girl adored Kelvin.

  What was it about stupid Kelvin?

  Doria’s crush smothered her. But Kelvin hardly noticed her. “Well, hey there, Doria,” he said. “And Mr. Gregg!” He offered the music teacher a handshake.

  How large his hand was. Doria changed her mind about shaking hands. She wanted to stick her hand out for the pleasure of holding Kelvin’s.

  “Kelvin,” said Mr. Gregg, “this is Professor Martin Durham. He’s researching the Laundry List.”

  “My daddy used to love those songs. Miz Eunice, she’d set on her porch and sing. I can sort of remember but not really. Mostly I remember my daddy talking about it.”

  “Is your daddy a baritone too?” said the professor. “Can he sing the songs for me?”

  Kelvin laughed. You could go swimming in a laugh as deep and warm as that. “Who would want my daddy to sing, when you’ve got Lutie? Lutie has the best voice in the whole wide world.”

  “Lutie’s being contrary,” said Mr. Gregg.

  “Oh,” said Kelvin. “I’m Lutie’s shadow, so I guess I’ll be contrary too.”

  Miss Veola raised her eyebrows. “Lutie’s shadow?”

  “When you’re as good at things as Lutie,” said Kelvin, “everybody is in your shadow.” He smiled at Doria. “Unless you’re casting a pretty big shadow of your own. Like Miss Doria.”

  Doria wanted to hurl herself into his arms, but instead she gestured toward Miss Kendra’s car. “Do you want a plate, Kelvin?”

  “No, thanks. I just went to Burger King. I’d take a cookie, but I know Miss Kendra’s rules. And I’m not in a vegetable mood.”

  Doria decided to learn how to bake cookies. And ice them.

  Lutie opened Miss Veola’s little gate with unnecessary force and shut it loudly behind her. “Good evening,” she said, like a trumpet. “Why, Professor Durham. And Mr. Gregg.” She used her Chalk voice: Whaaah, Professah Door-Ham. Ayund Mistah Grayyg.

  Doria and Kelvin regarded her thoughtfully.

  “Miss Lutie,” acknowledged the professor. “I was just about to ask Miss Doria about her own music.”

  “Sir?” said Doria, grasping at last the value of Southern styles of address. So courteous and yet so distant.

  “Mr. Gregg showed me one of your compositions, Doria. A person of your scope belongs in the High School of Performing Arts. Your talents are wasted at Court Hill High.”

  I am lonely at Court Hill High, thought Doria. But I am not wasted. Musically I have moved a long way in a short time. And musically, Mistah Door-Ham, I am ahead of you. I own some of the Laundry List myself.

  “Right now, on the organ,” said Doria, amazed to hear a Southern drawl in her own voice, “I’m doin’ some Buxtehude, a little Mendelssohn and of course Bach.”

  Kelvin butted in. “You know, Doria, you want real music, you should come to Miss Veola’s church one Sunday. I’ll take you. Lutie, she can shout down that aisle.”

  Kelvin would take her? Doria almost leaped on top of him so they could piggyback over to the church right now. “I can’t. I have a church job of my own.”

  “Don’t sound so sad about it,” said Miss Veola. “You’re doing the Lord’s work.”

  “For you, it’s probably the Lord’s work. But I’m just showing up. I love to play the organ and I love an audience. I’m not sure I love God. In fact, I usually forget he’s there, I’m so busy with the notes.”

  This was very distressing. The ladies climbed right on board. A soul was at risk. They dug deep.

  Professor Durham and Mr. Gregg gave up and left.

  Lutie said suspiciously, “Doria? You offer up a little godlessness just to change the subject?”

  Miss Veola said, “Shame on you, Doria Bell.”

  “Way to go, Dore,” said Kelvin.

  Kelvin enjoyed the scenery of the two girls. It tickled him that Lutie was associated with something called a laundry list. Lutie seemed more of a candidate for a Treasures of the Nile list or a Jaguar list. A Star in the Sky list. A How Many Guys Can Have a Crush on the Same Girl at One Time list.

  In the long shadows of early evening, the two girls seemed to change colors. The white one went black and the black one went gold.

  How beautiful the world is, thought Kelvin, utterly satisfied with life.

  He turned to leave and saw Train, alone in the road, swaying like a cobra.

  Saturday

  Night

  Train prowls.

  Doria practices alone.

  Lutie plays the message.

  Aunt Tamika tells the truth.

  10

  The sun had set.

  The guests were gone.

  Lutie turned on her pastor. “You had no right to talk to that musicologist.”

  “Rights!” shouted Mi
ss Veola. “You have rights to that music? What rights? You got a will, maybe? A last testament? A deathbed video?”

  Miss Veola never yelled. Lutie was stunned. “No, ma’am. But it’s my music, isn’t it?”

  Miss Veola lowered herself into a lawn chair. In the faint light of dusk, the pastor looked a hundred years old. “Lutie, Professor Durham is different. The other researchers were just wandering by. Your MeeMaw just stood there and looked ignorant until they were gone. This man will dig to China if that’s what it takes. But it won’t. He knows he’s on the right track. He’ll go from house to house. He’ll offer money or TV interviews or just a bottle of liquor. One by one, he’ll collect your songs. And then, Lutie, the Laundry List will be his.”

  Lutie did not want to hear this.

  “He’ll call them folk songs. Mabel Painter probably sang them, he’ll say, but anybody could have composed them. All the women in Chalk did laundry, he’ll remind us. These pieces were probably composed jointly. Besides, he’ll add, Mabel Painter lived in the nineteenth century. This is the twenty-first. The songs are public domain.”

  Lutie was filled with dread, as if she’d been walking through the woods and looked up to see a snake draped overhead.

  “And then he’ll point out that he’s the only one who bothered to collect them. If the young Painter woman had cared about those precious songs, she would have done it herself.”

  “Did he say that?”

  “It’s the way of things. Music collectors have always scoured the countryside for folk music. Hungarian. Appalachian. When some old Eastern European peasant woman sang her lullaby or some old shepherd on a Scottish moor sang his ballad, you think the researcher took names? Wrote checks? No. He went home and presented the songs as folk music, meaning they belong to anybody and everybody. The copyright will go to the researcher. The way things are shaping up, Lutie, you’re going to be informed that the Laundry List was given to the community of Chalk over the years and now Chalk is giving it back. Perhaps its new curator will make mention of Mabel Painter, or Eunice, or you, and perhaps not.”

  “That’s theft!”

  “You won’t be able to prove theft,” said Miss Veola, “because you never established ownership.”

  The word “ownership” was stiff and formal. Lutie hardly knew what to make of it.

  Mabel Painter had owned so little.

  Snatches of melody and words thrust themselves at Lutie. Some were notes she had forgotten. Some felt unsung, as if she possessed melodies she hadn’t heard yet.

  Lutie saw Mabel Painter standing in the meadow, telling God that she did not want more scars.

  Give me my star! cried Mabel Painter.

  Give me my star! cried Mr. Gregg.

  Give me my star! cried Professor Durham.

  We all want stars, thought Lutie. Except maybe Train. Train might actually want the scars instead, like the scar DeRade has in the palm of his hand, proof forever that he blinded Nate.

  “How can the Laundry List make him a star?” she protested. “The songs don’t have million-seller potential. They won’t work on some huge stage with a backup band and pyrotechnics. All they are is one woman’s hymn to her God.”

  “So is every hymn and carol in the world. But the world sings ‘Silent Night’ a million times every Christmas,” said Miss Veola. “Lutie, I know you’re sick of me by now. But if you perform the Laundry List, it would fill our church. It would bring our people together. It would help the lost find God. It would bring joy and yes, it would bring money. But most of all, it would establish you as the source of the songs.” Miss Veola paused. Then she said softly, “You know what your grandmother wanted. For you to use your wood for something good.”

  Miss Veola was referring to the saddest of the songs. The song where Mabel Painter admitted that a Negro laundry-woman wasn’t a real person with real feelings and real hopes. She wasn’t any different from a stick of kindling to heat the water. She was a laundry tool.

  I am wood, gentle Jesus.

  This world, they say I am wood.

  Wood don’t feel no pain. Wood don’t weep.

  Lord Jesus, the world, they say I am wood.

  Wood don’t have heart, wood don’t have hope.

  The world, they say I am wood.

  If I am wood, gentle Jesus,

  Use my wood.

  Use my wood for something good.

  Lutie was always shaken by the presence of Jesus in the song. If Jesus was so gentle and if he was also the Lord God Almighty, how come Mabel Painter was just a stick of wood? Why didn’t he intervene?

  Lutie could hardly see past all those notes. “There’s a song I half know,” she said slowly. “I can’t quite pull it back. It started playing inside me a few days ago. Do you remember one that starts with the words ‘Be you still alive’?”

  Miss Veola took a long slow drink from her glass. By now, it must be all melted ice, and no tea. “I think we’ve probably lost a number of songs, Lutie. One I half remember is about six more days. It was a countdown song. The only day Mabel Painter could be off her feet was Sunday, the seventh day. So each day of the week was one fewer to wait for Sunday. But I don’t know the words anymore, or the melody.”

  “What church did Mabel go to? The churches around here don’t seem old enough.”

  “I don’t think they had a building, only an arbor. Vines on a trellis. I feel as if somebody told me the vines were wisteria. Would have been violet and mauve. Probably had birds nesting. I think they’d have sat on something, because they were laborers. It really was their day of rest. But there wouldn’t have been pews.” Miss Veola struggled to her feet. “I’ll give you a ride home, honey.”

  Miss Veola had kept her Cadillac washed and polished and running for a quarter of a century. When she came out of her house with her purse and had locked the door behind her, they climbed in. Miss Veola gave her leather upholstery a little pat.

  Lutie had a sudden vivid memory of MeeMaw sitting here in the front seat, and the two old friends giggling like seventh graders. “Be you still alive?” she asked again. “I have a few notes of it.” She hummed, but her memory did not locate the rest of the melody.

  “You staying with Mika or Grace tonight?”

  “It doesn’t sound like a hymn,” said Lutie. “And I feel as if you have to cry when you sing it. I think it’s a weeping song.”

  “Which way am I driving, Miss Lutie?” said the pastor. “Tamika’s or Grace’s?”

  “Aunt Tamika’s.”

  They left Chalk. Miss Veola took a long slow turn and a long slow time.

  “Maybe Aunt Tamika will remember ‘Be You Still Alive?’,” said Lutie.

  A mile later, Miss Veola said, “I don’t want you to bother your aunt. Yes, it was a weeping song. No, it isn’t part of the Laundry List. Your MeeMaw songed that up.”

  “MeeMaw wrote songs too?” Lutie was amazed and excited.

  “No. She sobbed on the porch for years after Saravette left for good. And one day, the pain found notes.” Miss Veola turned into Aunt Tamika’s driveway and let the car idle. “You were a baby. Saravette was doing drugs and selling them, selling herself too, doing everything bad there was to do, and she and her mama had a terrible fight. Saravette stormed away and never came back. Never called. Never wrote. Never sent a message. Knowing how Saravette chose to live, and what she was doing to her body and soul, your poor MeeMaw didn’t even know if her baby girl was still alive. Eunice hid her sorrow in her heart because it wouldn’t be good for her baby Lutie to be raised in all that grief. But it came out in song.”

  In her youth, Miss Veola had been a singer, but youth was decades ago. She struggled for breath.

  “Be you still alive, my sweet sweet girl?

  Be you coming home?

  My heart hurts more than broken bone.

  More than crash and burn.

  Be you still alive, my sweet sweet girl?

  Be you coming home?”

  MeeMaw. On the lit
tle porch, with its bright red flowers in their blue cans, and the meadow stretching out. Be you still alive? she had cried to the dark sky and the dark unknown. Be you coming home?

  Lutie wept. “And did Saravette come home when MeeMaw was still alive? I don’t ever remember her being around.”

  “Once.”

  “Was I there?”

  “No.”

  “Were you there?”

  “No.”

  Lutie touched the slender rectangle of her cell phone inside her pants pocket. She had not answered Saravette’s phone call an hour ago, but Saravette had left a message. Why couldn’t you have sent messages to your mama when she needed you? Lutie thought, hating Saravette. Why were you so mean?

  “Run on in,” said Miss Veola, and Lutie knew that the old woman needed to cry. Whether for Saravette or Eunice or the world, Lutie did not know.

  Lutie let herself into the house. Saravette had come home once? How cruel. But maybe it had been a good visit, and that was why Saravette had stayed in the area.

  The garage door opened. Lutie was so glad not to be alone anymore. Aunt Tamika and Uncle Dean were back from a satisfying Saturday of shopping. “You have a good day?” said Aunt Tamika, kissing and hugging her and hanging up plastic dress bags.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Anything happen?” asked Uncle Dean.

  “No, sir.”

  “I got a text this afternoon from Miss Veola,” said Aunt Tamika. “A professor wants to record the Laundry List? Sounds to me like something happening.”

  Lutie felt the strong women in her life and history calling to her. Do something with your life! Sing! Study! Star! Get your ticket out!

  How envious she was of girls who were not trying, who let life puddle around them while they laughed, and did their hair, and had boyfriends.

  “Here’s how I look at it,” said her uncle. “You make a name for yourself with the songs. You use the recordings to get into a top-tier music conservatory.” He set packages on the kitchen counter and admired the shopping bags. “On the other hand, I’m not sure I want you majoring in music. You have to think of jobs, Lutie, and a decent income. Expertise in science might be a better ticket. You can always do music on the side.”