Not even because of Lutie’s sorrow.
The fever ended when Kelvin said “we.” We should be at that funeral. We’re Lutie’s friends.
The terrible decision: go good or go bad.
Bad meant you always had followers.
Good meant you might have to go it alone. If he went good, he might be shunned and despised.
“The funeral is at Miss Veola’s church,” said Doria.
He would have to set foot in the house of the Lord.
I didn’t blind Nate, he told the Lord. I stood there and let it happen, that’s all.
So maybe I did blind Nate.
It was too terrible for forgiveness. The whole idea of forgiveness seemed as wrong as blinding Nate. He thought of Pierce’s daddy telling him that being good was a ticket out.
Train did not want a ticket out. He wanted a ticket in.
He set the bottle of rubbing alcohol in the grass. He had shoplifted it new. Practiced with the half-finished bottle on the bathroom shelf. Worked fine. Exploded in flames.
“Rubbing alcohol?” asked Doria.
Kelvin said softly, “It’s good for sore feet.”
Doria frowned but didn’t pursue it.
Kelvin said, “I don’t think my parents know about Lutie’s mother. I’d better call them. They’ll want to be there. I can’t believe I didn’t know. What’s her mother’s name, anyway?”
“Saravette Painter. Isn’t that a beautiful name? I’m not sure she was a beautiful person. Still. When your mother is dead, it has to be the beauty you think about. That would be your song. Miss Veola wants Lutie to sing from the Laundry List to honor her mother. Remember we heard her sing some of the songs the other day, Cliff?”
It was startling to hear his real name. To think that that person still existed. That he might still be Cliff Greene.
“I don’t remember any songs about beauty,” said Train. “But I know which one I’d choose.”
Train remembered hymns? Had favorites? Kelvin practically fell over.
Doria beamed as if they were about to climb onto an amusement park ride. She even clapped a little. Kelvin felt dizzy with the strangeness of this trio that he and Doria and Train formed.
“Sing it for me, Cliff,” Doria begged.
She’s the only person in Court Hill who calls him Cliff, thought Kelvin. Except Miss Veola and his mother. Maybe that’s where we all went wrong. We let DeRade name him.
“I don’t sing,” said Cliff.
Although he did. Long ago and far away, they had been children in a Sunday-school choir, wearing silky robes and bright crosses hanging on ribbons.
Cliff scuffed the dirt with his huge filthy sneaker. “But for a funeral, I’d maybe choose ‘Cross My Creek.’ ”
A minute ago, my life was in danger, thought Kelvin. Now Train is just another self-conscious boy facing a beautiful girl.
Kelvin gave Cliff a breather. He said to Doria, “The old Painter house is a half mile that way, across a creek. Didn’t used to be a bridge. You had to go all the way around or wade. The Laundry List is different, you know. Those songs, they talk to the Lord different. Usually you invite people to come to the Lord, or you ask the Lord if you can go to him. But in ‘Cross My Creek,’ old Miz Painter tells the Lord to stop by. Set for a spell. Visit. And forgive each other’s sins.”
“Forgive each other’s sins?” repeated Doria.
“ ’Cause the Lord was slow,” said Cliff, as if he knew a thing or two about the Lord being slow. “Old Miz Painter, she didn’t think he should have been so slow.” Cliff took a big breath, then looked down, as if he really were on a cliff. Teetering.
He wants to sing, thought Kelvin. That’s why he took Music Appreciation. Not to ruin Mr. Gregg’s life. He wants to sing.
“How does it go?” asked Doria. “ ‘Cross My Creek’?”
Cliff took another breath.
Kelvin prayed.
Cliff sang.
Cross my creek, Mabel Painter had ordered the Lord. And then the melody softened. I’ll wash your feet, Lord, she offered. And then, like giving him a present—and you wash mine.
The song rolled on, telling the Lord to set for a spell, and not fret for a spell.
“Oh, Cliff!” said Doria. “Your voice is so warm and sweet.” She was certainly the only person in Court Hill to describe Train with those words. “I can just see you on the far side of the creek, beckoning to the Lord as if he’s the shy one and you have to let him know he’s welcome.”
Cliff was embarrassed. “Miz Painter would have had a basin,” he told her, without meeting her eyes. “Like my grandmother’s. White stuff on metal. What’s it called, Kelvin?”
“Enamel. We got one too.”
“Anyway, she didn’t have running water. She’da sat in her rocker on the front porch and washed her feet before she went inside, to get that red dirt off them.”
“She did laundry and didn’t have running water?” Doria was incredulous. She said, “Cliff, you know how people speak up at funerals and offer little stories about the dead person? We didn’t know Lutie’s mother, so we can’t tell some cool story about her. But you can stand up and sing. You don’t need a piano any more than Mabel Painter did or Lutie does. I think those words belong at the beginning of the funeral service. You invite everybody in. ‘Cross my creek,’ you’ll say to them.”
Cliff stared at her in astonishment. “Not me.”
Kelvin said, “Anyway, we’re not dressed for a funeral.”
Cliff looked down at his torn purple T-shirt, his soiled baggy jeans and his filthy sneakers with laces trailing in the dust.
All his life, Kelvin would remember the moment in which the baddest kid in school knelt to tie his shoelaces, the closest he could get to dressing formal for a funeral.
Kelvin called his mother on his cell phone.
“Saravette?” she cried. “Oh, Kelvin! I thought she was dead long ago! I am shocked. I should be there! When is it? I don’t think I can get there in time!”
“You knew her?” Kelvin felt hurt. His parents knew he adored Lutie and they’d never mentioned that she had a mother somewhere out there?
“Of course I knew her. Lutie looks just like her. Saravette and her mama fought every minute of every day her whole life. Saravette disappeared years ago. I just had no idea that—well—I’m hurrying. You go comfort Miss Lutie for me, Kelvin.”
What a great idea.
He and Cliff were down the hill now, where the sidewalk started up again. Miss Veola’s church was just down the road. A long white funeral-home limo was just pulling up. Kelvin placed a mental bet on whether Cliff would actually enter the church. Whether he could hang on to being Cliff, or whether Train would be back on track in a minute.
A crowd milled around the pink church.
A little too far for Kelvin to recognize anybody, but Cliff stopped short, like a foot smashing the brake.
He sees somebody he knows, thought Kelvin. He’s Train again. He’s got an image to preserve. He’s not going into that pink church. Not now. Not ever. But at least I haven’t been burned over seventy percent of my body.
Train looked over his shoulder, so Kelvin did too.
Doria was framed against the sky at the top of the hill. She had not followed.
I prayed for the wrong thing, thought Kelvin.
Cliff Greene walked back up the hill. “Yeah. Sit with us,” he said.
The church was filling up.
No matter what Lutie and her aunts half wished, funerals are not private.
Friends come. It is their job to offer comfort. To cry with you, sing with you and pray with you. To bring casseroles and desserts. To tell stories of good times. To laugh.
There were no good times to share in Saravette’s life.
No funny moments.
All the stories were sad.
Who had she been? A woman who’d tossed her life in the gutter and never bothered with the fine things she could have had: family and love and a daughter.
> Lutie was glad she had left that greasy little diner so fast. The fewer memories she had of Saravette, killer of MeeMaw, the better. She could not stand it if Miss Veola got all sentimental and Christian about Saravette. Let God forgive Saravette’s sins, if he had that much time.
Lutie paced, ignoring the choir robe shot through with gold threads that Miss Veola had laid out, hoping Lutie would sing. She accepted a hug here and words of condolence there.
The professor walked in.
His jaw dropped, like everybody’s the first time they saw Miss Veola’s paint job, and he smothered an incredulous laugh, just like everybody. It was a good way to start a Sunday, laughing in pink. But this wasn’t Sunday.
Martin Durham was not here as a friend of the family. He could have come for one reason only: a crack at the Laundry List. Sure enough, he chose a back pew, where he sat like a tourist, checking out women’s hats and the altar flowers.
Then through the door of the pink church walked Kelvin and Train, with Doria between them. Kelvin and Train looked sweaty and dirty. Doria looked elegant and shimmery. They were a startling trio.
Doria and Kelvin sat down in a pew. And then, to Lutie’s horror, Train walked up the aisle to the chancel. He swayed. There was fear on his face. His posture and his gait were all wrong.
Fear shot through Lutie.
What was Train planning? Even the police had known he was planning something.
A mass murder, where a crazed shooter killed an entire congregation?
Miss Veola was as stricken as Lutie. She put herself between Train and Lutie, as if to take the bullet.
Train whispered, “Can I sing ‘Cross My Creek’?”
Jesus stepped on Lutie Painter’s toes.
Or maybe it was Cliff.
For the first time in her life, she understood the old hymn about the ninety and nine, where Jesus left the flock of sheep on its own and went off into the dark and the storm to find the lost one.
Lutie had not bothered to find the lost one.
Couldn’t care less about the lost one.
Had even sat in a diner with the lost Saravette, but said nothing, offered nothing, did nothing—and walked out.
And the same with Cliff Greene. When he began to tilt wrong, and run wrong, and enjoy wrong, not once had Lutie Painter headed into the dark for his sake.
I’m the sinner, she thought. Not Saravette.
I’m a fake. Posturing, boasting, telling everybody how special I am. Nodding in agreement when everybody says, What a great voice! What a great mind! Of course she’s in AP classes. Of course she sings solos. Special Lutie.
While all along, I’ve been one of the comfortable ones. One of the safe ones.
Oh, sure, you can sing about sin and cleansing your heart, but you never think you committed any sins; it’s people in the audience who committed the sins.
And then Jesus steps on your toes.
Miss Veola, in her white robe with its white sash, put her arms around Train’s thin sweaty dirty self. “I prayed for this,” she said softly. “I’ve always prayed for you, Cliff. You were always furious with me for it. Have you forgiven me?”
“I’m not a good person,” whispered Train.
“Then you’ve chosen the very best song at the very best time,” said Miss Veola, letting go of him. She held her arms out wide, bringing her whole congregation into her embrace. She raised her voice. “Cliff Greene will welcome us with a song called ‘Cross My Creek.’ Some of us know it already. It’s easy to learn. Cliff will get us started, and then we’ll all come in.”
The older people in the room began to cry.
Because they knew “Cross My Creek”? Because they remembered Eunice Painter singing it?
Or because a lost child had come home?
In the back of the church, the professor took a thin gleaming state-of-the-art-looking device from his briefcase.
Cliff Greene was paralyzed. It had happened to him before. It had happened when DeRade actually got to work on Nate. He had stood there, getting cold, staring.
Now he stood cold and staring at the congregation. He was horrified by having an audience. He knew that they must be equally horrified by him.
I did a lot wrong, he thought. A lot of times. I did it to impress DeRade. But that’s no excuse. And now I’m hoping for a ticket in, but I haven’t done anything to deserve it. I didn’t become a good person. I just didn’t become a worse person.
He couldn’t get any air.
He couldn’t remember how to start anything—a life, a breath or a song.
The congregation was leaning toward him, willing him to come in. Doria kept breathing deep, as if teaching the subject. Kelvin just looked pleased with life, his big sloppy grin waiting for the next act.
If this is just an act, thought Cliff, it’s nothing.
I have to do it right. Can’t just be words. I gotta call to the Lord.
He could still walk out. He could still laugh at these people.
Kelvin straightened up. He made a lifting gesture with both hands, a sort of rolling of his palms. It said, Come on. You can do it.
Doria felt Cliff’s nervousness slip toward terror.
Standing on that step, facing the crowd, wearing the wrong clothes—clothes matter when you have an audience—Cliff looked as if he would not make it.
In her experience, terror helped a performance. You pulled yourself over it and through it, and it strengthened you. She nodded at him. You can do it, she told him.
He stared at her as one stares at a piece of meaningless modern art.
Doria took a deep breath to remind him how it was done. He didn’t pull in enough air for one note, let alone a song.
He breathed a second time, and a third, and now the whole church was praying for him, breathing deep and offering air, and finally he began to sing.
“Cross my creek.
Cross my creek, Lord.
I’ll wash your feet, Lord.
And you wash mine.”
When he had circled the song twice, Miss Veola joined in, and then Lutie, and then the whole room.
They gave Cliff a standing ovation, and Doria felt as if a lot more was happening than a stranger could tell. She raised her eyebrows at Kelvin. “They’re clapping him home,” Kelvin whispered.
She and Kelvin shifted down the pew so Cliff could fit back in.
“Good job,” she whispered.
It was the first time in years that Cliff Greene had wanted to do a good job.
First time in years he wanted to act in the light instead of the dark.
He prayed his mother would take him back.
He prayed for his brother.
An arm went around his shoulder. Kelvin’s arm was heavy. The weight of it pressed Cliff into the pew and felt good.
“We are here,” said Miss Veola, “to remember the life of Saravette Painter. She suffered. She did many things wrong and few things right. But she was loved. She was loved especially by her mother, Eunice Painter, who never—not even at the last moment of her life—stopped loving her little girl. Now Saravette has crossed the most important creek. She will wash the feet of the Lord and he will wash hers.”
Half the room was sobbing. Lutie thought, Do they know? Was it not a secret after all? Do these elderly ladies in their shiny hats know how my MeeMaw died?
“Let us pray,” said the pastor. “Lord, we thank you for everyone in this room. We thank you for the courage of Cliff Greene. We thank you for friendship and music and neighbors.”
Lutie was not sitting where she belonged, with her aunts and other relatives in the front. She was still in the chancel. She had lowered herself into a deacon’s chair when Cliff began to sing.
A metallic shimmer caught her eye and she looked up.
One head was not bowed. The professor was looking around, mildly interested, somewhat amused. In one hand he held what she assumed was a recording device, or maybe just a really good phone.
Lutie thought, He real
ly does need the Laundry List. Even here, even now, he doesn’t feel God or love or the pain of life. He’s just working on his career.
Lutie pitied him with all her heart. How nice that she still had all her heart. She hadn’t destroyed it when she wanted her own mother never to show up.
“Lord, have mercy on your children,” said Miss Veola, “especially the ones who did a bad job with life. Love all of us anyway. Take your daughter Saravette in your arms and welcome her to heaven. And your sons and daughters here on earth, Lord, help them use their lives for something beautiful. Something brave. Don’t let them fritter away their lives.”
Lutie felt the strong women from whom she had descended climbing through the years and into her heart. She felt their songs and voices rising.
She became aware that the church was very quiet. This was not a group that worshipped in silence. What was the matter?
Miss Veola had sat down.
The people waited.
It was time.
Lutie stood. She walked forward. She placed her feet where Cliff had stood.
“I’m going to sing the only song on the Laundry List that’s actually about laundry,” she told the congregation. “I hardly ever sing this one. Mabel Painter, my grandmother’s grandmother, wanted a grand life and she didn’t get one. My MeeMaw liked to tell me that Mabel Painter’s prayers came true, but not for her. Her prayers came true for me.”
Lutie found herself with even less air than Cliff had had. Her next breath still barely held her body up. This is how tired Mabel Painter was, every day of her life, thought Lutie. But she went on. And so will I.
From the back, in the silence, came a little click.
Uncle Dean quietly left the first pew and walked to the rear. Lutie forgot sometimes that her uncle had played football; in fact, he had had a football scholarship. His shoulders were wider than most men’s.
Uncle Dean stepped over a few legs, and squashed into the pew next to Martin Durham.
The professor looked like a child next to Uncle Dean.
They had a short chat.
Uncle Dean took custody of the recorder.
Lutie said, “Saravette was my mother. She made bad choices. I made a bad choice too. I never wanted to find her. She got lost, she stayed lost, and I was glad. I stayed with the ninety and nine, and we were all safe and clean and had houses with granite countertops and central air.”