The Lost Songs (11 page)

Doria offered a new subject. “In your prayer, you kept saying ‘guide her steps.’ Isn’t that a church anthem?”

“The one I know is ‘order my steps.’ I love that one!” said Miss Veola. “I love to give orders. In another life, I might have become an army officer, so I could have a platoon or a battalion to order around. Well, the trouble with giving orders is, people don’t even want suggestions. In Chalk, if you don’t get your education in the schools, you’ll get it in the streets. Only half our boys will finish high school. I cannot order them to stay in school. I cannot order them to be righteous. I can only remind them that God will be with them, holding their hands, if they ask him.”

“Why do they have to ask? Why doesn’t God just do that anyway, if he loves them?”

“Oh, Doria, that’s one of the big questions. Why doesn’t he? I do not know.”

Train’s house sat high on the hill of Chalk.

He tilted his head back, smoking and watching the world go by. He loved cigarettes. He wouldn’t mind a life where
nothing ever happened except his long legs dangling and smoke filling his lungs.

When he heard Lutie sing, he stood on the porch rail to get another three feet of height. Over roofs and branches he could see part of Miss Veola’s yard.

He didn’t remember Lutie’s grandmother singing this slow sweet song. He mostly remembered when old Miz Painter shouted at God. That woman had been a truant officer, accusing God of absenteeism.

Train considered parading past Miss Veola’s to prove that she lost more kids than she won. But Veola Mixton was the worst do-gooder he knew, and Train had been forced to deal with a lot of do-gooders. She’d barrel out and try to get him to visit. She’d offer sweet tea or macaroni and cheese (she did make the best mac and cheese in the world, with bacon all through it and crushed potato chips on top; and shove it under the broiler at the end, so that it came out crusty and perfect.) But quick, she’d head to prayer.

Train had lived with praying people all his life.

He knew the power of prayer. It could grab the most surprising people. What it did was, it lowered your resistance. It was a virus, hard to shake.

His mama never missed church and had dragged DeRade until he got too big. Dragged Train until Train got too big. She gave up. In school, people had given up on Train too. They were waiting for him to drop out and go away so they’d be free.

But it wasn’t really prayer that made Train wary of Miss Veola. It was remembering who he had been when he was little.

Kelvin and Lutie, they were still like the little kids they had been.

Course, Kelvin never lived in Chalk. His daddy went into
the army, got college degrees, and now had a fine job, and Kelvin never lived anywhere but one of those show-offy neighborhoods. His family showed off every time they came to Miss Veola’s church. Just showing up was showing off. And what did Kelvin ever do but sit there getting fatter?

And Lutie—the prettiest girl he would ever see, who sparkled like soda, all bubbles and clear ginger-ale excitement—Lutie had never really lived in Chalk either. Old Miz Painter’s house was on the other side of Peter Creek, which Train would cross during drought, when it was only a trickle, but not the rest of the year, when the underbrush shivered and spoke with the sound of little animals, and he could feel snakes watching.

When her MeeMaw died, Lutie had gone to stay with an aunt, some woman who wouldn’t lower herself going to Miss Veola’s church. Probably went uptown, to some sleek rich place.

Lutie and Kelvin weren’t afraid of him, but they didn’t think much of him. He needed people to be afraid of him. See the heat rising off him and be scared. If they weren’t actually afraid, like they were of DeRade, then Train was just noise.

Was that Doria under the oak? He’d been asking about Doria all afternoon. Got plenty of texts but not much detail.

Had Lutie really adopted her? People were saying that. Train didn’t believe it. Lutie liked people who were sharp as tacks, and Doria was dumber than dirt.

He heard Miss Veola praying in her big braying voice, like God was deaf.

Train went back to his stool and turned up the volume on the TV. Drown that out.

Usually he watched sports, but today he had turned to a news channel because yet another married politician had got caught cheating with sexy girlfriends and he wanted to check them out. Instead they showed a kid who had refused to pay
some friends the forty dollars he owed them. The friends doused him with alcohol and flicked a cigarette lighter at him.

They didn’t show the burned kid, who was now in a special burn ward in a special burn hospital, without any skin left. They showed the kids who’d done it, young and skinny and white and crying and even slobbering, claiming they hadn’t realized the victim would actually catch fire and that his skin would burn off.

Train lit another cigarette. He studied the flame at the end of his plastic lighter.

The kid had probably been annoyed when his friends threw liquid at him. Probably wondered what it was. Let’s see. Not Pepsi … not water …

And all of a sudden—flames. The kid probably didn’t remember elementary school safety class: stop, drop and roll. Probably not easy to remember if you were actually on fire.

Train imagined the victim running, fire eating his face. And when the victim screamed, fire leaning down his throat.

He imagined the friends chest-bumping.

Miss Veola had asked God to keep Saravette from harming others. So Miss Veola knew, or guessed, that Saravette had harmed others in the past. Lutie could ask for details. But did she want the answer?

Miss Elminah leaned forward, her dark wrinkled face full of nostalgia and pleasure. “Lutie, honey, I been remembering the ironing song. The one where you ain’t got no sword. Remember that one? Sing me that one.”

Who alive today could imagine the life her great-great-grandmother Mabel Painter had led? Lutie knew sweat; everybody in the Carolinas knew sweat, and she had seen people scraping by on a few dollars. But at Aunt Tamika and Uncle
Dean’s, there was no scraping. There was only splurging. Mabel Painter’s life had been without cell phones, electricity, even running water when she’d earned her living as a laundress. Mabel Painter would have been respected in Chalk, but beyond its invisible borders, she too would have been invisible.

Lutie didn’t want to sing the ironing song. It was a song about failure. MeeMaw used to sing it in the dark, when her heart was sore and nothing helped. Lutie had to get out of here. “Maybe another time, Miss Elminah. But right now, Doria has to leave.”

“No, no,” said Doria. “Don’t hurry on my account.”

Lutie wanted to kick her.

“Please?” said Miss Elminah. “I don’t think I have heard that one since your MeeMaw stood on her porch and begged God.”

My grandmother never begged for anything in her life, thought Lutie. She was praying. MeeMaw handed her heart to God and I don’t think he was as grateful as he should have been.

Miss Veola lowered her head, like a rhinoceros about to charge. Lutie had no choice. If Miss Elminah’s own grandchildren couldn’t bother with her, Lutie had to.

Fine. She would let the Lord have it. She would throw the anguish of the day in his face.

Lutie sang the ironing song.

Kelvin’s daddy had grown up in Chalk, but Kelvin lived in an impressive subdivision a mile and a world away. Kelvin walked down Tenth Street, headed home after a nice afternoon of watching other people play sports.

Kelvin too had received a text from Miss Veola.
Stop
.

Miss Veola was concerned that Kelvin was throwing away the brains, ability and future that God had given him. She was bound to place a demand that Kelvin wouldn’t want to fulfill, but then, so did everybody. Kelvin was used to it. No, the hard part of a visit with Miss Veola was that his parents only went to her church some of the time. Miss Veola’s service lasted too long. She preached and preached. She could have fifty scripture references, and wait for the congregation to find each verse in their own Bibles. Kelvin’s father preferred a speedier service, with speedy hymns, speedy prayers and a nice short message. Kelvin’s mother mainly loved coffee hour so she could chat with her girlfriends, and she usually ducked out before the sermon, claiming she had to cut sandwiches into little triangles.

Kelvin approached Miss Veola’s house from the side. Beyond the thick trunks of oaks and the fat green sprawl of untrimmed azaleas, he could see that Miss Veola had visitors. This was good. She was busy. Kelvin could say “hey,” and leave.

Since Miss Veola was in the middle of a prayer, Kelvin leaned against an oak, waiting for the prayer to end before he walked up.

Prayer didn’t bother Kelvin one way or another. He was touched when people seemed to believe that a prayer went somewhere. But he saw no evidence that it did or ever had. He remembered way back, maybe first or second grade, when he and Cliff Greene had wanted to be preachers. They used to pile crates up to use as a pulpit and shout “Amen!” That version of Cliff had vanished and there was no sign that it would ever return.

Miss Veola’s prayer shocked Kelvin. He had not known that Miss Elminah had been discarded by her distant grandchildren, that they couldn’t even be bothered to bring their babies to meet her. He would tell his mother, who would come visit Miss Elminah.

He did not know the name Saravette, but she was obviously a problem.

Wait—Miss Veola was praying for Doria? Doria Bell? Doria was in Miss Veola’s yard too?

He laughed at the idea that Doria needed God to guide her steps. Of course, Doria could use a little help in the social category, but she would grow into herself. There would come a day when Kelvin would brag: I was in school with her.

Then Lutie began to sing, her voice a cloud floating in heaven.

He did not know the song, but it had to be from the Laundry List. Those pieces were distinctive. His daddy talked about it now and then. “Old Miz Painter,” he’d say, meaning Lutie’s MeeMaw. “She was a piece of work. She’d sit on that little porch of hers, singing and singing. Her voice would carry over the fields and through the woods. She talked to the Lord like
he was her teenage son and she had to bring him into line. We used to wait for lightning to strike.”