The Lost Songs (24 page)

“Now, I promised Steph that the moment you and I wrap up, you’ll call her,” said Nell. “I mean, we keep saying, we’ve got to call Dore. And then we don’t get to it.”

Because you have better things to do, thought Doria. But at least Steph is calling now. I haven’t actually lost my friends. I’m just out of sight.

“So I’m on my computer in my bedroom,” said Nell, “and I’m looking at the Court Hill High website. Point people out to me.”

Doria started with the basketball team, and Azure Lee, its captain.

Nell was impressed. “She lives on your street? Wow. Amazing hair. She must have a thousand braids. She is stunning.”

Then the swim team, and Pierce.

“He’s gorgeous! And he lives down the street too? Why are you on the phone with me? You should be beating down his door!”

They worked through Rebecca and Jenny, while Doria
threw in a brief mention of graduating early, and then offered Kelvin, like dessert. She admitted that Kelvin, although perfect, was not looking her way. But reality had not dimmed her crush. Doria would even take up baking for Kelvin.

A thousand miles apart, the girls studied Kelvin’s Facebook page.

“He does look like a person who would enjoy cookies,” said Nell.

“I don’t know how to present them,” said Doria. “Do I bake enough cookies for the whole chorus and he’ll taste one and come up afterward? Or just grab him in the hall and hand him a ribbon-wrapped paper plate?”

“Tricky,” agreed Nell.

“Here’s something even trickier.” Doria told her about the lost songs, and Mr. Gregg and Professor Durham. “I understand wanting to take the songs. I wanted to take them myself, and send them to colleges as my audition tape for music school.”

“I thought you were going into premed,” said Nell.

“Whatever. We’re talking about stealing songs, Nell.”

“No, we aren’t. It isn’t stealing. Lutie doesn’t have a copyright. She doesn’t even have a recording.”

“But her grandmother’s grandmother wrote them.”

“I doubt it,” said Nell. “Apparently that whole community did laundry. Must have done it outdoors. Probably did it together, like picking peaches or something. I bet they were group songs. But tell me more about graduating early. It’s a good idea. You’ll come back up here for college and we’ll see each other more.”

“I was thinking of the University of Texas. They call it by its initials—UT. There are almost fifty thousand students there. Can you imagine?”

“I’m sure Texas is a fine place,” said Nell, in the voice of
one who doesn’t think so at all, “but your friends are here. Now let’s get back to Pierce. He has possibilities.”

“He’s adorable. But he’s not the one I have a crush on.”

“So? Is he in that Youth Group?”

“Technically, I think. But he wasn’t there last week.”

“Text him. See if he’s going this week. See if you can ride with him.”

“Nell, I ruined it when they found out I’m studying physics on my own. He and Azure Lee fled.”

“He’s had time to think about it now,” said Nell, “and he’s impressed.”

“Where did you get that from?”

“Wishful thinking,” said Nell. “Listen, it was good to hear your voice,” she said, moving into wrap-up mode. “Toughen up down there. Or lighten up. I can’t quite tell.”

And then she was gone. The silence in the house felt permanent. The whole conversation took on a minor-key sound, the sound of somebody making an effort.

Doria looked up Pierce’s cell phone number on a neighborhood watch list and texted him before she could think better of it.

Went to YG at First Meth last wk. U going this Sunday?

A text message was dry and casual. All Pierce had to do was write back one word. It would probably be no, and that would be that.

Next she texted Lutie.
I have the chords. Meet and play the Laundry List?

The thought of such a duet put Doria in a key-of-C mood. C was a sunshine key. A key that woke up knowing it was going to be a good day.

Uncle Dean, Aunt Tamika, Aunt Grace and Lutie were sitting at the table watching pizza congeal. A hot pizza is beautiful but a cold one is a sorry sight.

“What if,” said Lutie, “the professor looks for Saravette, and she says to him, ‘I broke all the commandments,’ and he says, ‘Really? Who did you kill?’ … and she tells him?”

“Never going to happen,” said Uncle Dean. “If he finds Saravette—and let me tell you, that’s a task—he’d see a pathetic junkie. I don’t think he’d listen to a word she says. Even a cop wouldn’t take Saravette seriously. And if she said out loud and direct, ‘I killed my mama,’ everybody would say, ‘You sure did, girl. Broke her heart six ways to Sunday.’ ”

And all I care about, thought Lutie, is what people will think of me. That would break MeeMaw’s heart six ways to Sunday, too.

E
ight minutes before the church service began, Doria Bell sat on the organ bench in St. Bartholomew’s.

She had chosen a quiet weaving fugue that was six minutes long. But she was not in the mood for an intellectual piece. She was in a show-off, knock-their-socks-off mood.

The chances were about one in two hundred fifty (the number of people here today) that anybody would know whether she played the piece printed in the bulletin. The choir director might. But during the prelude, he was out in the hall, arranging the choir for the processional. For hundreds of years, grown-ups had been processing on the first hymn, and still they couldn’t figure out where to stand.

The organ at First Methodist might be big and lusty, but the one here at St. Bartholomew’s was massive. Doria whipped out her Vierne symphony, opened the swell pedals, pulled out all the stops and plunged into the rocket charge of the sixth movement.

The whole church practically had a heart attack.

A full organ at full volume was in total control. Her
audience couldn’t think, move or talk. She owned these people.

Doria grinned.

She went for the gold, whipping the page turns, racing through the measures.

She held the last chord approximately forever and then lifted her hands with a flourish. There was utter silence, the audience still inside the music, even when it stopped.

And then they applauded.

This was not a church where people clapped. But now they did, in the exhilarated way of people who want to be part of the action and take it home with them.

They were glad they had paid half a million dollars for this instrument, thrilled that they had just heard every sound it had to give. They had not yet worshipped and neither had she, but they were stirred now, and ready.

Reverend Warren stood up and walked to the pulpit. “That, my friends, was the Word of God.”

Sunday morning, Lutie slept as if she were anesthetized. Aunt Tamika had to shake her awake. Lutie was supposed to sing a solo, so Aunt Tamika dragged her to church and dropped her off. Nobody else was there yet.

“I don’t want to sing,” Lutie told Miss Veola. “I don’t have enough air.” Lutie felt as if her skin had turned transparent, and anybody could see right through her and pull out the secret of Eunice Painter’s death, like a book on a shelf, and read the details.

“I cannot believe Mika and Grace told you about that terrible night,” said Miss Veola. She looked old and crumpled. “It’s a burden I do not want you carrying. Did you save Saravette’s phone message? May I hear it too?”

Lutie handed over her cell.

Miss Veola listened to Saravette’s maudlin speech. She gripped the back of the nearest pew, and slowly lowered herself onto the velvet cushion. “I feel like Saravette. Slow and slower still.”

Miss Veola did not look like a woman who could lead a church service.

It dawned on Lutie that even Miss Veola needed prayer. Lutie took her pastor’s hand. “Jesus, Miss Veola wants to be the shepherd, and run out in the night on the mountain and save Saravette. But first she has to be the shepherd here and speak to her own flock. You give her strength to get through the morning, Lord.”

Praying, Lutie often felt as if she were writing a letter, and instead of saying amen, she wanted to sign off, “Love, Lutie.” So she looked up, way up, and said, “Love, Lutie.”

The sermon always came toward the end of the service. At St. Bartholomew’s, it lasted about fifteen minutes. Doria usually rested up from what she had already played, listened to a paragraph or so, and then thought about what she would play next: the final hymn, the choral Amen and the postlude.

But Reverend Warren’s first sentence grabbed her.

“What stuff do you love?” he said eagerly, already basking in the stuff he loved. “Me, I’m a country boy. I love my tractor. I love my pickup truck. And when I get home, wow, do I love my wife’s cooking.” He patted his gut, and the congregation, many of whom sported a similarly ample gut, laughed with him.

“But stuff doesn’t last,” he said regretfully. “My tractor will rust. And food—for sure, in our house, it doesn’t last long. Last church I preached at, over to the coast, beautiful building, very old, it lasted through the Civil War. It stood firm through
hurricanes and street riots. But now it’s got termites. Bugs are gonna get it in the end. It’s just stuff and it won’t last. And our bodies, they wear out, and then we pass on. Stuff doesn’t last, even us.”

Music lasts, thought Doria. If you print it, and record it, and sing it for the next generation.

“The Bible tells us that only three things last: faith, hope and love. But there’s a problem. We leave all three of those behind on this earth when we die. Faith, hope and love stay here only if we give them away. That’s your job this week. Faith, hope and love. Give ’em away, as much as you can, to every person you can.”

Lutie thought Miss Veola would never wrap up her sermon. Five times already Lutie had thought she was at the end, and five times Miss Veola had waded into another topic. Even this congregation, who came ready to sit for a long while, was itchy.