The Lost Songs (32 page)

Kelvin watched him go.

In school tomorrow, thought Kelvin, in front of all the guys he wants to impress, and all the guys he
has
impressed, and all the guys DeRade assigned him—it won’t be easy to be Cliff. Being Train—that would be easy. We need to sing shotgun with Cliff, one of us on each side, so he can’t end up next to the usual voice part.

Nice plan. One flaw. Cliff had to cooperate.

“Amen!” called Miss Veola.

I’m not great at school and I don’t care, thought Kelvin. I’m not great at sports and I don’t care. I’m great at one thing, though, and I do care about that.

Lord, he said silently, you and me got to work together here. Gotta keep Cliff from being Train long enough for it to stick.

Voices and laughter filled the room, and the crowd looked for Lutie and her aunts, and people filled their plates, and Kelvin caught up to Cliff and filled the exit. “Let’s fix a plate to take to your mama,” he said. “When we bring it by, I’m going to tell her all about the funeral. She’ll want to know how great you sang.”

Kelvin didn’t see his kindergarten friend in the silent person standing beside him. But he didn’t see DeRade, either. I can do this, Kelvin told himself. I can guide some steps. “Besides, I wanna talk,” he said to Cliff. “You won’t believe what I’m thinking.
I
can’t believe what I’m thinking.”

Cliff didn’t show any interest but he didn’t reach for the doorknob either.

“I’m thinking I might be a preacher after all,” said Kelvin.

“Well, don’t make it sound like throwing yourself in front of a bus,” said Cliff.

“I can’t go it alone,” said Kelvin.

“You have me join, you’re gonna have a awful small crowd. Nobody else would come.”

“Two’s a start, though. But you know what? First? Let’s eat. You check out that dessert table? It’s awesome.” Kelvin bumped Cliff back into the room. Toward the good food. And the good people.

Trees clap hands and sing, thought Veola Mixton. There are blessings all around.

She watched her young people. To her they were all young.

She decided not to text the word “Stop” anymore.

She would write
Go
.

Go with the Lord. Go with each other.

Go
.

Azure Lee and Doria had finished Pierce’s mama’s cake and were looking over the biscuit selection. Ham biscuits, chicken biscuits, biscuits with gravy. Azure Lee bit down thoughtfully into a ham biscuit. “Pierce likes you,” she said.

“Seriously?”

“Yup.”

“How do you know?”

“He said.”

“Clearly?”

“Clear enough. Go over there and talk to him, Doria. It’s perfectly reasonable, you know. You’re the only white kids here.”

Doria whispered, “I have this crush on Kelvin.”

“Everybody has a crush on Kelvin. Give it up. Go talk to Pierce.”

Doria looked over. Pierce was looking her way already. Smiling at her. He held out a plate, like he wanted to share the dessert that lay on it. She began walking toward him just as her cell phone rang. It was Nell’s ringtone. Doria turned her phone off. “Hi, Pierce. Your mama made a great cake.”

“My
mama
?” he repeated, laughing. “Next thing you’re going to ask to meet my
daddy.
”

“I might even call him sir.”

“No way. You gotta stay a little bit Yankee. That’s half the fun.”

Half the fun, thought Doria, would be twice the fun I usually have.

Pierce put two more desserts on her plate.

Across the table, Kelvin rescued Cliff’s dessert plate just in time. Lutie flung her arms around Cliff and said, “Oh, you were the best. Thank you for singing. It made me cry. It made me know things. It made me feel good.”

Music, thought Doria. And prayer. And friends. They do that.

I’ve always gone to church, but beginning in my early teens, I didn’t sit in the pew with everybody else. I was the organist. I had my first church job two years before I was old enough to drive. When I was in junior high and high school, I accompanied my school choirs, and when I had my own family, I accompanied all their school choruses.

A few years ago, I moved from Connecticut to South Carolina. Choosing a church was difficult. I attended several, from a tiny country church to a megachurch. When I finally found the church that was just right for me, I decided to sing in the choir instead of play the organ.

One Sunday, there was a request in the bulletin for volunteers the next Saturday afternoon. I signed up. It was a hot-meal ministry in a community called Paradise. “Paradise” to me is a word reserved for the heaven that Jesus promised to the thief on the cross beside him.

It was so strange to use it in ordinary conversation. “I’ll be serving supper in Paradise.” “Have you been to Paradise yet?” “What did you think of Paradise?” I have seldom had a Saturday afternoon that provided more food for thought.

But Paradise did not seem quite the right name for this neighborhood. I asked several people where the name came from. Everybody agreed that the name Paradise had been given to the community because generations ago, women there had taken in laundry, and they sang as they worked, and when people drove in to pick up their laundry, the singing sounded like paradise. I loved that story. I never verified it. I just went home and started to write. What had those women been singing? What songs had kept them going over the years and through the labor?

I wrote the songs in this book so easily that I felt as if I had been singing them all along. And perhaps I had. I think the yearning for God to come in person and help in time of trouble is universal. And I strongly believe that another yearning in each of us is the desire to help others. There’s nothing as satisfying as lending a hand. I loved writing this book, and I loved all the people, and the songs they sang, and the help they gave.

I thank Mary Baker; her husband, Jimmy; and their son, young Jimmy, for serving supper in Paradise, and letting me be part of it. I thank Sherry Boyce, who suggested that I should sign up for it, and who was an early reader of this manuscript and corrected several errors. I thank the people of Paradise Community. Thanks to young-adult librarian Cheryl Brown, who read the manuscript and whose comments were so encouraging. Thanks to our minister, John Warren, whose sermon I am quoting and whose name I am using. Thanks to Fort Mill, the town in which I live, where I am constantly awed by yet another person who is generous with time, money, work and prayer.

Most of all I thank Beverly Horowitz, my editor, who kept me going as I floundered through many variations on a theme and who helped me to reach the story I wanted to tell.

Caroline B. Cooney is the author of many books for young people, including
Three Black Swans; They Never Came Back; If the Witness Lied; Diamonds in the Shadow; A Friend at Midnight; Hit the Road; Code Orange; The Girl Who Invented Romance; Family Reunion; Goddess of Yesterday
(an ALA-ALSC Notable Children’s Book);
The Ransom of Mercy Carter; Tune In Anytime; Burning Up; The Face on the Milk Carton
(an IRA-CBC Children’s Choice Book) and its companions,
Whatever Happened to Janie?
and
The Voice on the Radio
(each of them an ALA-YALSA Best Book for Young Adults), as well as
What Janie Found; What Child Is This?
(an ALA-YALSA Best Book for Young Adults);
Driver’s Ed
(an ALA-YALSA Best Book for Young Adults and a
Booklist
Editors’ Choice);
Among Friends; Twenty Pageants Later;
and the Time Travel Quartet:
Both Sides of Time, Out of Time, Prisoner of Time
, and
For All Time
, which are also available as
The Time Travelers
, Volumes I and II.

Caroline B. Cooney lives in South Carolina.