The Lost Songs (30 page)

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.

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.