The Lost Songs

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Stephanie had beaten her to it. Sweet Steph was texting Doria now, right on time.

  Doria and Stephanie had met in elementary school band. Stephanie played French horn. But music was not Steph’s love. She wanted to be an engineer. Her doodles were architectural and airy, spun with trestles and spans. In high school, Stephanie quit band to take more math classes. The band teacher was distraught. Horn players were scarce.

  Stephanie, like Nell, had shrugged. She had other goals.

  Doria felt better about her lonely day. Nell would have texted Steph and told her that their old friend Doria had a crush on K in chorus. Nell would have found not only the chorus’s Facebook page, but she would have identified Kelvin and gone to his page too. Doria braced herself for Nell’s analysis: “He boasts about doing nothing. If he’s the best your school has to offer, move back here.” Doria loved that old refrain—move back here!—but she would ignore it to defend Kelvin. He isn’t the best at school, but he’s the best to be around.

  But Stephanie’s message was generic. WUWH. WUZup. Wish you were here. What’s up?

  Normally Doria loved all the after-school walking she did, each trek a little interlude between places and activities. Today the short hike to First Methodist seemed insuperable. She hardly had the energy to hoist her shoes over the puddles and the mud.

  On a gloomy day like this, little light penetrated the stained glass and entered the church. Doria did not usually turn on the lights that hung from the soaring ceiling, only the lamp over the music rack. She really would be alone in the dark.

  Her actual church job was at St. Bartholomew’s, twenty miles north. She didn’t have her own car to drive there and in any case wouldn’t waste time going back and forth. She practiced at her parents’ church instead. The thing with pipe organs was, you certainly didn’t have one at home to practice on.

  The first Sunday after they’d moved to Court Hill, the Bells decided to try out the handsome brick church in the center of town. Her father bragged to the minister, “My daughter Doria is a brilliant organist.”

  Word went out. The very next week, she was asked to sub at a little country church called Wesley Chapel, way out on Lonny Creek Road. Right away her parents were suspicious of the Carolina countryside. A church in a field might have rattlesnake handlers and three-hour sermons given by crazed men with spittle around their mouths.

  But Wesley Chapel was a charming church, tall and thin and tiny, with black shutters and plain glass, and pine trees right up against the windows, as if they wanted to come in too. Literally every person in the congregation came up to say hi (actually, they said “hey”) and to tell Doria how wonderfully she had played and wouldn’t she be their permanent organist?

  You have a crummy little electronic organ, about as musical as a coffeepot, she didn’t say out loud. I don’t want to play it ever again. I don’t want an organ job at all, and certainly not here, where everybody’s a hundred years old.

  She found an organ teacher through an online search of local college music faculty. Their first lesson went on until Doria was too tired to play, which had never happened before, and Mr. Bates said, “I know of an excellent job opening. You’ll audition. We’ll drive up Wednesday.”

  So there she was, in Mr. Bates’s car the following Wednesday. Her parents had insisted that she text them constantly with updates, but Doria forgot. She loved the instrument the minute she sat down. Three manuals. A rich mellow sound with bright exciting mixtures. She played a toccata, her fingers flying over the keyboards, flinging the chords from one hand to the other. She got the job.

  The following Sunday, she discovered that she was the youngest person in the choir loft by twenty-five years.

  At her last lesson, Doria managed to admit to Mr. Bates that she was having a hard time making friends.

  “Some people aren’t good at being kids,” he said. “It usually means they’ll be good at being grown-ups. You are so grown up, Doria. I can certainly imagine a gulf between you and the other kids, because they’re still children.”

  Doria believed Mr. Bates was gay. She wondered how much hardship or joy there had been for him in high school. “Were you popular?”

  “I was very popular. I dedicated myself to popularity. Making fun of others was my specialty. I can never go to a high school reunion, Doria. I’m ashamed to meet all the kids I was cruel to.”

  Doria didn’t see a reunion in her future either. Reunions were for people who had friends.

  She walked through the rain, planning the dinner conversation she would have with her parents. They always wanted to know every detail of her day, so that was what Doria would give them: details. Rebecca, she would say, was wearing the most adorable sandals, a sort of Roman gladiator look, but with wedge heels. She also shared her apple slices with me and saved me two Thin Mints.

  Her parents would love that.

  They would assume that Doria’s whole day had been full of laughter.

  Lutie left the lobby. Outside, she pressed the little umbrella button, enjoying the swoosh as it opened. It was a large umbrella, covered with glowing sunflowers. Way ahead, she glimpsed the tiny yellow rectangle of Doria’s ugly music container.

  What to do? Where to go?

  If Lutie decided on Aunt Grace’s, she faced a major walk west. Aunt Grace lived in one of the town-house developments that were sprinkled all over the former countryside. It had a recreation center and a swimming pool and tennis courts, the way they all did, and Aunt Grace was a serious card player, and spent many an evening slaughtering people at canasta, euchre, rummy and poker.

  She watched Doria walk the other way, toward Tenth Street, which was a dividing line. North of it were patches of tough neighborhoods. South were patches of middle ground. You moved into the countryside and neighborhoods got richer and greener, with bigger houses and wider-screen TVs. Aunt Tamika and Uncle Dean lived out that way.

  Either aunt would pick Lutie up after work, but that meant five-thirty at the earliest.

  Lutie threaded through a long line of cars—dutiful mothers picking up sons and daughters who didn’t want wet hair. Then she ran through the rain until she caught up with Doria. “Hey, Doria,” she said. “You’re soaked. Stand under my umbrella.”

  Doria was as surprised as if they had met by chance on the streets of Hong Kong. “Hi, Lutie!”

  “You on your way to practice?”

  Doria hoisted her yellow music case as proof.

  Lutie smiled. “You can’t find a music case that’s not offensive to the eye?”

  “Well, I know, it does look like an infected mushroom. But I don’t lose it. It can’t blend in. Plus other musicians—their fingers are sticky. They’re not stealing or even borrowing; they just can’t help cozying up to music, and the next thing you know, your teacher has all your stuff mixed in with his. But an ugly yellow case like this?” Doria shook her head. “They don’t touch it.”

  Lutie laughed. Doria loved it when Lutie gave her wonderful hiccupping laugh.

  In Doria’s head, music was still composing itself, rather like the rain, notes spanging against hard surfaces. No music was as good as the sound of a friend laughing. “I’m having a music attack,” she told Lutie.

  “What’s that like?”

  “The notes gang up on me. I have to write them down or they turn on me.”

  “When I’m singing, it’s in my head and heart and bones and down to my toes.” Lutie shook herself, as if making the music fall through her and land on the ground. “I have to have music escapes. Too much music and I drown.”

  Had Doria actually met somebody who understood her? “When you’re singing,” she asked Lutie, “does the music fit you, tight as the bark on a tree, and you were born with it?”

  The rain stopped suddenly, as if it really had been an orchestra and the conductor had given the cue to stop. Immediately the air was hot, and the smell of sour mud and refreshed trees and oily road surface filled the air.

  Lutie shook t
he rain off her umbrella and telescoped it into a tidy cylinder. She didn’t answer, but a block later, she said, “I’m taking a class you might like. Ancient History. Mr. Amberson was telling us that the ancient Greeks saw astronomy and music as reflections of each other. Stars, planets and the moon are the visible harmony of the cosmos. Music is the invisible harmony. So, stars you stare at; music you hear.”

  It sounded like song lyrics. Doria wanted to share the words, text them to Nell and Steph. But they might scorn them and the words might be damaged.

  Lutie began to sing a soft wordless melody that started low and then climbed, only to swoop down and swim at the bottom, where it rested like a lullaby in the middle of the day. It was haunting, like some old mountain ballad that Doria had heard in a previous life. She soaked up the notes and decided she would re-create them later on the organ.

  Doria suddenly remembered the weird little conference with Mr. Gregg. Get those songs out of Lutie. Tell her you’ll play the piano for her or something.

  Is this one of the lost songs? Doria thought, dismayed. Do I have to turn it over to Mr. Gregg?

  “Doria,” said Lutie, “you don’t really hang out in that church alone, do you?”

  “Of course not,” she lied.

  Text messages were coming steadily now, what with school finally over and everybody needing to update everybody. Thanks to her very visible umbrella, quite a few people had seen Lutie catch up with Doria in the rain and wanted to know what was up with that. Music, Lutie texted back.

  Miss Veola had sent a reminder. Stop, it said.

  It occurred to Lutie that if she hauled Doria along with her, Miss Veola would behave differently. As a bonus, Doria would not be alone in the church in the dark. Maybe Lutie would get to know her better and know whether to trust her with another, more specific warning.

  “What music do you listen to, Doria?” she asked. “When you’re home?” Doria wasn’t carrying an iPod, which Lutie would have expected.

  “I don’t listen to anything. I like silence. I hear music in my head. If the house is quiet, I hear better.”

  Lutie craved music all the time—loud and strong and room-filling. She wanted it to rock the house and make her feet dance and her skin shiver. If she ever got her own car, she’d turn up the bass on the radio so loud that at stoplights, the driver in the next lane would frown.

  Lutie saw herself in all of her homes—dancing, stomping, swaying, whirling through each house and up and down all the stairs, and even on the furniture, a tap dancer in need of a platform.

  She held up her cell. “My preacher wants to talk to me. She’s just a few blocks down Tenth. Want to come? Miss Veola’s a peach.” Actually, Miss Veola was more like a pickle, sharp and briny. “She loves church music,” added Lutie. “She just bought a new church and we’re pretty excited about it.”

  “She bought a church?”

  “An old movie theater in a dead strip mall. We’re taking out the first few rows of seats to make room for a piano and an electric keyboard and a whole lot of percussion, and we also have two clarinets, a sax and a couple guitars.”

  Doria’s eyes lit up.

  Lutie propelled her around the corner, toward Miss Veola’s.

  When Cliff Greene was little, and he got sick, his mama took his temperature. It was an odd quiet moment, he and his mama waiting to see what the little gauge said. She had the stick kind that went under the tongue, not the forehead kind used by the nurse at the clinic.

  But he wasn’t Cliff anymore, and his mama didn’t care what his temperature was. Train felt like the motor of his body was revved up so high that all the liquid in him had boiled off. It wasn’t normal for a human, who was supposed to be ninety-eight percent water.

  Used to be fun, being DeRade’s shadow. Stopped being fun after Nate. Really stopped once DeRade went to prison.

  Train didn’t like the idea of prison.

  He liked air and sky and wind and grass. At home, he had shifted the TV to the plug near the front door so he could sit outside on the porch, his tall stool tilted back to lean against the wall, and watch TV in the fresh air. That made him feel better, so he started doing it in school, too. The high school was built on one level, and most classrooms had a door to the hall plus a door to the outside. Train would walk in, shove a chair across the floor and prop the outside door open. He’d sit half in and half out of the room. Hot, cold, rain or shine—Train just sat there, ruining the heat or the air-conditioning for everybody, and think about DeRade, who wasn’t going to have an open door for a long time.

  The rain stopped. Kids poured out of the foyer and spread over the paving stones like pancake batter. When Train followed, they lowered their eyes, pretending to be busy. Cried, “I’ll miss my bus!” and rushed away.

  But when Kelvin slouched out, bringing up the rear because he was slower than mud, they all grinned. Said hey and made room for him in their group.

  In kindergarten they had been the same—he and Lutie and Kelvin.

  Now they were strangers.

  Which reminded him of Doria, the new girl in town.

  He wasn’t usually attracted to keys. If you were going to break in, the fun was breaking. DeRade liked to leave a signature: a bruise, a cut or a broken window.

  But there were car keys on that key chain.

  Stealing cars was not what it used to be. More and more cars did not use keys, could not be hot-wired, or had LoJack or OnStar.

  One had been a Honda key. Probably an old Honda, because not that many kids drove new. If he had a key, he could drive the Honda when he felt like it. If Doria drove that Honda to school, he could just take her car when he wanted fresh air.

  The key chain also had a key to her house. He could open her garage when he needed wheels, and drive off. Maybe even put the car back when he was done, so he could do it again.

  He saw himself coolly moving in and out of Doria’s life and car and house like a ghost.

  But DeRade would mock him. Ghost? he’d say. One step up from a shadow. When you gonna do something?

  6

  People new to Court Hill didn’t know that Chalk existed.

  The word was not on any map. It was not the name of a street. It was just the name.

  Miss Veola lived on the far edge of Chalk, and Lutie meant to go down Tenth Street so that she and Doria skirted the neighborhood. But she forgot and they were now squarely inside the community.

  Lutie loved Chalk. She loved knowing everybody, even the bad ones. She loved the comfortable wandering from one yard to the next, the easy conversations, the always-waiting sweet tea.

  But by definition, a Yankee was filled with scorn. Doria was an exception to most rules, socially, academically and musically. But Yankee would win. A Northerner expected the South to be minor league, if not outright failure. And that was what Doria Bell would see.

  The houses in Chalk were so small. There was so much peeling paint. Everything sagged. Doors sagged. Screens sagged. Gutters sagged. And often, hope sagged.

  No driveways, just packed earth for old cars to park on. Lanes with turns so sharp and narrow, a fire truck couldn’t get through. Big trees towered above the little houses on the steep slope. Autumn leaves were bright as paint, the only color except for clothes drying on lines. On some porches men sat, half visible, drinking beer, playing cards, watching the world.

  Miss Veola said that the women and children in Chalk were the best, but the men were the worst. Lutie said, “That’s not Christian of you, Miss Veola. You can’t write the men off like that.”

  “The men, they write themselves off,” said Miss Veola. “If they could find Jesus, they’d see the fineness in their souls. But they’re too busy finding enemies. If they don’t have one, they make one.”

  Like Train, thought Lutie. He’s not on the prowl for money or drugs. He’s looking for a way to shine. Nice people are background. Violent people show up.

  Maybe Saravette had broken all the commandments, but Lutie didn’t
think Train had. Not yet, anyway. Did he want to? Certainly DeRade had wanted to. And did. He hadn’t been brought to trial for that murder, but lack of evidence didn’t mean innocence in DeRade’s case.

  Lutie felt a stab of grief for sweet little Cliff, who had sat next to her in kindergarten. Here in Chalk, the statistics about young African American men and prison were on display, because the wide broom of crime was always sweeping.

  Miss Veola refused to believe that a soul could actually be lost. She was always reaching out, by voice, food, prayer, phone, trying to wrap her fingers around the kids who were sliding away. She cared how people behaved and was always coaxing them to the Lord. When Holler went back to prison (of course his real name wasn’t Holler; he was just a man who never lowered his voice, which was how the police had caught him), Miss Veola helped his babymama and the children. (Actually, she ordered Lutie to babysit.) She gave Holler a New Testament and told him to read it.

  That was when they found out Holler couldn’t read. Miss Veola got him on the tutor list in prison, and he was reading now. Or so he said. People lied to Miss Veola to get her off their backs.

  Lutie and Doria turned a corner.

  Most white people walking into Chalk would feel a shiver of concern and turn around. But the world seemed less visible to Doria than to Lutie. Lutie could imagine Doria failing to look left and right for oncoming traffic, her mind full of music. She had certainly failed to wonder about Train’s motives. Whereas Lutie felt so wrapped up in the world, it was like a sweatsuit or sneakers she couldn’t take off. She was zipped and laced into the world.

  Miss Veola was out in her front yard, in a half circle of old plastic lawn chairs. She loved to talk, and people loved to talk with her. Little kids liked to dig through the basket she kept full of children’s toys. Sitting next to Miss Veola was Miss Elminah, wearing an amazing hat. Miss Elminah was always shaded with a wide brim. She was so old she still swept her dirt front yard.