The Lost Songs (3 page)

Mr. Gregg was a big overweight guy, shirt untucked, tie askew, and had a big overweight office to match. Sheet music and CDs and programs and books spilled out of cabinets and drawers, teetered in piles on the floor and were stacked so high on the visitor’s chair that it looked as if a tall square person were sitting there. The office’s two interior walls were used as a bulletin board. Mr. Gregg put stuff up but never took stuff down, so the bulletin board had become a dusty art project. The glass outer walls were so smeared with fingerprints they were barely see-through.

“Lutie!” yelled Mr. Gregg, beaming.

“Good morning, Mr. Gregg.”

Mr. Gregg had no capacity for small talk. He would never dream of asking how you were, because you might tell him, which would waste valuable music time.

“This is great, Lutie!” he cried. “I asked the office to find you, but could they pull it off? No. Buncha losers up there. Well, we have only ten minutes, but that could be enough! Let’s get to work.”

Mr. Gregg had asked the office to find her?

Imperfect. Highly imperfect.

They would have telephoned one or all of her homes. She would be in trouble in three locations. But maybe it was for the best. Maybe she ought to tell Aunt Grace and Aunt Tamika and Miss Veola what Saravette had said. But what if they didn’t brush off the possibility that Saravette was a murderer? What if they confirmed it?

Lutie thought of the cigarette in Saravette’s fingers. What else had those fingers held? Murder was a do-it-yourself
activity. There had to be a technique and a tool. The murderer lifted the knife or the gun and then used it. On another person.

“Lutie,” shouted Mr. Gregg, for whom life was a full-volume event, “I want you to meet Professor Martin Durham!”

She had not noticed that there was another adult present. Mr. Gregg hated visitors. They got in his way, had different standards, took up good teaching time and were bound to demand paperwork.

The professor was smaller than Mr. Gregg, and very dark. He had narrow features and an egg-bald head. He wore a gray suit with a gleaming vest, and a tie striped in blue, orange and red, like a beachfront awning. He was adorable in a middle-aged way. Almost bouncing, he extended his hand. “I am
so
delighted to meet you! This is
such
a privilege.” He took Lutie’s hand and pumped it, beaming.

Lutie took refuge in Southern courtesy, so helpful when stalling. “Sir,” she said, trying to get her bearings.

“Professor Durham,” explained Mr. Gregg, “used to be the director of the Center for African American Music at the University of South Carolina. He now has his own gospel recording company in Nashville and manages the American Music History department of the museum.”

“And I’m here, of course,” said Professor Durham, “because of your wonderful heritage.”

Lutie thought of her heritage sitting in a filthy diner buying drugs.

“He means your grandmother’s singing,” said Mr. Gregg. “Whenever I’m at a music teachers’ convention or leading a choral directors’ workshop, somebody is bound to ask, ‘Don’t you teach in Court Hill? Isn’t that where the lost songs are?’ Well, I mean, of course I had
heard
of the lost songs, but I didn’t
make the connection! Lutie! It’s you! Sitting in my own soprano section all this time!”

Lutie stilled her face. It was an old skill, drawn from generations of faces that chose not to participate. She knew how to look dumb as a stump. It frightened her, how easily that ability surfaced and how well it stuck.

“Lutie has a beautiful, beautiful voice,” Mr. Gregg told the professor. “Amazing range and depth. Lutie, sing one of those folk songs for us, okay?”

They were not folk songs. Folk music was public. Folk songs belonged to “folk,” whoever they were. The lost songs, however, were Lutie’s and Lutie’s alone. “Sir?” she said vaguely.

Mr. Gregg could not believe that Lutie was not bursting into song. “Lutie, those songs have never been written down! They’ve never been recorded!” He shook his head in disbelief. “Imagine that! Songs composed by descendants of slaves—I mean, that’s heavy. The crazy nickname put me off, you know? The Laundry List? Why would you refer to your compositions like that? That’s why I didn’t pay much attention to the story. But Lutie, Professor Durham has proved that this collection resides with a family named Painter. Lutie! You are a Painter.”

The professor was smiling and nodding, the way Saravette had. “I’ve tracked you down, Miz Painter,” he said, “and I’m a happy man.”

Tracked her down? It sounded like the kind of thing you bought insurance against, to prevent strangers from stealing your identity. “Lots of Painters,” said Lutie, staying neutral.

“And you probably know them all. You can get the lost songs for us,” said Mr. Gregg.

The songs were
not
lost. They were privately held.

Lutie employed three types of speech. For school, she used what she thought of as weather-forecaster English: unaccented
speech with carefully arranged sentences. Out of school, she slid into the local warm-honey drawl. “Isn’t it?” became “idn’t it” and “can” became “kin.” She could also speak Chalk, the dialect of the neighborhood where MeeMaw had brought up her family. When Lutie spoke Chalk, she might omit the verb and the plural, stretch the vowels, drop a consonant here, add one there. “That costs five dollars” became “Tha’ fi’ dollah.” And of course Miss Veola, her pastor, used a fourth language that came from decades of reading the King James Version of the Bible out loud: verses so rhythmic and lyrical, they were music on their own. Her speech was full of verses from Psalms and Isaiah and the punch lines of parables.

Lutie distanced herself with her Chalk voice. “Mr. Gregg,” she said.
Mis-tah Grayg
. “I’m taking five classes this year?”
Fi’ class this yeah?
“Honors chemistry is one of them?”
Wun a thim?
“I do not have time to chase rumors.”

“It’s no rumor,” said the professor. “But Mr. Gregg is a little off track. The composer was not your grandmother, of course, but your great-great-grandmother, Mabel Painter. I’ve dreamed for years that I would finally find the Laundry List. And Miss Lutie, here you are!”

Both men were right. MeeMaw’s grandmother
had
written the songs. Well, not written them, exactly, since they had never been put on paper. But songed them up herself. MeeMaw, Mabel’s granddaughter, changed the songs here and there, adding verses and softening edges, because she felt they were rough on God. (Miss Veola snorted. “God can take it,” said the pastor.)

MeeMaw had dealt with researchers over the years. University people, preachers, agents, history buffs, local musicians. Give me the songs, they said. As if MeeMaw ran a little corner grocery and would be happy to trot down the aisle, pluck one of her songs off a shelf and hand it over for a quarter.

MeeMaw always sent them away empty.

“Some people inherit land,” she used to tell Lutie. “Or silver spoons or oil wells. You and me, we inherited songs. They’re my grandma’s shouts to God. Her prayers got answered too late for her. Instead, her prayers were answered for you, Lutie. You’ll have the world she wanted. It’s her prayers gave you this life. God was slow, I don’t know why he was slow, but here you are, in the world
my
grandma told God to give you. You hold Mabel Painter’s songs tight, baby girl. You put them in your heart and you keep them there.”

For Lutie, it was the eleventh commandment.
You hold Mabel Painter’s songs tight, baby girl. You put them in your heart and you keep them there
.

“Miss Lutie, did your grandmother Eunice ever talk about the songs?” asked the professor.

Who would talk about music when she could sing it? “Y’all have the right Painter?” asked Lutie, her drawl so thick even a Southerner could get lost in it. “Painters all over Ireland County.”

“I did the genealogy,” explained the professor. “Mabel Painter had a son, Isaac. Isaac Painter married Louene Moore. Their daughter Eunice was your grandmother. Now, Miss Eunice, she married a distant cousin, also named Painter, so she became Eunice Painter Painter, and her third baby was Saravette Painter, and y’all are Miss Saravette’s little girl, Lutie.”

If only, thought Lutie. If only there were some lovely young woman named Miss Saravette and her little girl, Lutie.

“Lutie, sing one for me?” begged the professor.

So far he had tried “Miz Painter,” and “Miss Lutie,” and now just “Lutie” in his attempt to make friends. “You see,” he told her, “South Carolina was a portal for African and Caribbean slaves, and they brought extraordinary music traditions. Much has been lost forever, and the idea that something
still exists is exciting! But of course, nobody’s heard the songs, so I can’t make any identification.”

Nobody had heard the songs? What a riot. If the professor were to drive into Chalk right now, he’d find plenty of people who had just heard Lutie sing one, her voice filtering through the trees and over Peter Creek.

Lutie was attracted to enthusiasm. She liked the professor. But she said, “I think the Laundry List is just a story.”

“A really good story,” he said softly, “corroborated by many a source. A woman who spent her life taking in laundry for white folks, and whose spirituals were legendary. I think of the Laundry List as a treasure belonging to the world, Lutie. Music composed by a woman whose parents were probably slaves. Her songs alive by a thread. And the thread is
you
. Together we can return those songs to the world. Mabel Painter’s songs,” he added, as if reciting the name of a saint.

Mabel Painter might have been a saint, but if so, she’d been a very irritable one. Mabel Painter had ironed. She had ironed without air-conditioning in the hot Carolina weather. Without an electric fan. Without electricity, for that matter. And all day long, she sang.

There was even an ironing song, full of toil and desperation. Whenever Lutie sang the ironing song, it caught her by the soul and dragged her back to grim times and grimmer futures. She wondered what Mabel Painter would have thought of Saravette, who went and chose grim times when she could have had a good life.

“Miss Lutie, I’m hoping today after school will work for you. Can we talk a little more and maybe record a few of the songs?” asked the professor.

Steal them is what you actually mean, Lutie thought.

She considered changing her expression to sullen, which always
infuriated adults. But she wanted the professor to forget about her. So she stayed polite and confused.

“If you haven’t come across the songs, Lutie,” said Mr. Gregg, “maybe another member of the family or somebody from an older generation knows them. Give me the email addresses of your grandparents. Or great-aunts. Elderly cousins.”

“That old? Using a computer? I don’t
think
so.”

“Cell phones, then. Everybody uses a cell. Give everybody a call.”

Lutie shook her head. “I don’t think I can help,” she said, as if it grieved her. She joined the crush of kids coming in for chorus and made her way up the risers to the top row of sopranos. She looked carefully at the chair before she sat, as if otherwise she would fall through it, going down, down, down to where Saravette was.

That professor had crawled around in her family history. If Lutie was no help, he’d easily find Aunt Grace and Aunt Tamika. They were not musical, had never cared about the songs and had largely discarded church and God anyway. They probably couldn’t supply the songs themselves.

But Saravette had once known them all. Saravette, who would do anything for a dollar.

Few people knew about Saravette. Chalk looked much as it had for decades, but there was transience. Saravette had been gone a long time. Probably nobody there could tell Professor Durham how to locate her. He certainly wouldn’t find Saravette using online sources: she was part of the population whose computer use was limited to stealing one, then selling it.

If Professor Durham did find Saravette, what might she say? “I broke all the commandments.” (Laughter. Pride.)

Maybe he had already reached her. Maybe
that
was what Saravette had telephoned about.

No. If the professor had met Saravette, he would not have spoken lightly about her.

A terrible thought chiseled Lutie’s heart, cutting a permanent place for itself.
I broke all the commandments
. What if that had just happened? What if that was what Saravette had wanted Lutie to know? “I did it, Lutie! I had only broken nine commandments, but I finally finished the list. Broke the last one last night. Killed a person.”

Who?

Who had Saravette Painter killed?

“A
ll rise!” shouted Mr. Gregg, and the singers reluctantly rose from the seats they had just taken. Mr. Gregg made them stand for warm-ups. Nobody liked standing. Nobody liked warm-up exercises either. Five long tedious minutes passed until Mr. Gregg bellowed, “Sit!” and the students dropped heavily into their chairs.

Kelvin dropped the most heavily.

The chorus chairs were arranged in a semicircle on three tiers. Kelvin was the outside baritone in the second row, facing the sopranos. Kelvin adored girls. There were ten in chorus alone whom he especially admired. Actually, he admired all girls for one reason or another—their being girls was enough—but in this room, maybe in any room, Lutie came first.