A Thousand Voices

by Lisa Wingate

  “That’s kind of sad.” I pictured the room filled with people in nineteenth-century costumes, dancing the waltz as moonlight streamed through the windows. “It’s a beautiful room.”

  “Yes, it is.” Jace surveyed the area with an obvious appreciation, then smiled apologetically. “The plan is to eventually turn this into a performance hall, once our new library building is ready, but for now we’re making use of the space. The genealogy collection is over here.” He ushered me toward the back, where an L-shaped row of shelves divided off one section of the library. “We’ve only been building the genealogy lab for a few years. When the kids finish their junior year history projects, they compile their information in one of these notebooks.” He motioned to the shelf. “Then in their senior year, in technology class, they work on entering the various family names into a database and interfacing their information with research Web sites. Hopefully it opens doors for them a bit—helps them see there’s a whole big world out there. It’s not always easy for kids to make the jump from a protected schooling environment into the real world.”

  I winced inwardly, thinking that he could have been talking about me.

  If the thought had occurred to him, it didn’t show. He paused by the bookshelves. “Thanks for being so understanding with Autumn this morning.”

  “She’s really sweet,” I said.

  He pulled a notebook off the shelf, leafed through it, then put it back again. “It’s better that she wasn’t at the festival all day. I don’t know how she’d react to being there without her mom, especially during the princess pageant. Her mom made her a new Choctaw dress every year….” His voice trailing off, he glanced over his shoulder at me. “I’m sorry to keep bringing it up. It’s just on my mind today, I guess.” He pulled down another book. “Looks like we don’t have a research project specifically on the Clays, but try this one. When you have so many people drawing back to a small pool of ancestors, you find that a lot of the families are interrelated.” Setting the book on a table next to me, he lowered an eyebrow. “Not too many branches on the family tree around here, if you know what I mean.”

  I went to work leafing through the first notebook, then several others, as Jace fished them off the shelves. I found plenty of Clays, but no sign of Nora or Audie. There were instances of women named Nora, but since I didn’t know my grandmother’s maiden name, it was impossible to discern whether she was one of those listed in the family trees. After sifting through dozens of notebooks, I finally let my head fall into my hands and sat rubbing my eyes. The day was starting to catch up with me.

  “Take a break,” Jace suggested as he scanned the computer database. “I’m about done here. Looks like we’re probably not going to find anything. Guess none of your Clays have come through a genealogy project here.”

  “Guess not.” I wanted to collapse on the table, go to sleep, and forget everything. If I sat there any longer, I probably would, so I got up and walked out of the library, feeling like I was crashing off another self-made mountain of hope.

  What if the information from the courthouse was incorrect? What if Jamie was looking at the wrong file when she wrote my grandparents’ names on my birth records?

  The questions needled me as I wandered across the room and into the spill of window light near the edge of the cubicle maze. Bracing my hands on the windowsill, I stood looking down at the lawn.

  The field below went blurry, and a sob pressed against my throat. Holding a hand over my mouth, I moved farther from the library, down the narrow aisle between the cubicles and the arched windows until I came to a doorway in the corner. I slipped through the partially opened door and entered a tiny corner room with ceilings sloping into dormers. A gauzy light crept through the windows and touched the keys of an old piano, the only piece of furniture in the room. Moving closer, I stood to one side and stroked a finger over the smooth, age-yellowed ivory. It felt welcoming beneath my hand, and in my mind a door opened. I sat down at the piano and slid my fingers onto the keys, closed my eyes, and stepped into the place where all the music was. Around me, the air filled with “La donna è mobile,” then “Playera,” then “Fugue in G Minor,” and “Courante.”

  “Courante” faded into the soft, clear notes of a haunting tribal melody, the one Dillon had played at the campsite the night before. In my mind, I could both hear the flute and see the notes on an invisible sheet of music. On the piano, the song was as light and airy as the shadow of a bird flitting over new spring grass.

  As the last notes died away, I became aware of someone else in the room. I opened my eyes, and Jace was standing beside the piano, leaning against the dusty wood in a spill of window light, watching me.

  His eyes caught mine, his expression at once tender, sad, amazed. Slowly stroking his thumb and forefinger along his bottom lip, he pulled me closer with an invisible thread. I felt as if he were touching me, reaching somewhere deep inside me. I slid my hand toward him without realizing it. His fingers closed over mine, brought my hand into the sunlight. When he spoke, his voice was raw with emotion. “What in the world…,” he whispered, “…are you doing here?”

  CHAPTER 18

  "‘The Voices of a Thousand Leaves,’” Jace said as the melody faded to silence, the vibrations of the old piano dissipating into a hush. “The song you were playing. It’s about a boy who’s lost in a blizzard when his family is forced to make the westward journey on the Trail of Tears. For years, he wanders the world searching for the way home. Finally he finds a new people and joins their clan, but his spirit never stops yearning for the place where the leaves speak of his ancestors. When he grows old, winds from the east bring their voices to him. He sets off on a journey to see Nanih Waiya, the mother mound, one last time before he dies.”

  “You can hear the story in the music,” I murmured, closing my eyes again and letting the music flow from my body into the keys. Notes, chords, hand positions whispered through my mind like the voices of the leaves, bringing me far into myself.

  Opening my eyes, I looked up at Jace as the last notes died away. He had his arms folded atop the old piano, his chin resting there as if he were not only listening to the music but feeling it.

  “It’s a beautiful song,” I said finally. “I’ve never heard it before—before last night when Dillon played it, I mean.”

  “I’ve never heard it that way.” Jace nodded toward the piano keys. “Many of those old songs have never been written down in a formal arrangement. The words have been passed down orally, and the music travels from one flute player to the next.”

  “They should be written down,” I said, thinking that if I spent some time here, I could do that. I could pick up a cheap cassette player, record the songs first, then write down the stories and arrange the music for piano. “Nothing so beautiful should ever be lost.”

  His eyes filled with layers of emotion, found mine. “No, it shouldn’t.” My fingers paused on the keys, and I felt the pull of his nearness, leaned closer to him, fell into an invisible connection. For an instant, nothing moved. My heart slowed, my breath shortening in anticipation of something to come. A soft pulse beat against his throat, and his lips parted slightly with a breath. My gaze fluttered there, then moved back to his eyes.

  Stepping back, he broke the link between us.

  I tucked my hands between my knees, blushed, and swiveled away from the keyboard. “Guess we should get back to work.”

  His focus turned to the doorway. “I finished looking through the database, but I didn’t come up with anything. I do have another idea, though. I’ve had quite a few kids use land abstracts to trace their family histories. Land in this area was granted to members of the Choctaw tribe after removal in the 1830s. The abstracts for those properties read like family histories—all the marriages, divorces, children mentioned in last wills, and so forth. Depending on how many Clays originally received land grants in the area, and whether those grants have remained in the family, you might be able to trace forward from your f
amily’s earliest history here to the people you’re trying to find. It’s not a sure thing, but it is possible.” He glanced at his watch, then out the window. “Of course, we couldn’t work on it until after the weekend. It’s four thirty, and all the offices will be closed after five.”

  The time surprised me. I glanced at my wrist, then remembered that my watch was with Autumn. “I’ve wasted your whole afternoon.”

  “It was anything but a waste.” He stepped closer to the piano, braced an elbow against it and rested his cheek on his fist, then nodded toward the keys. “Play something else. Neenee won’t be dropping the kids off at homecoming for a half hour yet.”

  I realized that my fingertip was slowly stroking back and forth over middle C. “I’d better not.” Pulling my hand away, I stood up. My mind was filling with music again, and the compulsion to play was so strong that the keys seemed magnetic. How long had it been since I’d felt that way? “I’ll make you late.”

  He looked down at me, a slight smile on his lips, his eyes so dark I couldn’t see the centers. “I’m not worried.”

  “I get lost in it.” I was already lost—lost in the music, the moment, him. In his nearness, in the sense that he understood so much about me that went unsaid. He knew what it was to be both tormented and compelled by the past, to have it ask questions you couldn’t answer. I wondered if he was delaying our return to the festival because too many memories waited there for him.

  His smile faded, became somber and earnest as he leaned closer and idly slid his fingers along the dusty ivory. “The best things in life are the things we get lost in.”

  I wanted him to kiss me. The realization was startlingly powerful. I could see him thinking about it, then he shifted away.

  “Maybe one song,” I said as I returned to the keys, my body alive with an excitement that had nothing to do with music. I could feel him watching me as I played, could hear the weight of his body changing the vibrations ever so slightly as he leaned against the piano. Bending over the keyboard, I abandoned myself to the moment, as melody after melody filled the room.

  Finally, Jace touched my shoulder and told me it was time to leave. My throat was dry, testifying to the fact that I’d been singing or humming along with the music, providing an all-out performance in this dusty room.

  “I told you,” I said, embarrassed.

  “You did.”

  I stood, then held my hands out and tiptoed backward, as if the piano were a ticking time bomb. “Okay, Dell, step away from the piano,” I said.

  He laughed, ushering me out of the room and closing the door. Together we headed downstairs, then drove back to the homecoming festival, talking about land abstracts and Choctaw history—harmless subjects that both of us could be comfortable with. By the time we reached the Reids’ booth at the front corner of the closest craft pavilion, Autumn and Willie were already waiting. Shasta was babysitting them as well as her own little boy. Benjamin and Willie sat engrossed in playing trucks on a blanket, and Autumn moved around the booth, arranging silver jewelry and fringed leather items ranging from knife scabbards to hand-beaded cell phone holsters. When she saw us coming, she launched herself into Jace’s arms. Wrapping around him, she sighed and laid her head on his shoulder.

  “It’s about time,” Shasta complained. “I’ve had people coming by asking about your flutes all day, and you’re not here.” She motioned to a display of flutes on a table nearby. Carefully carved and inlaid with dark-and light-colored woods, turquoise, mother-of-pearl, and red coral, they were adorned with beadwork, the wood polished until it shone like glass. If Shasta was impressed with the workmanship, it didn’t show. “You forgot to put prices on them this morning, so all I could do was sell your stupid CD and tell them you’d be back later. Now it’s practically time to close up. The dances start in thirty minutes. They’re already forming the circle on the capitol lawn.”

  I slipped around the table to look at Jace’s picture on a CD next to the flutes. In the photo, his hair was long, and he was wearing a traditional ribbon shirt of bright cotton with appliqué work across the chest. He was younger, perhaps eighteen or twenty years old. With the long hair, he looked like his cousin Dillon but there was no mistaking Jace’s eyes, or the thoughtful, somber line of his lips.

  I turned to him with my mouth hanging open. “You have a CD?” His knowledge of traditional Native American songs suddenly made perfect sense. Jace wasn’t only a flute maker, he was a musician with an actual CD, bearing his photo. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “You didn’t ask.” His mouth twisted wryly.

  I slipped past Shasta into the booth, grabbed one of the CDs, and read the back. “You said you were a history teacher.”

  He faced me from across the table, Autumn still clinging to him. “I am a history teacher.”

  “‘The Voices of a Thousand Leaves’ is on here.” Looking down at the flutes, I tried to imagine Jace playing that melody.

  “I only keep the CDs here to use as flute demos.” He snatched the case from my hand and set it on the table, facedown, so that his younger long-haired self was no longer staring up at us.

  I reached for it again. “No. Wait. I want one. I want to buy one for my car.”

  He batted the CD out of reach, sliding it down the table like a beer glass on a bar top. Colliding with a box of porcelain baby dolls dressed in handmade Choctaw clothing, it ricocheted to the far corner, then teetered on the edge. “Sorry. That’s the last one I’ve got.”

  Uncurling herself, Autumn leaned back to eye him quizzically, her arms still looped around his neck. Pointing toward the back of the booth, she shook her head. “Daddy, there’s a whole—”

  “It’s an old recording. Not very good,” Jace interrupted.

  “I still want one,” I pressed, spurred on by his obvious embarrassment. “I’ll bet it’s great.”

  “Nope,” he assured me, bumping the table with his thigh, so that the CD fell off and disappeared into a pile of boxes and packing materials. “It’s not.”

  “That wasn’t nice.” A giggle bubbled from my throat as I squatted down and crawled partway under the table, trying to spot the CD.

  “Yeah, Dad,” Autumn echoed. “We got a whole bun—”

  “Ssshhh.” Jace set her down and began digging through the pile of boxes and bubble wrap. “You really don’t want that CD. It’d be elementary stuff for someone who plays like you do. It’s old. It’s been almost ten years since we recorded it. The recording’s lousy.” He was grinning, but there was a hidden chagrin behind the words, as in, Please don’t make me reveal my long-haired flute-playing self. I’m a history teacher now. A grown-up.

  “I want the CD.”

  “No, you don’t.” He found the case before I could, snatched it up, and sat grinning at me under the table. “Really. You don’t.”

  I gave him the evil eye I’d learned from Karen. She used it on James when he felt the urge to add more guitars to the collection that had already taken over the game room and the guest room, or when we’d already stopped at twenty-five historical markers on a trip, and he was eyeing number twenty-six. “Give me that CD.”

  “Nope.” Jace slipped it behind his back, then brought his hands out empty. “See. All gone.”

  I started laughing. “You’re such a…a…” With the kids nearby, my options were limited, so I finished with, “…turd. I played the piano for you.”

  “True. But you’re really good.”

  “I bet you’re really good too.”

  We hovered there in a stalemate, both crouched underneath the table, eyeing each other.

  “I’ll get it sooner or later,” I vowed.

  His teeth were straight and white against his dark skin. “We’ll see.”

  Someone tapped my shoulder, and I turned to find Autumn squatted down behind me with a shoe box full of CDs. “Here,” she offered. “We’ve got tons of these at home in the garage. There’s boxes and boxes.”

  “And boxes,” Willie e
choed cheerfully from the corner. “Nana Jo puts her drink on one, so it won’t make a ring on the table.”

  “Oh, look. Lots of CDs,” I said, flipping through the stack of younger, long-haired Jaces, then selecting one and dangling it in the air between us.

  He groaned under his breath. “You’ll be sorry. I’m a lot better flute maker than flute player.”

  “Guess I can judge for myself,” I said, and he grinned.

  “You could just take my word for it.”

  “I’d rather discover the real you. Music doesn’t lie.”

  “It’s not—”

  “For heaven’s sake, you two,” Shasta’s voice came from somewhere overhead. “Cut that out. You’ve got a customer, Jace.”

  I climbed out from under the table and Jace stood up to talk to a middle-aged couple who thought a genuine Indian flute might make a good souvenir of their trip to the Choctaw Labor Day Festival.

  “They’re just beautiful,” the woman commented, smoothing her hand along a gorgeous instrument of mahogany inlaid with a mother-of-pearl fish swimming in a tide of turquoise and lapis waters.

  Jace guided her to an instrument made of lighter-colored wood instead. The dark ones, he pointed out, tended to gather dust too easily. Natural colors were better for display.

  Shasta, who was pretending to be occupied with laying tablecloths over the merchandise in the booth, leaned over and whispered in my ear, “The dark one has a better sound. But they’ll never play it.”

  “Oh,” I said, watching Jace weave his magic with the flute-buying customers, just as he had with the tour group in the museum. Finally, the buyers settled on a blond flute carved with soaring birds and inlaid with lapis swirls, which Jace explained represented the invisible currents of air that brought the yearly migrations.

  Shasta had finished closing up most of the booth by the time they were ready to pay. “Anything else?” she asked as she opened the cash box and slipped in their check. The woman glanced around the booth, but it was clear that everything was already covered, and Shasta was anxious for shopping time to be over.