Suncatchers (15 page)

Eldeen turned the knob and opened the door a crack.

“Didn't you want to ask me something before you left?” Perry asked.

Eldeen released the doorknob, tilted her head backward, and raised both hands in consternation. “Well, of all things that ever were or will be! If I didn't almost walk right out without even finishing my request. If that doesn't just beat all!” She closed her eyes and laughed with gusto, stopping suddenly with a choking snort. “What I was aiming to ask you,” she said, “was if you could just spare maybe a half an hour sometime today and take me by the bank and then real quick by Wal-Mart, so's I can get the party things for Sunday night?” She looked at him wistfully.

“Well, I guess so, sure,” Perry said. “I could take you this afternoon if you don't mind waiting a few hours.”

“Why, not at all. Not at all!” cried Eldeen. “As long as it's before Jewel gets home, I'll just be tickled and grateful to go anytime.”

They settled on two o'clock, and Eldeen finally made her way out the door and down the four steps to the driveway, turning back several times to add random details about the morning's conversation.

First, “Arko and Tate used to operate a hatchery down in Rubicon. It was the most interesting place to visit—all them little separate pools for the different sizes of fish. Now Tate runs it by hisself with his son-in-law, Buddy, helping him out.”

Then, “It's funny how I was the only one of the four children in my family to take after their name. Arko hates okra something awful, and Nori never did iron a thing—always wore the wrinkledest clothes—and poor Klim was allergic to dairy products of all kinds. But me, I took a liking to the needle right off as a little girl and have done stitching all my life. Isn't that odd?”

She continued. “I guess it's kind of another coincidence in a way that my whole family's always been involved in raising fish—and catching and eating them, too—and then my poor little Jewel had to go and lose her Bailey in a fishing boat. My husband Hiram just thought so much of Bailey, and the first time Jewel brought him home to meet us—that was when we used to live in Felix, Alabama—Hiram took that boy fishing with him, and they came home just busting their seams 'cause they'd done caught 'em a bucketful of the biggest catfish you ever seen.”

She paused at the bottom of the steps and looked up at Perry. “Life's just full of turnarounds, isn't that so, Perry?”

“Yes, it is,” he said.

“But it sure is a blessing to know that
He
”—here she pointed skyward—“knows about every single thing that happens to us and has a divine, almighty reason for it all, the good and the bad, too.”

He stood with the door open, watching her plod across both driveways. The metal clasps on her boots gave a faint jingle with every step she took. As she started up the steps to her own door, she looked again at Perry and shouted, “We fried up those catfish, too, and had us the best supper that night! After supper Bailey asked Jewel to marry him.” She finally made it to the top of the steps, and before opening the door, she laughed and called back merrily, “I guess I don't need to tell you she said yes!”

Sitting down at his computer again a few minutes later, Perry tried to get back into his notes on the service the day before, but he kept seeing an empty green boat drifting in the middle of a lake.

He shut down the machine and thought maybe he could spend some time with pencil and paper, trying to decide the best way to approach the book he was going to write. He remembered now how much he had always hated the organizational part of a new book, figuring out the order of things. That's why he had grown to like fiction so much more than a book like this one. With fiction you could let the story tell itself, but this book was going to take some premeditated structure. Maybe he ought to call in Beth for consultation. She loved arranging details. She could probably come up with a neat symmetrical outline in no time flat.

So far, he had simply been taking copious notes on everything he observed about the church and the people. But behind every stroke of the keyboard was the niggling worry that all this would sooner or later have to be wrestled into some kind of format.

And it wasn't just the structure of the book that troubled him, now that he thought about it. It was everything, his whole life. What if these people at this fanatical little church were right? What if every detail
meant
something? What if the joys and sorrows—the “turnarounds of life,” as Eldeen called them—had some kind of specific purpose in the huge scheme of a man's existence? What if everything that happened to Perry Warren ultimately fit together tightly into a preplanned chapter in the great Book of Mankind?

10

A Slow Procession

As Perry had suspected, the trip to the bank and Wal-Mart ended up taking a great deal more than half an hour.

It was a windy day. Eldeen wore fuzzy tan earmuffs clamped over her green scarf, and her voluminous gray cape billowed as she slowly made her way toward Perry's car promptly at two o'clock. A brown parcel stuck out the top of her handbag.

“I do believe the wind was fixing to carry me off like Elijah!” Eldeen shouted when Perry leaned over to open the passenger door. She laughed softly as she lowered herself onto the seat and then lifted her feet in one at a time. Under the long dark blue dress she was wearing, Perry could see black velour pant legs that came to the top of her boots. “There, I finally got my hind leg in,” she said. “And just look at you, will you? Already got the car all toasty warm. I sure like that cap you're wearing. I told Joe Leonard on Sunday he ought to get hisself one like it. The way young people walk around bare-headed, it's just a wonder they don't all catch pneumonia. You lose most of your body heat through your head, you know.”

She began to chuckle as she struggled with the seat belt. “You need you a jumbo setting on this here thing,” she said. “‘Course these little foreign cars are made with little Oriental people in mind instead of regular-size Americans like us.”

Perry wondered if Eldeen really did think of herself as regular-sized. He pretended to adjust the rearview mirror until he heard the seat belt click into place.

“I just
love
a surprise, don't you?” Eldeen said as they backed out of the driveway.

“Well, yes, sometimes,” Perry said. But the truth was that he hated most surprises. Even the happy ones. He wanted to know about changes well ahead of time. He detested being confronted with something unexpected and then being asked, “Well, what do you think?” If he were Jewel, he would rather suffer physical torture than endure the surprise birthday party Eldeen was so happily planning for her. All those people watching excitedly for her spontaneous reaction—he couldn't imagine anything more horrendous. Maybe he should warn Jewel so she could get herself used to the idea—or get sick and stay home that night.

As they turned from Blossom Circle onto Lily Lane, Eldeen pointed to a house with a bright yellow birdbath in the front yard. “Isn't that a tacky color for a birdbath? But that little lady that lives there's just the sweetest little thing you'd ever hope to meet. Got her a heart big as all outdoors and then some. Feeds the birds all winter—has her a whole passel of feeders—and in the spring the birds just
flock
to her backyard. She's got the cutest birdhouses, all sizes—even has one for hummingbirds, with the teensy-tinsiest little hole, and they come, too! If only she'd see the need to come to church—here, turn left here and head on toward town. I'll show you where the bank is when we get closer. I told you about her, didn't I?”

“Who?” asked Perry.

“Flo Potter.”

“I think so.” Actually, Perry couldn't begin to keep straight all the names Eldeen wove into her stories.

“She's probably settin' in her house right this minute crocheting some little baby a pretty little blanket. I declare, that woman's fingers move faster than a water bug. She can whip up a set of them crocheted place mats of hers in no time. I reckon every woman in Derby's got a set of them by now. They sell a right smart lot of them in the G.O.O.D. Country Store, too. But Flo, she gives away a heap more'n she sells.”

Perry remembered Flo now—the one who had inspired Eldeen's recitation of Emily Dickinson in the church parking lot.

Eldeen hung her head and closed her eyes. Perry glanced over at her uneasily after a few silent seconds had passed. Before long she lifted her head and smiled. “There. No use preaching to a body if you're not praying for them is what I always say. I aim to see Flo Potter get saved before I die. She's the nicest little soul you ever saw, kind of soft and twittery and skittish like a bird herself, but being nice won't get you a ticket to heaven, I keep telling her.” She launched into a lengthy description of Flo's late husband, Purcell, who used to run a woodworking business out of his garage and made all her bird feeders and birdhouses by hand.

Eldeen had gone on to praise Purcell's brother, an enterprising retiree who set up sno-cone booths all over town every summer, when suddenly she grabbed Perry's arm. “Oh, here it is right here! Turn in here!” She took hold of the steering wheel and gave it a strong yank to the right. Perry's heart lurched as the Toyota careened into the driveway of the bank, barely missing another car headed out. The other driver honked and shook his head. Eldeen waved. “That was Terrence Barnett, I think,” she said. “His daughter teaches school with Jewel. She's the gym teacher and has the biggest muscles I've ever seen on a woman. You should see her!”

Perry applied the brakes, and they jerked to a halt. Eldeen's purse slid off her lap onto the floor. “We've come in backwards,” Perry said, looking at the three cars lined up facing them in the separate drive-in lanes.

“Well, if we haven't,” Eldeen said. “But it doesn't matter. The first one's empty over here, and I like it best anyway 'cause it's got the little drawer that rolls out and you don't have to keep pushing the button to talk.” When Perry hesitated, she nudged his arm. “Go on, pull on up there quick before somebody else comes. It'll be handier this way since I'm the one that's got the business to do anyway. I'll be on the right side.”

Perry couldn't believe it. He was actually pulling into a drive-in bank the wrong way. Thankfully no one here in Derby knew him.

“Now wasn't that forgetful of me to get so busy talking that we almost missed the turn-in?” Eldeen said cheerfully as they pulled up beside the drawer. She took her earmuffs off, rolled down her window, and spoke loudly to the woman inside. “I was hoping you'd be here today, Belinda! I got to get this cashed,” she announced, waving a check. Perry looked steadfastly at the Toyota logo in the center of the steering wheel as Eldeen and Belinda bantered back and forth.

Just then another car pulled up directly in front of Perry's Toyota. Perry kept his gaze on the steering wheel. This couldn't be happening to him. It didn't matter if these people
were
strangers. He was still mortified. Dinah always used to laugh at him about his fear of sticking out in a crowd. “Yes sir, old Mr. Daring, Mr. Who-Cares, Mr. Nonconformist—that's who I married,” she would say. Early in their marriage she had laughed about it fondly, but later she had quit teasing. “Loosen up, for heaven's sake!” she would say. “Why don't you show a little backbone and self-confidence? Step out and take a few risks! You've spent your whole life scared to death of making a fool of yourself.” It was one of her pet subjects. She had even quoted a favorite line to him from Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay on self-reliance. He could still hear her. “Conformity is the hobgoblin of little minds and statesmen!” As if she had forgotten that he was the one who had introduced her to Emerson in the first place. He had been tempted each time to correct her, to tell her what Emerson had actually said: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” But he had never bothered.

He tried quoting the line to himself now, over and over. It was strange how funny a word started to sound after you kept repeating it: hobgoblin, hobgoblin, hobgoblin. He made a mental note to look up its etymology sometime. The driver of the car in front of him beeped the horn lightly, but still Perry didn't look up.

“Why, looka there, would you?” Eldeen said, waving enthusiastically. “If it's not Edna Hawthorne, bless her heart! Right there in front of us! And she's got little Levi with her.” She turned back to Belinda, who was just sliding the drawer back out with Eldeen's money in it. “That's our preacher's wife in front of us,” Eldeen said proudly. “She's got a voice as pretty as a nightingale. You could hear her sing if you'd come to church with me some Sunday, like I been asking you to.”

Belinda laughed. “You don't ever give up, do you, Eldeen?”

“Not on your life, I don't,” Eldeen said. She took her money out of the drawer and then unbuckled her seat belt and leaned out her window. “Aren't we a sight settin' here all switched around?” she called to Edna. “Perry'll back up so's you can pull on in!” She turned back to Belinda. “Bye, honey! Remember, church starts at eleven on Sunday morning and seven at night!”

“They wouldn't let somebody like me in the door,” Belinda said, grinning. “But thanks anyway. Bye, Eldeen.”

Perry had shifted to reverse and begun backing up when Eldeen grabbed his arm again. “Oh, I forgot to give her something! I plum' forgot! I wrapped it up special for her, and then I forgot it. Pull back up quick. It won't take a minute.” She leaned out the window and hollered to Edna, gesturing her backwards with exaggerated motions. “Just a minute, Edna honey! Whoa, back up! I forgot something!” As Edna began backing up, the car pulling up behind her honked loudly. Perry heard an angry shout from somewhere.