Suncatchers (53 page)

Perry nodded. She had told him three times before. “I like it a lot,” he said. Joe Leonard smiled, coloring slightly and avoiding Perry's eyes. As Perry watched the boy take a rag from his case and wipe a smudge off the bell of the tuba, he wondered how many other students were as careful about the instruments they were borrowing from their schools. He thought of the words of Mr. Beatty, Joe Leonard's band director, when he had come to the hospital back in October to visit Joe Leonard. As he had studied Joe Leonard in the hospital bed, Mr. Beatty had rubbed his hand along his jaw several times, his countenance shifting between despair and amusement. At last he had said, “Well, I thought I had heard every excuse in the book for not practicing, but in all my years of directing a band, I don't believe anybody's ever told me he couldn't play because the doctor said he'd rip out his stitches.” Joe Leonard had smiled wanly, and Mr. Beatty had looked at Perry sitting beside the bed.

“I guess you're mighty proud of your son,” he said. “I sure missed him today in band rehearsal. He's my key player in the low brass.” Before Perry could correct the misconception, Mr. Beatty continued. “It's a rare thing these days to find a kid as serious about responsibility as this one.” He nodded toward Joe Leonard, whose pale face seemed slightly rosier than a moment ago. “I sure wish you'd tell me how you did it,” Mr. Beatty said to Perry.

“Did what?” Perry asked. “I didn't do . . .”

“Raised you such a fine young man,” Mr. Beatty said. “He's the—”

“Wait,” Perry said, shaking his head. “He's not my son. You need to tell all these nice things to his mother and grandmother. They're out in the hall talking to the doctor. You probably passed them on your way in.”

Before he had left a few minutes later, Mr. Beatty handed Joe Leonard a twenty-dollar bill. “You told me last spring you were saving up for your own instrument,” he said. “I know that'll take a while since tubas cost a little more than the average instrument, but here's a token of my confidence. I thought you'd like this more than a bouquet of flowers. Add this to your fund, okay?” Joe Leonard took the money, a look of wonder in his eyes. “Lots of kids tell me they're going to do this or that, and I just nod and say, ‘Uh-huh,'” Mr. Beatty said to Perry. “But when Joe Leonard says he's going to do something, I know he'll follow through.” He moved to the door, then turned around and raised both arms as if preparing to conduct his band. “Oh, please hurry up and get well,” he sang lustily to the tune of “Stars and Stripes Forever.” After he left, Joe Leonard had turned the twenty-dollar bill over and over in his hands.

“Now just looka there!” exclaimed Eldeen, turning around slowly to take in the entire church auditorium. “If our little white angels don't just make the most
precious
decorations! That was a real original idea Marvella had this year. Lots better than them boxes and bottles last year that nobody knew what they was supposed to be. I don't know how many times I had to explain to folks that they was supposed to be the gold and frankincense and myrrh.” She turned to address Perry. “Jewel and Willard's going to help me drape the choir divide with garland before we go,” she said. “We can still count on you to come over tonight for some of Jewel's good chili, can't we?”

“You know me,” Perry said. “Do I ever turn down an invitation like that?”

Jewel smiled as she lifted the dark green garland out of a brown paper bag. “Come at six. Willard wants to play Scrabble afterward if you'd like to stay.”

“Sure,” Perry said. “Oh, say, before I go”—he turned to address Eldeen—“what was the story about the ostriches?”

“Ostriches? Oh me!” Eldeen's face suddenly crinkled into its excruciating smile, and she bent over in unrestrained laughter. “Me and my big mouth! There I was just blabbing up one side and down the other, never dreaming in a million years that that door was open.” She finally calmed down and wiped her eyes.

“Inez Cannon down at the G.O.O.D. Store was telling me about her son-in-law in Kentucky who's gone to raising ostriches,” she said. “Gillam—that's his name—has these twenty or so ostriches in pens in his backyard, and Inez went to see him back in the fall and just couldn't get over them big old birds. She was telling us about how they'll get all worked up sometimes, the whole kit and caboodle of 'em, and they'll twirl around and around and pump their necks up and down and squawk and look just downright
deranged
. We was all just getting the biggest kick at the store yesterday out of her imitating them ostriches carrying on. You should of just seen her!”

“What about the one with the digestion problem?” Perry asked.

“Oh,
that!
” cried Eldeen. “Inez said Gillam has to keep the different ages separated 'cause they can get real mean to each other, and sometimes even the ones the same age will get into scraps. One day while she was there, Inez said one of the bigger ones got to pecking at one of his little sisters whenever she'd come near the food pan. He'd just peck at her, peck, peck, peck all day long”—Eldeen stopped briefly, raised one arm to signify an ostrich's head, and made biting motions with her fingers—“and he just kept on and on blocking her from getting her rightful share. Gillam finally had to lock him up in the shed for a while so's that other little bird could get her something to eat.” She finally dropped her arm and ceased her beak demonstration. “Well, later on—I don't know if it was the next day or what—but anyway, that mean ostrich started acting funny and jerking around inside the pen and just collapsing on the ground and all and not taking any interest whatsoever in the food pan anymore, and finally Gillam got so worried that he loaded him in his pickup and carried him to the veterinarian over in Paducah, and do you know what?”

“His whole digestive tract was full of feathers?” Perry asked.

“That's it! That's it! He'd done pecked so many of his little sister's feathers that he'd messed all his insides up, and that doctor had to do
surgery
on that ostrich and purge all them feathers out of its system! Now if that's not a lesson for us all!”

Perry stared at Eldeen, his mind quickly reviewing the anecdote. Another lesson—why did Christians always feel compelled to wrench a
lesson
out of everything? Was it something that came naturally after salvation? What was the lesson here? Don't eat feathers?

“Yes, sir,” she said stoutly, “jealousy and selfishness and meanness always catches up with you in the end. You can't get away with acting ugly forever. God's going to settle the accounts before it's all over!”

Perry chided himself for not seeing the lesson at once—that one should have been easy. Once again he marveled at what these Christians could extricate from every small occurrence in life, even from an ill-tempered ostrich in Kentucky. They didn't take things at face value. They seemed to interpret everything as an illustration of some scriptural truth. Saturated—that's what they were. Their whole way of life was saturated with their own peculiar philosophy.

“Wait, Jewel, don't do the whole thing!” Eldeen cried. “I'm meaning to help! I just got a little hung up talking to Perry,” and she hurried off toward the front of the church. “We'll see you tonight, Perry!” she called back.

Stepping outside the church, Perry squinted against the dazzling sunlight. Just looking up at the sky without noticing the temperature of the air or the brown leaves blanketing the ground beneath the big oak trees or the large Christmas wreaths on the double doors outside the church, a person would think it was a summer sky. The clouds were frothy mounds of laundry suds, the sky behind them was the color of rinsed denim, and the sun blazed like a fiery copper rivet.

34

One Happy Wife

Perry pulled out of the church parking lot and headed north toward Greenwood. He knew he was cutting it close to buy the gift today. Even if he could find one of those mailing services open this afternoon, with all the heavy demands at Christmas he was running a risk of its being late. But it couldn't be helped. The idea had just come to him last night.

He had already ordered Dinah a practical gift—a “Classic Braided Rug” from the L. L. Bean catalog—and Troy an “Acadia Bike” with something called “grip shift,” and those would be delivered sometime during the coming week he had been told. But what he was preparing to buy now would be something personal, something he hoped would carry an unspoken message to Dinah, though he wasn't sure he even knew what the message was supposed to be. The thought came to him now that maybe if he were forced to put it into words, it would have something to do with one of the “Wife's Most Basic Needs” Brother Hawthorne had talked so much about, the one that said
“She needs to know that you delight in her as a unique person and are vitally interested in her past, her present, and her future.”
They had all sounded so corny and extreme to Perry at first, written down so succinctly in a neat little list, but after Brother Hawthorne had finished discussing each one, Perry had reconsidered.

He felt adventurous knowing what he was about to do. The birthday gift for Dinah back in October had been impulsive. He had never intended to look for western wear—it had just been shoved at him more or less, and he had liked it and bought it without stopping to think. Of course, he had worried for days afterward that she would hate it, but she had dispelled his fears with her first words when he had timidly called later that week to wish her a happy birthday.

“Oh, Perry, I can't
believe
you!” she had said, but it wasn't at all the exasperated tone of voice with which she used to say the same thing after some disgraceful social gaffe she had observed him committing or after another of his domestic shortcomings. “I love it all,” she said, “and I . . . well, really, I just can't believe you did this. I almost thought after I opened it that you may have remembered . . .” She stopped.

“Remembered what?” Perry had asked.

“Oh, never mind. You wouldn't. It did surprise me, though. You usually go for such . . .
safe
gifts. This was a real step out for you, wasn't it?”

“Remembered what?” he repeated.

“Nothing. It was so long ago I had almost forgotten it myself.”

“What?”

“Oh, it's silly,” Dinah said. “Really, it's dumb—just a kid thing.”

“What? Tell me.”

She had sighed after a long pause and then said, “A paper I wrote in school when I was a little girl. Maybe I never even showed it to you, though, who knows?”

But she had. Yes, she had, and Perry could hardly believe he hadn't thought of it the day he had selected the western outfit for her. How could he have forgotten? But maybe, he thought, maybe that was one reason he had so instantly liked the outfit when the saleslady showed it to him. Maybe the memory of Dinah's school paper had prompted him without his realizing it. What he had considered an impulsive purchase may really have been soundly, though subconsciously, motivated. Memories carried great power even when dormant. He certainly knew that to be true.

Dinah used to carry the sheet of notebook paper folded up in her billfold until it started wearing thin along the folds. Then she had put it away somewhere, in a scrapbook maybe. Perry remembered how fond she had been of the little essay, one of those “What I Want to Be When I Grow Up” kinds, and she had shared it with him on one of their first dates, then brought it out occasionally during their courtship. She must have written it in third or fourth grade, for her cursive handwriting had obviously been in its formative stages. He remembered their laughing together over the spelling of several words and the creative punctuation, but most of all over the actual content.

The essay had begun forthrightly. “When I grow up I want to be a cowboy.” Not a cowboy's wife or sweetheart, not even a cowgirl, but a cowboy. He remembered his amazement when Dinah's father had entertained him at their first meeting with stories of Dinah's tomboyish childhood. Perry had looked back and forth between Dinah and her father, wondering how she could be sitting there so clearly and completely feminine in every way yet having done the things her father was telling. Surely this beauty with the amber hair could never have shinnied up the flagpole of her elementary school on a dare—wearing a dress. Surely she hadn't grabbed Buddy Gower by the collar after school and given him a black eye for picking on her cousin. It couldn't be true that she had challenged every boy in her fifth grade class to an arm wrestling match—and won. But she confirmed every story her father told and offered a few more of her own.

Perry had already seen the school essay by the time he learned of all these bold exploits, but he had assumed until then that the cowboy ambition had been only a passing fancy or maybe even a joke Dinah had played because she thought the assignment was stupid. That would be like her. After hearing her father's stories, though, he remembered feeling vaguely threatened by the thought of dating a woman who had despised dolls and playhouses and whose birthday lists always included things like a gun holster, a ball glove, a Lone Ranger mask, and cowboy boots.

He realized now that he had very possibly suppressed the memory of her essay on purpose, filing it away under “The Way She Used to Be” and desperately hoping it would never get mixed up with “The Way She Is Now.” It would have been interesting, though, now that he thought about it, to pursue the matter further had he not been so intimidated. He wondered what she would have said if he had asked at what point she had changed. What had marked the division between tomboy and lady? Surely a little girl didn't just wake up one day, pack away her baseball bat and rifle, and dress up for a tea party. What had initiated it all?