Suncatchers (23 page)

“Isn't that the truth?” asked Eldeen, bending near and shouting into Perry's ear. He flinched.

“What's that?” he said.

“I said it's just a joy and a blessing to see so many young people on fire for the Lord!” She swept her spoon back and forth in front of her like a flashlight.

“Hey, give that back!” yelled a boy at another table, and a photograph quickly exchanged hands. Someone shoved it at Joe Leonard. “Here, Blanchard, pass it on!” Joe Leonard handed it to Perry. Looking down at it, Perry saw the picture of a teenaged girl, a pixieish smile on her pink lips and an aureole of light brown hair circling her smooth, untroubled face. Would she end up marrying the boy who was still wailing “Give it back”? he wondered. In sixty or seventy years, would the two of them be shriveled and scarred, having burned out their lives for Christ?

15

A Beam of Light

“I hope you got your music,” Jewel said to Joe Leonard as they backed out of the driveway the next morning. Joe Leonard was holding just the mouthpiece of his tuba, blowing into it with his eyes closed, as if trying hard to remember something. He released a huge gust of air.

“Yes, ma'am, I did,” he said. Then taking a deep breath, he blew another series of notes into the mouthpiece, producing sounds that junior high boys would laugh over but which no one in the car seemed to think funny.

“It's sure a nice day to be celebrating July the Fourth,” Eldeen said. “I've heard lots of folks say they don't like it when a holiday falls on a Sunday, but me, I like it just fine. It makes it all the more special to my way of thinking. I hope you won't think I'm rude,” she said, waving her hand over her head toward Perry, “but I need to study my piece a little bit. Don't think just because I'm not talking that I'm settin' up here sulkin'.”

As they rode along the familiar streets, Perry studied Joe Leonard. The boy's hair was combed back smoothly from his face, slick furrows running in small, neat parallels above his ears. There was a tiny knick along his jawline. He must have started using the razor Jewel bought for him at Revco back in the spring. He wore a white shirt and a navy sport coat that looked too snug. Instead of his usual brown bow tie, though, he wore the red necktie Jewel had given him for his fifteenth birthday the week before camp. He was wearing his light blue slacks—one of the few pairs, Perry had noticed, that were long enough.

The boy's face flushed as he exhaled slowly into the tuba mouthpiece, an ascending string of arpeggios this time. Holding his breath that way, with his face scrunched into a scowl and his eyes closed, Joe reminded Perry of a young child throwing a temper tantrum. He wondered if Joe Leonard had ever done things like that. He thought instantly of Troy and wondered if he'd thrown a tantrum lately or held his breath until he got his way. Surely he was outgrowing that. He should have outgrown it years ago.

Troy's fits of temper had always been a source of disagreement between Perry and Dinah. Dinah's response was always swift and fierce. Had Perry not intervened each time, physically blocking her way, she would have done bodily injury to the boy—he was sure of it. One of Perry's worst fears during those earlier years had been that she would seriously hurt Troy in her anger. He couldn't imagine what would have happened if he hadn't been around each time to protect him. Over the last year or two she had given up, simply stalking away and calling back over her shoulder, “Go ahead, Perry, give him what he wants so he'll shut up.”

“Can't you see,” Perry had wanted to shout after her, “he's inherited his passionate nature from
you?
Can't you try to
understand?
” But he had never shouted anything in his whole life and couldn't bring himself to do so then. He had always remained calm, bending over Troy and talking soothingly. And invariably the boy had calmed down. All it took was a little patience.

Perry wondered what Dinah and Troy would do today. The last few years they had all gone to Pierce Lake on July Fourth. Troy liked to fish from the bank of the lake with a little rod and reel they had bought him, and Perry always shadowed him, cautioning him about slipping into the water, secretly horrified of the possibility of Troy actually catching a fish, which, fortunately, he never did. They always ate a picnic lunch by the lake later in the day and let Troy splash in the shallows with dozens of other children. Dinah usually stretched out for a sunbath, but Perry never took his eyes off Troy. He wondered if Dinah would take Troy to the lake today. He felt a tightness around his heart. He ought to be there to watch out for trouble.

“This program Willard's got planned sure is gonna be a thrill.” Evidently Eldeen had finished studying. “And just think, all four of us get to help out in it. Ever since I first woke up this morning I been thanking the good Lord for the United States of America. Oh, sure, it's got its problems, there's no disputing that, with all those spendthrifts in Washington squandering our taxes on a bunch of foolish nonsense, but I can't think of anywhere else in the world I'd rather live than right here! And anybody who's not going to stand up and be a loyal American should just hightail it to some of them other countries for a little while and see all them little babies with runnin' sores and bloated bellies and nasty flies all over theirselves, and drink water that's got germs and infection crawling in it and see their bones sticking out through their scabby, oozin' skin and feel their intestines all twisted up inside of 'em from starvin' to death!”

Perry felt something shift in the pit of his stomach. He glanced at the Corningware dish filled with spaghetti on the seat between Joe Leonard and himself and quickly looked out the car window, focusing on the clear blue sky overhead. They drove along in silence for several blocks. Joe Leonard once again blew into his mouthpiece, a few halfhearted notes, and then stopped and stared out his window.

Five weeks ago when Willard had asked Perry to sing in the choir for the patriotic special, he hadn't known what to say. “I need some basses like everything,” Willard had said. “Isn't that what part you sing?”

“Well, yes, I guess, but . . . I don't generally sing much really.” The last time Perry could remember singing in a group was in general music class in seventh grade. The teacher had been a delicate little woman past the prime of beauty but still feminine and pretty like antique bone china. Perry wondered now what the teacher—Mrs. Fairfax was her name—had done to make a class of twelve-year-olds so willing to sing. He couldn't imagine children of that age singing so unreservedly today. They'd be cutting glances at each other, reading off-color meanings into innocent song lyrics, and drawing satanic designs on the soles of their hundred-dollar sneakers with blue ball-point pens. Well, maybe at Wilderness Gospel Camp they wouldn't. He still didn't know what to think of those youngsters.

While Willard reviewed a list of the numbers they'd be performing in the patriotic program, Perry suddenly remembered with absolute clarity the seventh-grade school program in which he'd sung a solo line. He could hardly believe he had ever done such a thing. It was a question-and-answer song called “The Dandelion,” in which the entire chorus sang all the questions, while the answers were assigned to three different soloists. His solo came in the second stanza, after the chorus sang, “Oh dandelion, yellow as gold, what do you do all night?” He had answered, “I wait and wait till the cool dew falls and my hair grows long and white.”

He wondered now how it had ever come about that Mrs. Fairfax had chosen him for a solo and how she had convinced him to actually do it. His mother and Beth had been sitting in the audience, six rows back, and he could still see his mother's pallid oval face with her brooding eyes gazing above his head. She had never said a word about his solo afterward. He always wondered if she'd even heard it. He had waited and hoped for days that she would offer some small word of praise, but he had finally given up. He had tried not to care, but he never could master that. He learned that he could pretend not to care, though.

That all seemed so long ago, far removed in time and space from the world today—a distant time when seventh graders sang wholesome songs and scrubbed their faces for school programs, drank milk at all three meals, and recited the Pledge of Allegiance regularly. Even the Beatles, a sensation when he was in elementary school and junior high, seemed sedate in comparison to the cacophonous metallic racket he heard today. Perry still recalled with a sick feeling the time he had walked into Troy's school a year ago and seen a fourth grader swinging his fists at a teacher and screaming obscenities that Perry had never even heard at that age. He remembered looking down at Troy, at that time a second grader, and wondering if he knew what those words meant. But he wouldn't have dreamed of asking him.

Willard had stopped talking and was looking at Perry as if waiting for an answer.

“Well . . .” Perry halted. Was Willard expecting a commitment now?

“Five-thirty Sunday nights, okay?” Willard tilted his head and pulled at his earlobe. His fingers were the size of frankfurters. “The music's not hard, and we could sure use you. Besides, you're always here by then anyway, aren't you?”

So he had noticed. Perry wanted to believe he had been sitting unobserved in the back row during choir practice as he listened and jotted notes, sometimes even getting down a few good paragraphs of text, which he would later type into the computer at home. But no, somehow Willard, who always had his back to the darkened auditorium, had known he was there. Had Jewel told him—or Eldeen? Eldeen usually spent the hour during choir practice back in Fellowship Hall hearing children recite memory verses in a program called S.M.W., which stood for the Sincere Milk of the Word, and of course Jewel was always playing the piano for choir practice. Maybe Joe Leonard had suggested to Willard that Perry could help out the men.

Anyway, Perry had ended up agreeing to practice with the choir for a few weeks in preparation for July Fourth and had become the fifth member of the bass section, sitting between Phil Spivey and Sid Puckett. Joe Leonard sat a few seats down from him, one of eight in the tenor section, and Perry could hear his voice above the others.

Pulling into the parking lot, Eldeen said, “Good gracious, I'm nervous as a kite! I sure hope Marvella doesn't forget in the middle of all the excitement that she's supposed to help me into my costume. Maybe I ought to speak my lines again, just for practice.”

“Mama, you know that poem backwards, forwards, and sideways,” Jewel said. “It'll go fine, just calm down.” Jewel was wearing a white dress, one Perry had never seen before, with navy beads and earrings, and she had a red scarf draped loosely around her neck and tied in a little knot that gave the effect of a rosette on one shoulder. The choir members had all been urged to wear red, white, and blue today, and from the looks of everyone Perry saw getting out of the cars in the parking lot, the whole congregation—not just the choir—had cooperated. Perry was glad he had gone downtown to Carson's Menswear and bought a new tie for the occasion—navy and red striped. With his navy suit and white shirt, any visitors in the audience would think he was a longtime member of the Church of the Open Door.

This morning Willard had scheduled the choir for an extra rehearsal during the Sunday school hour. Eldeen sat in the front pew observing it all so that she would know when it was her turn to stand and say her poem, but they didn't have time to actually hear any of the speaking parts. Perry felt a growing dread as the hands on the large clock above the double doors swept closer to program time. Not that he was insecure about the music. It was all fairly simple. But he knew the program would be a great corny show of sentimental patriotism, and here he would be sitting in the choir facing everybody. What if something struck him funny—something that wasn't supposed to be funny? This was going to be a test of self-control, and he wished now that he had anticipated the problem and resisted Willard's urgings to join the choir. This was exactly the kind of thing anyway—getting involved in the church—that he had intended to avoid. But it was too late now, he thought as he looked at Mayme Snyder's ponytail in the row ahead of him. How did she get it to do that? he wondered. It looked as if it were turned inside out somehow.

To open the service, the choir marched in from the side, actually marched. Willard had drilled them repeatedly, shouting, “Left, right, left, right!” until they could all stay together. Leading their procession were two youngsters in Boy Scout uniforms carrying the American and Christian flags. As they marched in, the choir sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Perry held his black choir folder down by his side, as they had been instructed, and stared at Sid Puckett's back. Behind him he could hear Phil Spivey's rumbling bass singing “He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.”

It had never dawned on Perry, as many times as they had sung the hymn during choir practice, that this line of text must have been the source for the title of Steinbeck's novel. He wondered now as they started the chorus, filing into their choir rows and turning to face the audience, whether Steinbeck had had the title in mind all along or if he had wrestled with a thousand possibilities as Perry himself usually did, until one day—perhaps attending an Independence Day ceremony among migratory fruit pickers out in California—he had heard “The Battle Hymn” sung and had wept with relief and joy, crying, “I've got it! I've got it!”

He thought suddenly of a quotation of Steinbeck's he'd once read. “What we have always wanted is an
unchangeable
.” If that's what he'd really wanted, thought Perry, Steinbeck should have moved from California to Derby, South Carolina. He should have come to the Church of the Open Door. He should have embraced this religion of fundamentalist Christianity with its tenets of the immutability of God, the inerrant inspiration of Scripture, the universal applicability of the Ten Commandments, the rigorous standards of separation and sanctification, and Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, forever.