Suncatchers (6 page)

Perry studied them silently—a cluster of decorative trinkets fastened to the glass by small suction cups.

“You'll have to come back when it's light out and the sun's shining on them,” Eldeen continued. “Oh, the colors they do throw out!” She pointed to a red apple. “That one there's about my favorite—that deep red color and the pretty little green leaf. It's real glass, too. Some of them's just plastic, but on a sunny day they'll all just about dazzle your eyes out, plastic or not! That little yellow cat's a pretty thing, and so's the bluebird. They're all just so cheerful, and every one of 'em's different! They're a lot prettier in the daytime.”

Perry nodded and smiled. “I'm . . . sure they are,” he said. “They're nice—all of them. Well, thanks again for the meal.” He moved toward the door.

“We'll see you in the morning,” Jewel said.

As she closed the door behind him, Perry heard Eldeen say, “He sure is a quiet boy.”

Passing by on the sidewalk in front of the window, he saw the draperies close with a jerk. The suncatchers clung to the glass like dark moths.

4

Leftover Puritans

Beth had told him that Jewel and her family were religious. “They make Mother Teresa look like a slouch” was actually what she had said. Perry had been instantly interested. And he was even more interested when she told him it wasn't a particular denomination they belonged to but some kind of small independent church. She had done some checking, at Perry's request, and found out that, yes, the people at their church did call themselves fundamentalists. Perry supposed Cal had been right, in a sense, about all these circumstances being lucky. When he had first learned of the book contract, he hadn't known he'd end up living next door to some of the very people he'd be studying.

Cal had already told Perry that this part of the South was full of colorful, eccentric little churches. “You'll find the place crawling with religious fanatics,” Cal had said. “Leftover Puritans. They don't believe in having fun and don't want anybody else to either. It'll be the perfect place to write the book.” Cal ought to know. He'd grown up in Georgia.

It had been decided that they would all go to church together in Jewel's station wagon because of the tuba. They always left at 9:45 for Sunday school, Jewel had told him, so at 9:44 Perry pulled his front door closed and walked over to the Blanchards' driveway. Eldeen was already in the front seat of the car waiting, a swatch of her bright red dress caught in the door and hanging out the bottom. Perry wondered if she was wearing her black boots to church today.

Jewel was holding the kitchen door open for Joe Leonard, who was lugging a huge instrument case.

“Need some help?” Perry asked, but Joe Leonard shook his head.

“He's used to it,” Jewel said, “but thanks anyway. Here, you can open up the back of the car for us, though.” She tossed him a set of keys.

On the way to the church, Jewel told him that Sunday school classes were by age group and he'd be in the Fishers of Men class. “Unless you'd feel more comfortable coming to my class,” she said, glancing at him in the rearview mirror. “We're called the Willing Workers.”

“I think I'd rather do that . . . if it doesn't matter,” he said.

“You'll like the teacher of Jewel's class,” Eldeen said. “I wish I was in the Willing Workers so I could hear Harvey Gill every Sunday. He's a saint, that man is. Smart as all get-out, too.”

Eldeen went on to tell about her own class, the Autumn Gleaners, and her teacher, Marvella Gowdy, who obviously waited till Sunday morning to prepare her lesson every week.

The church, which was on the other side of town from Montroyal, was set sideways on a corner lot. It was a small white frame building with one of those encased marquees standing out front.
THE CHURCH OF THE OPEN DOOR
, the letters inside the case proclaimed, although Perry noticed that the front door of the church was securely closed. An elderly man in a long dark overcoat stood outside greeting everyone, though, and handing out a paper of some sort as they walked in. Jewel parked the car in the gravel lot and gave Joe Leonard the keys to get his tuba out. Then she went around to help Eldeen.

“Oh, Mama, you had your dress caught in the door,” Jewel said, bending down to inspect it. “I hope it didn't make a mark.” She brushed at it briskly. Then she took Eldeen's arm, and together they stepped gingerly across the gravel, with Perry and Joe Leonard following. Perry noticed that Eldeen was wearing opaque brown stockings and black rubber-soled lace-up shoes this morning. It looked as if her feet had been stuffed into them and then inflated. She wore a gray tentlike cape over her red dress, and a large black pocketbook the size of a duffel bag swung from her arm.

“This old gravel irks me all over again every Sunday,” Eldeen said. “I wish they'd pave it. Somebody's going to stumble someday and hurt theirself bad.”

As they approached the front steps, the elderly man smiled and opened the door for them. “Glad you've come, glad you've come. It's a little warmer today, yes, just a mite warmer all right,” he said, handing each of them one of the papers. On the front of the paper Perry read, “Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.” Under that was a picture of a dense forest smothered with snow, no doubt many miles from South Carolina.

“Shirley Grimes types up the bulletins every week,” Eldeen said, smiling down at the snow scene. “That's a real pretty picture, real pretty.”

Under the picture Perry read the words “THE CHURCH OF THE OPEN DOOR OF DERBY WELCOMES ALL OF YOU ONE AND ALL.” Evidently Shirley didn't proofread for redundancy.

“We meet in here first for opening exercises,” Jewel said as they passed through the lobby into the auditorium.

Perry had a brief vision of all of them standing in the aisles doing calisthenics the way he'd heard Japanese workers did in their office buildings every morning.

They sat down in a pew near the front, and Eldeen smiled and nodded to everyone around them, calling out their names softly. “Myrt, Mr. Simpson. Hello, Grady. There's the Pucketts. Jewel, look, they must be back from Rock Hill already. Nina, hello there. Beverly, I see your mother's gone and curled your hair up pretty as always. Good morning, Bernie. Hoyt, how's your back doing today?” Joe Leonard carried his tuba case through the door by the organ and came back out without it.

It had been years since Perry had been inside a church. His mother had taken Beth and him to an Episcopal church several times as children, but mostly just on Easter and at Christmastime. All he remembered was staring in awe at the high vaulted ceilings and richly tinted pictures on the windows.

And the summer he was thirteen, when his mother had been taken to a hospital for something mysterious that was never explained to Perry, he had been sent to stay with his uncle Louis in Wisconsin. Uncle Louis and Aunt Marsha had taken him with them to their church—a large Baptist church where everyone looked wealthy—and had even sent him to the denominational Youth Camp for one week. Perry still remembered his intense discomfort that whole week, watching all those people smile so much and sing what they called “youth choruses” and hearing his counselor pray every night for “the teens here in this very cabin who still haven't yielded to God's call.” Perry had remained at his seat during the closing service of the week—a candlelight ceremony during which the campers had been invited to light their own small candles from a large one up front to signify a “commitment to God”—and had shaken his head when a man had asked him if he wanted to go to the prayer room. He would never forget the wonderful relief of boarding the bus at the end of that week and heading back to Uncle Louis's.

He hardly knew what to expect today at the Church of the Open Door, though. He'd known a girl once who told him that the people in her church—a place called The Bread of Life—moved around a lot during the services and even swayed to the music and shouted with joyful abandon during the preacher's sermon and hugged each other. He'd seen things like that on TV, too—on the religious channel where men wearing bola ties and middle-aged women with bouffant hairdos sometimes conducted healing services. He certainly hoped no one would try to hug him this morning.

As a portly man in a rust-colored sport coat walked to the platform, Jewel slipped out and went to the piano. Perry was surprised as she started playing. He hadn't known she was the pianist. It was a bright and happy song she was playing, and when she hit the final bass chord, the large man stood up behind the pulpit and smiled jubilantly.

“That's Willard Scoggins,” whispered Eldeen. “He's our Sunday school superintendent and the song leader both.” The man had a round congenial face, and all his features seemed to have drifted toward the center of it.

“Let's all sing the song Jewel just played,” Willard said, and off he went, starting on a slightly lower note than Jewel but adjusting his pitch quickly. He waved his arms vigorously, his full baritone voice filling the auditorium. It was a song Perry had never heard before, one about counting your blessings and naming them one by one. Eldeen sang quite loudly and an octave lower than the other women. Joe Leonard's voice was high and reedy but not at all timid as Perry would have expected. The boy sang out with confidence in a section where all the voices seemed to be repeating snatches of the refrain at different times.

After the song Willard asked if there were any visitors. Eldeen immediately raised her hand and spoke out. “We've brought our new neighbor with us. This here's Perry Warren. He's Beth's sister. I mean, she's his brother.” Everyone laughed. “Oh, well, the two of them's brother and sister,” she said. “Some of you've met Beth before on visitation.”

Willard nodded. “Yes, we remember Beth. She's the one we all prayed for several times.” Perry wondered if Beth knew this. She had never mentioned coming to this church. What was “visitation” anyway? Were these people praying for Beth behind her back? And what for?

Willard went on to announce a churchwide Sunday school social coming up in March and requested prayer for a couple of people he called “shut-ins,” a term Perry had never heard before. After another lively song, one in which the repeated phrase was “Send the light!” everyone got up and headed through the two doors at the front of the auditorium, talking cheerfully as they went. Perry heard Eldeen call to a small black-haired woman, asking if her daffodils were up yet. The woman gasped and reached back to grab Eldeen's hand. “Oh, honey, you should see the ones on the creek bank!” she said. “They look like a picture!”

Harvey Gill, teacher of the Willing Workers, appeared to be around sixty. He was almost totally bald but had a firm lean face and the posture of a military officer. He held his Bible spread open in his left hand the entire time he spoke, and Perry marveled at the freedom of his gestures. Never once did he catch the edge with his other hand and flip it over or let it tilt and slip off, not even when he read some verses near the back of the Bible. He often made large sweeping motions with both hands to emphasize some point, all the while keeping his Bible balanced perfectly. He never seemed to tire of holding his arm out in the same position, and when he turned pages to read different verses, Perry wondered how he could find them so quickly since there didn't seem to be any markers in his Bible.

The lesson was titled “The Hidden Manna” and centered on God's provision for His people. Jewel shared her Bible with Perry since he hadn't brought one. He didn't even own a Bible, but he made a mental note to get one as soon as possible. Perry noticed that the margins of most of the pages in Jewel's Bible were filled with handwritten notes and many verses were underlined. The cover was limp and beginning to split at the binding. It appeared to Perry that she needed a new Bible almost as much as a new broom.

Harvey Gill shook Perry's hand heartily afterward and invited him back to the Willing Workers class. “It's always an honor to have visitors,” he said. “Next week we'll start a series on the Fruits of the Spirit.” As Perry looked into Harvey's steady gray eyes, he felt certain that the man had already gotten a good start on next week's lesson.

“I've got to go warm up with the choir,” Jewel told him. “You can go on to the sanctuary and sit with Mama if that's okay,” she said. “Joe Leonard and I'll join you later.”

Perry was glad to see Eldeen already seated in the same pew they had sat in earlier. She patted the place next to her. “Sit on down here and tell me how you liked Harvey and the Willing Workers,” she said.

“Well, it was all quite interesting,” he said. “We learned about manna.”

“Uh-huh, we did, too,” Eldeen said. “All the adult classes have the same lessons. But I'm sure Marvella's lesson couldn't hold a candle to Harvey Gill's. She hummed and hawed the whole time.”

The choir filed in a few minutes later as Jewel played the piano, a slower and more sedate song this time. Joe Leonard stood in the second row with the men, who were greatly outnumbered by the women. Willard was on the platform again, towering over another man in a well-tailored gray suit. Standing together, the two of them looked like a comedy duo. Compared to Willard, the other man was small and compact, built like a gymnast. He had a slightly receding hairline, but the hair he did have was riotously curly, whereas Willard's hair was thin and straight with the beginnings of a pronounced bald spot on top.

Eldeen leaned over and pointed. “That's the preacher up there with Willard,” she said. “Brother Hawthorne.”

Perry had already noticed that the paper he had been handed earlier had a list on the back called “Order of Worship,” a kind of agenda he supposed they would follow—which they did, starting with the “Welcome,” a cordial greeting from Willard, as if he hadn't just seen all of them in these same seats an hour earlier. Then there was a song, listed as “Congregational Singing—‘At the Cross.'” Perry turned to the right page number and read the words as everybody sang. He glanced around after the phrase “For such a worm as I,” but no one else seemed to think it odd. Another song followed, one called “Only a Sinner.” During this one he saw that Eldeen had her eyes closed and was slowly wagging her head from side to side as she sang the words.