Suncatchers (29 page)

“Don't you just know that scratchy old hay made 'em itch all over ever' inch of their bodies, though!” Eldeen said.

Perry swung and hit the birdie with the metal rim of the racquet. It fluttered over the net feebly, and Jewel responded with a brisk upswing that sent the birdie behind Perry. He backpedaled swiftly and, with a long arch of his body, contacted the birdie and sent it back.

Eldeen clapped her hands loudly, apparently at an insect. “Get away, you pesky feller! At least we can thank the Lord the mosquitoes aren't as troublesome this July as usual. 'Course, I coated myself good with Bugg-Off before we came outside, too. Anyway, all the neighborfolk pitched in that whole summer and helped 'em build a new house, Earl said, and it was a heap nicer than the old one, too. So I guess that's just another good example of how the Lord uses trials and tribulations to give us something better in the end, just like the story of Job all over again.”

After the point was over, Jewel looked over at Eldeen and shook her head. “Mama, it's awful hard to concentrate on the game with you telling a story.”

Eldeen laughed and laid both hands over her mouth. “Oh, I know it. I know it! I'll try to be good. I promise I will!” she said. But as Jewel served again, Eldeen began shaking with silent laughter. All during the next point Perry could hear her stifled chuckles, often erupting into low snorts.

“I couldn't help it,” she said after Perry won the point finally. “I got to thinking about something else Earl said. His great-granny was living with them at the time, he said, and she got so mixed up after the fire that she'd wander all around the inside of the barn looking for a particular room in the house or a pincushion she thought she'd misplaced or her favorite rocking chair, and once in the middle of the night they found her curled up in one of the cow stalls, stroking a calf and singing to it like it was one of her babies.” Her smile suddenly froze, and she stopped laughing. “Bless her heart,” she said. “I feel real mean gettin' a kick out of a poor old crazy woman's misfortune.” She looked around at them all soberly. “I hope you'll all forgive me. What a low-down thing to laugh about.”

Perry felt embarrassed. Eldeen looked like she was about to cry. Joe Leonard looked at Jewel uncomfortably.

“Oh, Mama, it's all right,” Jewel said. “You didn't mean any harm. What's the score now, Joe Leonard?”

“Eleven-ten, your favor. Perry's serving.”

“I know I didn't,” Eldeen said tartly, “but careless, thoughtless remarks is the worst kind of hurt. I been stung by words before—I know how it feels.”

“Well, Earl's great-granny can't be living anymore, so I don't think you've hurt her feelings.” Jewel bent forward, holding her racquet with both hands as Perry prepared to serve the birdie.

“But I been settin' a bad example for Joe Leonard here, talking that way,” Eldeen said. Perry swatted the birdie firmly. “And also,” Eldeen continued, “it's been a bad testimony in front of Perry.”

“Shh, Mama, it's
okay
,” Jewel said. She returned the serve with a low backhand stroke. Eldeen said nothing more until the point was over.

“What a sad, sad thing not to even know where you are!” she said. “To go roaming around lost and befuddled! And then to set yourself down next to a cow and think it was somebody you loved—mmm, mmm, mmm.” She closed her eyes as if the thought had grown too weighty to bear.

“Still eleven-ten,” Joe Leonard said. “Mama's serve.”

Jewel served, and the birdie sailed low across the net. “But at least she didn't
know
she'd lost her mind,” Eldeen said. She had dropped her voice, apparently addressing her words just to Joe Leonard now. “That's one blessing of that kind of a sickness, I guess,” she said. Perry hit a high, deep return, and Jewel fired it back with a forceful overhand. Perry managed to get his racquet on it and loop it back over.

“Although, you know that teacher you had back in first grade,” he heard Eldeen say, “the one whose mind just suddenly
snapped
after they retired her three years ago? They say she just meanders around the nursing home crying all the time now, and when anybody talks to her or asks her what the matter is, all she does is just cry the harder. Miss Perpetuo, that was her name, wasn't it? I always liked that name—Miss Lydia Perpetuo. I thought it had a real important ring to it, like some kind of a famous millionaire. She was one of your best teachers, I thought.”

Joe Leonard murmured something in response. Perry hit the birdie into the net.

“Twelve-ten,” Joe Leonard said.

“I've wondered if Miss Perpetuo isn't always crying because she
knows
her mind's not like it used to be and she's grievin' over what she's lost. So maybe some people
do
know they've gone crazy after all. Oops, you hit that one too far, Perry.” Eldeen pointed to the short piece of rope laid on the grass to mark the back boundary.

“Thirteen-ten,” Joe Leonard said.

“I been meanin' to go to the nursing home someday and visit her, the poor old soul. She's too young to be in such a fix as that. She can't be seventy yet.”

Jewel finally won the game, and Perry sat down next to Eldeen. With both hands he smoothed his hair straight back off his forehead. The humidity here in South Carolina always made the temperature feel ten degrees hotter than it was.

“At least Lydia Perpetuo is born again, though,” Eldeen told Perry, turning to look him full in the face. “She taught the ladies' Bible study at the old Methodist church down off Derwood Street. We had us some good talks back when Joe Leonard was a pupil of hers in the first grade.” Watching Joe Leonard playing badminton now, Perry could hardly imagine him ever being a first grader.

“So she might be a little deficient up here”—Eldeen tapped her forehead—“but she's rich right here,” she said, pointing to her heart. “And I believe with all my soul that the good Lord's preparing her a mansion in heaven right this minute—to live in
eternally
.”

Perry didn't reply. He was used to talk like this by now. Eldeen never pressed him directly, but neither did she let an opportunity pass to remind him of the benefits of salvation.

Eldeen fished a Kleenex out of the pocket of her muumuu and brought out with it a small box of Milk Duds. “Why, I forgot all about these. I wonder how long they been in there. Here, have some.” She poured several into Perry's hand, then popped one into her own mouth. “Mmm, I do love these!” she said. They watched Jewel and Joe Leonard for a while in silence except for munching sounds. The Milk Duds were a little hard. “Joe Leonard's had some of the most
interesting
teachers!” Eldeen said at length and then spent the next several minutes telling Perry about a fifth grade teacher who used to raise and harvest herbs for medicinal purposes.

After Jewel won the game with a zinger Joe Leonard couldn't return, she handed her racquet to Perry so he and Joe Leonard could play. When Perry finally won 17–15, Eldeen said, “Well, I was beginning to think we'd have to drive the car back here and turn the headlights on to finish up! That was some close game.” Joe Leonard took the racquets and birdies to the shed, and Perry folded up the lawn chairs and set them against the side of the house.

“Come on in for some ice cream, Perry,” Jewel said.

“And we can garnish it with some berries on top!” added Eldeen. “Joe Leonard did a big picking this afternoon, and they're as pretty as plums!”

They looked at Perry expectantly.

“Well, all right,” he said.

Eldeen clapped her hands and laughed. “Well, then, come on, everybody, let's don't stand out here and let the bugs get us!”

As they walked toward the side door, Joe Leonard loped past them and bounded up the steps.

“Yes, sir,” Eldeen said, “it all comes down to
giving up
is what I think about that poor, pitiful man.”

Perry had no idea what man she was talking about. He tried to think back to what he had last heard her talking about, but it was no use. Maybe the comment was in reference to Joe Leonard's herb-growing teacher. But when had he given up—and why?

No one spoke as they slowly filed up the side steps behind Eldeen. When she reached the top, she turned around and pointed her finger at Jewel and Perry. In her floral muumuu, she looked like some formidable Samoan matriarch. “Nobody who's got a deep-down feeling in their heart that they're fearfully and wonderfully made is going to lie down in the dirt like a little mewling crybaby like that man's done and just
quit!
” she said emphatically. At the same time he was wondering if she could possibly be talking about
him
. Perry hoped he could remember her exact words later. He'd thought for a long time what a fascinating study Eldeen's speech would make. He'd like to unravel it all someday and examine it systematically—syntax, grammar, diction, and then of course the enormous category of content. Once he'd heard her use the words
rigamarole, pip-squeak
, and
underdrawers
in a single sentence.

“Set yourself down,” Eldeen said, motioning Perry to the kitchen table. “I got to go wash the skeeter juice off my hands.”

Joe Leonard opened the freezer and got out a half-gallon carton of vanilla ice cream, then took a huge bowl of blueberries out of the refrigerator. Jewel handed him the colander, and he measured out two handfuls of berries into it and began rinsing them at the sink. Jewel was getting out bowls and spoons when the door buzzer sounded.

“I'll get it!” Eldeen called from the bathroom, and Perry heard her humming to herself as she walked heavily down the hallway toward the living room. He got up and ambled after her. Two separate instances of vandalism had been reported over on Tulip Court recently, and one woman on Daffodil Street said she caught some teenagers rummaging around inside her car late one night, but they ran away when they saw her at the window with a flashlight. Perry knew Jewel's house could be marked as an easy target if anyone knew the neighborhood. Two women and a fifteen-year-old wouldn't pose much of a threat to whoever was doing these things.

The draperies were still open in the living room, but it was growing too dark outside for Perry to identify the car parked at the curb. A slow draft of air from a large box fan sitting in the doorway between the kitchen and living room stirred the suncatchers hanging from the windowpanes so that they trembled ever so slightly. The DePalmas' porch light across the street shone directly behind the newest one—a small lead crystal butterfly that one of Jewel's piano students had given her this summer. Its fractured blues and purples shifted softly in the lazy sultry breeze.

“Why, just looka who's standing here at our front door!” Eldeen cried, throwing open the front door and unlatching the screen before Perry even saw who was there. “Wait a minute,” he wanted to urge her, “let's make sure it's somebody we trust.” But it was too late. “Come on in. Come on in!” Eldeen said, and Willard Scoggins stepped across the threshold. When he caught sight of Perry, his smile faded a little.

“Oh, I didn't mean to interrupt anything,” he said.

“Not at all. Not a bit of it!” Eldeen said. “Come on in the kitchen. We just came inside ourselves and are fixing to have us some light summer refreshment. You're welcome to join us.”

Perry and Willard shook hands, and Perry led the way back to the kitchen.

“Look who's come to see us, Jewel!” Eldeen called.

Perry couldn't make sense out of Jewel's expression when she looked up and saw Willard. Was it gladness or dismay? Shyness? Amusement? Or maybe just plain surprise?

Willard had on a bright green knit shirt with a tiny penguin stitched on the pocket. The shirt was tucked tightly into his gray pants, which appeared to be hiked up a little too far above his waistline. His face was shiny, and what little hair he did have was wet and neat. He reminded Perry of a little roly-poly inflatable man Troy used to have. “Mr. Pop-up” was weighted down at the feet somehow so that when you punched him, he'd rock back up ready to take another blow. Perry suddenly felt unkempt and sweaty. He saw Jewel trying to stuff her blouse down inside her baggy blue slacks.

“Well, let's don't just stand here grinning at each other,” Eldeen said. “Come on, Willard, sit down here at the table next to Perry.”

“I really just came to bring you these,” Willard said, looking at Jewel eagerly and holding out some sheets of music. “I told you on Sunday, remember, that I'd written out an arrangement for the choir, and I thought you'd like to see it and maybe play through it.”

Suddenly something clicked in Perry's mind. He couldn't believe he hadn't figured it out sooner. It all made such perfect sense now: Willard's expansive smiles from the platform over to the piano, his bright-eyed attention as he bent near Jewel each Wednesday night to whisper the song selection, his childlike excitement at her surprise birthday party, his determined bidding on her set of embroidered dish towels. Willard Scoggins clearly had his sights set on Jewel, and here it had taken Perry five months to piece it together.

Dinah would have seen it the first Sunday and would have pointed it out immediately. Perry had watched her assessments and predictions prove valid the whole fifteen years they had been married. At first he had accused her of snap judgments, but then as they kept coming true, he had attributed it to luck, only later realizing finally that it was a fundamental difference between them—maybe between all men and women for that matter. With unerring instinct, she could size up people and their intentions in an instant. She could read nuances of facial expression, tone of voice, and body movement and come up with amazingly detailed—and accurate—character analyses.