Suncatchers (33 page)

Perry stood at the back of the crowd watching Pat give her parents one last hug before taking Marty's arm again and running with him toward the old mail Jeep he had bought and painted deep maroon that summer. Marty opened the door for her, and before she got in, Pat turned and waved back at everyone, shielding her eyes from the birdseed being thrown. Perry saw the tin cans tied to the back bumper, heard them begin to rattle and clank as the Jeep lurched forward, saw the words
FAITH HOPE AND CHARITY
written in shaving cream across the back windshield—but over and over he kept remembering Brother Hawthorne's words to Marty: “Her happiness, the success of your marriage, the spiritual prosperity of the children God may choose to give you—all these lie at your feet.”

Here he had been, all these months, assuming the failure of his marriage to be an equal partnership. He was willing to take his share of the blame, but Dinah was the one who had changed, not him. How could Theodore Hawthorne lay a woman's happiness—the
success of the marriage
, of all things—at the feet of her husband and let her off scot-free?

“There they go!” he heard someone say, and he noticed as the Jeep turned the corner that the shaving cream words were already melting away.

22

The Fifth Day of Creation

Perry tried to look casual as he fingered the clasp of his life jacket again. The aluminum boat was rocking gently as the waves of a passing motorboat slapped its side.

“There,” said Willard, sighing contentedly, “this is the time of day when the fishing starts getting good. The big boats go in and things quiet down.” Perry slowly reeled in his line, studying the pink blush of the sky above the shoreline. If anyone had told him that before July was over he would be in a boat on a lake with Joe Leonard and Willard Scoggins,
fishing
of all things, he would have laughed in disbelief.

He had never considered going on the father-son outing for several reasons. First, and most obviously, he didn't have a son or a father here to go with. Besides that, it was a water activity, and he preferred dry ground. Then, too, part of it was simply the idea of being around a whole group of men for that long without the easy talk of women to fill in the silent gaps and blend things together. As a clincher, it was a fishing excursion, and he hated the smell of fish. But when Joe Leonard had knocked on his door one morning last week, had stammered his request in embarrassed politeness, then had finally looked up at him with an almost wounded expression, Perry found himself powerless to turn him down.

“Well, I'm not a fisherman,” he had said, shrugging and raising his hands in a helpless gesture. “I . . . to be honest, I've never really done any serious fishing before in my life.” Joe Leonard appeared to be holding his breath to brace himself for Perry's answer. They stood silently, Joe Leonard shifting from foot to foot in the doorway, until Perry thought to invite the boy inside.

Joe Leonard sat stiffly on the edge of the sofa, his long arms resting on his knees. He was wearing blue jeans with patches on both knees and his royal blue camp T-shirt. His eyes darted about, taking in every detail of the room, but his head never moved. Obviously he didn't intend to say any more, so Perry tried again, leaning forward in the chair he had taken.

“I guess it's hard to believe that somebody my age hasn't ever been fishing.” He stopped and gave a feeble laugh. Joe Leonard was squinting hard at the bookcase. “And what's even funnier, I guess,” Perry continued, “is that I never even learned to swim.” Joe Leonard raised his eyebrows and glanced quickly at Perry. His mouth was open as if he were about to speak, but instead he licked his lips and looked toward the door.

It came to Perry again that Joe Leonard lived a lonely life in many ways. No brothers or sisters, only his mother and grandmother at home. He worked by himself, methodically tending the blueberry bushes—watering them, checking the nets, picking the ripe berries, delivering them to people up and down the streets of Montroyal. He mowed lawns just as methodically. Perry had watched him several times guiding the mower in careful lines, cutting clean swaths, trimming along driveways and sidewalks afterward, sweeping up after himself.

The only young people Perry ever saw him with were at church, and there were really only six in what was called the Youth Group: the Chewnings' fourteen-year-old twin boys, three fifteen-year-olds—Marilee Tucker, Bonita Puckett, and Joe Leonard—and Mayme Snyder, who was going away to college this fall. It was odd to Perry how a church could have such disproportion in its age groups. There must be thirty or forty children under the age of ten but only six teenagers.

He knew Joe Leonard liked to read. Books, in fact, were about the only subject Perry and Joe Leonard had ever discussed together. The boy liked basketball, too. The Jelliffs, who lived in the house next door to the Blanchards on the other side, had an old basketball goal bolted to their carport. Their sons were both grown and married, and they had told Joe Leonard he could use the goal anytime he wanted. Almost every day, at odd times, Perry heard the dull, steady bouncing of Joe Leonard's basketball against the Jelliffs' driveway. If he looked out the corner window of the living room, he could watch Joe Leonard dribbling, pivoting, shooting from various angles. The goal itself was hidden from view, however, so he never saw whether the ball went in. The boy also played tennis with Jewel sometimes and Chinese checkers or badminton after supper, but still it couldn't be a life of much excitement for a fifteen-year-old. They didn't even have a television, a phenomenon Perry hadn't discovered until a month or two ago.

Joe Leonard was picking at a thick thread around the edge of one of his knee patches. The silence was heavy. Perry didn't know what else to say. He realized that he hadn't really given a definite answer to Joe Leonard's invitation, although he had clearly implied a negative one, but now they were stuck, neither one sure of the next step. Perry wished Eldeen were here to take things in hand and lay it all out plainly.

Perry thought of Joe Leonard's father—Bailey Blanchard, the hapless fisherman. Joe Leonard would have been twelve when his father died. Perry wondered suddenly how the boy had handled the tragedy.
“A boy abruptly bereft of the strongest male influence in his life.”
The words came to his mind in an instant. He had heard the phrase somewhere recently—or maybe read it—but he couldn't place the source. And immediately he saw the link between himself and Joe Leonard. Perry had lost his own father as a child, he was lost in a sense to his own son, and now he was offered a chance to substitute for Joe Leonard's missing father. Not that it would change any of the sad circumstances, of course, but it came to him that maybe this was one of those things you had to do.

“I'll go,” Perry said, louder than he meant to. There was a sharp snap as Joe Leonard broke off the denim thread. He looked at Perry self-consciously and grinned, then stood to his feet and moved toward the door.

“Well, good,” he said, “I'm . . . well, thanks a lot,” and he ducked his head and was out the door. Perry stood at the door a moment watching the boy walk quickly toward the driveway. Then from somewhere, an open window probably, he heard Eldeen's deep voice. “What did he say, Joe Leonard? Is he going?”

Willard Scoggins rose partway from his seat in the boat now and reached for his tackle box. The boat began swaying again, and Perry looked wistfully toward the shore. He could still see the glow of the fire from their wiener roast earlier. Several younger boys were leaping about it, cupping their hands over lightning bugs. Two or three men were fishing off the dock.

“Think I'll try this new lipless crankbait I got,” Willard said, turning around and holding up a chartreuse lure. “See, it's a half-ouncer, two treble hooks and the tie on top. You ever tried one?”

Perry shook his head. He wished Willard would quit moving around so much. With his weight, one slight misstep and they could all end up in the lake. Willard turned back around again and rummaged through his tackle box. Perry studied the breadth of his Levi's, noting the 42-inch waist size stamped on the back tag. Perry wondered if he had ever considered removing the tag. It shouldn't be hard to do. There was no need to go around advertising your waist size.

“Oh, that's right. I keep forgetting,” Willard said, lifting one leg and swinging it over to straddle the seat. “You said you didn't fish much, didn't you? Well, these little fellers”—he jiggled the lure, and Perry heard a metallic rattle—“they're great. See, they're sinkers. You let them fall, and when you start reeling, they waggle around like a live minnow. See how flat it is on the side here and how the head's down at a little angle like that? Well, coming through the water they vibrate like this, see”—he stood up again to demonstrate the motion of the lure, and Perry felt the boat tip to one side—“and the fish hears the racket and sees the little guy zipping by and—chomp!—he takes a bite he probably won't live to regret!” Willard laughed quietly and sat back down hard. Perry grabbed the side of the boat. “Lots of people don't understand crankbaits,” Willard said, turning serious. “They don't get a whole lot of respect.”

Perry looked down into the water and felt a twinge of fear. The lake was murky, with little bits of something yellowish floating all over the top. He ran a hand along the hard padding of his life jacket. How did these things work anyway? Were they good for only a certain amount of time? After all, a sponge would hold only so much water.

Perry saw Joe Leonard look back at him anxiously, so he smiled and tried to look relaxed. From somewhere on shore he heard a bird with an insistent wheezy call, like the sound of a little rubber squeeze toy. He breathed deeply and looked intently at the spot where his line intersected the surface of the water, feeling grateful that the day had gone smoothly so far. Earlier, he had ventured into the roped swimming area in an old pair of denim cutoffs, and no one seemed to question his staying in the shallow part with the little boys. He had helped to organize a little game of water basketball with a Nerf ball and a coat hanger he rigged up to a low tree branch and had even supported Levi Hawthorne and some of the others while they tried to learn to float on their backs. He and Joe Leonard had gone out in a paddleboat for more than an hour later on and had talked at length about
The Lord of the Rings
, which Joe Leonard was presently reading.

Then before they ate, when everyone had gone over to the volleyball nets to get a couple of games started, Joe Leonard had motioned Perry to the dock and had shown him how to cast. He had brought along an extra rod for Perry to use, already baited with something he called a spinner. It was easy, really, and Perry soon had the knack of releasing his thumb at just the right time so that the line could play out. He had thanked Joe Leonard, and they had gone to join the others.

Perry could understand the attraction of fishing, not for actually catching fish, of course, but for the leisurely drifting along in outdoor solitude. He finished reeling in again and recast, wondering if there were some way to make sure no fish would be attracted by his spinnerbait. He wished it weren't such a bright, shiny turquoise.

Willard was still expounding on crankbaits. “ . . . in shallows or out deeper, it doesn't matter. You can pump it, or jig it up and down, or let it zigzag, or just reel it in fast. But the hooks on these things”—he broke off and hunched over, his huge fingers almost hiding the lure he was working with—“they're never sharp enough for me, and I don't like these old curled-in ones. I always change them to round bend trebles,” and he held one up for Perry to see. “Gamakatsu—they're the sharpest—cuts bone clean.”

On shore another bird was calling over and over—sweet, liquid notes.
Too-roo-a-lee, too-roo-a-lee!
The inflection was more like a question, though.
Do you agree? Do you agree?
Perry reeled in very slowly. It occurred to him that maybe he could get the fish to think his spinner was a sick minnow, not fit to eat, if it moved lethargically. He began studying the sky, the bank, the grassy shallows, formulating descriptions he could use in a story sometime—“the dark range of steep pines silhouetted against the deepening coral of sunset,” “ribbons of mauve and gray,” “the bass choir of bullfrogs,” “the sun slipping like a burnished medal beneath the horizon,” “the moon rising like a porcelain saucer,” “the reeds set ablaze by the sun's last flame, like slender gold torches.” He brushed at a mosquito around his ear. “The whine of mosquitoes searching for a landing strip.”

He felt a light jerk on his line but was immensely relieved to see that he had only reeled in too much line and the turquoise spinnerbait had run up against the tip of his rod. It appeared to be choking, one tiny dot of an eye fixed sternly on Perry. He quickly loosened some line and then recast far out toward shore. Thankfully, neither Willard nor Joe Leonard had noticed.

“Now then,” Willard said, “let's try this little baby.” He leaned back and cast off the other side of the boat. Perry was beginning to get used to the swaying of the boat now. He thought maybe he could come out here by himself sometime under the pretense of fishing and try doing some writing. He could borrow a rod from Joe Leonard, rent one of these same boats, and drift all over the lake. A change of scenery might energize his writing. If he came close to anyone else, he could quickly pick up his rod. And if anybody shouted anything to him like “Catching anything?” he could shout back, “No, these hooks on my lipless crankbait must not be sharp enough!”

Zebco—that was the name imprinted on the rod he was holding. He wondered all of a sudden if it could possibly be the same rod Joe Leonard's father had used on occasion. Joe Leonard had said it was one “we've had for a long time.” Perry wondered if this could even be the very lake where Bailey Blanchard had drowned. On second thought, he doubted that Brother Hawthorne would do that—plan a church activity at the scene of a former tragedy. Anyway, now that he thought about it, he was sure Eldeen had said it was a small lake, and this one was definitely not what he'd call small. They hadn't even come within shouting distance of any of the other boats.