Suncatchers (60 page)

Actually, he had had the poem in his possession for several months, in a file folder labeled simply
ELDEEN
. The
Derby Daily
had sponsored a poetry contest for all the local readers back in the early spring, and Eldeen had entered without telling anyone, a fact that Perry still found remarkable. When the newspaper published the winning poems in late March, there was Eldeen's at the top of the page, printed in the boldest type with a big exploding star design beside it and the words
First Place
stamped across the top.

Jewel had brought it over to him late that afternoon, and after she left Perry had gone out and bought a paper, clipped out the poem, and filed it away in a new folder. He had suspected even back in March that he would need a separate file folder for Eldeen. There had been a big to-do at church over Eldeen's poem, and, curiously, it was the surprise element of the whole thing that seemed to please Eldeen most. Over and over she had clapped her hands and chortled gleefully, “I sure pulled a big surprise on folks!” She accepted the church people's praise graciously, but always it came back to “Weren't they all surprised, though!”

But the amazing thing was that Perry had forgotten all about the poem until he ran across it on the Friday morning before Christmas. Well, perhaps it wasn't so amazing after all, considering the overwhelming barrage of new experiences he had been stumbling through since March. March—wasn't that a decade ago? Besides, he had added so many other pages of hastily scribbled notes to the folder that the poem stayed buried in the back, and when he had started working last week on the sketch of Eldeen for his book, he had found himself in a daze, shuffling among scraps of paper, pages torn from his Day-Timer, the audiotape, and random thoughts that kept springing to mind as his fingers searched the keyboard for ways to contain Eldeen on paper. He never even made it all the way through the folder. One day he had typed for three hours straight, then reread what he had written, and deleted every word. By Thursday afternoon he had begun to despair, realizing that he had already spent more time on the few pages about Eldeen than he had spent writing entire chapters. He couldn't even decide what name to give her. He had tried using several—Dorothy, Leona, Lucille, Iva—but none of them seemed right.

What does it really matter
how
you say it? he kept asking himself. Remember, there's hardly ever only one way to say something. Just put it down the way it comes out and let it go. But he found he couldn't. It had to be right. For some reason the part about Eldeen had to be
exactly
right. Okay, he told himself, you've used the word “simple” for the past ten months in describing these people and their religion. So how come it's so hard to write about somebody who's so simple?

Frustrated, he had gotten up from the computer late Thursday afternoon, put on his jacket, and stepped outside for a walk. The rain had finally stopped around two o'clock, and the sky had cleared to a weak, pastel blue as if the color had been washed out. Brown oak leaves clung wetly to the pavement. If he had believed in signs and wonders, he may have been tempted to assign an interpretation to the cloud he saw directly over the DePalmas' rooftop as he stood in his front yard. The cloud was gigantic, and the irregular scallop of its contour was brilliantly outlined with a bold ribbon of phosphorescent silver. For a split second Perry stood awestruck before he realized that this was no atmospheric phenomenon, but simply the common result of the sun going behind a cloud. The brightness had to go somewhere, so it oozed its way out around the edges.

But although he had reduced it to an ordinary explainable fact, the sight must have in some way unsettled his mental balance, for it was directly after this that he had actually spoken a silent prayer. It wasn't long, and it certainly wasn't premeditated, but he was keenly aware of the words echoing through his mind:
Please help me finish this chapter right
. He continued walking along the curb, slowly, but his thoughts were racing. Had he really uttered that prayer? Why? And to whom? Did he believe that there really was a God on full-time duty who truly cared about him? Or was it an accident, a type of involuntary mimicry of what he had observed among the church people all these months? Maybe he had been thinking so much
about
Eldeen that he had thought
like
her for just a moment. Or maybe it was simply an act of desperation—nothing else had worked, so why not give prayer a shot? But, of course, God didn't attend to the prayers of unbelievers, did he? That is, unless they were asking for salvation, praying the “sinner's prayer,” as Eldeen called it.

Was it just another coincidence, then, that by the time he had walked halfway down Lily Lane, the perfect first sentence for the section about Eldeen had formed in his mind? The name fell into his mind, too, as if it were a piece of ripe fruit: Raynelle. The thoughts came easily after that, and as he repeated them to himself, they unrolled as from a smooth, seamless bolt. He found a Bic pen in his jacket pocket but nothing to write key words on. That was why, during the next two hours, anyone looking out his window as the sun slipped beneath the silver-rimmed cloud and the afternoon shadows deepened into dusk might have seen a tall man slowly walking along the streets of Montroyal, pausing from time to time to look up at the sky, and then bending his head again to write on what appeared to be the palm of his hand.

He walked for almost two hours, up and down streets all over Montroyal, even circling the same blocks several times before finally turning back toward home. He realized that anyone watching would have reason to regard him with suspicion, and if a policeman had pulled up at the end of the two hours and asked him what he was doing, he would no doubt have considered Perry extremely neurotic. He could well imagine the officer's stony face and narrowed eyes as he listened to Perry's answer—“I'm writing the final pages of my last chapter! See, I've got the outline here on my hand!”

It was almost seven o'clock by the time he got home. When he saw Hormel's dark shape beside Jewel's fence and heard him crunching pellets of dry dog food, Perry realized that he was craving food himself, and a sudden strong desire for meat seized him. Not a hot dog or hamburger, but a real piece of meat. A whole plateful of food, in fact—meat and vegetables and salad and bread. The light in Jewel's kitchen was on, and he could see the shadow of someone standing by the sink. They would have finished supper by now. He felt a twisting sensation in his stomach as he thought of what Jewel might have cooked. As he stepped inside his own house and turned on the light, he spread open his left palm and stared at it. The ideas weren't going anywhere. He might as well take time to eat. He would need plenty of energy for the long night ahead.

The man who answered the telephone at the Purple Calliope seemed to think there was nothing unusual about someone calling for a steak dinner to go. Thirty minutes later Perry was standing beside the cash register inside the restaurant holding a large Styrofoam platter with a lid, and thirty minutes after that he had already eaten most of the steak, and all of the baked potato, and was starting on the steamed broccoli and carrots. He couldn't remember eating a meal like this in a long time. Jewel never fixed steak, and it wasn't on the menu at Hardee's.

By eight-thirty he was at the computer. He had finished with Eldeen by eleven-thirty and got up to make a pot of coffee while the last chapter was printing. At twelve o'clock he sat down at the kitchen table, the manuscript for his entire book stacked before him, and began reading from page one, placing each page face down in a new pile as he finished. Occasionally he penciled in a change, but for the most part he read straight through. He had read each section as a unit, of course, before sending the chapters to Cal, but this was the first reading of the whole manuscript from beginning to end. As he read now, he recalled how gratified he had always felt in his earlier projects—even the children's novels—to take that final journey through the completed pages, to read a favorite passage and marvel for just an instant that he had really written it, to feel the swift twinge of joy—like the satisfying click of a full change purse—when he came to the last paragraph.

The sun was just coming up when he laid the last page upside down on the stack and pushed his chair back. From where he sat, in the doorway, he could see the pale glow of sunrise through the window over the kitchen sink. Then, turning to the living room windows, with their blinds still open, he could see the shade of night in the west. Here it was again—another dividing line. Day on one side, night on the other.

A question and an answer from Blake's
Vision of the Last Judgment
came to him out of nowhere. “‘When the sun rises, do you not see a round disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea?' O no, no, I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.'” Perry remembered how infatuated he had been with William Blake for a few months in college, how drawn to the poet's mysticism, how consumed with the yearning to sit in the company of the esoteric coterie of Blakean scholars. Knowing so little about the Bible, however, he had understood few of the allusions and had soon wearied of Blake's artistic flamboyance. It occurred to him now that if he were to read the quotation today for the first time, he would make all the right associations, including the seraphic praise in Isaiah 6 and the declaration of God's glory through nature in Psalm 19.

Perry closed his eyes. He had been alert, running on nervous energy, until now. Suddenly he wondered if he could even make it back to the bed. On his way past the spare room, he saw that the green light of the printer was still on, so he walked in to turn it off. As he turned around, he bumped against the edge of the file folder labeled
ELDEEN
, which lay open beside the computer, and all the scraps of paper floated to the floor.

That was when he saw the poem. It landed six inches from his feet and even whirled around at the last minute so that it was turned in the right direction for him to look down and begin reading. Across the top he saw the words he had written:
$50 prize—used for car tax and license renewal
. He remembered now how Eldeen had told everybody that God had sent the prize money at just the right time, because Jewel thought she was going to have to make a withdrawal from their savings account. Together, the tax and renewal fee came to $49.79—another one of those occurrences of happenstance these people were famous for, which they called “answers to prayer.” But he had had his own brush with answered prayer, or at least a semblance of it, on his walk around the neighborhood yesterday—and now coming across this poem. Did it mean anything? Was there more to it than just an accident?

He stooped, picked up the poem, and read it.

Streams of Joy and Peace
by Eldeen Rafferty

There used to be an apple tree o'er yonder by my wall
,

Its big round fruit dropped right down at my feet!

It bloomed so nice in spring and gave me apples in the fall
,

But I was just so careless of my treats
,

I never did say thank you—oh such a simple deed!

Until one day a bad disease crept in
,

That bad disease it killed the flowers, then it hurt the seeds!

I loved that tree and missed it so much then!

I used to have a deep, deep well, my, my, how cool and pure!

I always filled my bucket every day
,

And was that water sweet and did it taste good? That's for sure!

But oh, alas, my thanks I ne'er did say.

And so one day when I went out and lowered down that rope
,

I cried out, “There's no water anymore!”

I tried again, but it was dry, bone dry, alas, no hope!

I should have told my gratitude before!

I used to have a special friend, I thought he'd live so long
,

But I forgot that life was just a puff!

I didn't make amends for lots of things when I was wrong
,

And didn't say “I love you” near enough!

We went about our busy ways and thought we had good health
,

But one day Mr. Death he snatched my mate
,

And oh, what good is fancy houses, cars, and lots of wealth?

For once a soul is lost, then it's too late!

So open up your mouth and say those things—now go on, start!

Like Thank You and I'm Sorry and the rest.

And don't you dare forget the one that softens any heart
,

Please say I Love You—that's the very best!

Don't let your tongue be lazy, please just stand up now and speak!

And if you do, your love will grow and grow!

So all you have to do to find the Light of Love is seek
,

And streams of Joy and Peace will flow and flow!

Perry remembered now that Eldeen had said the contest rules had prohibited religious poems, and it interested him to see that she had complied to an extent. He realized as he read it a second time that something about the poem touched him deeply, though he knew if he were to critique it as a work of art, it would fall miserably short. He smiled over its excitable tone—the schoolgirlish fondness for exclamation points, the archaic
ohs
and
alases
, the feverish didacticism. There was so much to criticize if he were to analyze it as
poetry
—the triteness, the redundancies, the ill-chosen words like “puff” and “o'er yonder” and “bad disease,” the subject-verb agreement error, the shift of person, the relentless strumming of the meter. Truly, if this was the winning poem, Perry wondered what the other submissions had been like.