Suncatchers (52 page)

It wasn't a bad piece of work, really. The words were far more polished than those in some of their other numbers. Even the lyrics of some of the traditional carols Perry found to be sadly lacking in grace. Such as “The First Noel,” in which so many of the accents fell in the wrong place—on the second syllable of
presence
, for example, and on words like
the, by, in
, and
that
. With all the redundancies and metrical stumbles, it sounded to Perry as if the person who wrote the music needed to sit down and talk with the person who wrote the words.

“Manger Star” had a singable melody, yet not trite. Perry knew he wasn't the most qualified judge of musical merit, but he recognized a nice composition when he heard it, and he admired Willard for what he must have gone through to write this one. Putting notes together to form a song had to compare in some way to making stories out of words, and Perry knew what labor that involved. But Willard hadn't stopped with the music. He had added lyrics. Perry wondered how he had gone about it. Did he start with the words or music? How did he ever come up with all the moving parts in the chorus that somehow meshed together so smoothly at the end?

Watching Willard now, conducting Phil Spivey through his stanza, Perry thought back over how much his estimation of the man had changed. After he had joined the choir back in the summer, he had grown to like Willard in an indirect, impersonal way, appreciating his politeness and good humor. But when he had begun to understand the man's intentions toward Jewel, Perry had opposed the idea for a good while, convinced that Willard wasn't a suitable match for her. He had finally admitted to himself that his resistance was based solely on physical appearance—he pictured Jewel with a handsome slim businessman, someone tall and dignified like herself, not a round, jolly librarian four years her junior. The house next door seemed far too small to accommodate someone of Willard's girth. Eldeen took up enough space.

But Jewel loved the man. She had told Perry so that night as they sat outside on the steps. And the more Perry had watched Willard's chivalrous wooing of her, the more he had begun to hope for his success. There was something endearing about his undisguised esteem for Jewel. And about his unceasing
efforts
—Willard had even gone on a diet in August and had already dropped twenty pounds.

Perry realized he had missed the choir's entrance on the chorus, and he was glad Willard happened to be looking at the sopranos at the time, a pensive expression on his face. He held up his hand like a policeman stopping traffic. “Can you let that series of high notes
float
?” Willard asked the sopranos. “Right now it sounds like you're pushing.” He pretended to hold up a necklace. “Think of those notes as pearls on a string. We want to admire the luster of each one, but only for a little while. Just touch them lightly, don't grab them and bite down on them to see how hard they are.” Everyone chuckled, even the sopranos, and Willard raised his hands to begin again. “Let's start at the pickup to bar twenty-five,” he said, smiling. This time he was pleased and nodded encouragingly as they continued through the chorus, stopping only once more near the end to point out the dotted rhythm of an eighth note.

As Edna began her solo stanza, Perry let his mind drift to the Sunday morning in November when Willard had announced to the church congregation his and Jewel's engagement. How brightly his face had glowed as he read his clever little poem right after Brother Hawthorne's reminder about the annual upcoming post-Thanksgiving social that night. After Willard's joyous announcement, Bernie Paulson spoke up from the audience and asked him to read the poem again because he had turned his hearing aid down and didn't catch it all and he knew from everybody else's response that this was something he didn't want to miss out on. As Willard read it again, Jewel sat at the piano blushing happily, and the tips of Joe Leonard's ears turned bright red. Eldeen had said “Praise the Lord!” right out loud, and everyone had broken out into spontaneous applause.

When Willard finished reading his poem for the second time, Brother Hawthorne had gotten up and repeated the announcement about the church social that night, saying he was afraid everyone would forget about it after the surprise of Willard's news. The social after the evening service—a turkey soup supper—had turned into an engagement party, with everyone in high spirits over the prospect of two favorite church members getting married.

“Now you and Jewel can talk about the song selections on your way to church,” Brother Hawthorne had teased, “and you won't have to pay her a special visit at the piano before services.”

“Aw, shucks!” Willard had said, snapping his fingers, and everyone had laughed.

The churchfolks had pressed Willard to read his poem again at the social, and although he hadn't brought it along, he recited it from memory, his heart in his eyes as he addressed the lines directly to Jewel.

“The embers of my lonely life

Will soon be kindled by a wife.

On New Year's Day a new gold band

I'll slip upon my sweet queen's hand.

She'll be my crown, my diadem,

My lovely bride, my Jewel—my gem.”

Jewel had returned his affectionate gaze, her happy face upturned, her eyes like small blue flames ready to leap forth.

The rehearsal proceeded smoothly. Willard praised the men for their rousing rendition of “Go, Tell It on the Mountain,” during which Glenda Finch, seated behind the dividing panel on the front row, tapped a repeated rhythmic figure on a tambourine. Perry couldn't help worrying a little that the audience would be so distracted trying to locate the source of the jingling that they might not fully appreciate the rich harmony of the men's ensemble.

As Jewel and Birdie played a piano-organ duet of “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” the ladies from the back room began creeping out into the auditorium to arrange their little clump of decorations in the center of each windowsill along both sides of the church. Each arrangement consisted of a small white angel standing amid several sprigs of holly and ivy. From a distance the effect was quite charming, although Perry knew the angels were only constructed of Styrofoam balls and cardboard covered with fabric from one of Jewel's old white tablecloths. The tiny halos, made of tinsel twined around copper wires and run up along the angels' spines, caught the sunlight now and glinted merrily.

After the organ's chimes had pealed their last note of the instrumental duet, Fern Tucker left the choir and went to the platform to deliver what she called a “Christmas reading”—actually just a story about a Sunday school pageant that went humorously awry but resulted in the salvation of a hardened old grandfather who had come to see his grandson play the part of a wise man.

As the other choir members listened to Fern's story, Perry watched Eldeen work on a windowsill near the front of the sanctuary. First she laid the greenery down, stepping back after every addition to study her handiwork. Then she set the angel gently in the middle, but he sat crookedly, one side of his cone-shaped body resting on top of a cluster of red berries. Eldeen pressed down on his head, but he sprang back up lopsided. She pressed down again, more firmly, and this time the little Styrofoam head popped off and rolled down between two pews. Perry let out an abrupt snort of laughter, then began coughing to disguise his slip. Several women looked back at him curiously, and Louise Farnsworth whispered, “Do you need a drink of water?” He shook his head and made an exaggerated show of clearing his throat. The next time he ventured a glance at Eldeen, she and Marvella were huddled together over the angel, whose head was in the process of being restored. Then Marvella spread apart the greenery and set the angel down in the center. This time he sat decorously level, and Eldeen moved on to the next window.

The children pantomiming the nativity scene arrived at eleven-thirty and practiced walking with majestic gait down the aisle and up onto the platform as the choir once again performed “Manger Star”—the finale. By the time they had finished, it was a few minutes before twelve o'clock. Willard smiled euphorically, thanked everyone for a “profitable rehearsal,” and reminded them all to meet during the Sunday school hour the next morning for final preparations before the morning service. “Now, everyone has time to get to the mall,” he said, looking at his watch, “to finish up your Christmas shopping.”

“Oh, we got all next week for that!” Sid Puckett shouted. “I don't ever do mine till Christmas Eve.” Dottie reached back and swung her choir folder at his head. “You
better
get my present before then!” she said, laughing.

As Perry lifted his eyes to the large clock above the center aisle, he felt the sudden resurrection of a memory. Once again his mind played its old trick of calling up a past moment, triggered by the smallest detail, this time simply looking at the clock. As usual it passed swiftly, in a heartbeat, but it was vividly realistic while it lasted. As he gazed at the clock, he heard words:
“Do you know for sure where your soul would live for eternity if your last second of time were to tick right now?”
He heard them clearly, in the elastic voice of a native Tennessean, Brother Hugh Laswell, who had preached a week of revival meetings here at the Church of the Open Door back in the fall. Perry had been sitting right here in this same seat in the choir and had instinctively glanced at the same clock to which his eyes were now fastened. He had even seen both hands of the clock pointed straight upward as they were now. The choir had been asked to remain seated behind the pulpit during the entire service that morning since there were so many visitors in attendance.

It had been the opening service of what they called “Revival Week,” and Brother Laswell, the evangelist, had launched the week with a strong salvation appeal, citing story after story that Sunday morning of men and women he had known personally who had stubbornly rejected the gospel, postponing salvation until they fulfilled certain goals—got older, got richer, got more education, etc., etc.—but then tragically lost their lives in a variety of accidents and all “slipped off into eternity, lost sinners on their way to hell, to that everlasting lake of fire.” Brother Laswell had pronounced
hell
as “hay-yul” and
fire
as “fi-yer” and had drawn out all his
r
's as if they were stuck between his puckered lips. Later in the service, near the end, he had leaned forward and spoken quietly into the microphone, his eyes running back and forth over the congregation.
“Do you know for sure where your soul would live for eternity if your last second of time were to tick right now?”
Perry would never forget dropping his eyes from the clock that day to note a mild disturbance in one of the back rows as a very old gentleman made his way from the middle of a pew to the center aisle and began hobbling toward the front, calling out in a weak, hoarse voice, “No, I don't, but I'm ready to make sure!”

Eldeen had been elated after church that morning, for it was Mr. Hammond, her acquaintance from the grocery store, who had finally responded to her invitation to come to church and had now accepted Christ. “You just never know. You just
never ever know
,” she had said joyously on their way home, “when that little seed you plant is going to start sprouting and bearing fruit!” Perry had written up the whole incident for the
CAST
portion of his book and intended to use it in the last chapter, the one he was working on now, in which he was highlighting Eldeen.

“Well, I guess we're done,” Joe Leonard said. Perry looked away from the clock quickly and stood up, noting the puzzled look on Joe Leonard's face.

“Sure, sure,” he said, and he was smitten suddenly with the thought that it was
sureness
that was the most incomprehensible, elusive quality about these people. They were so sure of everything. They would stake their lives on the truth of the Bible. They accepted every story without flinching, even the farfetched ones about Jonah and the walls of Jericho and the parting of the Red Sea. They knew for a certainty that God created the world, that He had fashioned them for special purposes, that His hand could be seen in every part of their lives, that He would ultimately bring to pass all things wise and good to those He loved. They believed with all their hearts that God had sent Jesus to die for each of them individually, that their grandest prize awaited them in heaven, and that their final happiness was in no way related to anything material here on earth. But the paradox was that while it seemed to Perry the height of arrogance to be so
sure
one was right, these Christians were always stressing the importance of humility.

And they talked of death as a mere bridge—a short, stable bridge—to a wonderful land of promise beyond. How would it feel, Perry wondered, to look at a cemetery without the dark fear that had become so familiar to him recently? How would it feel to be absolutely sure about the future—not about every little particular circumstance, of course, but about the overall condition of well-being and protection? How would it feel to be able to meet suffering with the extraordinary reserves of character he had witnessed in these people over the past ten months, to live each day with spiritual aplomb, to anticipate with great joy what they sang about as “the meeting in the air”?

Jewel was helping Eldeen with her last window decoration, and Willard was stacking the choir folders inside a cardboard box on the front pew.

“I sure like that catchy introduction of ‘We Three Kings'!” Eldeen called out to Joe Leonard, who was setting his tuba in its case. “It gives that sad-sounding song a little bit of pep!” She turned to Perry. “You knew Joe Leonard wrote that extra part hisself, didn't you?”