Free Suncatchers by Jamie Langston Turner Page A

Harvey Gill would be Gilbert Hadley, and Brother Hawthorne would be Brother Franklin. There were others he hated to give up, though. Eldeen, for one. He thought he might go with something like Lorena or Ila. Or maybe he could play off the word Vaseline. Valina? Evaline? Salveena? Lavinia? Surely something would come to him.
    He typed a list of names as he thought of them, then closed the file and named it Name Bank . He knew he had to get his first impression of yesterday’s services down before the day passed, so he opened another file. He had taken notes inside his Day-Timer, and he got those out now. He could still see Eldeen’s nod of approval as she had watched him writing in church yesterday. “I filled up a whole heap of notebooks in my day,” she had whispered, “but it’s harder to write now on account of my arthritis, so I just listen real close.”
    Perry started typing, and the screen quickly filled. After Joe Leonard’s tuba solo in the morning service, the congregation had sung a song titled “Must I Go and Empty-Handed?” and then a plump redhead had stepped out of the choir and stood behind the pulpit. She had a pretty face, one of those fresh, guileless faces you’d see in ads for milk or Ivory soap. “That’s Brother Hawthorne’s wife, Edna,” Eldeen whispered. “She’s got a voice like a angel.” And it had turned out to be a nice voice—a cross between Dolly Parton and Julie Andrews, Perry thought, and she sang so earnestly, leaning forward to scan the faces of the audience. “Have you any room for Jesus, He who bore your load of sin? As He knocks and asks admission, Sinner, will you let Him in?” Brother Hawthorne stared up at his wife pensively while she sang. Perry wondered what he was thinking.
    Many people indicated their approval again with hearty amens after Edna Hawthorne finished. The choir then got up and filed down to sit in the congregation while Jewel played another verse of Edna’s song. Edna Hawthorne sat in the front row with three young children who had caught Perry’s eye earlier. The little boy, probably four or five, had received numerous pokes from his sisters seated on either side. Now he moved over to sit on his mother’s lap. Perry tried to imagine how soft that must feel.
    Jewel returned from the piano and sat beside Perry, with Joe Leonard next to her. Brother Hawthorne moved to the pulpit and bowed his head for a moment of silence that stretched out so long Perry wondered if someone had forgotten a cue. But then Brother Hawthorne began praying aloud, quoting phrases from all the songs they had sung and heard that morning, weaving them together into an eloquent supplication for mercy. It was almost poetic. Perry tried to see if he was reading his prayer from a script but saw only a closed Bible on top of the pulpit.
    The sermon that followed wasn’t at all what he was prepared for. Cal had led him to expect a ranting stream of rhetoric, ludicrously illogical in content and clumsy in style. Brother Hawthorne did not rant, although he did speak with intensity and briskness, and he gestured frequently. He sucked in his breath audibly before making a major point, cleared his throat after making the point, was fond of the phrase “by the way,” and maintained close eye contact with his listeners. At one point he stopped talking and gazed sternly at his son in the front row, who, having crawled out of Edna’s lap, had slapped a hymnbook shut with such a loud smack that Eldeen said, “Mercy me!” right out loud.
    In a way, Perry thought, the sermon was ludicrously illogical. The title of it had been “Ten to Two” and had dealt with what Brother Hawthorne called “The distillation of the Law of Moses.”
    â€œIf you obey these two commandments,” Brother Hawthorne had said, “you will have no trouble keeping the ten that were engraved by the hand