Suncatchers by Jamie Langston Turner

forget your money or something today?” she asked. Mr. Hammond’s mouth dropped open, and he looked up at her helplessly.
    Eldeen pulled the old man’s cart backward out of the way and stepped forward to stand beside him. She leaned down close to his ear. “Can’t you find your wallet?” she shouted. He didn’t look at her but shook his head.
    â€œWell, here, Mr. Hammond,” she said loudly. “Don’t you worry the least little bit. I got me a little secret place in my pocketbook here where I keep some emergency money just for rainy days like this. Even though it’s not actually raining outside of course.” Eldeen laughed loudly and stretched open her enormous purse, reaching deep inside. Helena looked back at Perry, raised her eyebrows, and shrugged good-naturedly. Perry heard a solid click from inside Eldeen’s purse, and she pulled out a five-dollar bill. “This here is yours, Mr. Hammond,” she announced, placing it in his small wrinkled hand and folding his knobby fingers over it. “It used to be mine, but now it’s yours.” And she gave his hand a firm pat as if he were a child being handed his lunch money. “There now, pay your bill.”
    The old man looked up at Eldeen sternly for a long moment before Helena finally reached forward and took the five-dollar bill from his hand. “Well, looks like somebody’s watching out for you, Mr. Hammond,” the girl said. “That’s what I call a good neighbor. But you better look out there. I think Eldeen might be making a pass at you. You know what a flirt she is.” She laughed heartily as she slapped the change into his palm. The old man turned again to gaze up at Eldeen, then slowly dropped the change into his sack of groceries, picked it up, and shuffled toward the door.
    â€œWell, if that don’t beat all,” Helena said. “Eldeen, he didn’t even give you back the leftover.”

7
    A Buggy Ride
    Walking across the church parking lot on Tuesday morning, Perry clearly heard a line of poetry spoken aloud. This sort of thing happened to him so often that it had ceased to startle him, but he still marveled over the curiosity of it all and wondered if others had such experiences. It was as if the audio track of his life kept replaying itself. He would do something—the simplest thing, like open a drawer or tie a shoelace or see a mail truck—and suddenly remember exactly what he had been saying or hearing or thinking the last time he did the same thing.
    Today it was looking down at his feet as he walked across the gravel parking lot at the Church of the Open Door that triggered the memory. The last time he had been here was Sunday night, with Eldeen, Jewel, and Joe Leonard. As they had pulled into the lot that night, Eldeen had been talking about a woman named Flo, who made crocheted place mats and sold them at the G.O.O.D. Country Store, which, she explained to Perry, stood for the “Golden Oldies of Derby.” Eldeen herself contributed sets of pillowcases to the G.O.O.D. Country Store to sell. “I sew little lamb designs on them to fancy them up,” she told Perry.
    â€œI sure hate it that Flo doesn’t see how much she needs the Lord,” Eldeen had said as she slowly swung her legs out the car door and searched with her rubber-soled shoes for a firm footing on the gravel. Heaving herself up and out of the car, she had looked up at the church’s small steeple, dark against the February dusk, and uttered solemnly, “Because I could not stop for Death / He kindly stopped for me.”
    â€œWhat did you say, Mama?” Jewel asked.
    â€œIt’s a poem I read in Joe Leonard’s English book,” Eldeen had said, taking Jewel’s arm. “It was about this lady who went out for a buggy ride with this man, who turned out to be Old Mr. Death hisself. He took her past all the places she was familiar with, like the