Suncatchers Read Online Free PDF

Welcome to your luxurious quarters, distinguished guest, he had thought before drifting off to sleep, wrapped in borrowed blankets. Sometime early in the morning the electricity had come on. He heard a sudden low hum throughout the house and was dimly aware of a digital clock somewhere in the room insistently flashing its red numbers.
    Perry looked around Jewel’s living room and counted five colorful afghans—two folded over the back of the sofa, two draped over chairs apparently as replacement upholstery, and a small one laid across the piano bench. He was going to ask the old woman if she had made them when it occurred to him that he didn’t know her name. It wouldn’t be Blanchard since she was Jewel’s mother. And he couldn’t very well call her “Mama.”
    â€œI’m bad with names,” he said, trying not to look at her boots. “Jewel probably told me yours at the door, but I can’t remember.”
    â€œNo, she didn’t,” she said. “It’s Rafferty, Eldeen Rafferty. You can call me Eldeen.”
    â€œEldeen?”
    â€œE-L-D-E-E-N, Eldeen,” she repeated. “Not a name you hear very much, is it? We had us some real original names in our family.” She began laughing silently, shaking all over.
    â€œIs it a family name?” Perry asked. Joe Leonard had disappeared, he noticed.
    She picked up a photograph from the dozen or more on the table beside her and motioned him over. “This is me, here, and my sister Nori, N-O-R-I, and my brother Klim, K-L-I-M, and my other brother Arko, A-R-K-O. Get it? Eldeen, Nori, Klim, Arko?”
    Perry didn’t.
    She set the picture down and sighed. “Nobody ever does,” she said. “I don’t know what got into my mother naming us that way. She was a character, she was.”
    He still didn’t understand.
    â€œShe couldn’t ever do things the way everybody else did,” Eldeen said. “Not that I would of wanted her to. No, sir. She made life real interesting. See, about the names—my mama wanted to name her children after everyday things around the house to remind us of our humble beginnings, which we never would of forgot anyhow. But instead of just naming us the thing itself, she switched it around and spelled it backwards.”
    â€œOh, I see,” Perry said slowly, studying her eyes. No twinkle of mischief and she wasn’t smiling. Standing over her this way, he caught a strong whiff of Mentholatum. He noticed also for the first time that the soft down of a mustache feathered her upper lip.
    â€œEldeen, needle . . .” he said.
    â€œYes, sir.” She laughed a throaty laugh, showing teeth too perfect to be her own. “Well, like I always say, I guess I’d a heap rather be named Eldeen than Needle.” And she laughed again as she set the picture back in its place.
    Perry’s mind wheeled. He thought of other common words Eldeen’s mother could have chosen to spell backwards for names. Words like tar and mud . Could this be possible? Was this woman leading him on? Straw and rail . Hello, my name is Warts. Glad to meet you, mine is Liar. Tub and knits . He grew feverishly hot. He felt dazed trying to imagine the mother of this old woman sitting inside a little house somewhere, looking out the window, maybe writing down lists of what she saw, sounding out all the words backwards and trying them out as names for her children.
    â€œShe already had Sessalom and Eram picked out for the next names,” Eldeen said, “but then she had female problems and never could have any more babies. She was satisfied with four, though, since she never expected to have even one. She used to say she was such a ugly little girl, looks-wise that is, that people thought she’d been in some kind of a accident. But then my daddy saw her one day when he was helping his uncle build a barn in Fiona, Arkansas, when she brought out some pie and