John Fischer The Catch

This is the final piece of our story of Saint Ben — the closing scenes following Ben’s death. It contains Jonathan’s great grief, but ends in delight with profound implications for us all.

Following Ben’s death, Jonathan refuses to speak to anyone. The next time he is at church, he retreats to their secret place in the bell tower and lets Grizzly know his intent to stay up there indefinitely, and Grizzly guards him religiously. Since Jonathan isn’t speaking, he and mute Grizzly are on equal terms. In fact, Grizzly’s silence is the perfect receptacle for Jonathan’s grief.

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This is a seriously abbreviated version of the Saint Ben story condensed into only three Catches. Next week I may pull a few short sections for reflection once you have a basic idea of the story. But if you get hooked (and I hope you do), we will have a couple of ways of getting the book out next week. In the meantime, one of our readers turned us on to abebooks.com that has a few inexpensive used copies, as does Amazon.

Referring to yesterday’s summary, Gene wrote me wanting to know what happened when the alarm clock went off in church. Details like that you’ll have to find in the story, except to mention that Ben got his hands on a microphone and put it up to the alarm clock which made it sound more like a fire bell than an alarm clock when it went off, sending most of the congregation jumping out of their seats, except for Homer Batts who had his hearing aid turned down so he could sleep through church.

So, here’s today’s summary:

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