Ezra

It was the slow kind of Sunday morning where everything seems to wade through cheap molasses. The kind of slow Sunday morning that calls for an oil change right after the 10:30 service just to clear the mind.

In a dirt clearing by her sunflower field, Bessie Mae’s stockinged feet were hidden by a pair of sweatpants and her face, shiny with sweat and satisfaction, were hidden beneath the belly of her old dinged-up truck.

Hidden, that is, until she heard her name through the light buzz of humidity.  

“Bessie Mae!”

She sighed, lifting herself out into the broad daylight to meet the old man that called her. Her first thought was that she wasn’t too fond of his eyes. They reminded her of her Papa’s eyes, the way they could be twenty-three or fifty-six or anything between. She knew anything could happen behind those eyes.

“I’m Ezra! You probably don’t know me. I sell antiques here in town and I’ve seen you around. I thought I’d find you outside somewhere, babying that heap of metal.”

Bessie Mae didn’t bat an eyelash at the comment. The old man chirped when he spoke, making his presence an even mix of comical and strange and unwanted.  

“I have a little gift for you!” He reached out to give her a small package wrapped in brown paper. It rattled, like it was full of little pebbles. When Bessie Mae’s hands remained firmly across her chest, Ezra set the package down at her feet.

“What makes you s’pose I need a gift? You don’t know me from a baby duck.”

Ezra didn’t flinch at her abrasive way of speech. “Oh, but I do! What if I told you that Charlie would like to speak to you? You better give him a call sometime.”

It is certain that Ezra should not have known Charlie, Bessie Mae’s estranged, smooth-talking, pretty-faced brother who could swoon a gray goose. But Bessie Mae knew something was off about the man when she first saw his eyes, so she didn’t doubt him.

“You’d call an alligator a lizard, you fool. Charlie ain’t got nothin’ to do with me and don’t want to get nothin’ started either. Been five years since I talked to him last.”

“I know that.”

“Well you low down like a snake’s belly in a wagon rut, goin’ around and tellin’ me who I need to call. Why don’t you go mind your own heaps of metal?"

He was gone without a trace of hurt feelings, leaving behind that little brown package and a thick air that only hangs around people with a deep-seated grudge.

Bessie took the little brown box from the dirt. She knew that whatever was in the box, that little box that shook like a bag of uncooked beans, was probably just as off-putting as the man. And Sunday, Bessie Mae thought, is the Lord’s day.

“And the Lord shore don’t need any more off-putting today,” she mumbled.

So she stuffed the little package inside the compartment of her truck, alongside a never-touched owner’s manual, a road atlas, and a messy assortment of letters she’d received over the years. She’d open it tomorrow, she thought. And maybe, just maybe, she’d think about calling Charlie.

Bessie Mae shut the compartment, took a long slug of iced coffee, and went about her oil change.

Fortunes

He was a leathery little man, sulking by the metro station in the 5 a.m. darkness with a deck of cards in one hand and a trembling fist in the other.

“Get your fortune told! Tarot card readings for nothing at all! No charge!” From the looks of it, the small man was a poor old soul who, even after thirty or forty years, never really managed to get two feet on the ground. And so, because she was the only awake soul in a couple square miles to respond to his squealing advertisement, Bessie Mae cut her humming truck engine and, canteen in hand, went to meet the little man.

“Who do you s’pose is gettin’ their fortune told at 5 in the mornin’, sir?  Ain't seen nothin’ but a cockroach this mornin.’”  The man ignored her question entirely.

“You want a fortune?”  he squeaked. His English was broken and his stature was bent.

“If you promise me to quit all that hootin’ and hollerin,’ I do.” With that, the leathery little man shuffled his deck of cards and began dealing them on the sidewalk at his feet.

“I’m so sorry,” he squeaked, leaning down to squint at his cards through quarter-inch thick glasses. “Your family. Something very bad will happen. Three months, your heart will get broken.” He paused, staring at one of the cards intently. “Like glass, it says. Broken like glass. And you will lose money. Lots of money. Oh… you have a job? It says you will lose a job soon.” At that, the man craned his neck upwards towards Bessie Mae, mouth open wide in shock. “Very, very bad fortune.”

After a long sip from her canteen, Bessie Mae let out a good long laugh. “That don’t amount to a hill a’ beans. You plain mad if you think my heart’s goin’a break.”

“Lies, lies, stop telling lies! The cards say you will have bad future, you will! The man shielded his eyes, almost as if Bessie’s humor was physically assaulting him.

“Now I ain’t hurtin’ you, just callin’ you mad. But Jesus been good to me, sir. I’m here to be good to you.” With that, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a wadded fifty dollar bill, slipped it to the old man, and turned to walk towards her truck. With high beams on, canteen situated in the middle console, and radio preaching excitedly, Bessie Mae remembered one last thing.

From her open window, Bessie gave the man a gentle reminder, “Now don’t you forget you promised me to quit all that hootin’ and hollerin,’ sir.”

And with that, Bessie Mae continued towards her sunflower field in the stillness of the early morning.

Sunflowers

It was midday and the air hung damp as a wash rag.

The humidity was kinder to the sunflowers than it was to Bessie Mae’s hair, which curled in a frizzy halo around her head.  Armed with rusty scissors and a spool of twine, she crouched in the middle of the sunflower field on her hands and knees, cutting the brightest flowers to spruce up Sunday's altar. Four stalks in, a shriek split the soggy air.

The cry came from a woman tottering down the street towards her, eyes wide and hair flying in a tight dress and steep heels.  

“Fragile folk,” her mother would call people like the crazed woman. The ones who tiptoed around manure and flinched at the sight of grease.  “You’s born with fightin’ hands, Bessie. Them fragile folks wasn’t. Sometimes you gotta fight for ‘em.”

And with that in mind, Bessie Mae introduced herself with a polite suggestion, “You mad as a hatter, ma’am, but you’d run faster without those heels.” Bessie Mae nodded at the woman’s feet.

The woman heard the comment, shrieked again, then stopped to pant like a sick dog at the edge of the field. Bessie stood with scissors in one hand, bouquet in another, waiting for a response. None came.

“You need som’thin’, miss? How ‘bout some barbecue? Maybe a little Jesus?”

That got the woman’s eyes flashing. “My name” she spit, “is not miss, it’s Penelope. And I don’t need Jesus, thank you, when there is a dinosaur chasing me.”

And that’s when a wide-eyed ostrich came waddling down Willow Lane, clicking loudly on the wet pavement.

“Ma’am, that’s an ostrich. Not a dinosaur. And frankly, I don’t think he gives one holler about you. Just stand still for once.”

Penelope did not flinch, her heels rooted solidly in the soft dirt. Just as Bessie Mae predicted, the bird didn’t give a holler about Penelope, humming loudly past the woman’s frightened stance.

“You might not believe me, miss, but bein’ chased by a human’s a whole lot scarier ‘en  bein’ chased by a bird.”

Frozen silence.

When the woman still had not moved after a full three minutes of silence, Bessie Mae offered her a freshly cut sunflower, some sugar from her truck console, or a ride to Mikey’s barbecue, all of which got flatly rejected.

And so the only thing left for Bessie Mae to offer were kind parting words, “Mad as a hatter and dumb as a brick. And Lord bless your heart for that.”

The In Between

The day started with the lonely strains of 5 a.m. FM radio. Static. An aggravated preacher. An auto-tuned remix of a new pop hit. More static. The edges of night, black as Bessie Mae’s own complexion, black as the canteen of coffee in the console beside her, sifted through her truck’s high beams.

She pulled into the closed gas station, accompanied only by the gurgling engine of a cop car at the south end of the lot.  She’d come back in full light to fill up the tank, maybe buy a couple more packs of sugar. But for these few hours, the empty town was hers to wander.

“Excuse me miss,  you know it’s about five in the morning and this station doesn’t open for another couple hours? You should head back home. ” The officer was a small, stringy creature, brimming with disapproval.

“I am full aware of the time, sir. Though I ‘spose it’s ‘bout half past by now.” She didn’t wait for a reply, grabbing the canteen from the console and three extra packs of cane sugar from the glove box. “You should take a look at that engine, too, if you know what’s good for you.”

Maybe it was that four years on Iraqi soil make a soul a little uneasy, a little ill at ease with the security of sleep. Or maybe it was the years spent drowning in slick grease and spark plugs before dawn, working in what seemed to be the only mechanic shop in all of rural Alabama. Maybe it was the splendor of sunrises. Whatever it was, Bessie Mae hadn’t opened her eyes later than 5 a.m. since she could walk. She’d learned that those in between hours, the ones filled with dim light and shifting winds, were the only hours that felt like home.

And that is why she spent those early hours wide-eyed and wandering on the streets of that two-bit town. That morning, while the sunrise hid behind a veil of clouds and a moody layer of mist, Bessie Mae’s simple heart was content by sipping sugar-diluted caffeine and humming  strains of hymns she’d have to teach the little ones next Sunday morning:

I, the Lord of sea and sky, I have heard my people cry.

I, the Lord of wind and flame, I will tend the poor and lame.

It was walking east on Bond, about half past six, where she saw a familiar stringy silhouette bent over the hood of a cop car.

“Miss,  I told you these parts aren’t too great. You must go home.”

She paused a second. Controlled a creeping irritation with the small man. Looked into those beady little eyes. Took a glance into the matted knot of plugs in the hood of his car.

“Officer, the only parts that aren’t too great are the parts under this hood. If I weren’t walking ‘round here near 'bout this time, you wouldn’t ever get this poor engine fixed.”

He remained silent, his pointy features sharpening with an air of insecurity.

“Not like I was calling the shots or anythin’, but didn’t I tell you to check your engine? Now you leave me alone an’ I’ll have that car runnin’ in ten minutes flat. Mark my word.”