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.”