Fred and Bessie lived at the end of a long, winding drive planted on either side with sunflowers, zinnias, and marigolds. Around their big log cabin, all kinds of flowers in every color reached for the sky or tumbled out of the beds. The air was busy with bees, yellow and blue butterflies, and little green and red hummingbirds that zipped up, down, backward, and sideways through the air like a tiny flying circus. One even came and hovered within a foot of my nose, studying me. There were other birds, too, black-capped chickadees and sparrows and bright red cardinals, to name some I knew.
Fred said that he used to farm tobacco, but it didn’t pay anymore.
“Now I just make the land beautiful for Bessie and sell flowers to the fancy flower markets. You wouldn’t believe what people’ll pay for a half-dozen sunflowers these days,” he said.
“How much?”
“Five or six dollars, retail. Bessie says folks are starved for beauty.”
“Huh.” I’d never thought how a person might be hungry for beauty.
“Mostly the flowers give her something to look at. It’s hard having to stay in bed.”
“Henry can’t fix her?” I asked.
“Not all the way. She wouldn’t even consider the heart transplant he recommended.”
“I bet he could do it.”
“He offered, but that wasn’t the point. Bessie believes a body’s beating heart makes that person who they are, that if they took out her heart she wouldn’t be herself anymore. She’s sure she wouldn’t recognize me without her own heart to tell her who I was. And she doesn’t even want to think what might happen if she had a stranger’s heart inside her.”
I didn’t know what to say. Bessie was an unusual thinker. Fred said, “I know that look, but there’s no reasoning with somebody who believes such things. It’s like trying to argue somebody out of believing in angels. And she believes in them, too.”
He shook his head and parked the pickup behind an old sedan that didn’t look like it had been driven in a while. A faded bumper sticker on its trunk read: Driving under the Influence of the Holy Spirit.
He saw me reading it. “That’s Bessie,” he said. “Just so you know.”
We stepped into the homiest place I’d ever seen. A tiny old woman lay propped up in the four-poster bed in the center of the living room. All around it were big overstuffed chairs with patchwork quilts and plump pillows thrown over them. Curtains in multicolored patterns hung in the windows, like something out of the story of Aladdin. Lamps made of tinted glass threw colors onto the walls, and prisms hanging from the curtain rods made little shivering rainbows everywhere. A kitchen area to one side had a big wooden table with cushiony chairs all round, and on the other side of the room a huge claw-footed bathtub peeked out from behind a beaded curtain.
I could tell the old woman in the bed had been pretty when she was young. A sparkle seemed to come from inside her. Her eyes were almond-shaped and soft brown, and she wore a tie-dyed cloth around her hair like a turban. She was sewing on a quilt that was held tight by a big wooden hoop in her lap and talking a mile a minute to a pink-faced man with wisps of white hair combed over his balding pink head. He sat hunched up in one of the big chairs, his hands resting on the crook of a cane between his legs.
“Father,” she said as her eyes lit on me, “I’m having a vision.”
“Then I’m having it too,” said the old man, turning stiffly in my direction. “I’m Father Philip.”
“Mostly known as the Padre,” Bessie added.
“I’d get up,” he said, “but I’m old and decrepit.”
“I’m Bessie, honey,” the woman told me, smiling. She set her sewing down and reached toward me with both small hands, so I couldn’t help but take them in mine.
“Zoë,” I said.
She leaned forward and pressed my cheeks in her cool palms. She smelled like cinnamon. “I prayed and prayed for God to send me a child, and you look as if you could use some holy mothering. What on earth took you so long to get here?”
“I don’t really know,” I said.
She and Father Philip looked at each other and laughed, and Fred just stood there, shaking his head. “I’ll make your tea,” he told her, moving off into the kitchen.
“You made all these quilts?” I asked, settling in a big chair.
“Every one,” she said. “Gives me something to do besides watch television and worry over the sorry state of people’s souls.”
“You let me worry about that,” said the old man.
Bessie turned to me. “The Padre’s having trouble with his sermon.”
“You’re a preacher?” I asked him.
“Apparently not,” he said. “Not a good one, anyway.”
“Our congregation’s complaining,” Bessie said. “They say he gives the same sermon every Sunday.”
“And it’s true, really,” the old man said cheerfully.
“You say exactly the same thing every week?” I asked.
“Pretty much,” he said.
Bessie stabbed her needle into the quilt. “I say he should keep right on saying it till they hear.”
“Mrs. Wilson says I’m a broken record,” said the old man, not seeming to mind the criticism one bit.
I made a face. “I met her.”
“Old cow,” Bessie agreed.
“Sounding unchristian in there,” called Fred from the kitchen.
“Oh, hush up, you old heathen,” Bessie said. “We’re speaking gospel truths.”
“So what is it you’re saying over and over?” I asked.
“That we should love God and each other,” the Padre replied matter-of-factly. “That’s the heart of the matter.”
I thought a lot could be said for his message, except the God part.
“Maybe,” I ventured, “it’s how you’re saying it. I could help you write it, except …”
“Except what?” the Padre asked.
“God’s not really my favorite subject.”
“What do you mean?” he said.
I hesitated.
“Spit it out,” Bessie said. “We speak our minds around here.”
“And then some,” Fred said, coming back with her tea and several pills on a tray. He set the tray on Bessie’s lap with a
