Because hirsute honey lovers have raided their hives since the dawn of creation, bees hate hairy creatures, and the preacher’s face was covered with hair.
The sign on his car read, “The Most High Right Reverend Doctor Thaddeus Isaiah Sichensich, Thunderbolt Of The Deep South,” but we just called him Brother Love. His Sunday morning singing and sermonizing radio show, “Don’t Let The Devil Ride,” was more entertaining than enrapturing, and we obliged him when he solicited donations.
He wore white suits, bow ties, stacked heel shoes and wide straw hats, and the pewter cross swinging from his neck inscribed an arc just below the scraggly ends of his Old Father Time beard.
I tended my honeybees early, and the sun was a blood-red egg yolk on the horizon when I saw the pious man of the cloth wheeling his long white Lincoln down the driveway.
“Mornin’, Brother Love,” I said, smoking a hive before extracting honey. “I sho’ enjoyed yo’ program Sunday.”
“Bless you, my child, bless you,” he said. Among our sometimes shepherd’s ceaseless salutations were such beatific benefactions as “bless you,” “praise the Lord,” and “amen, brother.” “Hell’s fire” was as far as he went in the other direction, but what happened that day demonstrated his thorough knowledge of vernacular likely to be evoked by that fire.
“Harvesting honey, I see,” he said, bending to look as I lifted the hive’s top. “One of our Maker’s bountiful blessings,” he rhapsodized. “Sho’ hope you’ll give me a jar.”
Which I’d planned to do ... until I noticed countless squadrons of bees gathering in attack formation, wings vibrating, humming in higher and higher octaves, menacingly drawing themselves up to their fullest extent, as they eyed his holiness’ hirsuteness.
“Heavens!” the preacher shrieked, combing bony fingers through scraggly strands. “I believe one of those little fellows is in my beard! Lawdy mercy! Bunch of ’em’s in my beard, down my shirt, up my britches legs, ooh, ow, #*#*#*#*#*!”
The volley of vituperative, venomous vehemence he spewed while slapping and streaking toward his car, bee-baubled beard billowing behind, definitely earned him no merits from his Maker that day.
Off he flew, cursing and praying simultaneously. The prayers went unanswered as his swarming, buzzing passengers gave their last full measure in Kamikaze suicide stings. Suddenly, the door flew open, and Reverend and ride parted ways. Across a cotton field he sprinted as the car eased off in a ditch.
“Brother Love, I’m sorry about those bees stinging you,” I said, after pulling the Lincoln back on the road, “Here’s something that’ll make you feel better.” I held out a jar of fresh honey.
Sopping with sweat, eyeing his ruined shoes and clothes disgustedly, and fingering the swollen nodules adorning his face, he said, “No, thanks. If I ever wander the wilderness forty years, surviving on honey and locusts like John the Baptist, I’ll just survive on locusts.”
From then on, when he visited, I didn’t have to say, “Beware bees, bearded brother.”
Jimmy Reed is an Oxford, Mississippi resident, Ole Miss and Delta State University alumnus, Vietnam Era Army Veteran, former Mississippi Delta cotton farmer and ginner, author, and retired college teacher.
Other books by Jimmy Reed include The Jaybird Tales.
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