Shot in the Heart - Mikal Gilmore [57]
Bessie waited for Frank to return from the rest room, and then waited some more. She thought: Is he lying in there, hurt or dead? She asked the man behind the counter to go and make sure her husband was okay, since he’d been gone so long. The waiter returned to say that nobody was there; that the window had been opened and it looked like somebody might have climbed out of it, and he sure hoped nobody was trying to skip out on their dinner tab.
Bessie paid the bill and took the boys back to the hotel. Frank wasn’t there. She waited for a while and then went over to see Fay. Her mother-in-law listened to the story of what had happened and shook her head. “Bessie,” she said, “I don’t think you should be here right now. I haven’t much money but I’ll give you what I can, and then I want you to go back to your parents’ home in Provo. That’s where Frank will look to find you. I don’t think he’ll be coming back here right away.”
“What’s going on, Fay? What is this all about?”
“I can’t tell you, Bess. I don’t know enough for sure to tell you. But I don’t think you should stick around here at the moment.”
Bessie got the boys ready to travel again. There wasn’t enough money to make it all the way to Provo. They took a bus as far as Reno, then started hitchhiking from there to Utah and saved what money they had left for food.
A couple of days later, Bessie and her sons were stuck along the highway in Humboldt County, Nevada, trying to thumb a ride. They were miles past the last place to eat and many miles from the next. They were weary, and the kids were crying from all the walking and from hunger. “Boys,” said Bessie, “I want you to kneel down with me and we’ll pray. God won’t let us down.”
The four of them knelt by the roadside, and Bessie asked for God to deliver them from their hunger and their plight. When she opened her eyes, she looked down the road and saw a man a few hundred yards away, walking their way. As he approached, my mother saw that he was about medium height, plain-faced, bald on top. Looked almost like a monk. When he got up to my family, the man held out a small paper bag to my mother. “Here, lady,” he said, “would you like some sandwiches and fruit and cupcakes? Some stranger gave them to me on the highway a while back, but I’ve already eaten and I’m not hungry.”
“Oh, thank you, mister,” said Bessie, and broke down crying. “We’ve been so hungry and so alone.”
The man placed the bag into her hands. He patted her on the shoulder and said: “Things will be all right, ma’am. You and your boys will be fine.” And then he resumed walking down the road.
Bessie took the sandwiches out of the bag and broke them into small parts for her and her sons. She looked down the road, but she could no longer see the man. She looked the other way, but he wasn’t there either. Gone.
She decided then that the man must have been one of the Three Nephites. In the Book of Mormon, there was a story about three of Jesus’s American disciples, whom he blessed with the gift of eternal life on earth, as he had once blessed John the Beloved. These men would remain on the continent forever, as witnesses to Christ’s truth, and as ministers to the needy. According to Mormon folklore, these disciples—who were known as the Three Nephites—had been transformed into human angels and still went about in the land, often appearing themselves as the homeless and hungry, in need of care. These angels blessed those Saints who helped them, admonished or cursed those who did not, and gave aid to the lost and desperate of God’s children whenever possible.
She was sure: This righteous man had