Pastor Guido was a local televangelist. Even though he was from New Jersey, most people liked him anyway. His wife’s people were from Metter, so that made up for it some. In fact, I think my mom’s aunt was his wife’s second cousin once removed or something like that. He had this little TV show that came on once in the morning after the local news out of Savannah and once after the late news at eleven. A Seed from the Sower, it was called. Only fifteen minutes long. It always started with some lame joke and ended with a passage from the Bible.
Pastor Guido built the garden a couple years before I was born. My father took me there every year to see the Christmas lights. At the gate they’d usually put up a huge plaster birthday cake with electric candles that said, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JESUS! Thirty-three candles. I’d count them each year. Once I asked my dad, “Shouldn’t it be one thousand nine hundred and ninety-some candles.” He said, “Shhh, these people are as serious as a heart attack.”
The gardens were about forty minutes away from my house if you walked. Half that if you rode a bike. They were pretty in a loud way, like a Hawaiian shirt. Artificially colored streams ran along fiberglass beds and splashed from cement waterfalls and fountains. The whole place was only about three acres, but it was strangely shaped and filled with trees and covered pavilions, so it seemed a lot bigger. Someone told me once that if you walked every path it was exactly eight miles. The paths were made of brick and lined with black-eyed Susans and ferns and bright purple coneflowers. No matter where you were in the park you could hear Muzak versions of famous gospel songs playing out of hidden speakers.
I chose this place to meet Logan because there were lots of hidden nooks where we could talk and not be seen. The place I had in mind was at the very end of the gardens near the road. A wrought-iron bench beside a waterfall. It was surrounded by weeping willows and plastic statues of geese. It’d take a long time to find it if you didn’t know where to look, and if you wanted to get out of the gardens fast, all you had to do was jump over a couple of bushes and you were out on Turner Street. A sign behind the bench said, PLEASE ALLOW ME TO COMFORT YOUR SOUL. I hoped Logan might do something very much like that.