Between a Wok and a Hard Place

by Tamar Myers

  Drop by tablespoonfuls on to a hot, greased griddle or frying pan. Flatten with a spatula. Fry until nicely brown on both sides, turning carefully. Serve with a dollop of sour cream.

  Makes four servings.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I raced back to the car, madder than a hen at an Easter egg hunt. Terry Slock was not lying down on the seat, napping, like I’d hoped. The car was indeed empty. I spun around in all directions looking for him, but he was nowhere to be seen. My head resumed throbbing.

  Then I heard it, splashing against the trunk of the sugar maple.

  “Slock!” I hissed.

  A moment later he came out from cover sheepishly. “I had to whiz.”

  “Behind a tree! Get back into that car,” I ordered, “or you’ll be walking back to the inn. That bear will be mighty hungry by then if he hasn’t found anything else to eat.”

  Terry was obedient, but not humbled. He was certainly not trustworthy. If only I had a pair of handcuffs I could lock him to the wheel. But oh, no—stingy, stubborn Melvin had not seen fit to give me any of the paraphernalia that went with my job. Yet if memory served me right, the last time he and Susannah were dating, he gave her a brand-new pair. She must have used them a lot, too, because when I saw the cuffs a few weeks ago, dangling from her purse, they were a bit scuffed. Who knew my sister had a flair for law enforcement?

  I trudged back up the lane to the house and knocked on the door. I knocked softly at first, in deference to my headache, but when no one answered I pounded with my fist. As long as I was going to have a headache, Annie Kauffman might as well also. Still no answer. I tried the screen door. It was hooked.

  Hot as it was, I hoofed it around to the back of the house and tried that door. It was locked as well.

  “Annie! I know you’re in there!”

  Silence.

  I peered into the relatively cool darkness of the house. Annie was no Freni. Sure, Annie had a wounded boy on her hands, but that was no excuse for the mess I saw. Dirty dishes piled up on the kitchen counter was one thing, but there were dust bunnies on the floor large enough to make a real mama rabbit proud.

  Freni would have been appalled. When not cooking, that woman is never without a feather duster in her hands. Trust me, her last movement will have nothing to do with her heart or her lungs. That feather duster will flick out one last time before falling from her lifeless fingers to the floor. From dust to dust while dusting is her personal creed.

  “You can’t not be home and have both screen doors hooked from the inside!” I yelled.

  Annie not only couldn’t, but wouldn’t, argue against that logic, and the dusty silence prevailed. I turned and just as I stepped off the porch I heard a woman’s voice. The sound was coming from the open window of a second-floor bedroom.

  I stepped back from the house and cupped my hands. “Aha! So you are home, Annie! And Samuel is, too, isn’t he?”

  No comment from the window.

  “Well, I know he is, and I know he’s been hurt—shot in the shoulder. And if you don’t get him a doctor, the wound could get infected. Especially in this hot weather. It might even develop gangrene, you know. And from there it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to amputation. Is that what you want for your son, Annie? A life with just one arm?”

  Of course Annie didn’t want that, and it was probably mean of me to suggest that she did, but when the chips are down and all else has failed, trot out the guilt. Mama would have been proud of me. We Amish and Mennonites are masters of the art—making Baptists and Jews pale by comparison—and my mother was undisputed guilt champion of Bedford County. It wasn’t until her untimely death, squished between a milk tanker and truck full of state-of-the-art running shoes, that I realized four of the Ten Commandments actually had a positive spin to them.

  Either Annie was adopted, or the bearer of a muted guilt gene, because she didn’t as much as peep in protest. That, of course, made me feel guilty. The poor woman was obviously so upset that she couldn’t even find her tongue.

  “He could always get a hook to replace his arm,” I shouted, “but the cows won’t like it at milking time!”

  Annie’s lips were sealed tighter than a clam at low tide.

  It was time to take a more drastic measure. I suppose I could have found some sharp implement in the barn and cut through the screen in the back door, but even as Melvin’s unofficial representative, that was going too far. Much better to pretend to leave, double-back, and climb up the rose trellis that reached to just below the upstairs bedroom window. After all, Annie, unlike most Amish women, had a black thumb for gardening. The climbing rosebush for which the trellis was intended had long since gone to that big compost heap in the sky, and all that remained was a thorny stump an inch in diameter.

  As I’m sure I’ve already made perfectly clear, I am not a heavy woman. I may be tall, but it’s an economy shell that covers this generous frame. So, what happened next was not my fault, but the Kauffmans’. Halfway up the latticwork ladder, it pulled loose from the house and like a giant slingshot, catapulted me through the air.

  It was my first truly airborne experience, and as such, a major disappointment. I would have much preferred the cramped seats and mediocre food my guests claim the airlines foist on them. My flight lasted only a second or two, and I did not have a smooth landing.

  However, I suppose I should be grateful that I landed on a chicken. While it must have been horrible for the bird, it cushioned my fall, and provided little Lizzie Kauffman with another drumstick for her supper. That is not to say that I walked away unscathed. One of my own drumsticks was sprained, albeit lightly, and my back felt as if it had been used as a practice ring for sumo wrestlers.

  “You don’t fool me,” I moaned, shaking my fist feebly at the furtive fugitives. “I know you’re up there”— I gasped with pain—”and I’ll be back. But for your sake, not mine! Don’t think for a moment that whoever shot Samuel in the shoulder is going to leave it like that. If you want to keep your family safe, Annie, you need the protection of the law.”

  I realize now that it was a stupid thing for me to say! Telling Annie to trust Melvin Stoltzfus with the lives of her loved ones was like asking Susannah to chaperone a slumber party for Sunday school girls. I would have been better off telling Annie to dispose of her worldly goods and flee in the general direction of Paraguay on the next available Valuejet flight out of Pittsburgh. At least then she might have respected me.

  If I hadn’t known that Annie Kauffman was a God-fearing woman who lived her faith, I might have concluded that the sound I next heard coming from the bedroom window was a snort of derision. Instead, I chalked it up to my imagination, and then, barely able to straighten my back, hobbled bravely back to my car.

  By the time I got there I was dripping with sweat. My back ached and my foot burned. Quite frankly, I was more than a little bit annoyed with Annie Kauffman, and quite possibly annoyed with myself. I certainly was in no mood to be tolerant of Terry Slock’s idiosyncrasies.

  “You slovenly slacker!” I nearly screamed when I saw him clipping his toenails, inside my car. The parings, I am disgusted to say, were scattered everywhere.

  “Huh?”

  I pointed to his bare feet, which were not even the least little bit attractive. “That should be done behind closed doors. Don’t they have manners out in Hollywood?”

  It was, of course, a rhetorical question. B.R., one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, was a guest of mine last summer. In the short week she was here, the poor innocent people of Hernia got to see more of her body than most married folks see of their spouses in a lifetime. They also got to hear words that even Susannah didn’t know, not to mention her sailor friends. Did you know that it is possible to pierce—well, never you mind. Suffice it to say it is impractical if you’re a nursing mother, which by the way B.R. was at the time.

  “Wow,” Terry said, “I didn’t think nail-trimming was such a big deal.”

  “Even filing one’s
fingernails in public is disgusting,” I said for his education.

  And I’m sure you agree. If only Edna Naffziger did. Every Sunday morning she sits in the pew directly in front of mine, shamelessly filing her nails while Reverend Schrock drones on with one of his interminable sermons. I know, that’s an awful thing to say about my minister, but it’s true. His sermons not only lack fire, they are a free (if one ignores the offering plate) substitute for melatonin.

  At any rate, each and every Sunday morning Edna and the good Reverend go about their respective business, as complacent as cud-chewing cows. At least, when the service is over, Reverend Schrock has only left behind a sea of nodding heads, whereas vain Edna has covered the pew and the floor at her feet with a coating of nail powder. This simply isn’t fair to Old Man Schwartzentruber, our custodian, who has to clean up Edna’s discarded body parts.

  “It’s more than disgusting,” I added. “It’s downright vile.”

  Terry had the temerity to grin. “I bet Mr. Yoder gets a kick out of you.”

  “That’s Mr. Miller,” I snapped, “and what he does is none of your business.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  He was still grinning, which irritated me to no end. I like people to cringe those few times I actually lose my temper.

  “Stop it this minute!”

  The smiled slowly faded.

  I swallowed enough irritation to make me gain a few pounds. “Now be a dear and drive for me. I threw my back out.”

  He grinned. “Oh, boy.”

  I gave him one of my sternest looks. “This is a brand-new car, buster. Treat it like a baby.”

  “Will do,” he said gleefully and scooted over to the driver’s seat, leaving a pile of parings behind on the floor. I made him scoot back and shake off the passenger-side mat.

  Properly chastened, his manners seemed to improve. “Shall I pick the feathers off your back, too?” he asked politely when he was done.

  We were halfway home when the storm, which must have been building up all day, broke. It was a downpour for the record books I’m sure. Papa would have called it a frog-strangler, and Mama would have blamed Papa for not having built and stocked a navigable ark.

  Visibility vanished in a matter of seconds, and even Terry, whose eyes are much younger than mine, found it impossible to see the road. Left with no alternative, he slowed to a stop, after pulling over on what we hoped was the shoulder of Zweibacher Road.

  “Man, it never rains like this in Southern California,” he said. There was admiration in his voice.

  “Ach, this is nothing,” I said proudly. “Just a little drizzle. We see this at least once a week.”

  “I want to go home,” he wailed in a little girl’s voice.

  I stared at him. “Say that again.”

  “I want to go home!”

  Terry’s lips had not moved. Either Terry was a much better ventriloquist than an actor or—I whirled. There, huddled in the backseat like a pair of lost puppies were little Lizzie and her English friend, Mary.

  Trust me, it is perfectly proper to scream when faced with a startling discovery. It was, however, very rude of the little girls to keep screaming so long, and there certainly was no excuse for Terry’s shrieks.

  Finally we all settled down enough to carry on a rudimentary conversation, albeit one punctuated by gasps and the occasional shriek from Terry.

  “What on earth are you two doing in my car?” I puffed.

  “We wanted to run away,” Lizzie sobbed.

  “Why?”

  “So the bad people don’t get us,” Mary whimpered. Then her eyes widened and her chin began to tremble. “You have an awfully big nose, Mrs. Miller. Are you a witch?”

  “Why, I never!” I huffed.

  Lizzie stopped sobbing and regarded me solemnly. “You’re a real witch? My mama says there is no such thing.”

  Mary nodded vigorously. “Oh, but there are. And there’s even a picture of this witch in my fairy-tale book. She lives in a gingerbread house and eats little children.”

  “I most certainly do not!” I huffed and puffed. “I live in a farmhouse, just like you.”

  “And she rides a broomstick,” Mary said. In a just world, her nose would have been growing faster than Pinocchio’s.

  “Cool,” Terry said.

  I glared at him.

  “Then why does she have a car?” Lizzie asked.

  “My broom is in the shop for repairs, dear,” I said, and frowned so deeply I could actually feel the furrows on my forehead meet.

  The girls screamed.

  I wish I could claim that it was my terrifying visage that prompted their outburst, but someone with a nose as long as mine cannot take risks with unnecessary lies. The truth is that Terry had parked my brand-new BMW just in front of the little bridge that spans Slave Creek and we were caught in a flash flood. It was as simple as that.

  Whereas one second all four wheels of my car were in contact with the ground, the next second we were bobbing about like a fishing cork on Miller’s Pond when the wind is high. Almost immediately we began bumping into things; young trees or saplings, I suppose. Maybe the tops of a couple of rocks. The rain was still streaming down too hard to see anything, and our collective breaths had completely fogged up the windows. Even Susannah, on her hottest dates, had never had that much privacy.

  “Do something!” I screamed at Terry. “Do you know how much this car cost?”

  Of course there was nothing he could do. The poor man was spinning the steering wheel around like a kid in a toy car, the kind you feed quarters to in front of the supermarket. My car was no more responsive.

  “We’re going to die!” the girls wailed in unison.

  “Not by the hair on my chinny chin chin,” I said resolutely.

  It was a poor choice of words, and they wailed louder.

  I began to regret that I had not stocked the car with earplugs. What good were three maps of Pennsylvania, two maps of Ohio and West Virginia, and half a roll of old, stale Certs breath mints in a floating car? Noah had at least been given sufficient warning.

  Despair and prayer go together, Mama always said, and she was absolutely right. Had my car been a luxury-size model, and my limbs not quite so long, I would have gotten down on my knees to beg for deliverance. But, the Lord hears the prayers of His faithful even when they’re securely strapped in, and in this case He chose to answer them as well. Abruptly the rain stopped. The ensuing silence was practically deafening. Unfortunately it didn’t last very long.

  “Are we dead now?” little Lizzie asked.

  “Don’t be silly,” Mary the sophisticate said. “The car’s still turning around in circles. Besides, in Heaven you have Jesus and the angels, and in Hell you have the Devil. We just have a man with stinky feet who can’t drive very well and a skinny old witch.”

  I was on the verge of asking the girl to stick out her finger so I could see if she was plump enough to eat when the spinning, like the rain, stopped abruptly. I discreetly extracted a wad of facial tissue from my less than ample bosom and wiped the foggy windshield.

  Slave Creek was no more, but Slave Lake seemed to be all around us. I wiped a spot on the passenger-side window and peered through the streaks. We were definitely surrounded by water.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “We are perched on top of a rock like Noah’s ark on Mount Ararat,” I announced. “What do we do now?”

  Terry had no tissues to extract from his bosom, and was not in possession of a handkerchief, but he had removed his T-shirt and was wiping the windows on his side of the car. His view appeared to be much the same as mine.

  “I took swimming at UCLA,” he said, and began to remove his jeans.

  “Put your clothes back on, for Heaven’s sake! There are little ones present.” Presumably Terry had the same equipment as Aaron, and if that was indeed the case, the sight of him naked would traumatize the girls for life. And there is no trusting boxer shorts, believe you me. There is no tellin
g who, or what, is going to stick its little head out that front vent.

  Terry sighed but obediently zipped up. “I was hoping you’d stop me. I flunked that swimming class.”

  “So what are we going to do?” I wailed, feeling suddenly very helpless.

  “We could roll down the window and let a dove out,” Lizzie suggested helpfully. “When he flies back with an olive branch, that’s when we know the water’s gone down all the way.

  I thanked her for the biblical tip. “Next time you stow away bring a dove with you,” I added kindly.

  “Looks like we’re screwed,” Terry said.

  I would have slapped him for that kind of talk, had he not immediately realized his error and obligingly slapped himself.

  “Witches cast spells,” Mary said thoughtfully. “Can you cast a spell, Mrs. Miller, and make the water dry up?”

  “Hocus-pocus,” I said. “Mumbo-jumbo. Jambalaya, crawfish pie, and fillet gumbo.”

  “Wow!” Mary exclaimed. “It’s working!”

  I peered out my window. If the waters were abating, they were doing so at an infinitesimal rate. I have hair-clogged drains at the inn that drain faster than that.

  Who knows how long we would have remained stranded had not Jacob Zook, a Mennonite farmer, appeared on the scene with his tractor. Jacob has the personality of a hibernating woodchuck, but he is one of the kindest men I have ever met, and is a wizard at mechanics. At some risk to both limb and tractor, Jacob managed to pull us lose from the rock and up on the slowly emerging creek bank.

  My knees were shaking when I got out of the car, and not because I had just survived a near-death experience, either. It shames me to say it, but all I could think about was the condition of my car. When I saw that it was unscratched, except for one small ding on the rear bumper, I literally threw myself on the ground and thanked the Good Lord for His mercy. Then I gently complained to my Maker about the ding on the bumper. I know, that might sound ungrateful to some, but when a car costs that much, every dent is like a stab in the heart, every ding a punch in the stomach. On the other hand, I could have lent my old car to Thelma and Louise and never noticed the difference when I got it back.