by Tamar Myers
“Why, yes, I do,” I said pleasantly. “May I speak to the reverend?”
“Did somebody die?”
“No, but this is extremely important.”
“If nobody’s actually dead—”
I could tell she was about to hang up. “The whole town is about to die.”
“What? Has there been a terrorist threat?”
“Not a terrorist threat, but a tourist threat.”
There was a moment of silence. “The reverend has asked not to be disturbed, Magdalena, unless it is an emergency. You tell me what this is all about, and I’ll decide if he needs to be wakened.”
There’s no point in pussyfooting around with a Rottweiler. Instead of a bone, I threw this one a juicy steak. “This hotel magnate is in town and he wants to—”
“Build a five-star hotel?”
I gasped. “How did you know?”
“I was raking leaves this morning when he stopped and asked me directions to your place. He’s a very nice man, don’t you think? Very handsome.”
“So is the reverend, dear.” There was no reason I should be the only one to feel guilty for having found the cunning colonel so charming.
Lodema has selective hearing. “I think that man is just what this town needs, don’t you?”
That gasp depleted the room of oxygen, leaving me temporarily light-headed. “You’re not serious!”
“Magdalena, this is a chance for us to do our Christian duty.”
“Our what?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Our witness to the heathen, of course. Here in Hernia everybody goes to some kind of church—well, except for your boyfriend, who is you-know-what.”
“You mean Jewish.”
“Whatever. Magdalena, I know you think I’m prejudiced, but I’m not. I’m just worried about his soul. Which brings me back to all the tourists this new hotel would bring. A lot of them do not belong to churches, or belong to churches of the—uh—wrong persuasion.”
“You mean Catholic now, don’t you?”
“Magdalena, you won’t find the word ‘pope’ in the Bible, you know.”
“It might be.” I will confess that I am woefully ignorant of other folks’ customs and beliefs. But—and I realize this may be terribly unchristian of me—I prefer to leave the saving of souls to the Good Lord Himself. My job, I believe, is to live a life that exemplifies love. Thist me, this is hard enough.
“Magdalena, are you quite through?”
“No, I still need to speak to your husband.”
“Well, I’m afraid that’s imposs—”
I could hear her protest while the reverend wrestled the phone from her hand. A door slammed before he got on the line.
“Sorry about that, Magdalena. You know how Lodema can be. But then, we all have our crosses to bear, don’t we?”
“Amen to that. Look, Reverend, did she tell you about this Kentucky colonel who thinks Hernia is a living museum, and who wants to capitalize on that fact?”
“No.”
I offered up a silent prayer of thanksgiving before giving Reverend Schrock my spin on the story. He didn’t once interrupt me.
“So,” I said, “you can see how this will forever alter our peaceful little community, and that’s why I want to hold a town meeting, and our church is the best place I can think of.”
“I agree.”
“What?” There hadn’t been a second of hesitation.
“Do you want to give me a list of names, Magdalena? I could start calling right now—or do you think I should wait until morning?”
“Uh—”
He laughed. “Or have you already called everyone and told them the meeting is at the church?”
“Guilty,” I wailed. “I’m sorry, I really am.”
“Don’t be. You did the right thing. Now get some sleep. I have a feeling you and I are both going to need to be of sound mind.”
I hung up, as my pastor directed, but a sound mind for moi—well, that was simply out of the question.
If there is no rest for the wicked, as Mama used to say, then I must have been very bad when I was a little girl. I mean, I don’t remember being particularly naughty in my adult years. Even as a teenager I was the model of Mennonite moderation.
At any rate, because the colonel had rented my entire top floor, Alison had been moved downstairs and into my room. When I got into bed I found her on my side. Since I generally sleep alone—definitely a mixed blessing—both sides of the bed were mine. To find the urchin sprawled across my entire space, reading a supermarket tabloid, was at the least unsettling.
“'Ey to draw your gangly frame in a bit, dear,” I said kindly. “You’re lying about like a canister of spilled pick-up-sticks.”
She scooted to the right three inches. “Hey, Mom, did ya know that most of them Hollywood movie stars are really aliens from outer space?”
“Doesn’t surprise me a bit.” I love the fact the girl calls me Mom. Odds are she is the only child who ever will. Even if Gabe and I married tomorrow, I would be unlikely to bear a child. There are but a handful of authentic Chinese restaurants that can serve eggs older than mine.
Alison read while I removed my prayer cap and undid my practical bun. Then, like Mama had always insisted, I brushed my hair a hundred strokes. When it came time for me to change into my cozy flannel nightgown, I disappeared into the bathroom.
The second I emerged, Alison whooped, much like I do when I spot a quarter on the sidewalk.
“Hey, it’s not that bad,” I protested. The gown was as pure and white as the driven snow, just like I was before I married that bigamist Aaron. I’d been planning to wear a similar gown, only pink, on my wedding night to Gabe.
“You look like a granny,” she said. “Like in ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’ ”
I decided to humor her. “My, what a big nose I have.”
“Yeah, it is kinda big and pointed.” She paused. “But I seen worse.”
“Thanks—I think. Now scoot your cold little tootsies over so I can get into bed.”
She did so without complaining, and didn’t even complain when I said a rather lengthy prayer. There was, after all, a good deal to pray about, what with our very way of life on the line.
I turned off the light and we settled in. It was, I thought, going remarkably well. Sleep alongside the urchin actually seemed possible.
Just as I was dozing off, half thinking and half dreaming of Gabe the Babe, I heard the most annoying sound. At first I thought it was a mosquito that had gotten into the room, which didn’t seem possible, given that it was mid-September and we’d already had a hard frost. My second thought, as the noise grew louder, was that a prankster—possibly my Gabe—may have taken it into his head to mow the lawn in the dark of night.
Then it hit me. The racket was coming from the child in bed next to me. Who knew that a twelve-year-old girl could snore like a middle-aged man?
“Roll over, Alison. Your snoring’s about to bring the rafters down.”
The child didn’t budge, nor did the snoring abate.
I poked her in the ribs with an index finger. “You shake the plaster off the ceiling, dear, and you’re helping with the repairs.”
I may as well have been speaking to the dead. Drastic times call for drastic measures, so I poked her with the sharpest thing I had.
“Ow!” She popped to a sitting position. “Whatcha do, Mom? Stab me?”
“My nose doesn’t feel too good either.”
“So why’d ya do it?”
“You were snoring like a banshee. Be a dear, and roll over, will you?”
“No problemo.” She turned on her side. “Hey, Mom, now that we’re both awake and all, can I ask ya something?”
“Sure.” Anything to shut her up so I could get back to sleep before the Babester inserted himself into someone else’s dream.
“Well, I was thinking,” she said, “that I wouldn’t mind it too much if you drove Jimmy and me on our date, on account his mom’s
gotta work Saturday night and they only got one car.”
The child may as well have dumped a bucket of ice down my flannel nightie. “Date?”
“ ’Course we wouldn’t expect ya to hang around the whole time. Ya’d get bored anyway, right? Hey, I got it! Why don’tcha just let Jimmy borrow your car? Then everything would be cool.”
“Jimmy can drive?”
“Of course. He’s seventeen, Mom. What do ya expect?”
“To wake up and find this is all a bad dream.”
“So you’re okay with that, right?”
“In a pig’s ear. Let me get this straight. Are you trying to tell me, dear, that you want to date a seventeen-year-old? And what’s more, you want me to be your chauffeur?”
“Hey, Mom, ya got a hearing problem, or what?”
I switched on the light. “Definitely what. I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation. In the first place, twelve is too young to date—and a sixteen-year-old? Does his mama know about this?”
Her eyes narrowed as her lips protruded. “He’s seventeen, not sixteen.”
“And that makes it better?”
“He’s a senior, Mom. How sweet is that?”
Words seldom fail me. This time was no exception. “What kind of high school senior would date a seventh grader? A warped one, that’s what. One who wants to take advantage of her.”
Alison’s face turned the color of my nightie. “Jimmy loves me!”
“Loves?” This was the first I’d even heard of this fledgling romance, and already the L word was being thrown around.
“Loves, likes. It’s the same thing, ain’t it?”
“One likes pizza, dear, but—”
“You’re just jealous!”
“Me? Of what?” I was genuinely mystified, because even Alison finds Gabe attractive. For an “old man.”
“ ’Cause you didn’t have a boyfriend when you were my age.”
That was certainly true. Skaggy Maggy, the less charitable called me. The memory of that still stung, but I was not jealous of a twelve-year-old’s boyfriend.
“I am not jealous, dear. And what I said goes. You are not dating, and you certainly are not dating a seventeen-year-old.”
“Man, that’s so unfair.” Her face went from regular-nightie white to wedding night pink. “Jimmy is the only man I’ll ever love. How dare you keep us apart?”
“There will be others, dear. Trust me.”
“I hate you!”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me! I hate you, hate you, hate you. I wish I’d never come here.”
“Alison!” I didn’t know what else to say. Even the crustiest curmudgeon can be cut to the quick.
“Well, I do hate you. And your nightgown sucks.”
I turned out the light. For this I gave up my beloved kitty? Little Freni might have puked in my shoes and shredded my drapes, but she had never shredded my soul. Who needed this? And from the stories I heard from friends with teenage children, it only got worse. Maybe I should rethink this whole custody thing before I got into it even deeper. But with a heart full of hurt, it was hard to think.
Perhaps in the morning I would have a clearer head. If Alison really hated living with me, maybe it was best she return to Minnesota and the ampler bosom of her real mother. But that wouldn’t be the case, would it? The judge up there had made it clear; either the girl stayed with me, under my strict supervision, or it was off to reform school for her.
Alison, who’d made her painful point, went straight back to sawing wood. I, on the other hand, tossed and turned all night. If I’d had a load of dirty laundry in bed with me, instead of a snoring girl, I might have gotten something done.
As it was, I crawled out of bed the next morning with eyes like unlanced boils, and a headache the size of Montana. I’ve had days that started better.
4
A fretting, flailing, frantic Freni is a fearsome thing. When I entered the kitchen that morning, preceded by my headache, my elderly kinswoman was on me like white on rice.
“Ach!” she squawked. “Liquor! Liquor!”
My first impression was that a very large parrot, or maybe a clever crow, had been released in the kitchen. Finding only a flapping Freni, and Anne Thrope, I breathed a sigh of relief. Bird claws can wreak havoc on even the most tightly pinned bun.
“It’s only champagne,” Anne muttered through scarlet lips.
Now I understood Freni’s agitation. My hackles were hiked as well.
“I told the colonel he had to leave his wine and stuff in the car. He should be grateful I didn’t make him pour it out.”
“But Colonel Custard always has champagne with his eggs Benedict.”
“Not in this house, he doesn’t.”
In a move meant to challenge me, Anne poured some of the bubbly brew into a tall, elegant glass. She set the liquid sin on a breakfast tray and smirked.
“Get rid of that stuff now,” I said. Whenever Mama used that tone on me, I moved so fast I flirted with time travel.
“Make me,” Anne said.
As long it was my house, there was no need to make her do anything—not when I could do it myself. I strode over to the kitchen table and snatched the vile beverage from the tray. With only a second’s hesitation I dumped the champagne into the sink. I had to taste it first, you see, to make sure it really was champagne, and I wasn’t just getting my chain yanked. Trust me, it was the real McCoy.
Anne bypassed the daggers and shot me butcher knives. “The colonel is going to be angry.”
“Serve him some apple juice. I doubt if he’ll know the difference.” To test my theory I drained the few drops left in the bottom of the glass. So there was a slight difference, but still, the color was almost identical.
“You serve him the apple juice,” Anne said with a toss of her head. For a supposedly accomplished chef, she was acting like a teenager.
I called her bluff. “I’d be happy to take the tray up to him. I have some news I need to deliver along with it, anyway.”
“Uh—you can’t go upstairs.”
“Says who?”
“The colonel rented the entire upstairs floor, remember?”
“Indeed, I do. But this is my inn, and I go where I like. Besides, someone has to clean the rooms.”
“Ivan will do that.”
Never look a gift horse in the mouth, even one with lips like cherries. I don’t mind stripping beds, but cleaning toilets is the pits, as my sister Susannah would say. Sometimes I long for the days when all we had was an outhouse. It was a six-seater, the largest outdoor commode in the county. Papa’s theory was that the family that sits together—but I digress.
“Then summon His Majesty to the dining room, so that I might serve him his morning repast.”
She sauntered off while Freni fumed. As for yours truly—well, there is no use sighing over spilled champagne, not as long as I wanted to remain a Mennonite. I dumped the remainder down the sink.
Freni poked me with a finger the size and shape of a prune. “Good thing I stopped her, Magdalena, yah?”
“Indeed.”
“So, you going to give these Englishers the ho-hum, right?”
“You mean heave-ho, dear.” As I mentioned before, Freni’s mother language is Pennsylvania Dutch, a dialect of High German. As is the custom of the Amish, she refers to anyone other than an Amish person as English, even if said person is straight off the plane from China. After all, Freni’s ancestors, like mine, arrived in this country almost three hundred years ago, when the English were the majority of white settlers.
“So, you will throw them out?”
“No can do. They’re registered guests.”
“But they broke the rules, yah? With this liquor.”
“Strictly speaking, I don’t think champagne qualifies as liquor—although of course it’s still not allowed.”
“Ach, Magdalena, this is no time for word games. This man wants to ruin Hernia. Are you just g
oing to sit and fiddle your thumbs while Nero burns?”
“Absolutely not, dear. He’ll get his comeuppance. In fact, tonight the colonel and his crew are going to hit the road.”
“Ach! You will make for them a car accident?”
“Don’t be silly, dear. That would be against the law. No, I’ve got something quite legal up my sleeve.” Freni’s eyes glittered behind lenses as thick as the bottoms of Coke bottles—well, back in the day when they were made of glass. “What is it, Magdalena?”
“Why don’t you come and see for yourself? Do you and Mose have plans for tonight?”
“Mose?”
“Your husband, dear. Fifty-five years, isn’t it?”
“Fifty-three. Yah, my Mose and I come. What time do you want we should be here?”
“Not here. Seven thirty at Beechy Grove Mennonite Church.”
“Ach!” Although we are cousins, and my religion gave birth to hers, Freni has rarely visited my church. The last time, I believe, was for my parents’ funeral.
“It’s not a service, dear. It’s a town meeting. All of Hernia will be there. In fact, go home right now and start telling your friends. Tell everyone you know.”
Freni frowned. “At your church, Magdalena, do you have graven idioms?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Like the Catholics.”
“Ah, images! No, dear. No statues of any kind. Unless you count Wilbur Neubrander, who hasn’t cracked a smile in forty years.”
“Always the jokes, Magdalena.” But the frown had fled, and I could tell she was getting excited about the evening’s event. Good entertainment is hard to come by in Hernia.
The colonel’s eyes flashed under neatly trimmed brows. As displeased as we were with each other, there was still enough electricity passing between us to power a small generator. Later, in the privacy of my room, I would slap my own face for having even entertained lascivious thoughts about the man who planned to destroy our town. And me an engaged woman!
“Miss Yoder, I still don’t see how any of this is your business.”