by Tamar Myers
Sure enough, when Lodema saw what I was doing, she floored it. Unfortunately for her, the pastor’s old Buick has about as much oomph as a satiated man, and I was able to maintain my distance. From what some of my guests have told me, drivers in both Carolinas would have been proud.
Lodema was livid. She turned to look at me, her face as white as a Longhorn’s breast. I could see her lips moving, but thanks to the roar of her engine, I couldn’t hear a word. How blessed, I thought, to go through life being unable to hear one’s enemies—or in Susannah’s case, a money-siphoning sister.
Finally, when I thought both she and the old car were about to blow gaskets, I dropped back and, when the gap was right, passed her with as much ease as I might have passed an Amish buggy. Of course, I couldn’t resist looking back with a gloating grin. Who knows, I may even have stuck my tongue out at her.
Perhaps it was Divine retribution but I noticed my turnoff in the nick of time. I had to do some fancy steering to get my Beamer on to Augsberger Lane in one piece. The pinging of gravel against my newly waxed finish was like a volley of stones striking my soul.
“Darn!” I said, which is as bad as I can swear. “Darn, darn, darn!”
Lodema Shrock leaned on her horn as she passed on the highway behind. No doubt the Mennonite Women’s Sewing Circle was in for a few chuckles at my expense.
Needless to say, thanks to my headache and a pockmarked car, I was not in the best of moods when I pulled into the Troyer drive. Therefore, I prayed for a Christian tongue. If the Good Lord did not see fit to give it to me—well, then it is really His fault, isn’t it?
Gertrude Troyer was on her hands and knees in her front yard weeding her dahlia bed. The Amish may be plain people, but they have an appreciation for the beauty of creation. Still, kneeling in a flower bed seemed a little too fancy to me.
She looked up suddenly, startled to see me, and for a second I thought she was going to bolt. Had she, I would have been flattered. After all, a fierce reputation is better than none. But Gertrude quickly composed herself and continued to weed as if I weren’t there.
I got out and approached her. “Your husband anywhere around?”
She pulled a dandelion out with its root intact, a feat which impressed me. “Do you see him?”
Her caginess impressed me even more. “That isn’t the question I asked, dear. Is he around?”
She refused to answer.
“Fine. I’ll find out for myself.” I trotted off in the direction of the barn.
“Miss Yoder!” She was a spry little thing and caught up with me after I’d gone only a few yards. “Miss Yoder, it is not right that you should—ach, what is the word—barge, yah? Barge into our farm. It is illegal, no?”
“No. I’m not barging into anything. I’m merely looking for a neighbor.”
She grabbed my right elbow with her dirt-stained hand. “But the barn you will not go into.”
“Says who?” I said as I started for the barn.
She grabbed my arm with both hands and tried to restrain me. She was surprisingly strong, but not nearly as devious as I. A hard kick to her shins and I was free and running.
“Jacob!” Gertrude yelled. “Jacob!” Fortunately she has a thin high voice that didn’t carry at all well.
I raced for the barn, ignoring the horse and buggy parked outside the closed main door. The horse whinnied as I approached, and it was only then that I realized Jacob must have company. Why hadn’t I noticed the horse before? Jacob, like any Amish man, would never leave a horse hitched unless he was intending to go somewhere momentarily. Besides, the buggy didn’t belong to the Troyers. Not that it mattered now. Magdalena on the warpath is as unstoppable as a German panzer, if I may be permitted to use a very unpacifist analogy.
The barn door was not locked, but it was heavy. I’ve been opening barn doors all my life, and I knew to throw my shoulder into the act. It slid open smoothly, so smoothly that I took Jacob by surprise. In fact, I caught him right in the act of taking money from another man. It looked to be an enormous amount of cash.
I gasped, not at the size of the wad—I’ve seen bigger before—but upon recognizing Jacob’s companion. It’s hard to say who was more surprised, the men or I.
Needless to say, I found my tongue first. “Benjamin Keim! What are you doing here with Jacob Troyer?”
Elam and Seth’s father looked as pale and rigid as Freni might have, had the Almighty chosen to smite her for blasphemy. His arm remained extended, his hand still clutching the cash. Only the blinking of his eyes convinced me I wasn’t looking at a statue.
As for the drop-dead gorgeous Jacob, he recovered the instant I said his name. He turned to me, just as calmly as you please, his full lips arranged in the most seductive of smiles.
“Good morning, Magdalena.” His voice was like that of a cat purring, not out of contentment, but from a need to be fed. “It is good to see you.”
“I wish I could say the same,” I snapped.
“You look upset, Magdalena. Is there anything I can do to help?”
I laughed bitterly. “Well, you could come right out and confess. That will save me oodles of time. Maybe even a few gray hairs.”
“What should I confess?”
He smiled again, and just seeing that smile made me feel a need to confess—if you know what I mean. It took all my inner strength to look at his shoes while I spoke.
“You can confess to supplying the young people in this county with drugs.”
As you well know, I don’t swear, but if I did, I’d swear that even Jacob’s shoes smiled. What’s more, the man seemed to read my mind.
“Ach, such an imagination! And what is this you say about drugs?”
“Don’t play stupid with me, buster. That’s drug money passing hands right now.”
“If you must know, Magdalena, the money Benjamin is giving me is for a horse. A plow horse. Is that not right, Benjamin?”
“Ach!”
I had no trouble looking above Benjamin Keim’s shoes. He had too much Yoder blood cruising through his veins to jump-start my hormones.
“Benjamin,” I said sternly, “at least have the decency to admit to your crime. Buying drugs for your sons is horrible enough. Don’t add a lie to your sins, it may break the camel’s back.”
His blue eyes thawed, becoming the pale watery pools I was used to. “Elam was right. You speak in riddles. What is this camel’s back?”
“Forget camels!” I shrieked. “Just admit that you are buying drugs from this creep!”
Benjamin hung his head but said nothing more.
“Well, Miss Yoder,” Jacob said smugly, “you are not so right about things as you think.”
I studied his laces. The left one had a knot.
“So straighten me out.”
“Well, from what Benjamin tells me, his sons came to him this morning and told him that you had given them uh—uh—”
“An ultimatum?”
“Yah, maybe that is the word. So now Benjamin comes to me and wants to give me this money so that I stop selling these drugs to his sons.”
I looked up, too angry to lust. “So you admit it! You do sell drugs!”
For the first time I could see that what I had once thought of as a seductive smile was nothing more than a smarmy smirk. I could stare now straight into Jacob’s eyes, and not feel the slightest quiver in my loins.
“Yah, I sell drugs,” he said almost casually. “There is much more money to be made with drugs than with farming. And do not think I keep all this money, Magdalena. I give very much to the widows’ fund, like a good Christian, yah? But the farming, I must do a little so the people do not become too suspicious.”
“Shame, shame, shame! And you call yourself a Christian!”
He blinked, and had the nerve to look crestfallen. “But I am a Christian.”
“True Christians,” I shrieked, “don’t corrupt teenagers! True Christians aren’t drug dealers.”
He shook his
once handsome head. “Ach, but I take care of these kids. I make sure that the drugs I sell them are pure.”
“And that’s Christian?”
“Perhaps you don’t understand, Miss Yoder. The world has come to Hernia. These children, they will take drugs anyway. So I protect them. I buy the drugs they want from a good source, and I myself test them.”
“Well, bully for you! Maybe we should erect a statue in your honor.”
“Ach, no!” He may have been a drug dealer, but he was still Amish enough to be horrified by the very thought of a graven image.
“That was sarcasm, dear.” I stepped confidently forward. “You know I’m going to have to turn you in.”
“But my boys,” Benjamin cried, “you will turn them in too?”
I turned from Jacob to face Benjamin and nodded reluctantly. “Yes, but I promised them that if they cooperated—which they obviously did—I’d do everything in my power to see that the law took it easy on them.”
“You have such powers, Miss Yoder?”
I smiled encouragingly at the boys’ father. “I’m not saying they won’t go unpunished, but I will make it clear to the judge that they cooperated and were instrumental in Jacob’s arrest. I’m sure some sort of plea bargaining can be arranged.”
“What is this plea bargaining?”
“Well, it’s like this,” I said, and fell flat on my face in the straw at Benjamin’s feet.
30
Lemon Crepes with
Raspberry Filling
Crepes
2 eggs
dash of salt
1 cup flour
1 1⁄2 cups milk
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1 1⁄4 grated lemon zest
Place all ingredients in a blender and mix until smooth. Drop about 2 tablespoonfuls of batter onto a hot, greased 6-inch skillet, tilting pan until batter covers the bottom. Cook one side only until brown.
Filling
1 10-ounce package frozen raspberries, thawed
2⁄3 cup wate
11⁄2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons water
Drain the raspberries and put the liquid in a saucepan with 2⁄3 cup of water and the sugar. Bring to a boil. Dissolve cornstarch in 2 tablespoons of water and add to the boiling mixture, cooking and stirring until mixture thickens. Carefully add the raspberries. Makes about 11⁄2 cups of filling. Also a great pancake topping.
31
Fortunately I can’t remember the fall, or that it was caused by Jacob hitting me on the back of the head with a pitchfork handle. The next thing I knew I was waking up in utter blackness. At least I thought I was waking up. I wasn’t sure, you see, because it occurred to me I might have died and gone to Hell.
I know that might be hard for some of you to understand, since we Mennonites, like many mainstream denominations, believe that one can pretty much be assured of salvation by repenting and believing in the saving power of Jesus’s blood, but I seemed to have done an inordinate amount of sinning in recent days. Let’s face it, I had told more lies than Pinocchio, I had lusted after a married man, I had been greedy numerous times, and if memory served me right, I might even have spoken sharply upon occasion.
Now, I read my Bible on a daily basis, and it doesn’t say a whole lot about Hell, but I know it is a place of extreme discomfort and hot as well—Hell. My environment at the moment, however, was not exceptionally hot, and while I ached all over, it felt more like having the flu than anything else. I briefly entertained the notion that, thanks to my kinship with Susannah, I’d been relegated to Presbyterian Hell. You know, Hell “Lite.” For Episcopalians, I’ve been told, Hell is having to use paper napkins at a sit-down dinner.
Of course, one can always pinch oneself to see if one’s awake, so I reached down to where my leg should have been and gave it a real hard tweak. Much to my surprise, I could feel my flesh with my fingers, but not the other way around. I might as well have been pinching a meat loaf, if you get my drift. Anyway, even though I couldn’t feel myself being pinched, I heard, quite distinctly, a low guttural moan.
Again, while I could hear the sound, I couldn’t feel myself making it. Perhaps, I thought, this was simply a characteristic of Hell. Perhaps I, the spirit, was torturing Magdalena, the body. To test this theory, I grabbed a big hunk of flesh and dug my nails in deep.
“Ouch!” I yelled in a loud deep voice, even though I hadn’t even opened my mouth.
I willed my heart not to beat through the bony walls of my chest. The Bible gives us some of the horrors of Hell, but it doesn’t necessarily list all of them.
“Mama?” I wailed. “Mama, are you here too?”
Please don’t get me wrong, I loved Mama dearly, but when I was a girl, even the thought of spending an eternity with my mother was a Hell of its own kind. To be absolutely honest, back then I often fantasized that Mama and I would end up in separate places—if you know what I mean. That isn’t to say that I was a totally selfish daughter, and consistently chose Heaven for myself in these fantasies. To the contrary, many was the time I was willing to dance with the devil, just to get Mama off my back. Rest assured that since her death—squished between the milk tanker and semitrailer loaded with Adidas shoes—I have stayed clear of these fantasies. For the most part.
“Ach, Miss Yoder, it is only you!”
“Benjamin!” I gasped. “Benjamin Keim?”
“Yah, it is me. Why do you pinch?”
“Sorry about that, dear. It was an honest mistake. You see, I thought I was dead and—well, never mind that now.” Little Freni was scrabbling about in the depths of my bosom, which settled that question once and for all. Scripture makes it very clear that animals do not have souls. If my pussy was stirring, I wasn’t dead. It’s as simple as that.
“Miss Yoder, are you still there?”
“As far as I know. But look, dear, I think you should call me Magdalena. Miss Yoder sounds awfully formal under the circumstances.”
“Magdalena,” he said slowly, as if trying my name on for size, “are you hurt?”
I frisked myself which, under the circumstances, was not at all pleasurable. “Remarkably not. But the funny thing is, this morning I woke up with a horrible headache, and now it seems to be gone. How about you?”
“Ach, my head. Young Jacob hits very hard with a shovel.”
“Is that what he did?”
“With you it was a pitchfork. The handle, yah? With me the shovel.”
“Was there a scuffle? Did you put up a fight?”
“It is not our way,” he said quietly.
“But it isn’t Jacob’s way either,” I wailed. “So what did you do, just stand there and let him whack you?”
“Ach, I am a man of peace, Magdalena. Not a jackass. I was running to my buggy, for to get help, when Jacob hit me from behind. I did not wake up until now.”
“Then how did you know it was a shovel, and not the pitchfork?”
“He had to hit me twice.” He laughed, choking on the pain. “I have a hard head, yah?”
Little Freni had not taken well to my frisking and was determined to crawl out of the safety of my bra. “Stay, girl,” I pleaded. “Stay.”
“Magdalena, who do you talk to?”
“My kitten. She wants out.”
“Ach, is this another of your riddles?”
“I wish.” One of these days I was either going to have to get the tyke declawed, or figure out another mode of transportation. “Benjamin, do you have any idea where we might be?”
“Ach, no. Do you?”
“For a second I thought I did. I thought I was in Hell.”
Benjamin’s laugh surprised me. “Ach, so funny, Magdalena. Do you see English tourists?”
“No.”
“Then this is not Hell.”
“But I don’t see anything. Do you?”
“It is as dark as the time I fell into the grain silo an
d was buried by the corn.”
“Ah, yes.” Benjamin Keim’s one claim to fame was the aforementioned incident. It made the headlines as far away as Cleveland and Newark. It even made the National Intruder—not that I read that rag, mind you. What caught the public’s interest was not the fact that an Amish farmer fell into his grain silo, but that by the time the rescue team dug the suffocating man out, he had somehow managed to become separated from his clothes.
“I did not take them off,” he said, as if reading my mind. The Amish, it seemed, were remarkably good at this.
“Whatever you say, dear.”
His ears, unused to sarcasm, didn’t hear it. “Are you afraid, Magdalena?”
“A little.”
“Just a little?”
“I’m sure I’ll be terrified at any minute, dear. It’s just that I’m still so relieved I’m not in Hell. The question remains, however. Where are we?” I felt around me with my free hand, taking care not to feel in Benjamin’s direction. I was sitting up, that much I could tell, and on a relatively smooth, hard surface. “Perhaps we’re in a cave,” I said in answer to my own question. “A deep cave. There are lots of limestone caves in the area, you know.”
“Yah, there are many caves.”
“Any on Jacob Troyer’s farm?”
“I do not know of any. But the Schrock farm is next door to Jacob’s, yah?”
“So?”
“So, Jonas Schrock has a deep cave on his farm.”
“He does? I never knew that.” I’ve always had the hankering, but not the guts, to go spelunking.