by Tamar Myers
“You’re really something,” Gabe said when I was quite through.
“Yeah, I know.”
“You’re a damn fool, that’s what you are.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You have a perfectly good life right here, being an innkeeper. Why the hell do you insist on subjecting yourself to all kinds of danger?”
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t you know you could have been killed? The murderer could still have been there someplace, hiding in the house.”
“Well, it’s not like we expected to find a corpse.”
“Yes, but you stayed there until the police came. Inside the house.”
“True, but the police were coming. We knew that. Besides, Dr. Pierce had been dead for hours.”
“How could you tell?”
“I’ve been around dead bodies before, that’s how.”
“I see. So you’re an expert, are you?”
His hand was still on my arm. I wrenched free and stood.
“Look, I don’t tell you how to lead your life. You have no business telling me how to lead mine.”
He stood as well. “I’m not trying to be controlling, if that’s what you think.”
“I didn’t say that.” But that’s exactly how I felt. It had occurred to me that the kitten snuggled next to my scrawny chest was not a considerate gift. One should not give animals as gifts without first consulting the recipient. The cuddly kitten would soon outgrow even my lingerie, and then what? If I didn’t have it declawed, it would shred my furniture. If I didn’t get it spayed, I’d find myself grandmother to dozens of little mixed breed kittens I couldn’t give away. And either I kept the poor thing outside in the elements, or I could devote a good five minutes a day sifting through a litter box and sweeping scatter. A cat was also a long-term commitment. A well-cared-for feline could live twenty years or more. I could be ready to retire well before Little Freni was ready to expire. Then what would I do? Pay expensive kenneling bills if I wanted to travel? In retrospect, Gabe’s gift was not quite the romantic gesture it had at first seemed to be.
“Well, what were you thinking right now?” Gabe demanded. “You seemed lost in space.”
“I was thinking that you should have asked before saddling me with a twenty-year responsibility.”
His face darkened. “Oh, so you want to give her back?”
I glanced down into the nether reaches of my bosom. Little Freni had fallen fast asleep, her head now on her paws. A casual observer would not even have been able to tell there was a pussy hidden somewhere beneath my clothes.
“No, I don’t want to give her back. But I do want you to pay to have her spayed.”
“Fair enough.”
“And next time, ask before giving me a pet.”
He smiled. “You’ll have to forgive me for being so impetuous and emotional. I guess it’s the writer in me.”
“You were also a cardiologist, dear. Heaven help your patients.”
“Amen to that.”
“Are you making fun of my religion?”
“Not at all. Hey, maybe I better get going before I lose any more ground today.”
I said nothing.
“Well then, good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” I said. “And thank you for the gift.” But I didn’t walk him to the door.
“Welcome to the PennDutch,” I said to Little Freni.
She purred in her sleep, while I gazed through the front door at a shrinking Gabe. He had a nice backside, I’ll say that much.
“Just as soon as I get a few loose ends tied up, we’re off to Sam Yoder’s. I suppose you’ll be needing some kitten chow. And then there’s the matter of your litter box. You do use one, don’t you? I mean, you do at least understand that a good kitty doesn’t soil her bed, right?”
“Miss Yoder!” It was a fairly faint call, coming as it was from upstairs, but I jumped nonetheless. Heaven forfend anyone should catch me talking to my dress.
“Not now, dears!” I hollered. “I’m busy!”
“Miss Yoder! Oh, Miss Yoder. We’ve been waiting on those lemonades.” It sounded like Daphne.
“And lunch!” That must have been Edwina.
“You'll find what you need in the kitchen,” I yelled pleasantly.
“But our backs!” they wailed in unison.
“Yes, dears, I’ll be back!”
I trotted off to my room, which is on the first floor at the back of the house, as far away from the open stairs as one could get. I took the phone from the lobby, so I could make my phone calls in there.
Mandilla Gindlesperger’s telephone was answered on the first ring. “Chad, is that you?”
“It most certainly is not!”
“Come on, Chad, I recognize your voice. Be you’ve been sucking on them balloons again, haven’t you? Your voice is still a little high.” The speaker was, without a doubt, a teenybopper. She popped gum when she spoke, a habit I find even more annoying than a raised toilet seat.
“This is Magdalena Yoder, young lady. I want to speak to your mother.”
“Good one, Chad. Hey, you’re not supposed to call here. If Mama finds out she’ll kill me.”
“Put your mama on the phone!” I barked.
“Funny, Chad. Look, why don’t I just meet you at our secret spot? Like in an hour, okay? I’m supposed to be washing lunch dishes right now.”
When in Rome, do like the Romans, right? When accused of being a teenage boy, act like one!
“Hey, baby, I got us a new spot to meet,” I said speaking in my lowest register. “How about in front of Yoder’s Corner Market?”
“You’re kidding! Man, that’s way cool. Since we just got busted last week for swiping smokes. Mama will never think to look for us there.”
“Yeah, but I got an even better idea. You wait for me at our usual spot, and I’ll swipe the smokes. Then if something goes wrong, we both won’t get busted.”
“Oh, man, but I hate waiting in that old church by myself.”
“Why?”
There are some conversations we are meant to have, and this was one of them. I firmly believe it was the Good Lord’s plan that I call Mandilla, and chose to dial exactly when I did.
“Why? Don’t be so ignorant, Chad. That place is haunted, and you know that. You heard that organ playing. We ran upstairs, remember? Only there was no one there.”
That had to be the First Mennonite Church on North Elm Street. That’s not my church, but a more liberal representative of my denomination, and the site of Hernia’s most famous ghost story. The story goes that the church’s first organist—the pastor’s wife— suffered a heart attack while practicing alone one Saturday afternoon. Since then there have been numerous reports of congregants, and even just casual passersby, hearing beautiful, but sad music when the church was locked and empty.
I made a few pitiful hen noises. “Hey, y’ain’t getting chicken on me, are ya?”
The teenybopper sighed. “Course not. I’ll be in the basement, like always. But I hate squeezing through that little window. And this time I’m taking a flashlight along—just in case the lights go out.”
“You do that, dear.” I spoke in my highest, clearest, most Magdalena tones.
“Hey, what the fudge?” Actually, the girl used a dirty word I would never repeat. “You ain’t Chad, are you?”
“I’m afraid not, dear. I’m Magdalena Yoder, like I said.”
“Oh, man! Busted already and I ain’t even left the house!”
“Well, you win some, I guess, and you lose some. You just lost big time, dear, but there are a couple of things you can do to make it easier on yourself.”
“Yeah? Name them!”
Twenty-four
“You can tell on yourself.”
“Sugar!” she said—well, not that word either, but you get my drift. “Why the hell would I want to do that?”
“Because that way you get to choose exactly how and when. If I tell her, it will be within
the next couple of minutes, and I don’t like little girls who sneak around and lie to their parents. In fact, I don’t particularly like little girls at all.”
“I ain’t a little girl!”
“Well, I’m not too fond of most big girls either. So, are you going to do it?”
“Man, that would be ratting out Chad.”
“That may well be, but speaking of rats, I’m a bigger rat than you or Chad put together. You don’t want to mess with me.”
Gum cracked, but she said nothing.
"Well?”
“Okay, but I don’t have to like it!”
“That is for sure. But you will do it, and before you see Chad again. And I want your mama to call me to let me know that she knows.”
“Oh, man!” There was series of staccato gum pops. “Is that the two things?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You said there was a couple of things I had to do to make it easier.”
“Right. But that was just one thing. The second thing is, I want you to put your mother on the phone.”
“But you said you wouldn’t tell!” The teenybopper, whose name I still didn’t know, had all but broken my eardrum. Little Freni woke, mewed once, and then mercifully went back to sleep. It’s hard to say who had more powerful lungs, the kitten or the teenybopper. “What was that noise?” the teenybopper demanded.
“Never you mind. Now, about your mama ... I won’t tell her. This is a different matter altogether. Now get her on the phone.”
“Oh, man!”
"Now!”
“Okay, okay. You don’t have to get so bent out of shape. Geez!”
The receiver on her end smacked against something and I jerked it away from my ear. Then I waited. During the ensuing silence Hillary dumped Bill and the national debt all but disappeared. If Mandilla didn’t get on the line soon, Little Freni was going to need that litter box before I could get to the store. Finally, when I had all but despaired of speaking to the woman, and had in fact organized a gray hair- counting contest with several of myselves in front of the bedroom mirror, Mandilla got on the line.
“Debbie told me everything,” were the first words out of her mouth.
“Come again?”
“She told me about her meetings with Chad in the church basement. And stealing the cigarettes. I didn’t know any of that was happening. Honest.”
“I believe you,” I said. “But that’s really not why I called.”
“This whole time I thought she was spending her days at her sister’s house. I want you to know, Magdalena, that I’m not going to let her get away with it. I’m going to give her what for.”
“At least she told you, dear. I hope you give her credit for that.”
“We’re a good Christian family, Magdalena. I won’t tolerate what she and Chad were doing in that church.” She sighed. “Although I guess I should be grateful they stole condoms along with the cigarettes.”
“Spare me the details, dear. I really did call about another matter.”
“Oh?” She seemed to be in a fog.
“It’s about that wonderful thing you’re doing, giving your next baby to God. I’ve been thinking a lot about that. Just how does one go about doing that?”
She gasped. “Oh, Magdalena, you’re not—why, you’re not even married.”
“I’m not pregnant,” I wailed. “But what if I was?”
“Don’t be ridiculous! The Lord despises unwed mothers.”
“What about the Virgin Mary?”
“And now you blaspheme!”
I sighed. There is no arguing theology with a woman whose church has thirty-two words in its name.
“Okay, so it isn’t me. I just wanted to know how you plan to go about it. Will you just leave the baby at church?”
“Of course not!”
“Well, then how? Please share.”
Mandilla’s sigh blew candles out as far away as Bedford. “All right. But only because you did me a favor by telling me what my Debbie was up to. You see, it’s like this. The day I learned I was pregnant with this one, I started praying mightily. Levi doesn't make that much money working as dishwasher at the Sausage Barn and—”
“Your husband works at the Sausage Barn?”
“Are you being judgmental, Magdalena?”
“Absolutely not, dear.” Sometimes it is okay to bend the truth so as not to hurt the feelings of others. It may not be in the Bible, but if the most powerful man in the world does it, can it be so bad?
“Because who are you to talk? You think just because you charge fancy prices, you’re not still in the service industry? If that’s the case, I have news for you—you are! My Levi buses tables and washes dishes, but he doesn't clean toilets. Just because Brad Pitt pooped in your pot doesn’t make your toilet any less dirty.”
She had a point there. “I take it that what you were trying to say is that the Sausage Barn and Miller’s Feed Store, even together, don’t pay a livable wage.”
“Exactly. And although most of our kids are old enough to have some kind of a job, well—Hernia doesn’t exactly abound with opportunities.” She paused to let her point sink in.
I swallowed. The summer before a Gindlesperger boy had stopped by the PennDutch asking for odd jobs, but I’d turned him down. Yes, I know it’s unfair to discriminate against someone just because his mother sat on my lunch bag thirty years earlier, but there you have it. Contrary to any rumors you may have heard, I am far from perfect.
“Go on, dear. So you prayed for financial assistance, right?”
“Yes. ‘Ask and ye shall receive’—Matthew seven, verse seven. So I asked. I was expecting maybe Levi would get a raise, but like the Bible says, the Lord works in mysterious ways.”
“How so in this case?”
“Well, Levi was talking to one of the customers—one he’d never seen before—and suddenly this guy says—‘Brother, the Lord hath sent me to you. The child in thy wife’s womb hath been claimed by Jehovah.’ ”
“Get out of town!”
“Magdalena, do you want to hear this or not?”
“I do, I do!”
“Then hold thy tongue,” she said, lapsing into Biblese, and then just as quickly out again. “So anyway, you can imagine that poor Levi was freaked out by all of this, but the customer says, ‘Fear not, all shall be well. Thy seed shall prosper. Verily, the fruit of Mandilla’s womb shall stand before the nations, and all the nations of the earth shall bow before him like sheaves of wheat.’ ”
I bit my tongue and slapped both cheeks, so as not to say anything sarcastic. It was a lost cause.
“Really, dear, this is too—”
“Good to be true? But such are the ways of Jehovah.” She paused. “Say hallelujah.”
“What?”
“Say hallelujah.”
“Hallelujah!”
“Was that a sarcastic hallelujah?”
“Heavens no. Please continue, dear.”
“Okay. Now, where was I?”
“The United Nations was going to bow before you like barley loaves.”
“That was wheat sheaves. But, yes. And then this messenger went on to tell Levi that we were to name the child Samuel—because of course it is to be a boy—and that the Lord wants us to turn him over as soon as possible after birth.” She sighed deeply. “Apparently, this is so there will be no chance for us to taint Samuel with the ways of the world. Magdalena, do you think Levi and I would taint the child?”
“Ours is not to question why, ours is but to do and die,” I said, mangling a line from Charge of the Light Brigade, and immediately regretting it.
“Exactly. And it’s a great honor to have the Lord God Jehovah request the fruit of one’s loom.”
“You mean loins, don’t you, dear?”
“Magdalena, must you always interrupt?”
“Pretty much. That seems to be my nature. So tell me, dear, what do you do once little Samuel is born? Drop him off at the Sausage Barn?”
“Is that legal?”
“Magdalena, don’t ever underestimate the power of the Almighty. The messenger just happens to be a lawyer.”
“Surprise!”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, dear. I was just surprised that angels went to law school. I didn’t know there were sharks in heaven.” Pigs maybe, but surely not sharks.
“I didn’t say that messenger was an angel—although—and this gives me the goose bumps just to think it—maybe he is.”
“So, it’s a he?”
“Of course, Magdalena!”
My heart raced. “Was he a short little man with white hair and thick glasses? Oh, and a handlebar mustache?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. He was comely, like a proper angel. You really should read your Bible more.”
“I’ll take that under advisement. Did he have a name?”
“Of course. His name was Donald.”
“Donald? As in duck?”
“Jehovah will not abide mocking, Magdalena. It says so in that unread Bible of yours.”
“I read it every day! And there’s nothing in the Bible about an angel named Donald.”
“Well, perhaps Donald is the Hebrew form.”
I very much doubted that. “Well, at any rate, you really believe this customer was sent from God?” “It’s clear, Magdalena. He is the answer to all our prayers. Not only will our little Samuel grow up to serve the Lord—which is an honor and a blessing just in itself, but the Lord is blessing us financially as well.”
“How so?”
“The Lord has seen fit to give us ten thousand dollars for the privilege of giving back to Him what was His to begin with.”
“God pays for babies?”
“Magdalena, you are a woman of such little faith.”
“I most certainly am not!” I have a great deal of faith—well, okay, a great deal of doubt too. According to Reverend Schrock, we all do. It’s just I don’t think the Good Lord goes around bankrolling baby adoptions.
“You know, Magdalena, you’re welcome to come with me to my church.”
“The First and Only True Church of the One and Only Living God of the Tabernacle of the Supreme
Holiness and Healing and Keeper of the Consecrated Righteousness of the Eternal Fire of Jehovah?” I said it in one breath.