by Tamar Myers
“I don’t do laundry,” Tiny said. “I get Peewee to do it.”
“Well, I’ll be dippety-doodled! How on earth do you get a man into the laundry room?”
“Look at me, Miss Yoder; I could have any man I want. Why would I be with someone like Peewee unless there were some perks—you know, special services?”
“Hop in,” I said, “and start praying that I don’t send you for a short spin.”
The Good Lord knows that I was sorely tempted to do just that. But I behaved. I merely shoved the folding table up against the dryer, jamming it against the lid in such a way that Tiny would be unable to open it by herself.
Then I did exactly what I’d begged Melvin and Tiny not to do to me. I made myself go down into the cellar.
32
I wasn’t lying about the spiders. They’re everywhere in the cellar. Fortunately most of them are fairly benign, and since I would walk through fire—slowly—if it meant putting Melvin behind bars forever, so what if they weren’t?
By the way, I feel compelled to distinguish fire walking from mere coal walking. The latter, in my not so humble opinion, is a gimmick. I shall herewith attempt to elucidate. Hot coals (aka embers), are by their nature covered in a layer of ash. A person walking quickly across a bed of coals is protected by that ash, and will not get his feet burned. To perform this feat, one does not need to be in a trance or be the object of a miracle. One need only walk quickly.
Contact with actual flames, on the other hand, will certainly result in injury. Although it may appear that I have digressed, I assure you that this is not the case. I am stating, unequivocally, that I would endure great pain, if it meant that the Murdering Mantis, that the Conniving Chameleon, was no longer a threat to humanity and to my family in particular.
If this were not the case, if my resolve had not been so strong, believe me, I would never have dared tug open the little round metal door on the north side of the cellar and squeezed blindly into it, like a bottlebrush into an opaque rose vase. Once I was fully inside, there was barely enough room for me to wiggle my way forward, with my arms stretched out in front of me. I felt like a giant earthworm—Well, I don’t mean that literally, having seldom, if ever, been a giant earthworm.
This tunnel, incidentally, was constructed at the height of the French and Indian War, shortly after my Hochstetler ancestors were taken captive by the Delaware Indians in eastern Pennsylvania. It was intended solely as an escape route that led from a log cabin on this site to the nearby woods. Comfort of the escapees was not taken into consideration.
At any rate, as I have many times stated, adrenaline is a wonderful thing. Oh that it were available for purchase in pill or liquid form. Because I was focused on my destination, and because of what I intended to do when I reached it, I didn’t feel the many cuts and abrasions I collected along the way, nor did I particularly notice the myriad insects I squashed. Some insects, of course, bit me, as did some spiders, but I honestly wasn’t aware of this until long afterward.
Nowadays the far end of the tunnel surfaces smack-dab in the middle of my henhouse. As I understand it, the tunnel has been closed and reopened several times in its long history, but Papa was the last person to reopen it, and that was during the Bay of Pigs invasion.
In the event of a nuclear war, we were to take refuge in the root cellar. Should the house tumble down, or the surrounding trees topple, and we were trapped inside, we could always escape via the tunnel and the henhouse. Frankly, it wasn’t such a bad idea then, and given the way things have been going on the international stage since then—well, I’ve not been motivated to spend the time or money to block up the tunnel.
The henhouse exit is a simple wooden trapdoor that blends in nicely with the floor, and under a layer of straw is virtually unnoticeable. Thus it was that when I finally flung open the door and hoisted myself up into the broad light of day, I caused quite a bit of commotion.
For one thing, the hens that had been skulking about, waiting for a chance to lay their eggs, became highly emotional. That is to say, each clucking chicken had been instantly transformed into a five-pound ball of airborne feathers and earsplitting cackles. Then there was the not so small matter of Peewee Timms and Barbie Nyle, who had unwisely chosen the henhouse as the location for their romantic rendezvous—No, I take that back. This was adultery, pure and simple.
What a disappointment that was! Barbie had always treated me nicely, and although I don’t know why, I’d had this feeling that maybe Peewee was secretly Jewish. Well, Peewee, although aptly named, was certainly not Jewish. Still, who was I to judge, and why should I even entertain the idea? After all, the zillion mites and fleas resident in my henhouse were going to do the judging for me, although most of the misery would come a little later, once Barbie and Peewee started scratching.
Of course I was shocked to discover two naked people fornicating amidst bits of straw and chicken poo, but I was nowhere near as shocked as they were to see me suddenly rising from the floor, covered as I was in slime and squashed spiders. They were literally breathless for a spell, and frozen with fear, and when they did react, the first sounds they made eerily resembled chicken squawks. Fortunately by then I had exited the well-built shed, slammed the hasp into its place, and closed the Yale lock on their sinfulness.
Now to catch the evil Melvin—although I had a sinking feeling he’d already gotten away by car. I started running and was halfway to the parking area in front of my barn, just passing under the old swing tree, when George Nyle appeared out of nowhere. Well, to be fair to myself, George did have mousy brown hair, a mousy brown mustache, and a deep tan, and he was wearing a khaki safari suit—even a Maasai could have walked right past without noticing him.
“Hey,” George said, “where are you going so fast?” He sounded positively genial, but then again, he might have been putting on act. After all, I had become Alice in Wonderland; nothing was as it should have been. Until I figured out just how much he knew about what I knew, I’d best play along as though everything were normal.
“It’s been a long day,” I said, “and I still have miles to go before I sleep.”
“Ah, a fellow lover of poetry.”
“Not especially—unless you’re talking about the Song of Solomon. Now that’s poetry. ‘Thy hair is like a flock of goats, going down from Mount Gilead. Your teeth are like a flock of shorn sheep which have come up for the washing.’ No modern poet could touch lines like that with a ten-foot pole.”
“And I wouldn’t want to touch a girl like that with a ten-foot pole. Where did you say the poem was from?”
“The Bible.”
“It figures. Look, Miss Yoder, I don’t mean to be rude, but you’re not exactly touchable at the moment, either. Where the heck have you been?”
“Well—you see—one might say I look like a sewer rat.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Uh-oh, his tone was a lot nastier than I’d hoped for. If I didn’t think fast on my size elevens, I might well perish whilst covered in a shroud composed of squished arachnids. It would not be a pretty way to go. Personally, I was hoping to hold out until the Second Coming, because I have never been a big fan of pain. Just about every day I give thanks that when I gave birth to Little Jacob, I practically shot him out like a cannonball. Of course, it hurt like St. Louis International Airport, Terminal A, while it was happening. . . .
“Miss Yoder! This is no longer a game! How did you get out of the cellar?”
Aha! So he was in on it. Indeed, just like Melvin said, they all were.
I pointed to the upper branches of the tree behind him. “Is that an owl up there? They usually come out about this time of day.”
Surely a question, no matter how misleading, cannot be a lie. And even though I didn’t see an owl, there might have been one up there somewhere, hidden by the foliage, and it was true that they did come out about that time, which was about an hour before sunset.
“Where?” he asked, and
foolishly turned.
That was when I grabbed the old wooden swing and swung it practically as high as it could go. Yes, it was a dangerous weapon in my hands, and it was a violent act that I performed, but I have since repented of this. In my defense—Well, I really have none, do I? My ancestors submitted to being scalped, rather than killing the Delaware with their muskets when they had the chance.
To sum it up, I may have been a poor pacifist, but I was an excellent markswoman. The wooden seat caught George just above the nape of the neck and gave him a nasty concussion. He survived, but for a long time—something like six months—he thought Peewee was his mother and Barbie was his sister. Frankly, it was just as well.
With four down, there were still two more to go, and that didn’t include the mysterious Surimanda Baikal. One can imagine my astonishment, followed by enormous relief, when I beheld one of the rental cars from New Jersey idling empty in the parking area in front of the barn. It was if the Lord had sent an angel down to start it for me. After all, my car keys were in my purse, which was still in the house, and the Good Lord only knew who was still in there.
I gaped at the idling vehicle for a few precious seconds. It should not have amazed me, and in that regard I was a faithless woman. After all, I was on side of Good, battling Evil in the guise of a spindly man with an ill- fitting head and bulging eyes that could rotate 360 degrees. Since Heaven had sent me a chariot—a horseless carriage, if you will—I should have immediately credited it to the Man Upstairs and given thanks.
But give thanks I eventually did, and then as the Good Lord expected of me, I took action. However, as I tried to climb into the driver’s seat of the monstrous black SUV, I was met with a great deal of unexpected resistance.
33
“Put your hands up, Yoder, and get in the back.”
“Mantis—I mean Chameleon—I mean Melvin! Where did you come from?”
“I’ve been sitting here the whole time, Yoder—slouched, of course.”
“And you didn’t see me either,” the craggy Carl Zambezi said, “although I was barely slumped.”
“Right. Well shame on me for not seeing either of you!”
“What’s the matter, Yoder? You going blind in your old age?”
“Au contraire, I have fifty-fifty vision. I see the half of the world that is good and kind and nourishes my soul, and the scum-sucking evil elements—like you—I just naturally overlook.”
“Now that was hurtful, Yoder,” Melvin said.
“Yeah, we watched you kill George Nyle,” Carl Zambezi said.
My heart leapt into my throat. As hard and small as my heart is, there’s always the danger that I’ll accidentally disgorge it, perhaps during a phlegm-producing cough. I shudder to think of the consequences. Besides the obvious physical difficulties this would present, what about the emotional and theological ramifications? For instance, it would put a whole new spin on Valentine’s Day—
“Yoder, are you in even in there?” Melvin barked.
“Of course, I am; and shame on you, because you should know by now that I engage in rather lengthy inner dialogues. That’s what makes me so interesting—at least to myself. And I didn’t kill George Nyle. I mean that if I did, it certainly wasn’t intentional. Shall I go back and see?” For the record, I still hadn’t as much as stuck one foot up into the SUV.
“George can take care of himself. Now get in before I blow your copulating head off!” Melvin actually used a far more vulgar term to express his anger, one that has never passed these lips.
“Double shame on you, Melvin,” I said, as I grudgingly climbed in. “Are those the same mandibles with which you kiss your mother?”
“Oy, such a smart mouth on you. You’ll get us both moidered yet.”
I jerked my head around to look at the seat beside me and then did a double take. “Ida?”
“No, it’s da Queen of Sheba.”
As my eyes and brain adjusted to my new surroundings, I could see that it was indeed my scrappy little mother-in-law, and that her hands were bound behind her, as if she were a hostage or a prisoner of war. Ida was a survivor of the Holocaust, and to be restrained like that had to be torture for her. Whilst she is not my favorite person—she is perhaps number twenty-six down the list—I cannot stand to see someone truly suffer. To say that my hackles were hiked is like saying that Hitler was a bad boy.
“Melvin Lucretius Stolzfus III! What have you done to this poor woman?”
“She tried to scratch me,” he whined.
“Untie her!”
“You can’t tell me what to do! You’re my prisoner.”
“Then I’ll untie her,” I said. Which I did.
Melvin’s response was to press the pedal to the metal and peel out of my long driveway amid curtains of gravel. Thank Heavens he wasn’t driving my car.
“Are you going to let her get away with talking to you like that?” Carl snarled, once we were on Hertzler Road and headed for the bridge over Slave Creek.
By the way, this is the only route out of Hernia, unless one has the patience to meander all the way over to Somerset past myriad Amish farms. Passing buggies might be fun for tourists, but believe me, it gets old—as do some of the buggy drivers, and as a consequence, they don’t hear one coming up behind them and so don’t move away from the center of the road.
“Heck no,” Melvin said. Again, he used extremely foul language. “Yoder, don’t you ever talk to me like that again.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. Melvin was immune to sarcasm. (Try it on either a praying mantis or a chameleon sometime, and you’ll see what I mean.)
“T’anks,” Ida whispered when I released her bonds.
“What happened?” I whispered back. “What did you do?”
“Don’t whisper,” came the command from the driver’s seat. “Speak so that we can all hear.”
“I vas doing nutting vrong. I vas only coming to see eef my Gabeleh vas home. Your phone eez not vorking, Magdalena, und az you know, I dun’t haf a cell.”
“The woman is a menace,” Carl said.
“No comments from Olivia’s erstwhile spouse, dear,” I said.
Melvin laughed long and hard. That is to say that for at least a minute, it sounded like there was a cicada loose somewhere in the car.
Most folks respond better to pleasant speech than they do to inflammatory words, so for once I decided to give that tact a try. Besides which, I had both the “brother” and the “local” cards going for me. After all, most folks root for the home team, don’t they?
“Where are we going, brother dear?” I asked sweetly.
“Shut up, Yoder,” Melvin snapped.
It was Carl’s turn to laugh long and hard; he sounded like the Bontragers’ male donkey come the first warm days of spring. He can be glad that Melvin was driving with one hand and holding a gun with the other, and that I was a good Christian woman. Honestly, I was tempted to lunge over the seat and smack the hee-haw right out of him.
But Carl answered my most burning question for me as soon as we turned right on Route 96, going away from Bedford. “Melvin says he knows this cool place that has lots of sinkholes where someone almost died last year. We’re going to throw you guys down one of those holes, but not before we torture you first to find out where that brat of yours is hidden.”
Ida jumped to her feet, her head still not touching the roof of the SUV. “You vant my grandchild? For vhat?”
“Because he witnessed the—”
“Sinking of the Titanic,” I said loudly.
“No, Yoder,” Melvin said, disdain dripping from all three syllables, “the Titanic sank in the nineteen fifties—your kid isn’t that old.”
“My kid is your nephew,” I said. “Remember?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Melvin said, waving the gun impatiently. “Anyway, the little brat was there when we—”
“Ate all the chocolate brownies,” I said.
“What?” Melvin barked. “Yoder, you’re nuts.”
“You ate all zee brunies und he had nahsing?” she said.
I could have called Melvin a ding-a-ling, but I prayed for patience—yet again. I pity the Lord on account of He’s had to listen to this prayer a billion times; it’s no wonder that He so often chooses not to answer it. However, this time, a sweet peace seeped into my pores as an idea formed in my weary brain.
“Ee-shay oesn’t-day oh-nay at-thay ou’re-yay obber-rays.”
“Darn it, Yoder, we’ve had this conversation in the past. How many times do I have to remind you that I don’t speak Pennsylvania Dutch?”
“It isn’t Pennsylvania Dutch, you ding-a-ling. Think again.”
“Oh, I get it now—you’re talking Jewish to your mother- in-law.”
“And it isn’t Yiddish, you numbskull!” You see what I mean about my prayer for patience going unanswered?
“You’re really trying to tick me off, aren’t you?” Melvin said. He was actually exhibiting more of the P word than was I at the moment.
“It’s Pig Latin,” Carl growled impatiently. “I can speak it.”
“Then you whisper in his ear,” I said.
Much to my surprise, he did as I directed. He may have said a few other things—things that Melvin vehemently disapproved of—because the car weaved back and forth across the road several times, throwing me up against poor little Ida, and almost provoking me to throw up on her as well.
Finally Melvin turned his attention to me. “Yoder, are you speaking from the perspective of an ex-law enforcement officer?”
As thrilling as it was to hear him say those words, they weren’t true. I acted—and still do—as a liaison between the community and the Hernia Police Department. The unofficial post was created back when Chris Ackerman was chief. Young Chris hailed from California—the land of fruits and nuts—and he had no idea how life in a barrel of sour Krauts was lived. (During Melvin’s administration, I was the brains.) But it behooved me naught to set him straight. In fact, it could be the difference between life and death.