by Tamar Myers
Again the slight smile. “Why, I think it would be fun to rough it for a change. Put us all down for A.L.P.O.” I must mention here that the Ream party had booked three rooms. Couples of their status might occasionally conjugate, but they never cohabit.
“The three-meal plan?”
“By all means. I’m looking forward to your famous Amish cooking.” Bingo! A woman after my own heart, and one that might even bring a smile to Freni’s lips.
“Very well, Mrs. Ream. Oh, there is one thing. In addition to being the manager and owner, I might add I’m also the bellboy. Now, I would be happy to bring all your bags in myself, except that—”
“No need to say more. Please Delbert, be a darling and get the bags.” She had half-turned to Delbert James, who had been standing impassively in the background. She turned back to me. “This is a very charming place you have here, Mrs.—?”
“Yoder. It’s Miss Yoder. Magdalena Yoder. Thank you.”
“Not at all. Perhaps when you have a moment you can tell me all about life here in Hershey, Pennsylvania.”
“That’s Hernia.” I stole a glance at the Congressman, who, as it happened, was glowering at me from his safe position slightly to the rear of his wife.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Hershey’s the chocolate town. The PennDutch is located in Hernia, Pennsylvania.”
Lydia Ream laughed then. Actually it was more of a chuckle, but people of her class don’t chuckle, do they? “I would love to hear all about Hernia, then.”
At that moment the impassive but not bad-looking Delbert James came back in with the first load of luggage. Reluctantly, I gathered up the three necessary keys and led the way through the back hallway and up the unfortunately steep stairs. Mrs. Ream followed directly behind me, and the whole way I was acutely conscious of that fact that I am not a size six with toddler-sized shoes who could move with the grace of a ballerina. So, my ancestors were peasants, can I help it?
And wouldn’t you know, this time I didn’t even make it all the way back to the sitting room before the next and final guest of the day arrived. Would that I had!
Chapter Three
I got back to the sitting room to find Susannah and a man engaged in animated conversation by the check-in counter. Immediately my blood began to boil. Fortunately I am not like Freni, who takes a long time to build up steam and then explodes, sometimes with dire consequences. I’m constantly exploding—little tiny puffs, which, like flatulence, are temporarily noxious but ultimately harmless.
When it comes to Susannah, the puffs may be louder, but there is always justification. Susannah, I’m sorry to say, is a slovenly, slothful slut. I know, that’s a terrible thing to say about one’s own sister, and both Mama and Papa would roll over in their graves if they heard me, but it’s the plain truth.
It was bad enough when Susannah married the Presbyterian, but when she divorced him and began sleeping with other men, she became a full-fledged adulteress in the eyes of my church and just about everybody living in the environs of Hernia, Pennsylvania. Susannah is the first person ever in my entire family history, which can be traced back to sixteenth-century Swiss roots, to get a divorce. Believe me, I'm not judging her. If she had to get a divorce, then she had to. But what she should have done afterward was to withdraw from the public view and buckle down to work here at the inn. Not Susannah!
Susannah is constantly running around, not only in Hernia, but as far away as Somerset and Bedford. She chews gum like a cow munching alfalfa. She wears makeup, perms her hair, and even paints her nails! In the summertime she frequently wears sleeveless dresses, and once I actually caught her wearing shorts. And of course you know where these ideas come from—TV! Susannah keeps a portable TV in her room, even though I won’t allow her to put up an antenna.
Please don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing immoral about wanting to get out into the world. As you already know, I myself want to travel some day. It is, however, possible to deport oneself modestly and with decorum. And of course, one must never, ever sleep with a man outside the bounds of matrimony. And I’m not just talking about the risk of getting AIDS here, I’m talking about sin, something Susannah admits she finds delightful!
I might even be able to deal with a sinful, sexy Susannah, but add to that slothfulness and slobbiness, and it’s just too much to bear. Susannah will never willingly lift a finger, unless it’s to paint another finger. So I get stuck doing ninety percent of the work around the PennDutch, Mose and Freni excluded. What little I can badger Susannah into doing, usually has to be redone by me anyway, so what’s the point? Thank the Lord that Papa and Mama, in their earthly wisdom, left the controlling interest in the farm to me. Perhaps they had been given a divine premonition of the impending Presbyterian. At any rate, if it weren’t for my tight rein on things, both of us would be out on the street, and at least one of us making her living from it.
So you can see how my blood began to boil when I saw my sister, who was just now coming home from the night before, in the sitting room, talking to a disreputable-looking character.
“Get behind me, Satan,” I said loud enough for Susannah to hear. The temptation to strangle was almost unbearable.
Susannah laughed and foolishly tried to hide a half-smoked cigarette by sticking it in her purse. “This, Billy,” she said by way of introduction, “is my older sister, Magdalena. But you can call her Mags. Everyone does.”
Although disreputable-looking, the character she’d dragged home exhibited more manners than she did. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” he said.
“It’s Miss Yoder,” I said pointedly.
“Billy Dee Grizzle, ma’am.”
“Mr. Grizzle,” I acknowledged his politeness. Even as I was saying his name, I knew it sounded familiar, and I knew why. William D. Grizzle was the last name still unchecked on today’s page of the register. “You’re not,” I asked sheepishly, “a friend of Susannah’s?” Perhaps I emphasized the word “friend” just a bit too much.
Billy Dee smiled broadly and displayed a set of remarkably white teeth. Remarkable in that Billy Dee looked like the kind of man who would chew tobacco. “Miss Susannah and I have just become acquainted, ma’am. She’s a very friendly young woman, but we ain’t friends yet.”
There was something about the way Billy Dee said the word “young” that made me feel flushed. It was as if Billy Dee had meant to say he couldn’t be bothered by someone as young as Susannah.
Susannah must have noticed it too. “I’ll leave you two old folks alone to chaw down on history,” she said. She might have meant to be cute, but it just sounded rude to me.
“Bye, ma’am. Nice meeting you,” said Billy Dee sincerely.
“Not so fast,” I said to Susannah. “There’s something you ought to know.”
“Mags, I only want a hot shower before I hit the hay. Can you tape-record the lecture so I can play it back later?”
I tried not to let my irritation show. “You better shower and hit the hay in my room. Room 5 has been rented.”
Susannah said a word that I refuse to repeat, and started toward the back, but I stopped her. “You need to clear your things out of Room 5 first. And give it a quick going over.” I was being kind. I should have told her to bulldoze the room and then torch it.
Susannah started to protest, but her whining was eclipsed by the sounds emanating from her purse.
“What in the world is that?" I asked.
“Oh, Shnookums,” she wailed, “Mommy is so sorry!” Apparently there wasn’t room in her pocketbook for both her still-lit cigarette and that bizarre excuse for a dog I told you about. Susannah fled in search of water, leaving a faint trail of smoke.
I smiled bravely at Billy Dee. “Good help is hard to find these days.”
He laughed, a good knee-slapping laugh. “I think I’m gonna enjoy my stay here, Miss Yoder.”
I hope I didn’t blush. “Magdalena, if you like. But let’s get down to business, shall we? Fir
st of all, vegan, lacto, or ova?”
“Carne.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Meat-eater.” He thumped his chest. “That’s me. Good old-fashioned consumer of flesh. But I see the others have all checked in.”
“The others? You know them?”
“Let’s see. A tall, skinny dude, late twenties, eyes like a deer. Nice-enough guy, though.”
“That’d be Mr. Teitlebaum.”
“Yeah, the Jew from Philadelphia. Now the other two. One’s young, kinda mousy. The other, well, how does anyone describe Big Red kindly?”
“That’s them,” I agreed enthusiastically, but I refrained from mentioning their names. I had overstepped my bounds by identifying Joel Teitlebaum. My job is to check people in and out, not to play twenty questions with my guests. “You know these people?”
“We’re all A.P.E.S.”
“What was that?”
“We’re all card-carrying members of the Animal Parity Endowment Society.”
“I tend to vote Republican myself.” That’s not really true. I vote all over the board, but it seemed like the right thing to say to even the score.
He chuckled. “What I mean is that we all belong to an organization that concerns itself with the rights of animals.”
“What kind of animals?” Dogs like Susannah’s have no rights.
“Well,” he drawled, “in this case, deer.”
I undoubtedly stared at him. I was in shock. Finally, after a few tries, I found my voice. “You’re kidding! You mean you’re not here to hunt deer?” I fumbled around in my files. Sure enough, Billy Dee and all the others he’d just mentioned had stated on their applications that they wanted to be here for the opening of deer season. “But it says—”
“Does it say why we want to be here?”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said again. I was in no mood for jokes, but this had better be one just the same.
His face now lacked joviality, which made him look even more like a redneck, although he was acting less like one. “No, ma’am, I’m deadly serious. We’re here to stop the deer hunt.”
I was having trouble believing what I was hearing. “Whose deer hunt? Those are state game lands out there. Tomorrow morning they’ll be swarming with hunters. You can’t possibly stop them all.”
Billy Dee rubbed his hands together briskly. “Ma’am, we don’t intend to stop them all. Just the Congressman and his party.”
I started to feel light-headed. What with Susannah and Freni to deal with on a daily basis, I had all the conflict I cared to handle. I was also feeling duped, an emotion which in me inevitably leads to anger. I clutched the edge of the counter with both hands, closed my eyes, and slowly counted to ten. First in English, then in German. Then I took a deep breath and opened my eyes.
Billy Dee Grizzle was still there. To his credit, he looked concerned. “You all right, ma’am?”
“I’m as fine as frog hair,” I snapped. “You, Mr. Grizzle, seem like a fair-enough guy. Why couldn’t you have been upfront?” Of course I knew the answer, but what difference does that make?
Billy Dee might have been just a little embarrassed to defend his reprehensible actions, because he looked away when he answered. “Ma’am, sometimes the end does justify the means.”
I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly through my nose. Living with Susannah had taught me how to control hyperventilation. To a point. “Not if the end involves my ruination, it doesn’t.”
He looked back at me. If Billy Dee’s green eyes were the window to his soul, he had a far kinder soul than he let on. “Ma’am, we won’t be doing any of our protesting at your place. I can promise you that. It’s gotta be done out where the action is. We can’t protest what they’re about to do, or have already done. We gotta protest them actually doing it. Otherwise it don’t count.”
“That’s a relief,” I said with perhaps a trace of sarcasm. “I suppose that after you protest you’ll all gather back here for an evening of parlor games?”
Billy Dee flashed another one of his big, white-toothed smiles. “Sounds like fun, ma’am. Especially if you’d care to join us. Seriously, ma’am, we won’t be causing you no trouble. I’ll keep an eye on things myself.”
“The only trouble, Mr. Grizzle, is that there is someone else trying to keep an eye on things around here. An interested third party, you might say. A reporter.”
Billy Dee’s smile seemed to shrink just a little. “A reporter? Are you sure? For which paper?”
“Does it really matter?” I asked, suddenly feeling very weary. When even one reporter latches on to something, it’s like inviting the whole world in for tea. Of course, this had been beneficial to me when that one reporter wrote that rave review of the inn. But I could well imagine what could happen if Miss Brown got caught up in the middle of the fracas that seemed inevitable between these two factions.
“Of course it matters, ma’am,” said Billy Dee emphatically. “I know a lot of reporters, and maybe I’ll be able to talk some sense into this one. You know, a little man-to-man talk.” He either winked or had an erratic tic.
“I doubt whether Miss Brown is a Candidate for a man-to-man talk.”
“Miss Brown? Which paper did you say she was with?”
“I didn’t. I mean, I’m not exactly sure.” Already I’d done too much blabbing about one of the guests. If Susannah had done that, I’d be furious.
“Well, don’t you worry none anyhow, ma’am,” said Billy Dee kindly. “Like I said, I’ll keep an eye on things and see that they don’t get outta hand.”
I put Miss Brown out of my mind and took Billy Dee’s word, and his credit card, and then showed him to his room. Despite the fact that he was a little rough around the edges, he was really a very pleasant man. Although he laughed a lot, he was always polite, which of course goes a long way to making up for such frivolous behavior. But don’t get me wrong. I was not interested in Billy Dee as a man. I’m sure he wasn’t even a Mennonite. Besides which, I really don’t have time for such considerations, not with the inn to run, and Susannah to look out for. Those days are comfortably behind me.
After I dropped Billy Dee off at his room, I stopped by the kitchen to see how Freni was doing. “How’s dinner coming along?” I asked cheerfully.
Freni was busy greasing loaf pans for the bread she was making, but she took time out of her busy schedule to glare at me. “I put dill seed in the bread dough. Does that make it whole grain or vegetable?”
I ignored her logic. “Another meat-eater just checked in,” I said encouragingly.
“So, what’s the score now?”
“Meat-eaters four, veggies three.”
“And I grated some cheese into the dumpling batter, so you’ve got another fruit now,” she said matter-of- factly. Clearly the woman was trying to be helpful.
“Where’s Mose?” I asked. Usually at this time of day he could be found in the kitchen giving his wife a hand.
“Milking.”
“Still?” With just two cows now, the afternoon milking should have been done over an hour ago.
Freni slathered grease into another loaf pan. “He’s not doing the milking. One of the guests is.”
“Which one?”
Freni shrugged. “All the English look alike to me.” To Freni and Mose, anyone not Amish, or distinctly Mennonite, was an outsider, an “English” person. Even Susannah was English, now that she wore makeup and sleeveless dresses.
“Is the guest male or female?”
Freni gave me a look that, if harnessed, could have shriveled a bushel of apricots on a rainy day. “This is my Mose we are talking about, Magdalena. You watch your tongue. The guest was a very tall man. Skinny, like a clothesline pole.”
“Ah, Joel Teitlebaum.”
“A nice man,” she added with surprising generosity.
Just then I noticed that the shortening Freni was using to grease the loaf pans was not vegetable shortening but lard she had rendered h
erself. "That’s not vegetable!” I cried.
“It isn’t meat,” she retorted.
“But it comes from a pig!” Vegetarianism and cholesterol issues aside, I doubted Mr. Teitlebaum would have been thrilled if he knew its source.
“Grease is grease,” said Freni stubbornly. “What matters is that the bread doesn’t stick.”
“What matters,” I said tersely, “is that we are honest with our guests. Not to mention with ourselves.”
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
“Would you like to do the cooking yourself?” Freni always asked me that question three seconds before she threatened to quit.
“You’re a superb cook!” I said and fled from the room with one second to go.
If I had been thinking clearly, not rattled by the conflux of hunters and A.P.E.S., I would have dashed into Hernia and picked up some fresh vegetables at the supermarket. Then I would have made a huge salad and everyone would have been satisfied. The English love their iceberg lettuce. It seems almost to have a pacifying effect on them.
Personally, I’m not much on eating raw green leaves. The fact that you have to put stuff on it in order to make it palatable seems absurd to me. Why not just down the stuff straight from the bottle and leave the leaves to the rabbits! But this is only my opinion. And if I had been less opinionated, and more accommodating, there might not have been a corpse clutching Mama’s dresden plate quilt.
Chapter Four
The new dining room occupies the entire bottom portion of the new wing. It is actually much more than a dining room. In one corner there is a half-finished quilt stretched across a sturdy oak frame. Guests are invited to try their hand applying a few neat stitches. Of course, if their needlework is lousy, Freni or I will rip out the stitches within moments of their checking out. I do, after all, sell the quilts in some of the trendiest gift shops along the East Coast.
If quilting’s not their thing, guests can always try spinning or weaving in the other back corner of the vast room. Neither Freni nor I knows anything about either of these two pursuits, although some of the guests appear to be rather proficient at it. One two-week guest spun and wove a very attractive scarf, which I in turn sold for fifty dollars at our own little gift shop by the front desk.