Gruel and Unusual Punishment

by Tamar Myers

  30 - Spinach and Parmesan Soufflé

  Soufflés made with grits do without the heavy white-sauce base of the more classical versions. The grits take the place of the sauce, giving both body and strength to the eggs, and the result is less rich and fatty and more nutritious. This spinach soufflé can be prepared two or three hours ahead of time, covered, and baked at the last minute.

  ¾ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

  1 pound fresh spinach

  3 large eggs, separated

  1 tablespoon unsalted butter

  1 recipe Basic Boiled Grits, cooked until very creamy

  Salt and ground white pepper to taste

  Pinch of cayenne pepper

  Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

  Preheat the oven to 350° F. Generously butter a deep 2-quart baking dish. Sprinkle the bottom and sides with 1 tablespoon of the Parmesan.

  Rinse the spinach well. Discard all the stems and coarse leaves.

  Put the spinach in a pot with just the water that clings to the leaves and wilt over high heat for 3 to 4 minutes. Drain, rinse under cold water, and drain again. Press the water out of the spinach with your hands and coarsely chop.

  Put the spinach, egg yolks, and butter in a food processor and run until mixed well but not pureed.

  Combine the spinach mixture with the remaining Parmesan. Stir in the grits and season to taste with salt and white pepper, cayenne, and nutmeg. Whip the egg whites until soft peaks form and fold them into the mixture. Transfer the batter to the prepared baking dish and bake about 30 minutes. The soufflé should be nicely puffed with a gentle brown crust on top.

  Serves 6

  Soufflé Plus

  For a memorable first course or a light luncheon entree, add a bit of any of the following to the soufflé base. Then transfer to individual buttered ramekins for baking.

  Back-fin crab

  Diced cooked lobster

  Finely shredded country ham

  Chopped cooked asparagus

  Crumbled Roquefort

  Diced sautéed chicken livers

  31

  I fell back, hitting Dorcas's knees with my head. While I may be a numskull, mine is not a numb skull. Dorcas and I both moaned with pain.

  Meanwhile the jack was struggling to get out of the box. "Help me," it said.

  I jerked to a sitting position and stared at the jack. Rachel Blank stared back.

  She'd obviously been having a bad day. Her normally impeccable do looked like an abandoned chicken's nest. Her mascara was running in black rivulets down her face. A strip of duct tape hung from one comer of her mouth.

  "Help me," she croaked. "Dorcas Yutzy is a lunatic."

  "I am not! Magdalena, don't believe a word this woman says."

  "Yes, she is," Rachel rasped. "I was trying to find you—thought you might be here. The second she opened the door, Dorcas went nuts. Believe me, Magdalena, she's stark raving mad."

  "I am not!" There was pain in the big galoot's voice. "And anyway, she attacked me. I think she wanted to kill me." She glared accusingly at Rachel. "You would have killed my baby, too, you know!"

  Ms. Blank blinked. "Don't be ridiculous! Besides, I don't even believe you're pregnant."

  Dorcas, bless her oversized heart, was not easily stifled. "Magdalena, she asked me all kind of questions about Clarence, like had he ever talked about her. I told her he hadn't, but she wouldn't believe me. Kept saying I was holding back. What would I be holding back?"

  I swiveled to look at Dorcas, but all I could see were her bruised knees. "I've a hunch you're about to find out, dear."

  I turned back to Rachel. She was standing on something hidden beneath the floor that wasn't very stable. The bulk of our esteemed mayor's weight was supported by her arms. She reminded me of some of the rock climbers I'd seen hauling themselves to the top of Stucky Ridge.

  I smiled at her. "Why should I help you?" I asked. "You tried to kill me as well."

  Rachel had the temerity to feign surprise. "I don't know what you mean."

  "Oh, yes, you do. At my beautiful memorial service you stood up and vowed that I would be remembered, and not just as another highway statistic. Well tell me, dear, how did you know my disappearance had anything to do with a highway?"

  Rachel blinked. "You're grasping at straws, Magdalena. It was only a guess on my part."

  "Well, grasp this, dear. You rammed the back of my car just as I was making that tight curve coming back from Cumberland. You must have seen me sail over the treetops. Then, when I went missing, you made the stupid assumption I was dead. Well, surprise, I'm not!"

  "Now you're sounding like a lunatic. May I remind you, Magdalena Yoder, to whom you are speaking? I'm the mayor of this crummy [she actually used a word that I can't repeat] little town, in case you've forgotten."

  "Madam Mayor," I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm, "I haven't forgotten a thing. For instance, I remember that when you left Hernia, lo those many years ago, you were a shy little thing. Nobody thought you'd stand a chance in the big wide world outside of Bedford County. Then one day you showed up on TV doing the weather reports from Philadelphia. The next thing we knew you were running for mayor." I sucked back some of the sarcasm because it was making the floor around me slippery. "Everyone was stunned. Some were even thrilled. Local girl makes good, that kind of thing. What nobody stopped to ask was, what were you doing during those ten years between college and the days you prattled on about cold fronts? Were you raising children in New Jersey like Thelma Rensberger? I don't think so! No, I'll tell you what you were doing."

  The smug mug by the rug challenged me. "Oh, yeah? What was I doing?"

  "You were working as a prostitute for the Benedicts down in Cumberland."

  Dorcas gasped. "Is that true?"

  "That's what you and I were on our way to find out, dear, when this raven started tapping at the door."

  . Dorcas had the gall to giggle. Perhaps she really was a lunatic.

  "It was a window, Magdalena," she said.

  "What?" I snapped.

  "Poe's raven tapped on a window, not a trapdoor."

  "Would Watson dare contradict Holmes?" Before she could answer I plunged on. "I did a little digging at the courthouse this afternoon, and guess what I learned? Clarence Webber was once Clarence Benedict. He was Arnold and Bonita's son. I don't know why I didn't pick up on that right away. I mean, he kept bringing his pigeons home, didn't he?"

  "Pigeons?" Dorcas asked.

  "Okay, his wives. I only meant that you were easy marks."

  "I wasn't a pigeon," Dorcas said adamantly.

  "We were all three of us pigeons, dear. Even I found myself having to struggle to resist his considerable charms. You see, Clarence had a knack for finding a woman's weak spot—her Achilles' heel."

  Dorcas gasped again, threatening to deplete the small room of its oxygen. "You married him too?"

  "Oh, no, dear. But that was his plan. That, and extortion, not to mention credit card fraud."

  "Well, I never married him!" Madam Mayor was still trying to hoist herself out of the hole, and was panting like a sheepdog in August.

  "That's because he already had his hooks in you," I said with confidence. "He was blackmailing you, wasn't he?"

  Rachel risked falling back down into the hole by using one hand to rip the tape the rest of the way off her smeared face. Her look of defiance was astonishing.

  "That son of a bitch," she roared. "What I did—working for his parents—was years ago. I was barely more than a girl. I haven't been in touch with any members of that family since then, yet he remembered me!"

  "Perhaps you should be flattered, dear. You are—and don't take this the wrong way—somewhat of an attractive woman."

  She lacked the courtesy to acknowledge my compliment. "He right away threatened to cut a deal with Melvin, unless I coughed up a hundred thousand dollars." It was unintentional, to be sure, but she actu
ally coughed. "Now, where would the mayor of a one- horse town like this come up with that much money?"

  "So you killed him."

  "You can't prove it. You certainly can't prove that I caused your accident. There were no witnesses!"

  "I think I can. Body shops keep records of repairs, you know. Your front bumper must have been severely damaged. Maybe the whole front end of your car."

  "You practically made me total it," she said accusingly.

  "There, you see?"

  "But that still doesn't mean anything. I could have hit a deer. A large buck can do a lot of damage."

  "It wasn't a buck, but a Buick. And there's undoubtedly paint from your car still on mine. The impact sent me sailing, all the way over a creek and into the crotch of a giant sycamore." I turned around again to address Dorcas's knees. "Although when Gabriel and Susannah found me, the car was on the ground. I couldn't figure that out at first, but then I remembered the awful storm. It must have knocked the car plumb out of the tree. Did the winds hit hard here too?"

  The knees bobbled, an indication that their owner was nodding. "It was awful. I thought the roof was going to blow off at one point."

  I turned my attention back to the villain. "I hope you like stripes, Your Honorableness, because you're going to be wearing them for a long time."

  Mayor Blank looked at me blankly. "But I was supposed to win this election."

  "Don't feel bad, dear. You win a free ticket to jail. Do not pass Go."

  "Bitch!"

  My intent was to stick my foot out and bring it down ever so lightly on her extended fingers. I wasn't really going to hurt her. You have to trust me on that one.

  Rachel Blank, however, had other plans. With lightning speed she grabbed my ankle and before I could dig myself in with my other crampon-like heel, she'd pulled me into the hole with her. Then, while I was still in shock, she used me as a stepping stool and scrabbled out of the tunnel. The next thing I knew the trapdoor slammed shut and I was engulfed in darkness.

  It wasn't utter darkness. I've seen that before, and not just in the heart of Aaron Miller, that bigamist ex-husband of mine. Once, on my only vacation, I visited the Lost Sea Caverns in Tennessee. Deep in the bowels of the earth the guide turned off the lights so we could experience true darkness. It was terrifying.

  At any rate, there was a definite, albeit dim, light source in Dorcas's tunnel. I would have supposed that a passageway between two houses—for indeed that was its purpose—would follow a straight line. Quite possibly its builders had encountered a rock too large to dispatch, because this corridor curved sharply to the right, just meters from where I stood. I would also have supposed an underground chamber of any kind to be damp and musty (the Lost Sea Caverns certainly were), but the air around me, although cool, was exceedingly dry.

  The walls, roof, and ceiling of the tunnel appeared to be made of reinforced concrete, not brick or fieldstone as I had imagined. It occurred to me that during the atomic bomb scare of the fifties, the Yutzy family had converted their infamous tunnel into a shelter. If that was the case, they weren't the only family in Hernia to do it. The John Burkholders, on the south side of town, are said to have built a series of underground rooms with enough space to accommodate their ten children and twenty-three grands.

  My parents, on the other hand, believed that building a bomb shelter was the desperate act of a faithless person. The launching of the first nuclear missile should be a time of rejoicing, because that meant the Good Lord was just seconds behind, on a cloud, with trumpets blaring all around. And what if, I asked Papa, Jesus chose not to time His return with the machinations of Nikita Khrushchev's thumb? Well, there was always the outhouse. It didn't have bunk beds like Laurie Burkholder's subterranean palace, but it had an exceptionally deep pit.

  Thus, expecting to find a protective chamber of some sort, I walked toward the light in Dorcas's tunnel. I was not disappointed. The room I entered was perhaps twelve feet square. While that is not palatial, it must be remembered that there were only three people in the Yutzy family: Dorcas and her parents. What I did not expect to find were more people. A man and a woman—in bed together!

  "Excuse me!"

  I wheeled, and then turned again. There was something very familiar about the woman. She was lying perfectly still, which, incidentally, is the only way a true lady acts in bed. This woman's pose, however, didn't seem quite right. I couldn't see her left arm, but her right arm was suspended stiffly over the man's chest. Although I couldn't see the man very well, he too appeared unnaturally stiff. Either they were mannequins or—

  "Mrs. Yutzy? Mrs. Yutzy, is that you?"

  No answer.

  I took a few baby steps forward and cranked up the volume a notch. "Mrs. Yutzy, I don't mean to be rude, but what were you doing down here in a bomb shelter with Mayor Blank?"

  Elizabeth Yutzy stared vacantly up at the ceiling. The gentleman in bed with her did the same thing. There was an electric candle fastened to the wall just above the headboard, and its feeble light did nothing for their complexions. They both looked sort of— well, dead.

  "Don't they look peaceful?" a voice behind me asked.

  I literally jumped out of my shoes—well, at least my left shoe. I've always had trouble keeping that knot secure. At any rate, grinning goofily at me was the big galoot herself.

  My heart was pounding like a madman on a xylophone and I was in no mood for games. "Dorcas! Don't you ever sneak up on me again!"

  "I didn't mean to scare you, Magdalena. I thought you heard me coming."

  "I did no such thing!" I peered around her. "Where's the murderess? Where's Rachel Blank?"

  "Still in the kitchen, but out like a light." Dorcas giggled. "I conked her on the head with a dinette chair. Then I tied her to the table. This time I did a much better job. She won't be getting loose."

  I breathed a sigh of relief, then remembered the dimly lit duo behind me. "Dorcas, please tell me those are papier-mâché figures on that bed over there."

  Dorcas was probably staring at me behind the thick lenses. All I saw were two dark circles.

  "Do you think that beige dress looks all right on Mother, or should I have put her in peach?"

  I shuddered, my worst suspicions confirmed. Elizabeth Yutzy's hearing problem was worse than anyone in Hernia imagined.

  "Who's the man with her?" I asked weakly.

  "Why, Daddy, of course."

  "Dorcas, dear," I said, choosing my words carefully while trying to edge around her, "your daddy ran off to Cleveland with a barmaid from Bedford."

  "No, he didn't."

  "Yes, he did. Ask anyone in town—well, anyone over thirty, because that happened a good number of years ago."

  The grin on the big gal's face almost split it in two. "He died of a heart attack, Magdalena. He didn't run away. It was my idea to put him down here. He and Mother couldn't bear to be apart, you see. Then when Mother died last spring—"

  "Last spring?"

  She nodded. "Easter Sunday. I'm afraid I had to miss church."

  "But what about—I mean—uh, I don't want to be indelicate, but—"

  "Oh, that. Well, you see, this shelter was designed to keep out contaminated air. It has its own purification system, which means I can control the humidity level. Did you know, it's actually drier in here right now than it is in the Egyptian desert?"

  I gasped as the awful truth sank in. "You mean your mommy's a mummy?"

  "Yeah, I guess you could say that. You see, I teach biology as well as gym, and it's really not that hard to do if you have the right setup. Now the eyes—"

  I ducked around her and raced back down the tunnel to the trapdoor. She made no effort to stop me.

  32

  "What's this glop?" Alison pointed to the serving bowl nearest her.

  "It isn't glop, dear. It's Freni's special mystery salad."

  "Well, it looks like glop to me."

  "Ach!" Fre
ni squawked.

  We were having a family dinner at the PennDutch, which still remained unopened to guests. Seated around the massive oak dining table, made by my ancestor Jacob "The Strong" Yoder, were my sister and her husband Melvin, Freni and her husband Mose, the very handsome Gabriel Rosen, and of course the urchin Alison.

  "Forget the glop," Susannah said irritably. She turned to me. "So Mags, go on with your story. What happened then?"

  "Then," Melvin said, arranging his mandibles in a sneer, "Magdalena came running to me for help."

  "Well, you are the police chief," I said. "I can't be expected to do everything for you."

  "Was the police chief, Yoder. With Rachel Blank out of the picture, I'm a shoo-in for the congressional seat."

  "Don't be too sure, dear." The election had been postponed, and in a weird twist of fate, the Reverend Richard Nixon intended to run against the cocky Melvin. The good pastor was assured of at least thirty-three votes—mine being one of them.

  "No, no, no," Susannah cried, pounding the table with her knife handle, "I meant, what happened to the bodies in the basement?"

  "It was a bomb shelter, dear. Anyway, the folks out at Evergreen Cemetery gave them a proper burial this morning. It was a private ceremony, of course. Besides Dorcas and my minister—hers wouldn't come—Melvin and I were the only ones there."

  "And why did Dorcas put the mayor in her basement? Why didn't she just call the police?"

  "Well, it turns out that Clarence found out about her parents' bodies in the basement, and must have told Rachel about them. When Dorcas didn't cooperate with her, Rachel threatened to expose Dorcas's secret. Dorcas panicked. Unlike the mayor, Dorcas is not a killer. So she just locked Rachel in the bomb shelter until she could think of what to do."

  "What will happen to Dorcas?" Alison asked. "Will she go to jail?"

  I tried not to smile at the girl. During her stay with Freni and Mose she'd taken to wearing Amish clothes. Even given the fact that half of Alison's genetic material is of Amish derivation, she looked remarkably authentic—except for the hot pink lip gloss and a silver stud in each ear.