by Tamar Myers
Tiny nodded. ‘Thanks for the explanation.’
‘Booger buns,’ Granny said, and howled with laughter.
‘Mr Hancock, tell me the truth about your wife’s mishap. Is there really a pit in my woods, and if so, where is it? I frequently walk the trail to make sure that it’s safe for my guests. I can’t imagine a real pit being dug so suddenly.’
Tiny cracked a few knuckles before answering. ‘Well, uh, maybe the word “pit” was a slight exaggeration. I think that “shallow trench” might be a more accurate description.’
‘Oh goody, I adore trenches!’ I said, just to keep him off guard. ‘How deep a trench is it? Can an armoured tank hide in it? Let’s say that I had fallen into it. After standing, would my knobby knees protrude over the front edge? If so, is it at least deep enough to lay a row of tin cans, end to end, and not have them touch a ruler laid across the top? An inquiring mind wants to know.’
Tony smiled wearily. Or was it warily?
‘Your knobby knees would definitely have been exposed, because it’s only a foot deep at the most.’
‘Aha!’ I said. ‘Finally we’re getting somewhere, and the “where” doesn’t seem all that big of a deal. Now tell me about the sharpened stakes that lined the trench.’
‘They were shish kabob skewers.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You know, like for barbecuing chunks of meat and vegetables. They were pushed into the ground to make them stand on end. Then leaves and long grass were fluffed over the top to disguise the skewers and the pit. It was supposed to be a trap, you see. On TV I saw a documentary where natives in the Congo dug a real pit and lined it with sharpened logs. They caught an elephant to feed their village, but I fail to see what sort of animal this trap was intended to catch.’
‘Tourists,’ I said.
‘Beg your pardon, ma’am?’ Tiny said.
‘It was a tourist trap,’ I said, ‘and it caught your wife. How badly hurt is she? I mean, really hurt?’
He laughed with embarrassment. ‘It’s barely a scratch, but Delphia loves to make a scene. The path was muddy from all that rain, and most of the skewers were flattened into the ooze when Delphia stomped on them. I guess one skewer gave a little resistance on the way down and grazed her shin.’
‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘Are you telling me that your wife purposely stomped on the trap?’
TWENTY-TWO
The poor man groaned. ‘Miss Yoder, you may have noticed that my wife is a cantankerous and contrary woman. When we encountered this strange mound of vegetation bisecting the path, I told Delphia to step over it, or else walk around. She immediately jumped right on it with both feet and started stamping as if she was putting out a fire. That’s just the kind of woman my wife is – she hates being told what to do.’
‘Imagine that,’ I said. ‘At long last I’ve discovered my much older, very much shorter, identical twin sister from another mister.’
Tiny was not amused. ‘Miss Yoder, please don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re nothing like my wife. You, I could live with happily.’
‘Magdalena already has at least one husband,’ Granny snapped.
‘Don’t start, Granny,’ I said. ‘I was an inadvertent adulteress, and you know it. But if you want to bring that subject up with a perfect stranger, then I’d be happy to resurrect the rumour that Great-aunt Pearl told me about what you and Ned Kershbaum did on that infamous hayride of 1912.’
Granny didn’t say anything in return, but trust me, there’s nothing quite so chilling as the glare of a blue-eyed ghost. The temperature in the parlour plummeted. I shivered. Big Tiny rubbed his biceps.
‘Tell me,’ I said to Tiny, ‘why do you let Mrs Hancock treat you the way she does?’
Tiny chewed his lip before answering. ‘Frankly, Miss Yoder, it’s because she holds the purse strings. In the beginning it was her father, Big Daddy Joe-Bob, as everyone called him, although he never scraped together enough flesh and bones to even touch five-foot two. He was the richest man in Southwest Texas bar two counties, and when he died he left everything to Delphia. By then we’d already been married twenty-nine years, and I was used to the good life. Just be a “yes man” and you get taken care of right nice. So why rock the boat, right?’
‘What about your self-respect?’ I said.
‘I don’t have any ma’am,’ he said, ‘but I have my own little plane, six cars, and a righteous little speed boat for weekend trips to the lake. Then there’s Delphia’s yacht down in Galveston, which I get to use from time to time.’
‘Is all that worth your self-respect?’ I said.
‘Well, it’s a sight more than your husband gets, ain’t it? No offense, ma’am, but he has to live in an old farmhouse in a backwater town, and among a bunch of religious types. I been looking around, and I don’t see a plane in your garage, or no six cars, or no speedboat. Now, you are better looking than Delphia, I’ll give you that, but still, I reckon that he still loses were we to compare our assets.’
Not only was I so mad that I could spit cotton, but the cotton had been spun into thread, and the thread had been knit into a dress. I rose shakily to my feet.
‘You, sir,’ I said, ‘are a loathsome coward.’
Tiny appeared genuinely confused. ‘Miss Yoder, I didn’t mean to offend you. One of the things that I liked about you was your directness. I honestly believed that we could share our inner truths, and not have the other judge us. I wouldn’t have opened up to you if I thought you were going to turn on me! You tricked me into exposing my true self. You beguiled me with your feminine wiles.’
‘I don’t have any wiles,’ I hissed.
‘Booger-filled buns,’ Granny said.
‘Careful, Granny,’ I said, ‘or I’ll sit on you again.’
‘Case in point,’ Tiny said. ‘You mince no words. I found that very refreshing.’
‘Your wife certainly doesn’t hold back,’ I said.
‘Ha! Not with her words, that’s for sure, but with her money. Do you know how many times I’ve thought about … never mind.’
‘Don’t stop venting now, Mr Hancock,’ I said.
‘Are you being sarcastic, Miss Yoder?’
‘No, I’m speaking from experience,’ I said.
‘Maybe from her experience with two husbands at the same time,’ Granny said.
‘Granny did the rumpy-pumpy with Ned Kershbaum under the hay,’ I said.
Granny’s look was one of surprise. ‘Yah – maybe. What does this lumpy-dumpy mean, Magdalena?’
‘It’s an English expression, Granny, and according to the rumour, it’s what you did with Ned. Now please be quiet like a good Apparition-American.’
Tiny cleared his throat loudly. ‘Miss Yoder, if you don’t mind some friendly advice—’
‘Which I very much do, dear.’
‘But you might appreciate this,’ Tiny said.
‘I doubt if I will.’
‘But just listen for a moment. A commonly held belief is that Apparition-Americans are souls of the dead who haven’t completed their transition out of this world, because they don’t realize that they are, in fact, dead.’
‘Now you’re dead to me,’ Granny said vehemently.
‘Far be it for me to defend this old battleaxe,’ I said, ‘but in this case I think that you’re full of prunes, Mr Hancock. You don’t think that during all the decades that she’s been occupying that rocker, scaring the living daylights out of folks who can only hear her but not see her, she hasn’t been able to figure things out? Of course she has!’
Tiny shook his head vigorously. ‘Miss Yoder, have you, or anyone, ever told her directly: “You are dead?” That it is time to move on. Time to pass into the afterlife. Time to go home to God. Have you ever said those exact words? Because I have said those exact words to numerous ghosts when we’ve travelled, and when I’ve inquired later, invariably the reports are that the hauntings ceased abruptly after our departure.’
‘Te
ll that man he’s a charlatan,’ Granny said, sounding panicked. ‘I want him out of my house. Now!’
‘Yes, go!’ I said.
Tiny laughed. ‘But don’t you see? She has nothing to worry about if she’s going to Heaven.’
‘Leave now, or I’m coming over there – and I’ll momentarily suspend my pacifist beliefs – and I don’t know what I’ll do. Maybe kick you in the shins. But you’re leaving this room right now!’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Tiny said and flashed me a big ole Texas grin. But then just as he got even with the rocking chair, he paused and loomed over it like a redwood just beginning to topple. ‘You are dead,’ he said to Granny. ‘Go home to spend eternity with God.’
I was furious with what he did. I was so angry that I sat open-mouthed and watched him as he strode to the door and threw it open. When I thought to turn back to look at Granny, well, she wasn’t there! I couldn’t believe my faded blue eyes.
‘Granny!’ I hollered. ‘Come back! Granny don’t go! Don’t listen to that big lummox from Texas. I need you. You weren’t exactly a paragon of virtue, Granny. How do I know if you’re headed up, or down?’
That might sound like a stupid question for me, a ‘born again’ Christian to ask, because having been ‘born again’, the Bible assures me that I am headed up. Granny, however, never discussed her spiritual life with me. I know, there are folks who say that once you are dead it’s too late to repent of one’s sins, but I say, how do those people know this for a fact? That is, unless these same people are speaking from experience, in which case that would make them spirits – and evil spirits at that.
At any rate, my hollering sent the big Texan on his way and brought everyone else running to the scene of his crime. Immediately my precious, and precocious, male progeny pointed at the empty rocking chair.
‘Where’s Granny?’ he said.
I choked back a sob. ‘She’s gone, dear.’
‘Where’d she go, Mommy?’
‘Heaven,’ I said. OK, so I couldn’t be sure, but there was a fifty/fifty chance that I was right, so in the event that I was wrong, it was only half of a lie.
‘How’d she go, Mommy?’
‘She was exorcized, dear.’
‘But Granny didn’t like no exercise. Just sitting.’
‘Excuse me,’ said Cheryl, Miss Know-it-All Psychiatrist from New York City, ‘but it isn’t healthy to encourage these sorts of dark fantasies in young children.’
‘You’re excused, dear,’ I said, and not exactly kindly either, mind you.
‘Gabe,’ Cheryl said quite sharply, ‘say something to your stubborn wife. That boy is your son as well.’
‘Und my grandson,’ Ida said.
‘Maybe both of you should butt out and leave Magdalena alone,’ Agnes said. ‘I’ve never seen Granny, and I know that the two of you have never seen her either. Nor has Gabe. But Little Jacob has acknowledged her since the day that he could talk. I know this for a fact because I was babysitting for him, right here in this room, when he pointed at her chair, and said, “Ga-ga”.’
Cheryl’s face went white with rage. ‘How dare you, an interloper, tell me to butt out? For all you know he’d heard Lady Gaga mentioned on my brother’s TV.’
‘Enough,’ Gabe said softly. ‘Agnes is the best friend our family has ever had – and that includes the two of you.’
Ida pounded her ample bosom with a jewel-encrusted fist. ‘Oy, such pain dis son gives to his poor mama’s heart.’
‘So, Mags,’ Agnes said, ‘now that she’s gone, is that like forever gone? I mean, can she at least come back to irritate you on your birthday and holidays?’
I shrugged and turned away because I was tearing up. If folks want to see Magdalena cry, they better be prepared to pay big bucks for a private showing – either that or bury me up to my neck in peeled onions. Ida, on the other hand, having received no response to her little outburst, resumed attacking her bosom.
‘What tanks does a mudder get?’ she moaned.
‘What’s a “mudder”?’ Little Jacob asked.
‘It’s the voman who married your daddy’s fadder,’ I said.
‘Mags, was that kind?’ Agnes said, as she placed a pudgy hand on my bony hip and attempted to steer me to a chair.
I shook my head. ‘No. I’m sorry, Ida, for making fun of your fake accent. There’s no excuse for my bad behaviour. None at all. Except, that it’s been the absolute worst day of my entire life. While I know you will all expect to be fed dinner in an hour or two, I’m afraid you will either have to fend for yourselves, or have someone run into Bedford and get carry-out.’
‘Even me, Mommy?’ My son’s clear, high-pitched voice made me feel even worse than I was already feeling.
‘No, not you, dear,’ I hastened to say. ‘Daddy, or one of the ladies, will take care of you. Won’t you, Gabe? Agnes?’
‘Sure thing, hon,’ Gabe said. ‘But no need to worry about anything; supper has already been taken care of.’
‘It has?’
‘Yup. While we were all at the festival this morning, my cousin Miriam and your sister Susannah hightailed it into Bedford and did a little grocery shopping, and guess what?’
‘This is all a dream, or else I’ve been pranked, because Susannah wouldn’t hightail it out of a burning building, even if she was wearing a paper dress, and had just washed her hair in gasoline.’
Gabe put a loving arm around my shoulder and gently moved me toward the door. ‘It’s not a dream, babe. And not only that, they’ve already made dinner. It’s a scrumptious-looking Australian seafood salad. They even made the dressing for it.’
I stopped abruptly. ‘Does it contain shellfish? Gabe, you know that Little Jacob is allergic to shellfish.’
He nodded. ‘No worries, mate,’ he said to our son. ‘I remembered seeing a pizza in the freezer with just your name on it. How does that sound?’
‘Awesome,’ Little Jacob said.
Then after we’d trooped out and had dispersed into various rooms, I cornered Gabe alone in the upstairs bedroom that we were temporarily occupying. Frankly, the behaviour he’d exhibited in the parlour was uncharacteristic of him. My husband is not fond of Susannah, whom he refers to as ‘the felon’. Wasn’t he worried that my shiftless sister would be a bad influence on his precious cousin?
‘Darling,’ I said sweetly, ‘how wonderful of the girls to make dinner for us. But speaking of whom, where are they now?’
‘Oh that,’ Gabe said, and then chuckled. He might even have casually tossed a string of connected chuckles over his left shoulder. ‘Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.’
‘Yes, that, ha ha!’
‘Mags, I’ve been sworn to secrecy. You don’t want to make a liar out of me, do you?’
‘Perhaps I didn’t yet tell you that Toy insists on spending the night until he discovers who put the snake in my car and slashed Agnes’s tyres. This means that we’re out of guest rooms. It looks like I’ll be sleeping with Little Jacob, and you’ll be spending the night bunking with your ma – unless I can be coaxed into making other arrangements for some of our guests.’ I gave him a knowing smile.
‘They went to a club in Pittsburgh,’ Gabe said. He couldn’t have spoken any faster if he’d been an auctioneer at an estate sale.
‘Like a book club? That’s wonderful! But, dear, we have book clubs right here in Hernia, and I’m sure Bedford has oodles of them. Why go all the way to Pittsburgh?
‘It’s not a book club, hon; it’s a gay nightclub.’
‘Oh.’ I prayed for guidance. ‘How do you feel about Miriam being gay?’
‘What? It’s not Miriam, Babe, its Susannah.’
‘Don’t be silly, Gabe, my sister is madly in love with that convicted murderer, Melvin Stoltzfus. I know that I call him a praying mantis, but he is decidedly male.’
‘Yes, but Susannah was in prison,’ Gabe said. ‘You know what they say that does to a person.’
‘That’s a stereotype,’ I snapped. ‘I know
Susannah. She loves men like I love cinnamon rolls. Neither of us are prepared to give them up. Did my sister say that she was a lesbian?’
‘No. They just said that they’re headed into the city to spend the evening at a gay bar, and I just assumed.’
‘Darling,’ I said. ‘I think it would be wise not to say anything to your mother; let Miriam come out to her, if that’s what she wants to do.’
‘Absolutely. Just like I haven’t told her that the murderer with whom your sister is in love, and who escaped from prison five years ago, still hasn’t been caught.’
I couldn’t help but giggle. ‘Can you imagine what would happen if you did tell your mother, and then you went on to tell her that this sociopathic killer was also my half-brother? What do you think her reaction would be?’
Gabe laughed heartedly. ‘She’d plotz. She’d faint dead away.’
That’s when the devil firmly fixed that wicked thought in my head. ‘Oh, let’s tell her,’ I said.
TWENTY-THREE
Take it from me, as a world-class sinner (I am not bragging, mind you), we do not have control over the thoughts that just flit into our brains. I am confident that even many Christian psychologists will agree with me on that score – although sadly, I fear, those psychologists will not agree with me on much else. But if we dwell on these evil thoughts, and especially if we follow through on them, then we are surely sinning. By the way, we are all a bunch of sinners, not just Yours Truly. If you doubt my word, then see what the Apostle Paul had to say in Romans 3:32.
So I listened to the Devil, and not my God-given conscience and chose a moment when everyone was schmoozing around my spacious dining-room table indulging in afternoon snacks. Little Jacob had already wolfed his snack down and was upstairs in our temporary quarters watching ‘caw-toons’ on a small television that Gabe had taken from Alison’s now acquisitioned room.
‘Agnes,’ I said loud enough for everyone to hear, ‘do you remember Melvin Stoltzfus?’
My friend dropped a macaroon that was an inch from her mouth. ‘What? Is this some kind of a joke? How many times did that man try to kill you? Three times? Four?’