by Tamar Myers
Susannah had the chutzpah to roll her eyes throughout my recitation. ‘Nah, them things was to be expected on account that we’re sisters. I’m talking about when I was like five or six, and you bought me a baby doll – you know, one of them realistic ones that you can feed water to in a bottle, and then it wets itself. I loved her so much. I even named her Mags, after you.
‘But then you said, that if she was going to be named after you, she had to be a Christian, so you took me over to Miller’s Pond and you baptized her. Then suddenly Aaron Miller, who was like your age and drop-dead gorgeous, pops out of the bushes and says “hi”, so you let go of my doll.’ Susannah addressed Melvin. ‘Guess what happened next?’
‘They started making out like crazy?’ he said, before guffawing.
‘I’ve apologized for what happened next a million times,’ I said. ‘And after your baby Mags went floating away and eventually sank, I bought you a new one with my hard-earned babysitting money. Plus, Mama thrashed me within an inch of my life with a couple of weeping willow switches.’
‘See, I told you that the doctrine of pacifism is phoney baloney,’ Melvin said.
‘It is not,’ I said hotly. ‘Mama didn’t believe in striking anybody else’s children – just her own children. So there.’
‘My papa whipped the living daylights out of me,’ Melvin said. He sounded proud of it.
‘Boo hoo hoo,’ I said, as I rubbed at my eyes with my newly freed fists. ‘That doesn’t give either of you the right to kill anyone. Most especially blood kin, and the mother of your nephew.’
‘Little Jacob is only my half-nephew, on account of you’re just my half-sister,’ Melvin said proudly. In all seriousness, the fact that he had been able to figure out his relatedness to my son, was a major accomplishment, given the man’s math skills.
‘But Mags,’ Susannah said, ‘yours and Melvin’s birth mother was no relation to me, so that means that Little Jacob isn’t related to me either.’
‘Au contraire, dear. Our family genealogy is so tangled, that you and me and Melvin are closer than first cousins – more than a small amount of hyperbole aside. If you and your Mely-kins have a baby together, it might even be born with horns and cloven hoofs.’
‘Really?’ Susannah said.
I smiled. ‘Would I lie at a time like this?’
‘Yes,’ my captors replied in unison.
‘Well, I’m not lying when I say that you and Melvin are close blood relations. But before we ponder the possible peculiarities of your potential progeny any further, perhaps you should procure paper and pen post-haste.’
Melvin stepped back from the bed, all the better to give me a menacing look as he stroked his hairless mandible with a claw-like forefinger. ‘Maybe we would,’ he said, ‘if we could.’
‘What is that supposed to mean?’ I asked.
‘That means, dear,’ he said in a mocking voice, ‘that we haven’t got any paper or writing implements, as you call them, in the house.’
‘How can that be?’ I said. ‘Don’t you ever jot down messages? Take notes of some kind?’
‘We’re millennials, Mags,’ Susannah said. ‘We’re not you old-fashioned boomers. Boom, boom! What does that stand for, anyway? Farts? Old farts! Get it?’
Susannah laughed until tears ran down her cheeks. My poor, misguided, lovelorn sister has always been worse at maths than Melvin, and apparently not very good at guessing one’s age from one’s physical appearance. Melvin is actually one year older than I am, which makes him a boomer, not a millennial.
‘Boom, boom, you old fart,’ Melvin said to me. But his eyes said, You better not give my age away, Yoder, or your death will be more excruciatingly painful than you imagined.
I sighed dramatically. ‘When you’re done having your fun, children, I suggest you fetch me the writing supplies before I change my mind and call the operation off. Then not only will you lose the only reasonable excuse for my disappearance, but you will also forfeit the million dollars I was planning to send you by money order when I made it safely out of the country – if indeed, you will consider that option.’
‘We will! Won’t we, Mely-kins? I always wanted to have a pink bathroom and a walk-in closet that can hold a hundred pairs of shoes.’ Susannah draped herself around Melvin’s narrow shoulders like a wet piece of tissue paper.
‘Sure thing, Carrot Cakes,’ Melvin said. ‘Here, you take the gun. Now, don’t let your sister out of this room, no matter how much she begs and pleads. Even if she has to go to the bathroom, she can just do it in her pants. Remember that she’s a fast-talker, a manipulator – in other words, you can’t believe a word she says. Magdalena Yoder is a big, fat, skinny liar.’ He started out the door but turned back. ‘I’ll be heading down the mountain to the Bottoms-Up Bar and Grill. The bartender’s gotta have something. If he don’t, I’ll keep on going until I get to town. I’ll be back within an hour – maybe an hour and a half. You got all that, Sugar Lips?’
‘Sure do, Mely-kins.’ My sister blew him a kiss.
We heard his tiny girlish feet patter down the stairs, the front door slam, and then the engine of the car, as he drove down the mountain in search of writing implements.
Susannah stood very still listening to him go, as if she were a doe in the woods, and he was a predator retreating into the distance. When we could no longer hear the car, she whirled and threw herself into my arms!
‘Thank God that evil man is gone,’ she cried, as the gun clattered to the floor. ‘Oh Mags, oh Mags, I thought he’d never leave.’
TWENTY-NINE
‘Wait just one marshmallow minute!’ I cried. ‘What do you mean by that? Is this a trap?’
‘O, Mags!’ Susannah said, and threw herself at me, practically knocking me back down on the bed. ‘I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I didn’t know!’
I held her at arm’s length as I slid to my feet. ‘OK, tell me slowly, and clearly. What didn’t you know, and what is going on?’
When Susannah resumed speaking, she was crying. To my knowledge, Susannah hasn’t cried once since the day that we buried our parents.
‘I didn’t know that he was actually planning to kill you,’ she said, sobbing. ‘He-he s-said that he just wanted to make you suffer because your life has always been awesome, and his life has always been lousy. So he asked me to help him with some pranks during the festival. Magdalena, that’s all I agreed to do. They were just harmless pranks, right?’
‘Harmless pranks?’ I screeched. ‘You call killing two people “harmless pranks”?’
‘What are you yelling about?’ she asked between sobs. ‘We didn’t kill anyone!’
‘The bodies in Sam’s dumpster, Susannah.’
‘Cousin Sam’s dumpster?’
‘Who else’s? They were to be guests at the PennDutch until you and Melvin murdered them.’
‘Honestly, Mags, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I swear on a stack of—’
‘Don’t swear on the Bible,’ I said. ‘I believe that you didn’t kill anyone. But I am convinced that Melvin did.’
‘Oh Mags, I am so sorry for everything!’
This was not the time to lecture her, nor was there even any time to comfort her. She would always be my baby sister, no matter how stupid and misguided her actions were. I’ve lived too long to believe in ‘unconditional’ love, but I do believe in loving the memory of how someone once was.
I grabbed my sister by her shoulders, still at arm’s length, and squeezed them gently. ‘So what do we do now, Susannah?’
‘We run,’ she said. ‘We have to get out of here before Melvin gets back.’
‘Where to? Up to the top of Cheat Mountain, and hope that we can get cell phone service up there?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s too steep and rugged. We’d never make it up there at night. Especially without flashlights. Besides, what good would it do if we did? Neither of us has a phone.’
‘Yes, we do,’ I said, as I headed for the d
oor.
‘Mags!’ she wailed, sounding just like me, ‘we don’t have phones. I left my phone in the car, and you—’
‘Brought my phone,’ I said.
‘What? But Melvin had me search the pockets of your frumpy dress. There was zilch. Nada.’
I turned triumphantly. ‘Susannah, dear, we are both a carpenter’s dream: flat as a board on top. Ergo, we both wear an item of clothing that comes with its own twin phone storage pockets.’
‘We do?’
‘Susannah, where did you used to tote that nasty little teacup Yorkie dog of yours?’
‘You mean my precious itty-bitty, widdle Shnookums?’ Susannah said in a little girl voice.
‘Yes,’ I said with a growl, ‘that very same mangy rat that snapped at me every chance his flea-bitten carcass came within an inch of me.’
‘You know where I kept him,’ Susannah said. ‘In my bra, of course.’
‘Well then,’ I said, ‘it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that your older sis often stashes her cell phone in the top half of her sturdy Christian underwear. But never in the bottom half, of course, because that would be unhygienic, and besides, the periodic vibrations of incoming messages would undoubtedly lead to unintentional arousal. That is what’s known as phone sex, and the pastor has preached that phone sex is the same as adultery.’
‘Give me a break,’ Susannah said. ‘But OK, come on, we’ll have to run down the mountain a ways in order to get a signal. I mean a good long ways, like clear down to the Bottoms-Up Bar and Grill.’
‘Then let’s get a move on, dear,’ I said.
Of course, there was to be no running. One does not just wake up from a concussion and then hit the road pounding. Well, I guess that I could, if one was willing to put up with a miniature jackhammer in one’s head, pounding away at one’s skull. Besides which, Susannah has never run a meter in her life, unless it was away from work. Nevertheless, the steep incline of the mountain road kept us moving at a dangerous, and painful, pace. Had it not been for the full moon, I’m quite certain that the earth would have been happy to rise up and greet my face on several occasions.
Due to the brain-rattling conditions it was hard to carry on a conversation. However, it was imperative that I learn as much as I could about Melvin’s latest diabolical scheme as soon as possible, lest Susannah switch allegiances again. It’s been said that blood is thicker than water, but when it comes to my sister, the saying applies only if the blood in question has been congealed.
‘Susannah, whose cabin is that?’
‘Melvin’s. I mean, he’s renting it.’
‘But why all the way out here?’
‘He said that after he killed you, he was going to bury you in the woods out back, and no one would ever know where to look for you because the cabin was so remote. But Mags, you have to believe me: I didn’t think that he’d actually follow through with it.’
The Devil made me want to reach out and swat her. Thank goodness I am as stupid as I look, for had I done so, she might have stumbled and rolled down the mountain all the way to Charleston, West Virginia, and I still had oodles more questions to ask.
‘Susannah, how long had Melvin been planning this multi-prong attack on the Billy Goat Gruff Festival?’
‘Is that a serious question, sis?’
‘Silly me,’ I said. ‘In other words, ever since the first one. Because I came up with something good, he wanted to destroy it.’
‘That’s not fair, Mags. Did you ever think to honour him? Make him Hernia’s Citizen of the Year? Think of all the years that he served this community as Chief of Police?’
‘Sister dear, your hubby is a convicted killer. And you’ve got it wrong; he didn’t serve this community – this community survived him.’
‘Oh, Mags, you’re so mean!’
‘I’m being truthful. Now you be honest and tell me how he found the time and opportunity to pull off all those pranks if he had to be Miriam half the time.’
Susannah trilled triumphantly. ‘My Mely-kins thinks of everything. Remember when my genius hubby – and that’s what he is, Mags – hung out with that bunch of unemployed Shakespearean actors?’
‘Oh, yeah. The last time he tried to kill me.’
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Well, my lovey-dovey learned all about make-up and costumes and wigs, so he’s been living in Hernia for the last two weeks setting things up. You know, like renting the sewage truck, filing the wagon traces, scoping out the snake-handlers’ church. That kind of thing.’
‘No way, Jose!’
‘Yuppers. He’s been living in a rented room on Cranston Street, on the poor side of town.’
‘Economically challenged,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘It’s not nice to say poor anymore.’
‘What about “rich”?’ Susannah said.
‘Economically blessed,’ I said.
‘Now you’re just messing with me,’ Susannah said.
‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘Susannah, where is that mini, mangy mutt of Miriam’s – er, Melvin’s, that goes by the name of Fi-Fi? He didn’t leave it back at the inn, did he?’
My sister had the temerity to laugh. ‘Oh, Mags, you and your need to alliterate. No, that mini, mangy mutt wasn’t even Melvin’s. He picked it up from a rescue shelter just for “operation Magdalena”. We dropped it back off at the same shelter when we went into Bedford to pick up the ingredients for your Australian seafood salad. How did everyone like the supper that we prepared? You never did say?’
I groaned loudly.
‘Mags?’ Susannah said in alarm. ‘Does your tummy hurt? Tell me!’
‘No, Susannah. My stomach feels fine. Why do you keep asking?’
‘Because Melvin poisoned the seafood salad.’
I managed to stop a few yards downhill. ‘What did you say?’
‘I didn’t do it, Mags. Melvin did it. I tried to stop him; honest I did. But he hit me, Mags. Hard. Right across the mouth. He’s never done anything like that before. And then he just collapsed on the floor and bawled like a baby. Mags, I’m scared. It’s like he’s had a breakdown or something. Then when he got up – believe me, I’ve never seen his face look like that. Mags, there was nothing that I could do to stop him. I felt so helpless.’
I stared at my baby sister. Maybe it was the moonlight, but I was looking at a face that I didn’t recognize.
‘Let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘You couldn’t think of a way to warn me? You couldn’t text? Maybe leave a note with the salad when he wasn’t looking?’
‘I don’t expect you to understand,’ Susannah said, ‘but it’s like Melvin has this power over me. Sometimes I think that I would die for him.’
‘Yeah?’ I shouted angrily. ‘Well, how about this? What if my Little Jacob had died tonight because his supper was poisoned? Or my husband Gabe? Or Chief Toy? Or any of the others, all just because a convicted murderer was controlling your mind? Susannah, you are a bright and beautiful woman, yet you sold out your family for the approval of this … this … well, never mind.’
Susannah burst into tears, but I let her cry. I had no words of comfort for her at the moment; she needed to feel the total impact of her actions. For years Melvin had been obsessed with killing me, and surely Susannah, as his Sweetykins, knew that. Even a marble statue isn’t that blind.
‘Stop your blubbering, sis,’ I finally said. ‘For your information – not that you deserve to know this – we never did eat the meal that you two felons prepared for us. I suppose that if we had, we’d all be long dead by now. Is that it?’
‘Well, not Little Jacob,’ Susannah said between sobs. ‘I knew that he was allergic to seafood. I remember you told me that once when you visited me in prison.’
‘Uh-huh. But what about me, the woman who raised you since you were eleven years old? Were you really all right with me clutching my stomach, and writhing in agony like a python at a snake belly-dancing contest?’
Susannah let o
ut a cry that was so mournful it was sure to make coyotes weep. ‘But you don’t understand!’
‘Then help me understand,’ I said. It wasn’t so that I wouldn’t press charges (I would, no matter what she said), but because I wanted to be able to forgive her.
My sister grabbed my arm and clutched it with fingers as thin and sharp as knitting needles. ‘Melvin adores me, Mags.’
‘That’s nice,’ I said. I sped up, as to pull away from her talons, but she surprised me by exhibiting speed for the first time in her life.
‘You don’t understand,’ she said. ‘He worships me. Frankly, I don’t know why, but I can tell you, that it feels awesome. Mags, you’re smart and drop-dead gorgeous, and you’ve always been able to get a man. Now you’ve got that handsome Jewish doctor—’
‘Excuse me? What did you say?’
‘I’m not anti-Semitic, Mags, you know I’m not.’
‘It was that drop-dead gorgeous part. Were you mocking me?’
She let go of my arm. ‘I know what it is now! It’s that body-dysmorphic syndrome that you suffered from, isn’t it? You haven’t been cured, have you? Don’t tell me that you still think that you have a horsey head, and a flat chest, yada, yada, yada. All you need to do is look in a mirror, Magdalena, and see the beautiful woman that Gabe adores. And Toy, for that matter.’
‘Toy?’
Susannah groaned. ‘Yes, you fool. That man is crazy about you too.’
‘Ack,’ I cried. ‘Get behind me, Satan! I don’t want to be beautiful! I’m not beautiful. I look like a horse, and that’s that. Case closed.’
We walked in a state of high tension until we approached Bottoms-Up Bar and Grill where chaos appeared to have reigned. The large parking lot was jam-packed with pickup trucks and motorcycles, and there were vehicles seemingly abandoned willy-nilly along the embankments. Clearly this was one very popular nightspot for entertainment. One car belonged to the county sheriff or one of his, or her, deputies, yet I paused before entering.