Pennsylvania-Dutch - Too Many Crooks Spoil The Broth Part 5

"Quakers?" I asked hopefully. Although I'm sure there must be some, I had never heard of a vegetarian Mennonite.

Linda giggled again. She was either a very good actress, or as sweet as maple syrup. "I belong to the New Age Church of Holistic Oneness, Miss Yoder. We don't believe in violence either. Against humans or animals. That's why we must protest the taking of innocent lives. In this case, deer lives. And what better way to spread our gospel of inter-species coexistence than to bring it to the attention of the media."

My throat felt dry. "Which media?" To my knowledge Hernia only had a weekly paper.

Linda didn't miss a beat. I mean st.i.tch. "The national media, of course. ABC, CNN, you know the ones."

"I don't watch television," I said proudly. Actually, that wasn't quite true. Occasionally when Susannah is out, I sneak into her room and watch reruns of "Green Acres." "And besides which, why single out Congressman Ream? Tomorrow there will be thousands of hunters out there."

"Sad, yet true. But how many of them are ambitious politicians, who at the very least will attract media coverage and who are in the position to introduce legislation outlawing this barbaric pastime?"

"You have a point," I conceded, "but can you at least keep the inn out of it?"

Linda sighed the impatient sigh of the young. When Susannah, who is not so young anymore, does it, she rolls her eyes as well. Linda, to her credit, kept her eyes on her work. "I already told you, Miss Yoder, I respect your wishes. I do not lie."

As long as she wasn't looking up, there was no harm in me rolling my eyes, was there? "I believe you. But what about Miss Parker? She's your leader, isn't she?"

Linda and Billy both laughed. "Ma'am," said Billy, who did look up and almost caught me in mid-roll, "we A.P.E.S. don't have leaders. We do things by consensus. What Linda says goes for me as well. As I'm sure it will for Joel. So you don't have nothing to worry about, Miss Yoder. Except maybe getting a good night's sleep and finding yourself a new cook."

"Speaking of which," I said, "how does buckwheat pancakes with home-harvested honey sound for breakfast?" I was trying to be cooperative, I really was.

"Is the honey organic?" inquired Linda.

"The bees are especially bred to produce organic honey," I said, rolling my eyes again.

Billy Dee caught my look and winked. "Got any bacon to go with that?"

"Home-cured. Organic as well."

"Very funny," said Linda, still not looking up.

"Mr. Grizzle," I then said nervously, "may I please speak to you a moment out in the hall? It's about that problem with the toilet in your room."

Of course, there was nothing wrong with Billy Dee's toilet, and it was stupid of me to imply that there was. Susannah always says I add too many details to my lies. Spa.r.s.e lies, she says, generally go across much better.

But Billy Dee was at least a cooperative conspirator. "Sure thing, Miss Yoder," he said hopping up. "I been meaning to talk to you about that myself."

"Did you get a chance to talk to Miss Brown?" I asked when we were alone.

"No, ma'am. I knocked on her door a couple of times, but either she ain't in, or she's out like a light. A lot of them reporters have drinking problems, you know."

I didn't know, but now I certainly hoped it was true. When Susannah comes home in her cups, I can count on her sleeping for at least the next twelve hours. With any luck, and if what made Miss Brown's suitcase so heavy was booze, the retiring reporter might be out of commission for most of the week. Of course I am theologically, as well as personally, opposed to alcohol, but the good Lord is just as capable of using the devil's tools to his advantage as anything else.

"Say, Miss Yoder," added Billy Dee as an afterthought, "I'd like to do me a little pole fishing tomorrow evening when we get back. Any ponds around here?"

"Miller's pond is just up the road about a mile and a half. He doesn't mind if you fish it, as long as you close the cattle gate behind you."

"Sure thing, ma'am, thanks. But, say, you wouldn't happen to have an empty jar or something I could keep my bait in? You know, with a lid."

I refrained from laughing. "It's November, Mr. Grizzle. If you're looking for night crawlers, you may have to dig down to China."

"Name's Billy Dee, ma'am, remember? Anyhow, I bet that cow manure out there back of the barn keeps the ground as warm as toast. Might have to wrestle me those worms out of the ground, they'll be so big."

He was probably right. Papa used to fish in November, and with night crawlers too, I think. "I keep some empty jars in that old cabinet on the back porch. Help yourself. You need a flashlight?"

"Naw, but thank you, ma'am."

"Just turn out the lights when you leave."

At the rate they were working, the quilt might well be finished by the time they turned in.

By then I was p.o.o.ped, so I headed circuitously for bed. We have no night clerk here at the PennDutch. There is no "vacancy" sign for me to turn on or off in the evenings. If all the guests have arrived, I am free to toddle off to bed whenever I feel like it. AII the guests have their own keys to the front door and are free to come and go as they please. Once or twice I might get up in the middle of the night to see if the front door has been locked, but this is only a recent practice. I know every single solitary soul living in Hernia, even the three Baptists, and if it hadn't been for the rape and murder of Rachel Zook by an itinerate vagabond last year, I wouldn't bother to lock up at all.

After locking the front door, I turned off the lights in the main sitting room and then popped into the parlor. The parlor has always been the parlor. It too is located at the front of the house, just off the sitting room, and back when the sitting room used to be the dining room, the parlor was where we entertained the non-eating guests. Eating company, as Mama called the others, had no need to use the parlor. But for non-eating guests, the ones you only wanted to stay for an hour or less, the parlor was the perfect solution.

The parlor was smaller than the dining room but had a lot more personality. Although it had its own entrance off the front porch, we never used it but always entered through the old dining room. I think that in the very old days the parlor used to be the kitchen, because the wall opposite the dining room is dominated by an enormous hearth. The hearth is mostly filled in now with bookshelves, but the center portion has been kept open as a fireplace.

Back when Grandma ran the show, the parlor was furnished only with straight-back, uncomfortable chairs. Any visitor who managed to survive sitting in one for an hour without squirming was a candidate for elevation to an eating guest. But when Mama took over, she changed all the rules. Out went the straight-backs and in came the overstuffed. Comfy furniture was Mama's one concession to decadence.

I must confess that I have taken Mama's drastic changes a step further, by the addition of two La-Z-Boy recliners. It was in one of these chairs that I found Joel Teitlebaum.

"Oh, good evening," I said. It had been an evening of surprises and I was a mite startled. I am, after all, easily lost in my thought.

"Good evening, Miss Yoder," Joel said cheerfully. He had apparently been reading one of the books from the hearth and munching on sunflower seeds. A little stack of empty sh.e.l.ls lay on an end table next to him.

"Is it a good book?" I asked lamely. I am always at a loss when talking alone to a man, even one young enough to be my son.

"It's not bad. Parallels and Discrepancies Between Amish and Orthodox Jewish Lifestyles by Judith Hostetler Cohen. Is she related to your cook?"

"Somehow. And to me. Virtually all Hostetlers in the country are descendants of one man, Jacob Hochstetler, who immigrated to America from Switzerland in 1738. In fact, about eighty percent of all Amish are somehow related through this one man, as are heaps of Mennonites."

"Even Jeff Hostetler, the former Giants' quarterback?"

"Yes." I knew nothing about football, but Susannah did, and Jeff Hostetler's kinship had already been established.

"Bad," said Joel.

"Pardon me?"

Joel smiled patiently. "Bad means good."

"So you didn't like the book then?"

Joel laughed. "No, the book was okay. 'Bad' and 'bad' mean two different things."

"I see." Of course I didn't.

Joel held out a little brown sack of sunflower seeds and offered them to me. Want some?"

"No, thanks. Are you still hungry?" There were plenty of raw carrots and apples in the kitchen I could offer him instead.

"Naw. I had some 'peach jerky' and kelp cookies up in my room. I hope you don't mind."

"Munch away," I said. "You are, after all, on the Amish Lifestyle Plan, so I trust you'll clean up all the crumbs." I wasn't worried anyway. Despite the fact that he was dressed in some homespun-looking fabric, and was wearing plastic sandals with navy blue socks, Joel Teitlebaum was impeccably neat.

"I hear that you've discovered our purpose for being here, Miss Yoder."

I sat down in the easy chair nearest him. "And how did you hear that?" I had left Billy and Linda safely in the dining room just minutes before.

He took some sh.e.l.ls out of his mouth and started stacking up another neat paG.o.da. "I couldn't help hearing when I was in my room. The Congressman and his aide were in the hallway, and they didn't exactly keep their voices down. The Congressman, for one, seemed pretty ticked."

What exactly did he say?"

"Enough to tell me that we're going to have to get up pretty early in the morning to keep track of them." His tone was only slightly accusing.

"How early?"

"Just early. They didn't say when they planned to sneak out."

I breathed a sigh of relief. "I'll have a vegetarian breakfast all prepared for you by seven," I offered. I am a firm believer in at least postponing any confrontation that I can't stop.

"Can you make it six instead?"

"Six-thirty." I felt like I was bargaining away one of my quilts.

"Okay, I'll tell the others. Say, how much snow are we expecting by morning, anyway?"

"Not any that I know of. Why?" The last weather report I'd heard had called for fair skies with a low of thirty-eight and pockets of scattered frost in lowlying areas. Of course that forecast might have been from a week ago.

"I thought I heard the Congressman say something about snow." He glanced down at his plastic sandals. "I just didn't want to have to go tramping about in the snow in these things. They're the only shoes I brought with me. Got caught up in one of my sculptures and packed kind of quickly," he added sheepishly.

"If it does snow, I can lend you a pair of galoshes," I offered gallantly.

"But Miss Yoder," he said laughing, "I wear a size twelve. Men's twelve. I doubt if even your feet are that big."

"Thank you, sort of. But these aren't mine really these were my father's."

"In that case, thank you. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you."

"No offense taken. Well, speaking of feet, I'm dead on mine. If you want to tell the others about breakfast, young Linda and Mr. Grizzle are still in the dining room quilting away like they were at a bee."

"Linda and Billy?" He sounded genuinely surprised, but recovered quickly and said good night. I got the impression he would continue reading until milking time. Young people these days don't seem to need any sleep. It must be all that fluoride they've been getting in their water.

As I closed the door behind me, all I could think about was crawling into my warm, snuggly bed. Then I remembered that I was going to have to share my bed and choked back a yelp of dismay.

8.

If you've never had to share a bed with Susannah, count yourself lucky. I hate to say this about my own sister, but unfortunately each year fewer and fewer people can count themselves lucky. Of course I don't share Susannah's bed in the same way these people do, but, still, I feel a weird sort of bond with them.

If you survive the night with Susannah, chances are that you will emerge with enough b.u.mps and bruises to draw looks of sympathy from total strangers, and undoubtedly will be a good deal deafer to boot. Susannah thrashes and snores like n.o.body's business. When Mama and Papa were alive, we had a sow named Susannah, and its name was no coincidence. It is a pure wonder that Susannah's precious little Shnook.u.ms sleeps with her every night and still survives. But perhaps this explains why the mutt is so high-strung he can catch kites on a windless day.

"Susannah," I warned her that night for the millionth time, "unless you want to sleep on the floor, stay on your side of the bed. And for pity's sake, sleep on your left side. Otherwise you sound like a pond full of bullfrogs."

Despite her claim to tiredness, Susannah had been awake and watching "Murder, She Wrote" on her portable TV. "Dishes done?" she'd asked callously when I entered the room. I said nothing and let her finish the program while I undressed. Just having the TV on, especially on a Sunday night, made me feel guilty.

"Well, if we're not going to be chatty, all right if I stay up and watch the movie? It's about this woman who finds out her husband's having an affair, and she decides to get even by having an affair of her own, except that the man she chooses is the husband of the woman her husband is having an affair with. So, at one point they figure it out and "

That's when I made her turn off the TV and scoot over. "Susannah dear," I said, trying to imitate Mama's voice, "let's say our prayers now and get ready for the sandman."

"Is he cute?"

I simply refused to answer. Cute is not what Susannah is after. John Stutzman, who goes to our church, is cute, and he's all eyes for Susannah, but she pays him no mind. Not that Susannah goes to our church anymore anyway. My point is that Susannah is turning her back on our people and our traditions to such an extent that, as awful as it is to say so, I am glad Mama and Papa are not here to see it. That old adage about the apple not falling far from the tree is plain baloney. Susannah's apple rolled out of the orchard and into the world the year Mama and Papa died.

I eventually quit fuming about Susannah and fell asleep. Both she and Shnook.u.ms beat me to it, however, and when I did drift off, it was to the alternating rhythm of Susannah's deep throaty snores and Shnook.u.ms's pitiful pips. At some point I dreamed that I was stranded in a rowboat without oars in the world's largest frog pond. Maybe it was even an ocean, except that it was shallow enough for cattails and fresh enough for millions of croaking, squeaking, and bellowing frogs. Then, suddenly, all the frogs but one fell silent, and the one, in a startlingly human voice, began to scream for help.

I woke up and turned on the bedside lamp. Not surprisingly, Susannah and Shnook.u.ms were still sound asleep. Of course, it wasn't their dream, but not that it made any difference. It is those with the most on their consciences who sleep the soundest, or haven't you noticed? Anyway, I was just about to turn off the light and try to go back to sleep when I heard the scream again. This time I was definitely not dreaming.

I put on my slippers and threw on my heavy corduroy robe, which doesn't at all compromise my modesty, and set out to investigate. The scream seemed to have come from upstairs, possibly from the new wing, above the new dining room. As soon as I had negotiated the impossibly steep stairs, it was immediately clear that I was on the right track. Joel and all three members of the Ream party were standing in the hallway looking toward the new wing.

"What the " began the Congressman, but I cut him off.

"It's okay, folks, I'll take care of this." I mean, what's the point of standing around and scratching your head when all you have to do is check something out?

The scream, a sort of garbled "help," was emitted one more time, and then I immediately knew where it came from. I headed straight for Susannah's old room, with Joel at my heels.

The door was open, and the reading lamps on either side of the bed were turned on. Centered in the bed, but with her back pressed up against the headboard, was Linda McMahon. She seemed to be staring fixedly at something on the quilt that covered her legs.

"Linda!" Joel pushed past me and raced to the bed.

"Help!" she screamed one more time. So intently was she staring at whatever it was, she didn't seem to be aware of our presence.

I went around to the other side of the bed and tried to follow the angle of her gaze. She was staring at something just below her knees, at some point in a strip of blue and red calico. Then I saw it too, but, I'm ashamed to say, I started to laugh.

"What's so funny?" demanded Joel.

"It's only this." I took off one of my slippers and laid it gently on the quilt, atop Linda's shins. When I removed it a minute later, there was a little brown, eight-legged creature clinging to it. "A little itsy-bitsy, teensie-weensie spider."

Joel recoiled as if I were waving a snake at him, and Linda somewhat ironically began to open and close her mouth like a baby bird begging to be fed.

"Come on, folks, get a grip on it," I said in my best Susannah imitation. "This is a harmless little house spider, just out to get himself a midnight snack. And I don't mean you," I hastened to a.s.sure Linda.

"Where did he come from?" Joel had backed far enough away from the bed so that I was having to lean way over it just to allow him to get a good look. "Probably from up there," I said, pointing to the ceiling. "He really is harmless, I can a.s.sure you. He eats things too small to even see. In fact, some folks consider them to be lucky spiders." I wasn't really lying. Susannah did consider it lucky when I didn't make her sweep down all the cobwebs that eventually collected in her room.