by Tamar Myers
“That’s a laugh. From what I hear, your ratings are in the toilet. Your show could be canceled any day.”
“That’s my business.”
“Well fine, then, have it your way. But half of nothing is still nothing.”
“We’ll see about that.”
A door slammed, and I prudently stepped into the closet and closed the door. From the sound of the footsteps going past me, Alma Cornwater was one unhappy camper.
Trust me on this one, the only fate really worse than death is sharing a bed with Susannah Yoder Entwhistle. It’s bad enough that my sister’s snores can wake the dead two counties over, but she thrashes like a combine. A sleeping Susannah, tied to the front of a tractor, could harvest a wheat field the size of Montana in one night. I put on two long-sleeved, ankle-length plaid flannel nighties and a red woolen ski mask to keep me from bodily injury. What I completely forgot about was Shnookums’s predilection for wandering, once released from the confines of Susannah’s bra. In theory, the dog sleeps on the floor at the foot of his mistress’s bed and disturbs her only when it is necessary to use the great outdoors. This was real life, however, not theory.
In real life my sister sleeps too soundly to be disturbed by a runt with a peanut-size bladder. But were she a light sleeper, she would not bother to get out of bed. Susannah solves the potty problem by buying Huggies intended for newborns, cutting them in half, and taping these dinky diapers around her dog’s derriere. It’s no wonder the mutt is always in such a foul mood.
I awoke in the middle of the night to find the tiny terror perched on my chest, his teeth clamped to the bottom edge of the ski mask. He had the audacity to be growling, and each pathetic snarl sent noxious waves of decaying horse flesh straight to my nostrils.
“Susannah!” It is no easy feat to scream through gritted teeth.
Susannah snorted and rolled over. Shnookums, however, growled louder and shook his Lilliputian head in a futile attempt to unmask me.
“Let go, you filthy rat, or I’ll feed you to the first cat I find.” I knew better than to lay a hand on the beast. I value all ten sets of fingerprints.
“Susannah! Wake up!”
Susannah mumbled something about it having been good for her too. The repugnant pooch was not nearly as complimentary. He snarled one more time, and then with an audible grunt passed gas so foul that it put anything Aaron did to shame.
I sat up, the dog dangling from my chin, his beady little eyes staring up at me definitely. “You beast!” I screamed.
This time it was an openmouthed scream, and Susannah woke up. The second her eyes fluttered open, that minuscule mongrel on my mask let out a yowl intended to break a mother’s heart. Fortunately, in doing so, he fell loose from the mask and landed on my lap.
“Magdalena, how could you?” Susannah shrieked. She scooped her cunning canine into her arms and rocked him like a baby.
But I was through being abused by a dog in diapers. “How could I what? You’re the one who won’t let him out to do his number one.”
Susannah howled, shocking Shnookums first into whimpers, then silence. “Number one? You’re forty-six years old, for crying out loud. Can’t you even say the word pee?”
“I have a right not to be vulgar.”
“There’s nothing vulgar about the word pee, Magdalena.”
I turned on my right side, my back toward my sister. “Take that animal outside and let him urinate,” I said.
More howls, and a few yowls as well.
“Take him out now, dear, or you can spend the rest of the night sleeping on the floor in the parlor.” Heeding the wisdom of my grandmothers, I do not have a sofa on the premises.
“Okay, okay, don’t get your panties in a bunch.”
“Susannah!”
My sister is a slow learner, but stops just short of being incorrigible. Protesting loudly—I’m sure at least some of the guests heard her—she heaved herself out of bed and stomped out of the room, slamming my bedroom door behind her. Believe me, a huge part of me wanted to chase after my sister and force her to repeat her exit, this time without the melodrama. But what was the point? A proper attitude was the water to which my equine sister could be led, but not made to drink.
I pretended to be asleep when she came back in, for all the good it did me.
“Magdalena?”
Silence.
“Magdalena. I know you’re still awake. I can tell by the way you’re breathing. Your mouth’s not open wide enough.”
“Thanks.”
“Hey, you’re not still mad at me, are you?”
“Of course, dear. What makes you think anything has changed?”
“But I’m not still mad at you.”
“At me? That’s because you have no reason—never mind, Susannah. Just go to sleep and leave me alone. Did that ferocious fur ball do his business?”
She giggled. “You’re a hoot, Mags, you know that? Mama would have been so proud of you.”
I sat up. “Of me? You’re the one she doted on.”
“Ha, that’s a laugh.”
“What do you mean? Everyone could tell she liked you best.”
“Get real, Mags. I once heard her tell Papa that I was the bane of her existence. Her ‘cross to bear,’ ” she said.
“But that’s impossible. She bent over backward for you. Mama let you get away with things that I never, in my wildest dreams, imagined possible.”
“Oh, Mags, you don’t have a clue, do you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean? I’m not blind, for Pete’s sake. I watched you wear pants and paint your nails, and before I could catch my breath, Mama was doing the very same thing.”
“Mama never painted her nails, Mags.”
“But she wore pants and cut her hair!” To a conservative Mennonite, like Mama, that was akin to a Methodist dancing naked in Times Square in the middle of rush hour.
“You are clueless. Mama had to do those things!”
“Mama had to dress like a harlot and make a fool of herself in front of the entire community? Who forced her? Papa?”
“No! I did.”
“You?”
“Yes, me. It’s all about the birth order, Mags, don’t you ever read?”
This from a woman who needs help with the hard words on her cereal box? “You’re absolutely right, Susannah. I don’t have a clue on what goes on in that pumpkin head of yours. Next time I want sense from you, I’ll ask for pennies.”
“Not even funny, Mags. I do read, you know. I read this book on birth order, and it explained everything. You want to hear what it said, or not?”
“Enlighten me, O wise one.”
“I’ll ignore that, Mags, because I know you’re tired and just being your usual cranky self. Anyway, this book said that firstborn children—that’s you, Mags— tend to be like their parents. You know, conservative, concerned about appearances, that sort of thing. While later-born children, especially youngest children— that’s me, of course—tend to rebel. Independent thinkers, it called us.”
“Are you sure it didn’t say ‘original thinkers’? Because that’s the biggest load of huafa mischt I’ve ever heard.”
“You swore!” Susannah sang out gleefully.
“I did not!”
“You said horse—”
“Manure! And anyway, Mama was not the youngest child in her family.”
“Urrrgh! Sometimes I think you’re denser than Melvin.”
“You take that back!”
“What you don’t get is that Mama was trying to save me.”
“Your soul?”
“That too, I suppose. But Mama knew I was a troublemaker, and she tried to get close to me by acting like me. Not the really bad stuff I did, of course, but the smaller stuff. The stuff that really isn’t important—like how you look.”
“Did it work?”
Susannah was silent for a minute. “Judge for yourself,” she said in a small, strangled voice.
“Aw, Susannah
, you’re not so bad.”
She choked back a sob. “I’m not? Funny you should say that. You think I’m the Whore of Babylon.”
“I most certainly do not!”
“Get off it, Mags. You’ve called me that plenty of times. Anyway, that’s not the point”—she blew her nose, presumably on her half of the sheet—“where were we? How did we get started on this? Oh, yeah— you said Mama liked me best. But that’s not true at all. You were just like her. She was so proud of the way you turned out that she almost burst. That’s what she told all her friends. She said it was a sin how proud she felt.”
I was stunned. “Really?”
“You better believe it! And Papa too. But not me, of course. I hated you, Mags, you know that?”
“Because Mama and Papa were proud of me?”
“Oh, yeah. When they died, I wished it was you who was in that tunnel, squished to death between a truck full of turkeys and a tanker of maple syrup.”
“That was running shoes and milk, dear. Anyway, how do you feel about me now?”
I could sense her eyes rolling in the dark. “Don’t expect me to get all mushy, Mags, and say something corny like I love you. But if you must know, I’m kinda glad you’re around.”
“Ditto.”
I slept sounder that night than I had since Aaron left—although actually, since Aaron’s amorousness knew no bounds, that wasn’t a fair comparison. Let’s just say I had one of my best nights ever, but even that was hardly enough to prepare me for what the morning brought.
Chapter Fourteen
On the Magdalena Scale of Horrors, waking up to a ringing phone in the middle of the night ranks just below sharing a bed with Susannah. The next step down is to have someone shake you out of a sound sleep.
“Stop it, Aaron! How many times is enough?”
“Miss Yoder!”
“Aaron, you don’t need to be so formal. After all—”
“Magdalena! Wake up! Please wake up. I have something important to tell you.”
It had all been a bad dream. There was no spouse stashed up in Minnesota. I wasn’t an adulteress after all. I could hold my head as high as anyone, and given the fact that I am five feet ten, I could even hold it higher than most folks. I threw my arms joyously around my Pooky Bear.
“Ach!”
I opened my eyes, only to find myself gazing into the terrified eyes of Jonathan Hostetler.
“Jonathan! What on earth are you doing?”
“Me?” he croaked.
I released Jonathan’s neck and scooted back under my covers. I may have been sleeping in two long-sleeved, ankle-length flannel nightgowns, but—and this is for your ears only—underneath them, I was as naked as a baby jaybird. Besides, the nightgowns I was wearing that morning were a provocative pink.
“Jonathan, what’s wrong? Is it Mose? Is your father worse?”
“Papa’s feeling better. A little bit. But my Rachel— ach, that can wait. It’s the man in the barn.”
“What man? And whose barn?”
“There’s an Englishman in your barn, Miss Yoder!” Jonathan is only a year or two younger than I, and we’ve known each other all our lives, but out of some weird deference to the fact that I employ his parents, he insists on calling me Miss Yoder—unless, of course, he’s absolutely desperate to get my attention.
“The barn is not off limits to guests, Jonathan. Well—to smokers, yes, but then again, the whole place is off limits to them.”
“Ach! This man isn’t smoking. It’s much worse than that.”
“That’s off limits too. Who is he, and who is the woman with him?”
“No woman, Miss Yoder. He’s by himself.”
“That’s even worse,” I cried, sitting back up, and thereby exposing some of my alluring flannel.
“Magdalena!” Jonathan was waving his long, knobby arms, like a conductor trying to flag down a through train.
“Well, spit it out, Jonathan, I don’t have all day.”
“I think the man is dead.”
“Dead?” As familiar as that word was becoming, it never failed to raise the short hairs on the back of my neck, and the down on my cheeks.
Jonathan nodded victoriously, his grim news finally delivered. “Yah, dead. Maybe very dead.”
“Very dead?” Now that was a new one.
“He was kicked in the head, I think. It is a terrible sight.” At the moment Jonathan wasn’t a very pretty sight either. His face was the color of an uncooked asparagus stem.
“I’ll call 911,” I said. “You go in the bathroom and throw up. Remember to lift the lid, dear. Then when you’re done, go back and get your mama.”
I made the call, and then reluctantly called Melvin Stoltzfus, our chief of police.
I found George Mitchell lying face down in Matilda’s stall, beside an overturned milk bucket. Matilda, bless her shy hide, was pressed against the far side of the enclosure stall, her head turned into the corner. Her long tasseled tail, which she twitches when she’s nervous, was thumping regularly against the wooden slats behind her.
“Mr. Mitchell,” I called softly.
There was no answer.
“Mr. Mitchell!”
I made the mistake of turning him over. The left side of the man’s face was depressed, like an angel food cake upon which a can of peas has been dropped. His left eye was either missing or had been altered to the point that it was no longer recognizable. There had been a great deal of blood, and bits of straw clung to thickening ooze.
There is no point in lying, so I will confess that I too threw up. But I had regained some, if not most, of my composure by the time the paramedics showed. I was perfectly rational and in charge of all my faculties a few minutes later when Melvin arrived on the scene.
The paramedics, God bless them one and all, pronounced George Mitchell dead. Melvin seemed to have no quarrel with that.
“Take him to the county morgue,” he directed. “I’ll get the necessary information from Miss Yoder here.”
Now, I’m not blaming the Bedford County paramedics for heeding an order from Hernia’s chief of police. They’re trained to save lives, not investigate suspicious deaths. It was Melvin who should have known better.
I couldn’t believe it when a pair of paramedics picked up poor George Mitchell’s inert body and plopped it on the stretcher like a sack of potatoes. They may as well have been unloading the produce truck at Pat’s I.G.A.
“Melvin, tell them to stop! Stop!” I shouted at the paramedics.
Perhaps I sound more authoritative than I give myself credit for sounding. At any rate, the men, who were at that moment reaching down to pick up the stretcher, seemed to freeze.
Melvin turned. Ironically, it was his left orb that finally fixed on me. “What the hell was that for, Yoder?”
There was no time to chide him for swearing. “This is a crime scene, you idiot. You can’t remove the body until you’ve made a thorough investigation.”
“Crime scene?” The aberrant issue of some ancient ancestor’s loins had the audacity to laugh. “You’ve been watching too much television, Yoder.”
“I don’t watch television,” I hissed. There were never any corpses on Green Acres, so that didn’t count.
“Then you’ve been reading too many mystery stories in those girlie magazines of yours. There hasn’t been a crime committed unless”—his right eye fixed on Matilda—“unless it was your cow’s intent to kill the deceased.”
“What?”
“Which, come to think of it, just might be the case. She looks pretty guilty to me.”
The paramedics laughed nervously. But Melvin, I knew from experience, was dead serious.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Melvin! Matilda doesn’t have a murderous bone in her body.”
“Don’t be so sure. It’s happened before.” No doubt he was referring to the time a bull kicked him in the head.
“What are you going to do, Melvin? Throw Matilda in jail.”
Unfort
unately, the paramedics laughed again. Melvin gave them his famous one-eyed glare.
“This isn’t funny, Yoder,” he said pointedly to me. “You remember what we had to do to Henry Kurtz’s rottweiler when it bit the Brubaker boy?”
I gasped. “You’re taking Matilda into the Bedford pound?”
“The pound doesn’t take cows. But Mishler’s slaughterhouse does.”
“What? You can’t kill an innocent cow!”
“She’s dangerous, Yoder. She could do it again.”
“She didn’t do it, you idiot! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Mr. Mitchell here was murdered, all right, but his killer was two-legged.”
In a rare moment of cooperation, both eyes settled on me. “Are you saying this man was murdered? I mean, really murdered.”
“Bingo!”
“And just what would you offer as evidence?”
“I don’t know. Melvin. That’s your department, isn’t it? I’m just saying that if you check Matilda’s hooves, you won’t find any blood.”
I immediately realized my gaffe. “Of course I’d be happy to check for you.”
Melvin’s silence spoke volumes.
I walked over to my cowering cow and spoke calmly to her. Cows, unlike horses, do not take kindly to having their feet inspected. No doubt it is a matter of balance for them.
“Matilda, dear, that mean little man over there wants to see your feet. Be a good girl now and don’t kick me.”
Although Matilda swatted me repeatedly with her tail, she didn’t kick me. But that’s as far as her cooperation went. I had to wrench that splayed foot off the floor. It was like lifting one of Aaron’s barbells.
“Nothing, see?”
“Now the other,” said Melvin, who was watching from a safe distance.
“He’s being unreasonable,” I cooed, “but just go along with it.”
But no matter how hard I tugged, I couldn’t get Matilda’s right rear foot off the floor.
“It’s no use,” I said, huffing and puffing.
“Maybe she’s got something to hide.”
I don’t for the life of me know why I allow that man to get under my skin. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. So, I guess it’s Mishler’s slaughterhouse after all. Too bad she’s such a bag of bones. Otherwise I’d say put me down for ten pounds of hamburger and a couple of nice sirloins.”
