Between a Wok and a Hard Place

by Tamar Myers

  When Terry saw that it was me he waved furiously. Reluctantly I pulled over and rolled down my window partway.

  “Mrs. Miller,” he panted, “I just saw a grizzly bear.”

  “What?”

  Without asking my permission, he tried to open the passenger door. He was out of luck. The doors on my new car lock automatically whenever I put the gear into “drive.”

  “It was huge, and it was coming right at me.”

  I politely covered my smile with my hand. “That wasn’t a grizzly bear, but a black bear. Chances are it was just as afraid of you as you were of him. Anyway, they’re not very common around here, so consider yourself lucky.”

  “Oh.” He seemed almost disappointed.

  “Where’s your car?” I asked pleasantly. He was, after all, sweating like a Mennonite bride on her wedding night, and the leather seats of my BMW had yet to be defiled by even a single stain.

  “I left it back at your inn. I thought I would get a better feel for the area by walking.”

  “Well, you’re certainly—”

  Something snorted in the woods and a terrified Terry nearly ripped the handle off my door trying to open it. Fortunately, the window was cracked only a few inches, otherwise he might have dived right on through.

  “Mrs. Miller!” he screamed.

  “All right, dear,” I said, reluctantly unlocking the door, “but don’t lean back until that sweat on your back has had a chance to dry.” To be on the safe side I cranked up the air conditioner.

  “What are you doing here anyway?” I asked, once he was safely ensconced and was breathing at a near normal rate. “Aren’t you supposed to be learning how to bake pies?”

  “Oh, that. No offense, Mrs. Miller, but your cook is—well—she’s—uh—”

  “Bossy?”

  “Yeah, that’ll work. I didn’t sift my flour with other dry ingredients before I started to add the shortening. Well, you would have thought that I’d committed a capital crime.”

  “Did you at least cut the shortening into the flour with a knife until you had pea-size pieces?”

  “They were more like walnuts, but they smooshed together nicely anyway when I rolled it out. Mrs. Hostetler didn’t think so, however. She wanted me to start all over again, so I just left.”

  I sighed, perhaps a touch impatiently. There was going to be heck to pay when I got home. “Where did you get the duds?” I asked, displaying my knack for the vernacular. “Didn’t I explain that the Amish might think you’re mocking them?”

  He grinned. “Pretty cool, aren’t they? I went to Miller’s Feed Store. Just like you said, they didn’t have any ready-made stuff, but they did have these bolts of cloth, and this nice old lady offered to sew these for me.”

  “Was her name Abigail Cobb?”

  “I think so.”

  “Figures.” Abigail is a Presbyterian, for pete’s sake, but she zips on over to Miller’s Feed Store every time she sees a tourist headed that way and tries to sell them a bit of Amish culture. The woman is the craft maven of central Pennsylvania. She doesn’t own a shop, but operates out of her home, hawking the culture of kitsch any way she can. Ceramic geese with bows around their necks, teddy bears in tutus, lute-playing angels, and two-dimensional garden ladies exposing their bloomers as they bend over to tend their blooms. Amish sensibilities don’t even figure in her scheme of things.

  We had chatted far too long. I had to find Samuel Kauffman and make sure he saw a doctor. I also needed to question him about his assailant. I couldn’t very well do that with a nosy tourist along.

  “Well, now that you know it wasn’t a grizzly bear, I’m sure you wouldn’t mind hopping out and letting me go on merry way.”

  “You bet I do,” he said and slid comfortably down into the seat. “A bear is a bear, if you ask me. Could you drop me off at the inn?”

  “I could,” I said graciously, “but I won’t. I’m not headed that way.”

  “That’s all right. I’ll go whichever way you’re headed.”

  I gave him one of my better frowns. Susannah says I could plant lima beans in my frown furrows, and who should know better than their most frequent recipient?

  “I didn’t invite you along, dear,” I said.

  He sat up. “Frankly, Mrs. Miller, I’m kind of nervous about walking back to the inn. This is the first time I’ve ever been in a woods. I certainly never expected to get attacked.”

  I rolled my eyes, but I assure you he was looking the other way. “You weren’t attacked, dear,” I said calmly. “Just whistle loudly or sing and you won’t see hide nor hair of that bear again.”

  Terry Slock slid down in his seat again. It was no wonder, since he obviously lacked a backbone. “I can’t do it.”

  “Then hum a mantra,” I coaxed. “Remember that his bearness and your manness are part of the same oneness.”

  “You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?” he asked petulantly.

  “Of course not, dear.” Honest, I wasn’t. I was just trying to get him out of my car peaceably.

  “Please let me ride with you. Wherever you’re going, I won’t get in the way. I promise.”

  Against my better judgment I capitulated. He was a decent, albeit misguided man, and I couldn’t very well abandon him to the wolves, so to speak.

  “I’m going to be paying a visit to an Amish farm,” I said. “Now I know I talked about taking all of you to see one, but this isn’t the time. I have something private I want to discuss with the owners, so you’ll have to wait in the car.”

  That seemed fine to him and we rode in agreeable silence for a few short minutes.

  “I’ve been thinking about converting,” he said suddenly.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, and I’d like to become Amish. Do you think they’ll have me?”

  Much to my credit I snorted only once, and it was out of surprise, not derision. ‘“Why?”

  “I really dig their lifestyle—back to the earth, mother nature, peace.” His posture improved as he became excited. “They’re really with it environmentally.”

  “They’re not trying to be with it, dear,” I said kindly, “their aim is to be away from it. They strive to remove themselves from the temptations of the world, and that’s much harder than you think. They don’t watch television or movies. Could you handle that?”

  “There’s been nothing good on the tube since 1960 anyway,” he said without the need to reflect. “But horses, buggies, and barn-raising parties—wow! You know, that could be so cool. I bet I’d be pretty good at all that stuff. Okay, so I grew up in Hollywood and all, but I know Harrison Ford personally, and I’ve seen Witness six times. I know what I’m getting into.”

  “Do you, now? They don’t live this way in order to have fun, dear.”

  “But they do have fun, right?”

  “Yes,” I said hesitantly.

  “I’m great at that!”

  “How are you at humility? That’s very important to them.”

  “I can be as humble as the best of them,” he said proudly.

  “It’s a very close-knit community,” I said, “and not only do they submit themselves to the will of God, but to the rules of the community as well. Could you do that?”

  “No problem.”

  “You sure?”

  His face colored, contrasting nicely with the brim of his hat. “Hey, I know what you’re getting at and that’s not fair. I was just a kid then. Anyway, community is what I’m after. It’s a manifestation of the Oneness I’ve been talking about. By converting I’d be merging my Meness with their Themness. Actually, it gives me goose bumps just to talk about it.”

  I sighed. “I’m afraid their idea of the Oneness and your Meness are not going to get along.”

  “What do you mean?” he challenged.

  I cast about for a concrete example. “Well, they pray a lot.”

  “So do I! Ommmmmmmmmmmmm.”

  I waited a
decent length of time for him to add an “amen.” When he didn’t, I jumped right back in anyway.

  “Why don’t you start your own little group?” I asked gently. “You could make your own rules then. You could create your own charming outfits and drive around in buggies—although you might consider using cars. Metal horseshoes actually do a lot of damage to the highways. The state tolerates it because the damage is offset by the revenue tourism brings in. But since your group would be concerned with ecology, you certainly wouldn’t want to do anything wasteful, even if the cost is recovered in the end.

  “Say, I’ve got an idea—your sect could use electric cars. The kind with rechargeable batteries. After all, Pennsylvania has plenty of hydroelectric energy to recharge those batteries. You could even make the use of electricity a religious requirement. You’d be the first sect ever to do so. You’d be on the cutting edge of a new religion—a way of life. And of course you personally would be the one to set the standards, to decide what’s really in. You’d be the guru.” I paused just long enough to let him nibble at the bait.

  “And you know,” I continued brightly, “by being an electrically based organization, you’d be free to watch TV and movies, something the poor Amish aren’t.”

  He humphed. “Movies maybe, but no TV. At least none of those biting sitcoms that are on today. They don’t make them like they used to.”

  “Indeed.” Although it is against my principles to watch television, I have upon rare occasions enjoyed episodes of Green Acres in syndication. I am quite sure that there is nothing being produced these days that compares with that delightful show.

  “Of course we’d still farm,” he said. “That’s the only way to ensure organic food. We’d have to have horses for that, right?”

  “Maybe John Deere will come up with an electric combine,” I said encouragingly.

  Terry’s face was glowing with the light of revelation. “What would we call ourselves?”

  We had driven out of the woods and were surrounded by cornfields. The summer rains had been evenly spaced, and the com was tall, the ears long and full. The darkening tassels hinted at a bumper crop, winter fodder for dairy herds our local Amish raised. If ever there was a sign of God’s goodness, this was it.

  Then it hit me. “You could call yourselves Children of the Corn,” I said enthusiastically.

  For some reason quite beyond me, he was deeply offended. “Very funny, Mrs. Miller. I didn’t expect you to stoop to ridicule.”

  I hastened to assure him that I had not. “I’m sure it would be a very popular group. Lots of folks would join.”

  “Like who?”

  “Well, the 4-H Club for starters. And Shirley Pearson—maybe even the Dixons—but I doubt that Dr. Brack will cooperate. Not unless you make wearing his back braces a religious requirement.” I chuckled appropriately at my joke.

  Terry was no longer glowing, but glowering. “Shirley doesn’t have a spiritual bone in her body,” he growled.

  “What do you mean?” I asked indignantly. Of my current guests she was my favorite, although I must say that little Caitlin was beginning to capture my heart.

  “Ms. Pearson,” he sneered, “is only interested in making money. Do you know why she’s really here?”

  “Why?”

  “To buy up the Amish farms.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, you heard me right. She let that slip the first day here. Silver Spoon Foods is on a buying spree, it seems. Their goal is to have all their food grown on their own farms. That way they can control cost better, and turn a larger profit. At least that’s what their investors think. And as you know, Mrs. Miller, even though it’s kind of hilly here, the land in these valleys is very good.”

  “It’s the best,” I bragged.

  “Ms. Pearson said she’d never seen fields with yields so high.”

  It was all so perfect. Shirley could buy the Miller farm and spare me from having a WalMart right across the road.

  “My father-in-law will sell!”

  “Yeah? Well, she figures her corporation will need at least ten farms to make the investment pay off.”

  “The Amish will never sell,” I said sadly. “This land has been in their families for generations.”

  Terry laughed cynically. “Oh, they’ll sell if the price is right, and these investors have a lot of money to back their offers.”

  More good news. “Who says our economy is in a slump?” I asked cheerfully.

  “It’s not our economy that’s the issue here. It’s their economy.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “The Japanese.”

  “What do the Japanese have to do with this?”

  “Didn’t you know that Silver Spoon Foods is the American Division of Kakogawa Foods?”

  “I most certainly did not! But that’s impossible—the Japanese would never have a woman in such a high position.”

  He smiled. “Oh, yeah? Pretty clever, isn’t it? Anyway, my point is that Ms. Pearson is here on a working vacation. Her interest in Amish culture is all pretense. She has no interest in religion.”

  “There’s always the Dixons,” I said in a daze.

  He groaned. “The Dixons are philistines.”

  “They are?” I was sure they’d put down “American” on their applications. Japanese, Philistines... we were turning into quite an international gathering.

  “Oh, yeah. Just because he’s an award-winning photographer and she’s a famous children’s book writer doesn’t mean that they have class. The Dixons are even bigger phonies than Ms. Pearson. Did you know that neither of them has read Franz Kafka, and they actually like Ayn Rand?”

  “Could we do the book reviews some other time, dear?” I said kindly. “I’m getting a migraine.”

  “Fine, but that’s not all.”

  I ignored the bait and he mercifully allowed me to drive that last mile in silence. My head was no longer throbbing, only pulsating, when I turned into the Kauffman driveway. I parked under a large, shady sugar maple close to the road. Terry Slock would have to wait for me as far from the Kauffman house as possible.

  “You stay put,” I directed him. “Don’t even think about getting out.”

  “Will we be here long?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  I walked slowly up the lane to the house. The first half of summer had been abnormally cool, but it now seemed bent on going out with a bang. The last two weeks had been stifling by Pennsylvania standards, but at least they had been dry. Today the humidity level was so high I would have been surprised, but not shocked, to see fish swimming along in the air at eye level. It was the type of day that could see a thunderstorm pop up at any minute.

  As I plodded along, I took careful note of my surroundings. The Kauffman farm appeared deserted. Their buggy horse was not in the front paddock, nor was the buggy parked on the lawn. The work horses were not in sight, either, although it was possible that Eli Kauffman, Annie’s husband, was working them elsewhere on the farm.

  In the west pasture I could see at least thirty head of dairy cows, all of which would need milking that evening. If indeed the family was absent, they would be back by dusk to begin the milking unless—I caught my breath—they had made arrangements for friends or neighbors to come in and milk for them.

  Perhaps the Kauffmans were so terrified by this assault on their son that they had fled the county, or the country even. After all, there were thriving Amish settlements in Ontario, Canada, and even in such far-flung places as Belize and Paraguay. Better the jungles of Belize or the pampas of Paraguay than the barrel of a gun in Hernia.

  Then I noticed the chickens. A flock of Annie’s prized free-ranging hens were taking a dirt bath in the shade of a pin oak on the east side of the house. The rooster and several more hens were lounging about beneath an apple tree midway between the house and the barn. From the direction of the distant chicken house I heard the faint, but satisfied, cackle of a hen who had just laid an egg.

&n
bsp; There was something wrong with this scene. Our area abounds with chicken and egg-eating varmints. Although most of the critters—raccoons, foxes, opossums, owls—strike at night, some, like the hawk, hunt only during the day. Our most common and dangerous predators, however, hunt day or night. This is not a native species I refer to, but the packs of abandoned, semi-wild dogs that roam our roads. Feral dogs kill not only lambs, but adult sheep. Chickens are just puppy-play for them. Annie would sooner dance the Macarena naked in downtown Hernia than leave her chickens loose unattended, even if only to visit a neighbor just down the road.

  “At least someone is home,” I crowed triumphantly over my shoulder.

  Not that Terry had reason to give a hoot. He had no idea that I was an amateur—albeit semiofficial— detective, and that I had any reason to suspect that the Kauffmans might be hiding. My sleuthing powers would just have to go unappreciated.

  Anyway, Terry was no doubt engrossed in the details of the new sect he was about to create. Of course it was vain of me, possibly even idolatrous, but I found myself hoping that if his new denomination had saints, he would see fit to name me as one. After all, I had given him numerous helpful suggestions, including a charming name for the group. I could picture it clearly—Saint Magdalena, and if there was a chapel erected in my honor—St. Magdalena of the Cornfields.

  When I was almost to the house I turned and waved beatifically in Terry’s direction.

  The car was empty.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Hernia Corn Fritter Cutlets

  5 raw ears fresh sweet com

  1 small onion, minced

  ½ medium green bell pepper, diced

  2 large eggs, separated

  3 tablespoons milk

  2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

  ½ teaspoon salt

  ¼ teaspoon black pepper

  Bacon grease (although any cooking oil will do)

  Grate the corn off the cobs into a medium bowl. Add minced onion and diced green pepper. In a medium bowl, beat the egg whites until they begin to peak and set aside. In a small bowl, beat the egg yolks and add to vegetables. Add milk, flour, salt and pepper and mix thoroughly. Fold in egg whites.