Between a Wok and a Hard Place

by Tamar Myers

  Just to be on the safe side, I finished my prayer with a veritable onslaught of thanksgiving. After all, it was possible the Good Lord had provided the flash flood as a lesson to me on perspective, and I didn’t want to risk another lesson. Perhaps it is paranoid of me, but I have always suspected that there is a troublesome angel up there whispering into God’s ear that Magdalena is a slow learner.

  But form must not be confused with function, and there was still the question of whether or not the car was operable. Jacob, as it turned out, was a genius with machines. He fiddled with the engine until it started, and after a few feats of magic had that thing purring smoother than a snoozing kitten. Needless to say I thanked him profusely, although I remained standing. Then Terry thanked him, albeit a little less profusely, and even the girls praised him for his expertise. The poor man was the color of a pomegranate before we were through.

  “Are you the Good Samaritan?” Lizzie asked, causing him to turn an even darker shade.

  “Ach, no. Just a farmer.”

  “Mrs. Miller is a witch,” Mary said proudly.

  “Just for a few days every month, dear,” I corrected her.

  Jacob went through several more color changes, but he seemed loath to leave. Even after we were back in my car, he stood stock still in front of it, as if rooted in the mud. Much too late I noticed that there was an expectant look on his face.

  “Thanks again!” I called gaily.

  “Yes, thanks,” Terry said and put the car into Drive.

  The engine raced, but the car wouldn’t budge.

  “Damn,” I said, which is as bad as I swear—even on my witch days. “We must be stuck in the mud.

  Terry gallantly rolled down his window. “We seem to be stuck,” he said to Jacob. “Would you mind giving us a tow?”

  Jacob with the woodchuck personality grinned slowly. “Oh, you ain’t stuck, mister. I still got you hooked up to my winch cable.”

  Terry flashed him a Hollywood smile. “Would you mind unhooking us?”

  “Oh, but I would.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Of course I’d be happy to oblige, just as soon as you pay me my rescuing fee.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. Sometimes—perhaps due to their large size—my ears pick up snitches of distant conversation. How else can I explain the time I distinctly heard Aaron say that I was his favorite wife?

  “The funniest thing just happened,” I said, and chuckled soothingly, “but I thought I heard you say something about a rescuing fee.”

  The hibernating woodchuck hiccupped and smiled broadly. “That’s right, you did. That’s thirty dollars for making the call, a hundred and thirty dollars for towing you out of the stream, and thirty dollars for unhooking my winch cable. That generally covers my expenses back. Plus, of course, eleven dollars and forty cents tax. Your total is two-oh-one and forty cents. Will that be cash, check, or credit card?”

  “What?” Ignoring my bruised and battered body I struggled from the car.

  Jacob took an involuntary step backward, but otherwise stood his ground. “I don’t take American Express, though. Just Visa and MasterCard.”

  He was serious, too. For the first time I noticed the credit card imprinting machine bolted to the engine block of his tractor.

  “You should be ashamed of yourself, Jacob Zook! And you a good Mennonite.”

  He shrugged. “It’s not much of a living, Magdalena. Only five or six cars each year get caught by the creek. I still have to put my corn in. ‘Course ninety-three was a good year. Twenty-one cars in all—the wife and I took us a trip to Cancun the next winter. It was the first vacation my little Emma had ever been on.”

  I paid with a check.

  We drove straight back to the Kauffman farm. The second we turned into the driveway the front door of the farmhouse flew open and out came Annie, her arms flapping like the wings of a giant crow. Terry was barely able to stop the car before Lizzie jumped out and ran shrieking with joy into the arms of her mother. The two Kauffman females embraced ecstatically.

  “What a touching sight,” I muttered.

  “She ain’t even afraid of getting whipped,” Mary said. “Imagine that!”

  I made a mental note to meet Mary’s parents as soon as things settled down a bit.

  “Out you go, dear,” I said kindly. “Hurry it up.”

  Mary reluctantly unbuckled her seat belt and slid halfway out. “I don’t think you’re the wicked kind of witch, but you sure are bossy.”

  “Touche,” Terry said.

  I glared at him and then turned to smile warmly at Annie who, still clutching Lizzie, was approaching the car.

  “Gut Himmel!” Annie said breathlessly. “My little Lizzie says you saved her life.”

  “I did no such thing!”

  “She did so, Mama. Mary, you tell her.”

  Mary nodded vigorously. “Mrs. Miller is a good witch. She said a magic spell and the water went down.”

  Amish, and we Mennonite as well, do not believe in witches or magic of any kind. It is, in fact, an anathema to us, and by extension, so is the secular celebration of Halloween. Some liberal Mennonites have moderated their stance and do allow their children to go begging for treats on October 31, but Mama was not one of them—not until Susannah came along, at any rate. I had to watch as many of my classmates gorged themselves on candy the next day. My sister, born ten years later, not only got to canvass Hernia for candy, but Mama made her the most adorable little outfits; fairy princess, Snow White, and even a mermaid costume with a sequined tail that Susannah dragged along behind her on a roller skate. But even my precious sibling was forbidden to dress like a witch.

  I could feel Annie Kauffman’s bright-eyed gaze scrutinizing me.

  “I am not a witch,” I said stoutly, “and you should be ashamed, Annie, for filling these little girls’ heads with all that witchy nonsense.”

  “Me?”

  They say the best defense is offense, and I can be very offensive if I put my mind to it. “All this witch talk is a sin, Annie. What would your bishop say if he knew your little Lizzie believed in witches? What else do you believe in, Annie? Little green men from outer space?”

  “Why I—”

  “How is Samuel doing?” I had decided to let her off the hook. She was under enough stress.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about—I mean, well—”

  “It’s imperative that I speak to him, Annie. It could save his life.”

  Poor Annie looked like a raccoon caught raiding the hen house. It wasn’t just her guilt, but the dark circles of fatigue around her eyes.

  “Ach, my Samuel is in the house,” she said quietly. “Come see for yourself.”

  The upstairs bedroom in which Samuel lay was beastly hot. Annie had closed the windows when the storm began, and they were still closed.

  The room was simply furnished, as are all Amish bedrooms. There were three beds in the room, evidence of Samuel’s older brothers, now married; a simple chest of drawers with an oil lamp on top; and on the floor a large, braided rug. There was no closet. As in most Amish homes, the clothes were hung on wall pegs. The only decorative elements were the rug, a quilt on each bed, and a picture calendar, the only type of wall art generally permitted in Amish homes. This month’s scene was a bright red Japanese tori bridge with flowering pink cherry trees in the foreground.

  Eli, young Samuel’s father, was sitting at the floor of his son’s bed. I had always thought that Eli was a tall man, but this was the first time I had ever seen him close up and without his hat. Sitting, at least, he looked much shorter than I had remembered. His dark brown hair was cut in the traditional bowl style, and like his graying beard, was unkempt. He looked up when I entered.

  “Hello, Eli,” I said. “Hello, Samuel.”

  Eli stood up. “He can’t hear you. He has a fever.”

  “He’s unconscious?” I gasped. “And you’ve been keeping him here?”

  “Ac
h, what else could we do? Someone wants our Samuel dead.”

  I laid what I hoped was a reassuring hand on his arm. This was no time to worry about propriety.

  “Eli, your Samuel might die if he doesn’t see a doctor. We have to get him into Bedford.”

  He nodded. His faded blue-gray eyes were brimming with tears.

  “But it cannot be done. An Amish boy, wounded by a gunshot—the man who shot the boys would find him in the hospital. Like they will find Enos.”

  “Enos is dead.”

  Annie’s hands flew to her face. “Gut Himmel! Enos was such a sweet boy—he never hurt anyone. Now you say he is dead. My Samuel could be dead, too!”

  Eli put a rough hand on his wife’s back in a rare gesture of Amish affection. “You see why we cannot take him to the hospital?” he said to me.

  “I see,” I said sadly. Then something Eli had said sunk in and I caught my breath. “Did Samuel tell you who the man was who shot them?”

  “No.”

  “But he said it was a man?”

  “No.”

  I swallowed my irritation which, I am happy to say, was fat-free. “But you just said—”

  “Samuel didn’t tell us anything,” Annie said, dipping a cloth in a basin of water and touching it to her son’s head. “He didn’t want to get us involved.”

  I waved my arms to take in the room. “But you are involved! And if you don’t get your son medical attention real soon, you might be involved in his death.”

  It may sound like a horrible thing to say, but they needed shaking up. I didn’t, however, expect them to turn the color of hothouse mushrooms.

  “We will pray,” Eli said stubbornly. “But no hospital.”

  “Enos died from complications,” I explained patiently. “There was no second attempt on his life.”

  “But you cannot guarantee my Samuel’s safety,” Annie cried.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll take him in my car. Nobody will know. We’ll register him under another name. I’ll speak to the Bedford County Sheriff. We’ll keep it all hush-hush. I promise.”

  “His name is Samuel Kauffman,” Eli said almost fiercely. “Another name would be a lie.”

  It was time to trot my knowledge of the scriptures. I chose a quote from Jesus himself, as recorded in the book of Matthew.

  “ ‘I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.’ You definitely have the dove part down pat, Eli. For your son’s sake, work on the snake.”

  Eli frowned. “ ‘Thou shalt not lie.’ It says so in the Bible. It’s the ninth commandment.”

  I smiled patiently. “Why yes, that is one of the traditional translations, dear. But the New International Version has a much different translation. In it the ninth commandment tells us not to bear false witness against our neighbors, which gives it an entirely different meaning. Samuel is not your neighbor, and this is not a court case.”

  Eli took an eternity to respond. Perhaps he was waiting for Mama to stop turning in her grave. The day I switched from reading one version of the Bible to another was the day our relationship hit its all-time low. You would have thought that I’d gone out and built a golden calf by her reaction. Strangely enough, but not surprisingly, when eight years later Susannah announced that she was going to be a Buddhist, Mama barely blinked. Of course Susannah never became a Buddhist and Mama was dead by the time Susannah did the truly unfathomable and became a Presbyterian. Still, Mama turns over rhythmically in her grave every time I deviate in the slightest from her approved way of doing things, but manages to snooze right through my sister’s blatant blunders.

  “Ach,” poor Eli said at last, “you are tempting me, Magdalena.”

  I ignored the flattery. “How about the sixth commandment? Thou shalt not kill.’ It says that even in your German version, doesn’t it?”

  “Ach! What are you saying, Magdalena?”

  “Well, you can’t leave him here, Eli. You know that. And if we take him to the hospital and register him under his own name—well, you know what could happen then. And you would have been a party to it, Eli. Your own son’s death.”

  They were harsh words, but true. Someone had to make him face up to reality.

  Eli stared at me. I felt him looking into my soul, searching for something worth trusting.

  “Eli, you have my word that your Samuel will be safe if we move him to Bedford. That is what you want, isn’t?”

  “Yah,” he said, teetering in his resolve.

  Annie had been standing beside her husband, listening quietly. “Magdalena saved our little Lizzie’s life.”

  I flashed her a grateful smile. Now wasn’t the time to correct her.

  Eli glanced at his son and back at me. “Yah, gut. Take him to the hospital in Bedford. It is the only thing to do. But maybe it is better if Annie and I stay here.”

  “Good thinking,” I said. “Try to carry on your lives just as normally as possible. I’ll keep you constantly informed. I’ll come straight back from the hospital and tell you what the doctor says.”

  Annie shook her head. “You might be seen, Magdalena. Better you should call at little Mary’s house. They have a phone.”

  It was not an unusual request for an Amish woman. While the Amish do not have telephones in their homes, there is nothing in their tradition that prevents them from using non-Amish phones in an emergency situation.

  I took down the number. “You can trust these people?”

  Eli and Annie exchanged glances.

  “Yah, they are good people,” he said, “but maybe it is better to be like the snake. We will tell them we are expecting an important phone call from a relative. That will be enough for them.”

  “I see,” I said, and smiled conspiratorially.

  “Ach, but it’s true,” Annie protested needlessly. “My mama was a Yoder, Magdalena. A second cousin to your father. Just look at my nose. It’s almost as big as yours.”

  Frankly, it had a long way to go, but this was no time to make her feel inadequate. Because of my back I couldn’t help them carry Samuel to the car, but I distracted the little girls while Terry, who was delighted to be conscripted, participated in this life-saving mission.

  “Wow,” he said over and over again on the way to the hospital, “this is so cool. Harrison is going to be so jealous.”

  “Don’t you say a word to anyone,” I chided. “We don’t know who to trust. Although Harry is probably okay. He has yet to break any of his promises to me.”

  “You know Harrison Ford? The actor who starred in the movie Witness?”

  I looked down the length of my considerable nose. “How do you think he did his research?”

  “Wow! Cool!”

  From the backseat Samuel moaned.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Dr. Rosenkrantz was a competent, if unpleasant man. He had his underlings hook Samuel up to so many tubes, the poor boy resembled a bagpipe. But Doc knew his business, and in less time than it takes Susannah to steal from the offering plate, Samuel, now known as Thomas Arnold, began to recover. Within the hour his temperature dropped to near normal and he began to drift in and out of consciousness. I phoned the good news back to the Kauffmans.

  “Thomas is on the mend,” I said joyfully to Annie.

  “Who?”

  “Thomas!” I hissed. “Thomas Arnold in Bedford.”

  “Make sense, Magdalena. I don’t know any Thomas Arnold in Bedford.”

  “Is that the man who runs the fresh fruit stand on Route 96?” Eli asked on the extension.

  “Yah,” Annie chirped, “that’s the one. And he’s a real cherry pie if you ask me.”

  While Annie is fluent in English, she is idiomatically challenged. Still, I knew who she meant.

  “The expression is fruitcake, Annie, and you’re talking about Thomas Amstutz. He’s a different Thomas. This Thomas is the fruit of your loins.”

  “Ach,” they cried in unison. “That Thomas!
”

  “Yes, that Thomas. Anyway, he’s going to be just fine.”

  “When will he be released?” Eli asked anxiously.

  “Yah, when?”

  “Good heavens,” I said, “not for several days, I should think. Even then, he must stay at the fruit stand until we have a buyer.”

  “Ach, so it isn’t our Thomas after all,” Annie wailed. “It’s the cherry pie man.”

  “Is his fruit stand for sale, Magdalena?” Eli asked. To be sure, he sounded disappointed, but Eli is a practical man, with a knack for making a dollar.

  Call me a quitter, but I despaired of speaking in code. “Your son Samuel is fine,” I practically screamed into the phone. Fortunately it was a slow day at Bedford County Hospital and the corridor was empty except for Terry, who had been sworn to secrecy, and Nurse Dudley. The latter, I know from personal experience, is either stone deaf, or a prototype masochist. My call button, not to mention my screams, never once went answered. At any rate, I had been observing Nurse Dudley, and true to form, she wasn’t the least bit interested in her new patient.

  Before I left I talked with the Bedford County Sheriff for the third time. It was agreed that the hospital staff would call me at the PennDutch as soon as Samuel, alias Thomas, was strong enough to be interviewed. I could have first crack at him on Melvin’s behalf.

  “We still can’t get over how he broke his leg,” the sheriff said, laughing. “Is it true he once shipped his cousin in Philadelphia a gallon of ice cream by UPS?”

  “He shipped the ice cream to his cousin in Scranton,” I sniffed, and pointed my shnoz skyward. I am told that I do a fair imitation of your average Parisian when asked for directions.

  “Betcha he won’t be milking any more bulls,” the deputy said and nudged his boss. They both laughed.