by Tamar Myers
I saw her eyes dart from mug to mug as she assured herself that nothing had been switched. “Cheers,” she said, and quaffed back half her mug in a single gulp.
“Good Scrabble word,” I said.
She stared at me, her eyes as big and round as the saucers our mugs didn’t have.
“Quaff. It’s not a word one thinks of on a regular basis. Of course with that letter combo, it would be pretty obvious.”
The chief exploded from her chair, knocking it over, and threw herself half over the rail. My instinct was to lunge for her and pull her back, lest I be the one to hear her splat on the concrete below. With my luck she’d drag me over with her, and we’d both go splat, and me not having made a final confession of sin. Then, instead of being greeted by Papa and Mama as I entered the Light, I might be saying howdy to Cousin Eldridge Hostetler, who did unspeakable things with his pony, and was mean to animals as well, and who always claimed there was no God. I know, once saved, always saved, but a deathbed confession doesn’t hurt, does it?
Fortunately the chief expectorated before I could react, thus saving me from both puke and pulverization. When she was quite through gagging, she tore back inside, and I could hear the water running. She took her sweet time about returning, but I didn’t mind, thanks to Kevin, the stock boy.
“How did you do that?” she demanded.
By then my shoe was steaming in the cool air, but she didn’t look down. “Do what?” I asked sweetly.
“Switch the drinks?”
“Come again?”
“I have to hand it to you, Miss Yoder. You’re not the yokel I thought you were.”
“Another good Scrabble word—excuse me? You thought I was a yokel?”
“Oops, did I say that?” She clapped her hand to her mouth in what was supposed to be a coy gesture.
“So now you’re mocking me?”
“Miss Yoder, you don’t honestly think I would have taken this job, moved way out here to East Nothing, if I’d thought I’d have to contend with a powerhouse like yourself, do you?”
“Moi, a powerhouse?”
“You are a force to be reckoned with: highly intelligent, extraordinarily assertive, and extremely attractive to boot. Why are you wasting your time being mayor of Hernia when you could be governor of Pennsylvania, for crying out loud, to use one of your quaint phrases?”
“If the shoe fits,” I said. “Of course I’ll have to stuff it with newspapers while it dries, so it doesn’t shrink.”
“Aha, you’ve just answered my question. I forgot about the nut factor. Still, that shouldn’t stop you from being governor of California, maybe even running for president of the United States. You’re certainly arrogant enough.”
I leaped to my feet, one sodden, one dry. “That does it. I’m not going to take insults sitting down. Do you have any more to hurl at me before I leave, pun quite intended?”
A strange look transformed her face. “Do you really have to go?”
“Criminals don’t catch themselves. You ought to know.”
“Miss Yoder—please, may I call you Magdalena?”
“May I call you Olivia?”
“Please do. Magdalena, I have a confession to make.”
“Before you do, you have a right to remain silent. You have a right to call an attorney—”
“Not that kind of a confession, you twit. I just wanted to say that I—uh—well, this is hard to say.”
“It needn’t be. I already know that your handpicked underling, Chris Ackerman, is gay. And now you want to tell me that you are as well, and that you are attracted to me.”
“No.”
“But you said I was beautiful.”
“Yes. I also think a lattice-top cherry pie is beautiful, but I don’t want to date it.”
I felt vaguely rejected. “Then, what did you want to tell me?”
“I wanted to tell you that, initial impressions aside, I have every confidence in you. If anyone can find Cornelius’s killer, it’s you.”
“Thank you. If you don’t mind, I’ll get going now, before you have a chance to cancel your vote of confidence with a comment about me being a rube, albeit one with an aptitude for solving the Rubik’s Cube.”
“Nertz to Mertz,” she said without missing a beat.
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s from an old I Love Lucy show—but I forgot, you don’t watch TV.”
“And neither should you, dear. Who knows what you might see. I heard from Sam—you know, my cousin who owns Yoder’s Corner Market—that there was a wardrobe malfunction on some show or another and that a bosom was inadvertently displayed. Of course that wouldn’t have happened if the displayer had been wearing sturdy Christian underwear, but you get my point.”
“Not everyone thinks it was inadvertent.”
“There you go!” I headed for the sliding glass door.
“Are you all right, Magdalena?”
I turned slowly, all the while willing myself to be charitable. Given the speed at which Hernia’s grapevine operates, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn she’d already heard that I’d broken off my engagement to a Jewish Adonis, and was going to offer one of her shoulders for me to cry on. Well, just because we were now on a first-name basis, and might, someday, conceivably be friends, didn’t mean I was going to spill my guts to her.
“Why do you ask, dear?”
“Because your right foot is making squishing sounds.”
“Oh, that! I’ve always been a heavy sweater.”
“Just the one foot?”
“Okay, I’m busted. But you have to admit it was clever, me pouring my drink into my shoe, and then into your mug. Do you think the cocoa picked up subtle undertones along the way? Foot flavors, as it were? Perhaps a little toe-jam bouquet?”
Olivia rushed to the rail again.
There are times, when my vocation impinges on my avocation, that all I really want to do is take a vacation. This was one of those times. Believe it or not, I do more than share clever quips as I traipse around Hernia in pursuit of justice.
The PennDutch is my bread and butter, and even though I can now afford to butter both sides of said bread, I feel that it is my duty to perform for my guests. Every evening I don a clean broadcloth dress (usually in a snazzy navy) and a starched white prayer cap, and polish my shoes. This night I had to dig out my backup brogans, which are a mite worn—“broken in,” as we frugal types are wont to say. Anyway, given that it had been one of the very worst days of my life, I felt the urge to add an extra touch to my comely appearance. I decided to apply a lick of paint to the front door, so to speak.
That is why Freni, when she opened the pantry door, discovered me dabbing the contents of a cherry-flavored Kool-Aid packet on my moistened lips. You would have thought she’d found the family skeleton, by her reaction.
“Ach, du lieber!”
“Freni, you really should knock first.”
“This is the pantry, for frying out loud.”
“That’s ‘crying,’ dear.”
“Yah, but I am a cook.”
I pursed my cherry red lips. “How do I look?”
“Like a harlot, yah?”
“Yes, but a pretty harlot, right?”
Freni shook her head and, mumbling to herself, bustled off to attend to a boiling pot. Whatever it was that brought her to the pantry was temporarily forgotten. I may be the daughter she never had, but I am, at times, as baffling to her as quantum physics. Rather than judge myself harshly on this count, I prefer to see myself as a much-needed spice in her life, perhaps curry. Never mind that I read somewhere that real curry is not a single spice, but a marriage of several spices that are freshly ground before being mixed together. The curry I buy for the PennDutch Inn comes premixed, in an attractive bottle, and the flavor is to die for.
In fact, Freni’s very special chicken curry was on the menu for supper. Its fragrant aroma was what drew me out of the pantry and into the kitchen proper. I may even have lifted a li
d and peered into a pot.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a wooden spoon appeared and rapped the back of my hand. “It will make tough the chicken, Magdalena.”
“Why so little?” I asked. There was enough curried chicken in the pot to serve only three Ohioans.
“The English,” she said, referring my guests, “are not liking curry. They say they want real Pennsylvania Dutch food, so they drive to Bedford. I tell them I do not write the menus, and that I eat this curry, and I am Amish, but they do not want to listen.”
“They’ve all gone into town?”
“No, there is one who stays.”
“Who?”
“Ach, I do not know her name. I am only the cook, not the social erecter.”
“Director, dear.”
“Yah, that is what I said. Magdalena, you know that I do not speak bad words about anyone—”
“Except your daughter-in-law, Barbara.”
Freni frowned over the tops of her bottle-thick glasses. “I think maybe you have hit the nail on his head. This woman is very much like Barbara.”
“As tall as Goliath, but as sweet as your shoofly pie?”
“Ya, tall like Goliath.”
“Freni, I was thinking that since there is only one guest tonight, and she’s from Vermont—one of the thin states—and I’m not particularly hungry, why don’t we make up a tray of your delicious entrée, and after supper I’ll run it over to the chief?”
Freni shrugged her shoulders. Lacking a neck, her head bobbled like the head of one of those dogs you see in the rear windshield of some cars.
“Yah,” she muttered, “but maybe they do not eat such fancy food in California.”
“What? You’ve been cooking for the fruit-and-nuts crowd from Hollywood for years. If it’s unpronounceable, or unidentifiable, they toss it back like a good Amish man tosses back headcheese.”
“Always one with the riddles, Magdalena. Where are these Amish who throw headcheese? Iowa, I think.”
“Yes, Iowa, from whence hails your daughter-in-law. I mean that the chief undoubtedly has a sophisticated palette, and a little curry is not going throw her a curveball.”
“Ach, again the riddles!”
“Riddle-shmiddle. You’re stalling. Out with the truth. Why is it you disapprove of me taking supper over to a lonely, grieving woman?”
She threw up her stubby arms in exasperation. “If I tell you the reason, will you climb off my back?”
25
Coconut Chicken Curry Flurry
Ingredients
¼ cup oil
3 green chilies, split in half (optional)
3 medium onions, finely sliced
Salt to taste
4 cloves 3 cardamoms
1 can (13.5 ounces) coconut milk, divided
1 cinnamon stick
½ cup warm water
2 pounds chicken, cleaned and cut into pieces
¼ cup coriander leaves for garnish Pinch shredded coconut
1 teaspoon ginger-garlic paste
Yield: 4 servings
Preparation
1. Heat oil in pan. Add onions. Stir-fry till soft.
2. Add cloves, cardamom, and cinnamon and stir till mixture reaches a light golden brown.
3. Add chicken, ginger-garlic paste, chilies if desired, and salt. Mix thoroughly.
4. Then add ½ can coconut milk and stir. Let this cook slowly while adding warm water.
5. Cover pot and allow curry to cook on low heat till chicken is tender, approximately 20 to 30 minutes.
6. Add the rest of the coconut milk and mix till gravy is thick and smooth.
7. Garnish with coriander leaves and shredded coconut. Serve with rice or naan.
26
“I’ll clamber down posthaste.”
“It is this: The chief is supposed to be an example to the community, yah? Instead, she makes sweat in April with a man she does not marry.”
“What?”
“For her the bed shakes when there is no storm.”
“Oh, I get it. You’re mad at her because she complains about our weather?”
Freni sighed heavily, brought to her wits’ end by the dimwit I was. “The chief and Cornelius Weaver, they do the hickey poker. It is a sin, yah?”
“The what—ah, say no more! Your turn of phrase is far more descriptive than the actual name of that dance. But remember, Freni, not only does the Bible instruct us not to throw the first stone, it also commands us to show hospitality to strangers. And who could be more strange than a woman who puts hot sauce in cocoa?”
Despite the thickness of her lenses, and the grease and flour deposited thereon, I could see that my kinswoman was rolling her eyes. “Is that a historical question?”
“Something like that. Freni, I love you. Have I ever told you that?”
Fortunately when her eyes stopped in midroll, they faced forward. “Yah.”
“Do you love me back?”
“Ach!”
“Between the two of us, we represent a thousand years of inbreeding. When it comes to expressing love, we are about as demonstrative as a wet dishrag. We can’t even hug without those silly little pats on the back. It’s either that or a death clench. If we were ever to hold each other in a still, silent embrace, what do you think would happen? Would we turn into pillars of salt, like Lot’s wife?”
“Yah, salt,” Freni said and added a pinch to the evening’s dinner.
“Come on, Freni, let’s try hugging like regular folks. Since you’re vertically challenged, you put your arms around my waist, and I’ll put my arms around your plump, but only slightly slumped, shoulders. We’ll hold that position—no patting—while I count to sixty. What do you say?”
“I say you are meshugganeh.”
“What?”
“It means there is grain in your silo, but it does not reach the top. I learn that from Ida.”
“Why, the nerve of that woman! What else does she say about me?”
“That you are not—ach, I cannot say.”
“That’s okay. I know she thinks I’m not good enough for her son.”
“Yah, that too, but—it is better I say no more.”
“No fair! You can’t stop now.”
I’ve seen calmer looks on chickens with their heads on the chopping block. “So now we hug, yah?”
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and my cousin’s bush was an exceptionally tangled and overgrown mess. Her birds rarely found their way into my hands, so it behooved me to grab one whenever I could.
“Hug away!” I cried and threw my arms around the dear soul. But, and this was using the very reliable Mississippi One, Mississippi Two system, we’d hugged less than ten seconds before she pulled away.
“And now I will get back to work,” she said.
“But you cheated! Even the real English—the ones from England—hug longer than that.”
Freni muttered something that, although unintelligible, I interpreted as her final word on the subject of hugging. Although recently she has gotten better about handling her emotions, still, my temperamental cook has quit a total of ninety-eight times. I could insist that we persist in my attempt to overcome our genes, but it might well mean me having to finish preparing supper, and then cleaning up afterward.
“Righto,” I said. “Cheerio, tut-tut, keep a stiff upper lip, and all that sort of rot.”
“Yah, meshugganeh,” she said, and turned to stir a pot of vegetables that was on the cusp of boiling over.
While she busied herself, I slipped out of the kitchen and into the dining room. Sure enough, the table was set for two.
It is a massive table, capable of seating twenty foreigners, or twelve Americans. Built from oak by my ancestor Jacob the Strong Yoder, it was the only piece of furniture to survive a tornado several years ago that flattened my house. Freni, perhaps in an effort to spare me a carbon copy of her daughter-in-law, had laid the place settings at either end of the table. Unless my guest and I used megap
hones, we would be unable to carry on a meaningful conversation.
While it is true that I offer Spartan accommodations at a premium price, I also try very hard to make my guests feel important and welcome. After all, isn’t validation what we all want most after food, shelter, safety, sex, good health, minimal taxation, recreation, competent sales clerks, easy-to-open boxes that are just that, glue that actually sticks, slow drivers who stay in the right lane, laundry products that never need improving, stiff penalties for people who spit their gum out on sidewalks, and prescription bottles that can be read without the aid of a magnifying glass? Personal validation is the special touch that has made my humble inn such a huge success, so, tired as I was, I was determined to validate the herring out of the brave guest who’d remained behind. To that end, I moved my place setting.
27
The woman from Vermont reminded me that her name was Sidney “with an i,” and that she was a writer.
“They’re coming out of the woodwork,” I said pleasantly.
“Writers?”
“That too. I was, however, referring to that line of ants moving along the baseboard. I can’t figure out if they are termites or just regular house ants. Which ones have waists?”
Sidney, it saddens me to say, was not up to snuff in the manners department. Not only did she bring a notebook to the dinner table, but she had the temerity to write in it.
“House ants?” she asked, jotting something down.
“Well, they’re not in the barn. Frankly, I don’t mind them as long as they stay away from the food. The way I figure it, they have to spend the winter somewhere, so why not inside where it is nice and comfy? Same goes for field mice. Of course they have to stay out of the kitchen and public rooms, and my guests generally don’t like them in their bedrooms, which pretty much limits Mickey and Minnie to the cellar.”
