Just Plain Pickled to Death

by Tamar Myers

  Auntie Leah gasped. “That’s awful!”

  “Then why did you do it?” Uncle Jonas asked softly.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “What?” The townsfolk were going to accuse the YY air force of sonic booms again.

  “I am accusing you of turning your back on my daughter when she needed you. She went to you, Leah, after her mother’s death, to tell you what she saw, but you turned her away.”

  “I did no such thing!”

  “Apparently you were too busy. And she was just a kid. A kid who ended up dying because of you.”

  “That’s unfair,” Auntie Lizzie cried, and we all voiced our agreement.

  “It’s in the diary. You read it, Magdalena.”

  “I dig pot,” Auntie Magdalena whimpered.

  “She did not,” Uncle Elias translated quickly.

  Everyone looked at me.

  “Sarah didn’t word it nearly that strong,” I said gently. “Anyway, how were you to know what she wanted to tell you?”

  “Never turn a child away,” Auntie Vonnie humphed. “Jesus himself gave us that example in the Bible.”

  “He certainly did.” Uncle Rudy patted his wife’s wrist, the perfect example of a supportive husband.

  Auntie Vonnie ran with the encouragement. “I’d have to say I see poor Jonas’s point of view quite clearly. If he wants a private burial, then so be it.”

  Uncle Rudy nodded.

  “It’s all right with me,” Uncle Manasses said, much to my surprise. “Jonas is her father, after all. He should have his say.” He turned to Aunt Lizzie. “What do you think, dear?”

  “Well, well, well” was all Auntie Lizzie said, but somewhere in the distance I heard a cock crow three times.

  I was shocked at the way the room had polarized into two camps. Or at least I assumed it had. But perhaps I was wrong and everyone had turned against poor Auntie Leah. And if that was indeed the case, would I be brave enough to stand up for her?

  “Auntie Magdalena, what about you? What do you have to say?”

  “Leroy has a cart of mould,” she moaned.

  “She said Leah has a heart of gold,” Uncle Elias said crisply. “And I agree.”

  Auntie Magdalena mumbled a few more things and Elias nodded vigorously. When she was done he looked around the room slowly, his gaze settling briefly on each married couple.

  “It is damn easy to get distracted when you’re a parent. There were any number of times when my own kids have tried to talk to me, but I was too busy just then. It’s happened to everyone. So, even though we haven’t seen the diary, my wife and I feel that it should have no bearing on whether or not Leah gets to attend the funeral. The funeral is, after all, a family event, and Leah is family.”

  “But you’re not,” Vonnie said.

  Mine wasn’t the only gasp.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Elias’s dark eyes flashed.

  “I simply meant that this is a decision that should be made by blood.”

  “Blood, bile, boogers,” Susannah intoned.

  Auntie Vonnie gave Susannah a withering look and linked her arm through Uncle Rudy’s. “And anyway, what Elias just said doesn’t apply to us. We always had time to listen to our kids. And our neighbors’ kids as well. Had young Sarah come to me with her problem, she’d be sitting here today.”

  “Aaron?” I looked beseechingly at my beloved.

  My Pooky Bear cleared his throat. “I’d kind of like to take a peek into the diary first. Leah, at the very least, should get a chance to see what it says. In this country we’re innocent until proven guilty.”

  I patted Aaron’s arm discreetly. “Pops?”

  Aaron Senior swallowed an enormous bite of hot potato salad. Our discussion had not slowed down his ingestion process in the least. “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” he said carefully. “At least I think that’s how it goes. Damn, but I wish I still had my King James version.”

  “Susannah?”

  “Gall, gook, gangrene.”

  “Susannah!”

  “What?” The look she gave me was devoid of deceit, and I felt my stomach do a flip. Tomorrow I was going to have to trot out the yellow pages and look up a therapist over in Bedford. I had been sadly mistaken about her recovery.

  “Hey, you didn’t ask me,” Uncle Sol said.

  As we turned to look at him, Auntie Leah looked away. Possibly she had reason to believe her own husband would betray her.

  “What about it, Uncle Sol?” I asked calmly. “Do you think Uncle Jonas has the right to bar an aunt from attending her niece’s funeral?”

  Uncle Sol stood up. Given the uncles’ height it is sometimes hard to tell if they’re standing or sitting, but I saw the napkin fall from his lap.

  “Leah and I have been partners now for fifty-two years. I stand by my wife. Leah should definitely get to read that diary, but regardless of what it says, she’s going to that funeral. She and Sarah were very close.” He sat down again, disappearing briefly while he recovered his napkin.

  “Well, there you go,” I said to Uncle Jonas. “That’s eight against five. It seems pretty clear what the majority has ruled.”

  Uncle Jonas gave us one of his neat smiles. Then he began to speak in that voice that can put new grooves in your records.

  “This is absolutely absurd. First of all, she”—he pointed to Susannah—”isn’t even part of the family. Besides which, she didn’t express a valid opinion. She should be locked up, if you ask me.”

  “Nobody asked you,” I snapped.

  “And the Miller men both equivocated. As for you, Miss Magdalena Yoder—you aren’t part of the family either.”

  I linked arms with my Pooky Bear. “I will be, come Saturday.”

  Had I not been a pacifist and seated at the opposite end of the table, I would have knocked that tidy smile off his face. “Well, now,” he said, “while you were all out gallivanting today, I made a few calls. I even spoke to this Melvin person. My little Sarah’s funeral is going to be Wednesday afternoon at three o’clock, Beechy Grove Mennonite Church. You are all invited except for Leah.”

  Twelve pairs of eyes stared, twelve mouths hung open. I was the first to recover.

  “Get out of my house, Jonas Weaver! You are no longer welcome here. Delores Brown has a room waiting for you on Maple Street. She takes all kinds.”

  I, however, was the first one to get up from the table. I can’t stand for folks to see me cry.

  A scratchy roar may not be as bloodcurdling as a high-pitched scream, but it will get your attention. When it persisted too long to be merely a stubbed toe or a whacked crazy bone, we gathered, one by one, in the hall outside Uncle Jonas’s room.

  “It was right here in my suitcase!”

  I pushed through the throng. “What was? The diary?”

  “No shit, Sherlock. What else?”

  I said a silent prayer that the ghost of Grandma Yoder would continue to sleep peacefully. This had been her room, after all, and the only four-letter word my Pennsylvania Dutch-speaking grandmother knew was “soap,” something she fed me liberal amounts of when I tried to teach her more.

  “Are you sure it’s missing?” someone asked.

  Uncle Jonas pointed to the contents of his suitcase, spread across the bed in the neatest little piles you could imagine. Every item of clothing was folded just so. Even his socks—which had clearly been ironed—were folded, edge to edge, not balled, like Mama used to do with Daddy’s. His toiletries were lined up in precise rows, like soldiers on parade. There was obviously no diary.

  “Maybe you misplaced it somewhere else,” I suggested helpfully.

  He glared at me. “I loaned the book to you.”

  “Yes, you’re quite right. But then I gave it back, remember? Just before I ran into town to see Delores.”

  “You gave it back, all right, but you stood there and watched while I returned it to my suitcase. You knew exactly where it was.”

  “Your suitcase has a
lock, doesn’t it? Why didn’t you lock it?”

  “I did. Obviously you found out the combination somehow.”

  I felt my Aaron lay a restraining hand on my shoulder, but I shrugged it off. “I did no such thing. This is absolute nonsense. Why on earth would I want to steal your diary when I’d already read it?”

  He had the nerve to give me that tidy smile again. “You were the only one who knew about it, Miss Yoder.”

  I started to take a step forward, but the pressure of Aaron’s hand increased. “Yes, I was the only one who knew about it until supper. Then everyone knew.” Blinded by rage, I trampled right over my family-to-be’s feelings. “Why, with this bunch, I wouldn’t be surprised if the king of Siam knew by now.”

  “That’s Thailand,” he said.

  ‘What?”

  “Siam is Thailand now. Has been since 1939.”

  “You know what I mean, buster. Besides, Melvin Stoltzfus, our chief of police, knows about it.”

  He pointed a manicured finger at me. “You told him already?”

  “I was laying groundwork, Uncle Jonas. Anyway, you can be sure that Melvin didn’t sneak in and swipe it. He’s not that bright. Poor man once tried to milk a bull.”

  He blinked. “That man is your police chief? The one you wanted me to show my Sarah’s diary to? The one I spoke to this afternoon?”

  “Hey, I was upfront with you. I told you his name when I called you in Florida.”

  “I haven’t even been back to visit here for twenty years. How the hell was I supposed to remember a name? But the bull-milking, that I remember. That was back when we were still living here. Everyone was saying he should have been jailed for animal cruelty.”

  “He was kicked in the head,” I said. “That was punishment enough.”

  Even his grunts were raspy. “Look, all I know is you were the first one to leave the table tonight. You could have come straight on up here and stolen the diary. In fact, I’d bet my life you did.”

  What with his swearing and betting, it was clear that life in Sarasota, despite its large Mennonite and Amish communities, had led Uncle Jonas a ways from the fold. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d secretly converted to Presbyterianism along the way.

  “No, you look,” I said, trying to ignore Aaron’s fingers digging into my back. “I’m the one who went to the trouble of looking you up. For reasons that have become apparent, none of the others—even your so-called allies—could be bothered. I sent my fiance all the way over to Pittsburgh to get you, I put you up in my inn, I went to town and found you term lodgings, and now you have the nerve to treat me like this? Well, I won’t have it.”

  I wiggled out of Aaron’s grasp, pushed Uncle Jonas aside, and proceeded to pack his suitcase for him. I did not pack his suitcase the way he would have liked. When I was done it looked like Susannah’s bag would look at the end of one of her escapades, if Susannah used luggage.

  “You get out of my inn, Jonas Weaver.” I turned to the others. “And any of you others who want to try and stop Auntie Leah from attending her own niece’s funeral can do the same. This is supposed to be a family I’m marrying into, not a herd of stampeding cattle.”

  The bovine imagery was unintentional, but it didn’t seem to offend anyone. There was a smattering of applause, and no one but Jonas Weaver left the premises.

  I have never been entranced by watching fires, but stargazing is another thing. I can gaze at a summer sky for hours. At the PennDutch we are just far enough removed from the lights of Hernia to see some spectacular nighttime skies, and that night was a doozy. All the queen’s diamonds, spread across a bolt of dusty blue velvet, could not have been more impressive.

  When I was twelve I saved up my allowance and bought a cheap telescope at a secondhand store over in Bedford. Along with it came a tattered book on astronomy. That summer was one of the happiest in my life, although—and I am ashamed to admit it—my new hobby turned me into a sinner faster that Eve could swallow that apple.

  Every night when the sky was clear, I would sneak out after my bedtime and study the stars for hours. Disobeying one’s parents is a sin, and like the Bible says, sin has a way of getting found out. It wasn’t long before Mama noticed the dark circles under my eyes and accused me of you-know-what. Unfortunately I didn’t know what you-know-what was then, and in an effort to shorten the lecture, I made a full confession.

  “You caught me,” I said. “I do it every night. I could do it for hours at a time. Mama, I wish you and Papa would try it. I just know you would love it.”

  That was the day I ate a whole bar of Camay soap.

  Once when Susannah was little I tried to explain the constellations to her.

  “That’s Ursa Major, the Big Dipper,” I said.

  “It looks leaky.”

  “And that’s Virgo, the virgin.”

  “Are you a virgin, Magdalena?”

  “Over there is Taurus, the bull.”

  “You can say that again.”

  I gave up.

  Even when they found out what I was really up to, my parents did not share my fascination with the heavens. It confused them too much. That mankind should inhabit a minuscule planet in such a vast universe did not make sense to them. Anyway, it was heaven with a capital H that interested them. In the end I decided that stargazing was best enjoyed as a solitary pursuit (much like you-know-what, or so I’ve been told).

  I was sitting on a rocker looking up at Canes Venatici with my naked eye when I felt Aaron’s now-familiar touch on my shoulder.

  “Beautiful,” he murmured.

  “Wait until everyone’s asleep and all the lights are off,” I said.

  “Why, Magdalena, what a surprise!”

  “I was talking about the stars, Aaron!”

  “But I was talking about you.” He squatted down on one haunch and laid his head on my shoulder. I could feel his long, dark lashes flickering against my cheek.

  I held my breath, willing time to stop. Of course it didn’t, and when I exhaled I sounded like a disgruntled horse.

  “I love you, Magdalena Yoder, you know that?”

  “Yes.” I was dying to say “I love you too,” but it is so hard for me to say the L word. I always require a mental rehearsal first.

  “I was proud of you tonight, Magdalena.”

  “Thank you.” I could have kicked myself for leaving off the “dear.” If I can say “dear” to strangers, why can’t I say it to the man I love?

  “You make me the happiest man in the whole wide world,” my Pooky Bear said.

  “I have a telescope somewhere up in the attic,” I heard myself say. “I’d really like to show you Uranus.”

  It was the most romantic thing I could think of to say.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Sure enough, when I stumbled into the kitchen the next morning, there was Freni, bustling about as usual. She was even whistling a happy time, but she stopped abruptly when she heard me come in.

  “Freni,” I said brightly. “You have a nice walk?” Freni lives directly behind me and actually prefers to walk through the woods rather than to come by any sort of conveyance. That is not a religious preference, mind you, but one based firmly on stubbornness.

  She turned, spatula in hand, and stared at me. “I’m eighty years old, Magdalena. I’m lucky I can walk at all.”

  “You’re seventy-four, Freni.”

  “Close enough. Are those English going to sleep all day?”

  “They’re Mennonites,” I reminded her for the umpteenth time, “and they’re not on any sort of schedule. Maybe we could make breakfast a help-yourself situation. You know, put out a couple of boxes of cereal, some juice, the toaster and a loaf of bread.”

  “Ach! What kind of a breakfast is that?” Freni squawked. “I’ve got bacon and eggs here that need to be used before the end of the week.”

  “Well, I hate to see you tied to the stove all morning. What if we invite those who want a hot breakfast to make their own?”

>   Will I ever learn? Despite her temper, Freni doesn’t have a violent bone in her body. Still, that spatula came perilously close to my ears. Both of them. A deaf person, watching her from behind, might have concluded that she was trying to conduct a one-person orchestra.

  “They come in, I go out.” Freni was mad enough to lapse into Pennsylvania Dutch, her mother tongue. “Is that clear, Magdalena?”

  “Yah.” I can’t speak Deutsche, but I can understand it. Chances are I could understand Freni if she was speaking Chinese.

  “Now you go right on upstairs and wake them all up. Tell them that I’m making pancakes, sausage, and bacon, and I want to know how they want their eggs. Tell them they eat in thirty minutes.”

  “Yah. Quite clear,” I said respectfully. “But before I go I want to ask a question.”

  “What happened last night between my daughter- in-law and myself is none of your business,” she said. She was speaking English again.

  That anything had happened between Barbara and Freni was news to me, but I resisted the temptation to pry. It took a tremendous amount of strength on my part, and the fingernail marks on my palms may well stay with me the rest of my life.

  “It’s not about that, dear. Do you know a woman named Diane Lefcourt?”

  The way Freni clucked, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had personally supplied our breakfast eggs.

  “Ach, Magdalena, whatever made you think of her?”

  “They talked about her at dinner last night. Someone said she was a bad influence on Aaron’s aunt Rebecca.”

  Freni’s spatula waved the orchestra into a loud crescendo. “That Diane woman was a bad influence on the devil himself. All of Hernia breathed a sigh of relief when she ran off with that mattress salesman from Johnstown.”

  “Johnstown, Pennsylvania?”

  “Ach, what other Johnstown is there? Now go wake up the English, Magdalena. The sausages will get tough if they sit too long, and a cold pancake is fit only for pigs.”

  I scurried off to do her bidding, visions of the over-done pork roast supplying unexpected energy. It was not, of course, a pleasant task. My rooms do not possess Do Not Disturb signs.

  “Go away,” someone in Auntie Vonnie’s room grunted.