Just Plain Pickled to Death

by Tamar Myers

  My Pooky Bear, my hero, arrived just as I let out a second scream, this time with words.

  “Get your grubby hands off me, Melvin Stoltzfus!”

  “You heard her,” Aaron roared.

  Actually, if truth be told, Aaron spoke very calmly. Far too calmly for a man whose sugar dumpling has almost been violated by a deviant detective.

  Still, Melvin seemed stymied. He scratched his head longer than a flea-prone dog in a henhouse.

  “Well,” he said at last, “then I’m just going to have to take you in to the station and search you there.”

  “On what grounds?” Aaron asked sensibly.

  “Obstruction of justice,” Melvin said and reached to snap a pair of cuffs on me.

  Make no mistake about it, I am claustrophobic. Not about tight spaces necessarily, but about being physically restrained. I cannot abide constrictive apparel of any sort. For this reason, I won’t even wear a watch unless I absolutely have to. So you see, when I felt that cold, confining metal circle my wrist, it was a reflex pure and simple that caused me to fling my arm outward. And it was pure bad luck that made my fist connect with Melvin’s miserable mug.

  Contrary to Susannah’s claims, I do not possess big muscles. I do not use steroids, nor have I ever used them. In gym class I could never get past two pushups, and I couldn’t do a chin-up if my life depended on it. But somehow I managed to lay Melvin out like a salami at an Italian picnic.

  I didn’t lay a hand on Zelda, though. If it wasn’t against my religion, I’d swear to that on a stack of Farmer’s Almanacs. The fact that she hit the driveway just seconds after Melvin had to be due to her bad cold. I mean, I didn’t even graze her. As for the charge that I stuck out my foot and tripped her—well, I’d have to say that is complete nonsense. I stuck out my foot because impacting Melvin’s mandibles caused me to lose my balance. And that is the truth. A healthy woman would not have gone down so easily.

  I had never been inside a jail before, and in a way it was more interesting than it was scary. Like I said, I can handle relatively small spaces—it’s being shackled that makes me flip.

  Hernia has separate cells for the sexes, and apparently the women’s cell doesn’t get much use. There were only four names scratched into the walls, not including Susannah’s, and the mattress and pillow, while lumpy, were quite clean. I wish I could say the same about the toilet, although in all fairness its brown color was undoubtedly because of the hard water. After all, the sink was brown as well. Of course it was a peculiar toilet, in that it had actually been designed not to have a seat. Only a man could think that one up, I assure you.

  There were four bunks, and I chose a top one on the off chance I would be getting company. I was just settling down to collect my wits when I heard the hall door open and two sets of footsteps approach. I closed my eyes and prayed for strength.

  “Brought you some company,” a female voice said. It was Andrea, Zelda’s replacement, on loan from Bedford.

  “Just remember I was here first, dearie,” I said in my gruffest voice. “You don’t mess with me, I don’t mess with you.”

  “Ach! Magdalena Yoder, how you talk!”

  “Freni!” I opened my eyes and sat up.

  “Who else? Were you expecting the sewing circle from church?”

  “Freni, you didn’t hit Melvin too, did you?”

  “Ach! Of course not! I’m here to visit. Magdalena, if your mother could1—”

  “Please,” I begged. “For once leave Mama out of it. Are you here to bail me out?”

  She shook her head. She was wearing her black traveling bonnet, which looked rather out of place behind the bars.

  “Aaron can’t post bail until tomorrow morning, after the hearing. You’re going to have to spend the night in here, I’m afraid.”

  “But it wasn’t my fault!” I wailed. “You know Melvin Stoltzfus. Doesn’t that say it all?”

  Freni nodded sympathetically. “Yah, but assaulting a police officer—make that two police officers—is serious business, Magdalena. Melvin is talking about having you tell time.”

  “You must mean ‘do’ time,” I corrected her gently. “Freni, you know I can’t stay in here. I’ve got a murder to solve, not to mention a wedding—my wedding—on Saturday.” I glanced over at Andrea, who was discreetly looking away. “You and Aaron have to get me out, Freni,” I whispered.

  Freni looked at me fondly with her faded blue eyes. That was as close as she could come to saying “I love you.”

  “How, Magdalena?”

  “I don’t know. Bring me a cake with a file baked inside. Sneak a gun in under your bonnet. Just get me out, and soon!”

  Freni nodded pensively. “There may be a way,” she said. “There just may be a way.”

  But she wouldn’t tell me more.

  Susannah was my next visitor. She seemed right at home.

  “I usually take that bunk over there,” she said brightly. “The mattress is better.”

  “Where?”

  She hauled Shnookums out of her cleavage and set him on the floor. The pathetic pooch slipped right through the bars and headed straight for the bottom bunk on the other side of the room. Somehow it managed to hop up on the bed, and, in an attack of nervous exuberance, piddled pitifully on the pillow.

  “They allow you to bring him in here?” I asked calmly. Andrea was safely engrossed in the latest issue of Cosmopolitan (which, I learned later, Susannah had provided as a diversion).

  “Yeah, but I’ve never been hauled in for assault and battery, Mags. Disturbing the peace is as far as I’ve gotten—if you don’t count DWI—and that was only twice. Besides, Melvin and me used to be friends, remember?”

  “I’d rather not, dear, but now that you’ve brought up the subject, I don’t suppose you’d be willing to impose on your bond to see that I make mine. I am supposed to be married on Saturday, you know.”

  Susannah rolled her eyes in sympathy. “Yeah. Bummer. But Melvin hates my guts now, Mags, since I dumped him. Says I broke his heart down to the bone, which sounds kind of silly to me. Hearts don’t have bones, do they, Mags?”

  “Melvin’s does,” I said. “Are you sure there’s nothing you can do or say?”

  She shook her head vigorously, no doubt admiring the way her hair looked in the reflection of the bars. “He says only Zelda can do it now for him, Mags, and you knocked her out cold.”

  “I did not!”

  I froze while Andrea glanced around the room and then buried her head back in other women’s cleavage.

  “She was sick, Susannah. Shnookums could have toppled her over.”

  “Well, you’re still my hero, you know.”

  “What?” I hadn’t been so shocked since that time I was sent home from school early because of an approaching snowstorm and found Mama and Papa in a flagrante delicto. Well, their version of it, anyway. Papa was down to his long johns and Mama was in her flannel nightie. But it was broad daylight outside!

  “Come on, Mags, don’t make me say it twice.”

  “Please.”

  “Okay, but then this is the last time. You’re my hero, all right? I mean, I’ve always looked up to you—because you’re my big sister—but now I really respect you.”

  “Because I punched Melvin out?”

  “And Zelda.”

  I held my tongue that time. If Susannah wanted to believe that I had intentionally clobbered two cops, who was I to rain on her parade?

  “So, can I get you anything?” my sweet little sister asked.

  “My Bible,” I said seriously.

  She nodded just as seriously. “Shall I carve out a little space and hide a knife in it?”

  I patted her arm affectionately through the bars. “Thanks, but no thanks. You excited about your first day at work tomorrow?”

  She shrugged, but I could tell by the sudden gleam in her eyes that she was immensely excited. Would wonders never cease! My slothful, slatternly sister was about to embark on an endeavor for wh
ich she could expect to receive legal remuneration. Our parents would be so proud.

  “You’re not planning to smuggle Shnookums in with you?” I asked casually.

  “Of course!”

  “But Susannah, what if that pint-size canine falls into a can of paint? He could drown.”

  She looked taken aback. “Why, I hadn’t thought of that, Mags. I suppose there is some risk, after all.”

  “You’re damn tootin’, dear,” I said affectionately. I was growing prouder by the moment.

  “So, in that case, I think you should keep him.”

  Without another word, my sister turned in a swirl of shimmering silk and slipped out of the holding area. Andrea, who had forgotten to lock the door, darted after her in a panic. Perhaps she thought I had slipped Susannah a dangerous weapon.

  In the meantime Shnookums, who had all the pet appeal of a rabid rat, began to howl piteously. I really couldn’t blame the mangy mutt. Susannah had hand-reared him on a doll’s bottle after his mother had refused to nurse him (I couldn’t blame her either!). Except for one time last year when a vicious man in Ohio came between them for several days, the two had been inseparable.

  Anyway, much to my credit, I petted the pooch.

  “It’s okay, my sweetsie-beastie, itsy-bitsy little Shnookums,” I cooed in my most Susannah-like voice.

  The mangy mutt rewarded me by mashing his minuscule yet menacing molars down on my right index finger.

  That did it. It had been too horrible and long of a day to be harassed by a hair ball.

  “Get this straight, buster,” I shouted. “You keep that yap of yours shut or I’ll turn you into a dust mop. You got that?”

  Shnookums blinked, but said nothing.

  “I read you loud and clear,” my Pooky Bear said.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “Hi Aaron!” I glanced around for someplace to hide, but the only hole available to crawl into was the lidless brown toilet.

  “You’re quite a woman, you know?” If I had been brave enough to look, I would have seen that my Pooky Bear’s eyes were gleaming with admiration.

  “I only punched Melvin. Zelda tripped—well, sort of.”

  “And they say chivalry is dead! Imagine that, my very own hellcat to do battle for me. You’ll make one hell of a protective mother, Magdalena. Our kids will be the safest ones on the lane.”

  “Our kids,” I wailed, “are going to be born in jail!”

  Aaron laughed. “Then with these bars they’ll even have extra protection.”

  I failed to see the humor in his comments and told him so. He pretended to be chastised but wouldn’t stop grinning.

  “Look, you’ll be out of here first thing in the morning. Judge Wagler is the magistrate and—”

  “Jacob Wagler?”

  “You know him?”

  “Unfortunately, quite well.”

  “Oh, Mags,” my Pooky Bear sighed, “you didn’t hit him too, did you?”

  “Worse than that. I made him eat dirt.”

  “Figuratively, of course, but I’m sure—”

  “No, literally. We were three years old at the time. Actually, he was already four. Anyway, we were playing in a sandbox—my sandbox—and he grabbed my shovel and wouldn’t give it back. So I pushed him down, sat on top of him, and fed him dirt.”

  “You made him eat dirt?” Aaron’s voice echoed down the hall, and Andrea momentarily surfaced from a sea of anorexic women with breast implants.

  “Aaron, what else was I supposed to do?” I wailed. “There were only two shovels, and he already had the other!”

  I stole a quick glance at my fiance’s face, and that was when I noticed that his eyes were shining. They were just brimming over with love.

  “I’ve waited a whole lifetime to find a woman like you, Mags,” he said. “I sure as hell am not going to let a repugnant runt like Melvin Stoltzfus delay our happiness by even one day.”

  “You go, boy,” I said, borrowing one of Susannah’s favorite phrases.

  “I’ll move heaven and earth if that’s what it takes,” my hero declared stoutly. “I’ll climb the highest mountain, I’ll—”

  “Will you keep a mangy mutt overnight?” I scooped Shnookums off his bunk and thrust him through the bars.

  It was the true test of my Pooky Bear’s love that he gingerly accepted the cowering cur and stuffed him into the vest pocket of his shirt.

  “Till tomorrow, my love,” he said.

  Let me make it perfectly clear here that it was Aaron who spoke, not Shnookums. That mangy, malodorous mutt just yelped piteously while Andrea, without looking up from her magazine, unlocked the hall door and let them out.

  Think me strange, but I actually enjoyed my night in jail. Once I got it through my head that I was really stuck there, alone, it didn’t take me long to discover all the advantages solitary confinement has to offer.

  For one thing, I had four beds to choose from, and I could rotate among them all night long if I so desired. Of course, at the PennDutch I have more than four beds, but the majority of them are perennially occupied by the rich and famous (present occupants excluded) who fill my coffers, and I’m not about to kick them out of bed when I want a change of mattress.

  The real blessing, however, was the sudden and complete lack of responsibility I felt. If Susannah decided to drink and flirt her way up to Poughkeepsie, there was nothing I could do about it. Just as long as she didn’t end up sharing my cell that night, my dear little sister was none of my concern.

  And, of course, neither were my guests. Let Freni quit, let Auntie Leah bellow in the kitchen, let Auntie Vonnie gripe. Auntie Lizzie could paint herself up as the whore of Babylon for all I cared, and if Auntie Magdalena whimpered herself into a frenzy, well, that was somebody else’s problem, wasn’t it? As for the uncles, who cared if they slept all night in the parlor—although it would be nice if Uncle Elias got on the ball and checked out the Millers’ barn.

  It was even pleasant, in a weird sort of way, to be cut off from my Pooky Bear. I mean, he had said such sweet things during his visit, and since my cell didn’t have a phone, there was no chance he would make a late-night call. My tongue is the least reliable of my appendages, and has been known to double-cross me more than once. Much better to end the evening with my Pooky Bear’s eyes brimming with admiration than to struggle through a phone call during which I—the Lord only knows for what reason— might suddenly start talking about barium enemas and throbbing varicose veins. Not that such abrupt turns in conversation have necessarily happened, mind you, but it was a big relief to be freed from the risk.

  I slept like a baby, which is to say I woke up every couple of hours. Finally, I forced myself to squat over the brown toilet, after which sleep stayed with me. In fact, I was enjoying the deepest sleep I’d had in years when Melvin Stoltzfus began banging on the door to my cell with a cluster of keys.

  “Go away,” I moaned.

  “Yoder, get up!”

  I sat up, rubbing my eyes. “There’d better be a breakfast tray in your other hand, dear. This place has done wonders for my appetite.”

  He unlocked the door, opened it, and stepped back. “Out.”

  “Oh? It’s the shower first? Listen, Melvin, I washed my hair yesterday, and I’m quite content to wait and take a good soak when I get home.”

  “Yoder, out!”

  There was something odd about his voice, something that compelled me to look at him closely. I recoiled at the sight. Melvin Stoltzfus had a black eye. I mean a real shiner, the kind they tell you to put steak on, which is a real waste, because the steak would make you and your eye feel a whole lot better faster if you charbroiled it and ate it. Only in Melvin’s case, given the size of his ocular orbs, it was doubtful he could afford that much meat.

  “Ooooh. Did I do that?” I asked gently.

  Much to my surprise he laughed loudly. “Don’t be so full of yourself, Yoder. You hit me in the chest and I lost my balance. This I got later. Much la
ter.”

  “Aaron? If you’ve arrested Aaron—”

  “I didn’t arrest your precious Aaron. Now come on, Yoder. You have some papers to sign.”

  “I’m not signing anything until after my day in court. Which reminds me, Jacob Wagler is going to have to disqualify himself on account I once made him eat dirt.”

  “There isn’t going to be any court hearing, Yoder. And as for Judge Wagler, he said he’d rather eat dirt again than touch you with a ten-foot pole.”

  “What? You can’t just ship me off to the state pen without a trial! It’s unconstitutional, Melvin! Why, if your mother—” At the mention of his mother, Melvin seemed to wilt.

  “Please, Yoder. Just come.”

  “Why, Melvin Stoltzfus, what on earth is going on? Did your mother—? I mean, did Freni—?”

  He nodded dejectedly, and I almost felt sorry for him. Only one woman in the world has more control over her children than my mother (God rest her soul, and Susannah excepted), and that’s Elvina Stoltzfus. Poor Melvin was born with a steel umbilical cord, and nothing he will ever do, including die, will sever it.

  While I am experiencing this rare moment of compassion for my nemesis, I will go ahead and say that it is to Melvin’s credit that he is who he is. What I mean is, if Elvina Stoltzfus had had her way, Melvin would still be incapable of feeding himself, much less walking or talking. Those of us who observed Melvin’s relative maturation were astounded when he began to date (his brother Perry is reportedly still very fond of a sheep named Delilah). So, for all the grief that Melvin gives me, it could be worse, I suppose. After all, Elvina Stoltzfus would follow her precious son everywhere, I’m sure, if it were not for the ten-pound goiter attached to her neck, which she firmly refuses to have removed. Then again, that’s her business, isn’t it?

  I successfully resisted my temptation to pat him compassionately. “Was it your mother who gave you the shiner, dear?”

  “But it was really your fault, Magdalena.”

  “How so?”

  “You sicced Freni Hostetler on me.”

  “I did no such thing, dear. I merely agreed that she should speak to your mother.”