by Tamar Myers
The path between my house and Freni’s is the same path our common ancestor, Jacob Hochstetler, was forced to follow after he was taken captive by the Delaware Indians in 1750. Of course, at that time it was already an old hunting path, and it was woods the whole way. The woods have now shrunk to a mere ribbon that crowns the crest of the hill, the remainder being com fields. Still it is a joy to walk along this path, listen to birdsong, and above all, escape the telephone.
Freni doesn’t have to worry about distancing herself from a phone. As an Amish woman she doesn’t own a telephone. Her house doesn’t have electricity. When Freni and her husband, Mose—also a cousin of sorts—travel, they hitch their horse, Sadie, to a buggy. The most complicated piece of machinery Freni owns is her sewing machine with its foot-powered treadle, upon which she sews herself garments even more conservative than the ones I wear.
By the time I reached the Hostetler house, the day had warmed considerably, and I was just beginning to break into that dreaded sweat. Several more days of this weather and the tulip buds would open. I fervently hoped that Freni had a nice pitcher of lemonade waiting in her gasoline-powered refrigerator.
I knocked several times on the unpainted kitchen door, but there was no answer. I turned the knob, and the door opened. Freni was standing by the kitchen sink, her broad back to me.
“Freni,” I called loudly. I once made the unfortunate mistake of surprising my cousin, who is a mite hard of hearing, and got a broom in my face. And this from a pacifist!
My cousin turned. “Ach, Magdalena, come in.”
“Freni Hostetler, whatever are you doing?” In her right arm she cradled three five-pound bags of flour. In her left arm, precariously balanced between her ample bosom and stubby little hand were three pint-sized mason jars filled with water.
“What do you think I’m doing? I’m practicing, of course!”
“Practicing what? Did you get a job in a bakery?”
She glared at me through wire-rimmed glasses. “The babies! I’m pretending to feed the babies. Barbara’s not going to have enough milk for triplets, you know. Ach, I don’t think she’ll even have enough for one. She’s even flatter than you, Magdalena. Why, that woman is as flat as Kansas.”
“How would you know? Have you ever been to Kansas?”
“No, but Barbara told me.”
Barbara Kauffman Hostetler is Freni’s formerly despised, but now tolerated daughter-in-law. For twenty years Barbara, who hails from Kansas, has been unworthy of Freni’s son Jonathan. Then something came unstuck in Barbara’s plumbing and the woman bloomed. There were three buds at last count, and blossom time was four months away.
“Wouldn’t it be safer to feed just one of the babies at a time?”
Freni muttered something in Pennsylvania Dutch that sounded like “What would you know about feeding babies, you who is forever doomed to be as barren as the Gobi Desert?” Fortunately, my grasp of the dialect is minimal, and I chose to interpret it as something else entirely.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ve always like this shade of blue on me.”
Dark eyes rolled behind thick lenses. “So, would you like to hold little Freni?”
“That’s a bag of flour, dear. In fact, they’re all three bags of flour. Now, do you want to hear my good news or not?”
“Yah,” Freni said, “slap me.”
“That’s ‘hit’ me, dear, and slang doesn’t become you. Anyway, you wouldn’t believe what happened! I just got two calls, and now the inn is booked solid for next week—well, five rooms at any rate. You know what this means, don’t you?”
Freni shrugged, and the mason jars clanked ominously. “I need you back at work.”
My kinswoman is the only cook the PennDutch Inn has ever had. Her meals are really quite tasty, despite the fact she relies heavily on the three favorite Amish food groups—sugar, starch, and grease.
Freni frowned. “I quit, remember?”
“Freni, you’ve quit more times than Cher’s had surgery. Besides, think of the brand-new buggies my bucks can buy your babies.”
She sighed, which meant I had made my first breach in her defenses.
“Please, pretty please,” I begged. “It’ll make the time go by faster until they’re born.”
“Movie stars?” Freni asked with studied casualness.
“Maybe,” I said just as casually.
“Mel?”
“Mel who?” I knew exactly who she meant, but I was afraid now to tell her the truth.
“Mel Gibson! The one with the skirt.”
As a plain person, one who is supposed to live in the world, but not be of it, Freni is ostensibly unaware that star-worship exists. In real life, because she is my cook—well, most of the time—the woman sees more stars than an astronomer. She dotes on Denzel Washington and fawns over Ben Affleck, but Mel is the apple of her eye. I’m sure Freni would give her life for the man—maybe even one of her unborn triplet grandchildren.
I swallowed hard. “So, maybe it’s not movie stars this time.”
“Ach, not him! I’m seventy-eight years old, Magdalena. I’m too old to be chased around the Inn again. And all those Secret Service men just looking the other way!”
“You’re seventy-five, dear.” Freni is the only woman I know who pads her age—perhaps in a misguided attempt to gain respect. “And it’s not him, anyway. It’s a reunion of World War II vets.”
There was the sound of breaking glass and splashing water, followed by the thud of five pounds of flour on a wooden floor. Freni and I stared mutely at the remains of one of her faux grandchildren and its breakfast. She was the first to find her voice.
“Ach du leiber! Now see what you’ve done?”
“I think we have the beginnings of a giant pie crust, dear.”
“That”—she pointed to the floor, thereby putting the remaining two faux babies in jeopardy—“is my little Mose.”
“Mose shmoze,” I said, my patience wearing thin. “I need you back at work.”
Freni shook her head. “For shame, Magdalena, and you call yourself a pacifist. Your mama would roll over in her grave if she knew there were soldiers sleeping in her house.”
“Leave Mama out of this,” I snapped. “Besides, it’s not her house now. It’s been totally rebuilt, so it’s all mine. And anyway, they’re not soldiers now—they’re old men.” I graciously refrained from adding “like you.”
“Tch, tch, tch.”
“Don’t you tch, tch me, dear. Someone had to fight the Nazis. If these brave men hadn’t, those little grandbabies of yours would be goose-stepping around Hernia shouting ‘Seig Heil’.”
“Ach,” Freni squawked, and another faux baby hit the floor. She fumbled with the two mason jars for a few seconds but it was a lost cause.
“Oops. Looks like you could use a little more practice, dear.”
“Out!” Freni screamed. “Get out of my house this minute.”
“So you’ll come back to work? Because they’re not all going to be vets, you see. Their wives are coming too, and then there is the concert pianist from Pittsburgh and her historian husband. They—”
“Yah, yah,” Freni said, pushing me with one hand, her other stubby arm gripping the last bag of flour. “I’ll come, if you go.”
I was out of there like an atheist from a revival meeting. Like the atheist, I should have stayed long enough to see the error of my ways.
Three
I used to get up with the chickens. Literally. I don’t mean to say that I slept in the hen house, or they in my bed, but we got up at the same time. Before the late, great disaster—which I still say was a tornado—I owned a flock of fifty-three laying hens and one irascible rooster. The cock was named Chaunticleer and his favorite wife—also my favorite hen—I called Pertelote. To my knowledge they were the only literary fowl in Bedford County, and very near and dear to my heart.
Then along came that horrible storm and my flock went flying, never to be seen again. Undoubtedly some
were eaten by foxes and raccoons, but I have a sneaking suspicion a few managed to sail over the border into Maryland and ultimately ended up on the dinner tables of folks living there. Most of my hens were past their laying days and far too old to be consumed by humans, but those Marylanders, I’ve heard, will eat anything that Comes flying down the pike.
At any rate, I was up and dressed by five-thirty, and had just sat down at the kitchen table with my first cup of coffee and the Bedford Times, when someone rapped sharply on the door. It was a good thing I was no longer holding the cup, because I jumped so high I got altitude
sickness. Okay, so maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but I was really spooked, and it took me a while to find my voice.
“Who is it?” I finally rasped.
“It’s me.” The speaker was obviously a male and his voice vaguely familiar.
“Be more specific, dear. The last time I checked there were almost eight billion ‘me’s in the world. Which one would you be?”
“It’s Samuel Berkey.”
That narrowed it down, but not as much as you might think. Berkey is a common Mennonite and Amish name, and Samuel is as ubiquitous as maple trees in Vermont. I knew eight men by that name in Bedford County, and six over in Somerset.
“It’s Samuel Berkey the Bishop’s son-in-law.”
“That narrows it down to two, dear.”
“Samuel Berkey with the straggly beard.”
“Ah, that Samuel Berkey. Strubbly Sam.” I strode to the door and flung it open. “Why didn’t you say so to begin with?”
Samuel blinked. He is an Amish man, perhaps in his early seventies, and he dresses in typical garb for this region: black pants, white shirt, black vest, and black coat. His shirt and coat fasten with hooks and eyes rather than worldly buttons. His pants are held up by suspenders. He wears a straw hat on weekdays, and on Sundays a wide-brimmed, black felt hat. Since he is a married man—well, a widower now—he wears a beard, and it is this feature that immediately distinguishes him from the other men in his generation. Sam’s beard is sparse to the point of looking messy. Strubbly, we call it in Pennsylvania-Dutch.
“Come in Strubbly Sam,” I said not unkindly. In a culture where so many share the same name, nicknames are not derisive, they are necessary.
Sam stepped in, and his glance swept the expanse of my kitchen. No doubt he was allowing himself the luxury of gazing upon modem electric-powered appliances he could never use, much less own. I’m sure had his wife Amanda been alive, he would have memorized every detail to recount that night at the dinner table.
“Here, for you,” Sam said, and handed me a wire basket, practically spilling over with eggs.
“Thank you.” I took the gift with mixed feelings. I knew Strubbly Sam by sight and reputation, but these were the first words we had ever exchanged. Sure, I saw him at the feed store from time to time, and sometimes at Cousin Sam’s Corner Market, but we definitely did not move in the same circles. I was a Mennonite woman, after all, and he an Amish man. For a fleeting moment, I flattered myself with the notion that Samuel Berkey had come to pay court. But because he was an Amish man, and I a Mennonite woman, this was highly unlikely. He was also old enough to be my father. Still, I tried to picture myself in a stiff black apron and a black bonnet, perched on the front seat of a buggy built for two. When the buggy turned down the drive of a farmhouse that lacked central heat and air conditioning, the fantasy faded.
But an egg is an egg, and I had an inn about to fill up with guests. I transferred the eggs from the wire basket to a large blue crock. Alas, several of the eggs were in less than pristine condition.
“You should have washed the eggs,” I said gently.
“Yah, that’s what my Amanda would say.”
I pointed to a chair, but he shook his head.
“So, Strubbly Sam, to what do I owe this honor?”
“Honor?”
“This visit—these eggs. Something on your mind?”
“Yah, Big Magdalena—”
“Big Magdalena? I may be five foot ten, but I’m skinny as a mop handle!”
“Ach”—he turned a lovely shade of salmon under his wispy whiskers—“there are things besides height and weight to consider.” I would have liked to think he was referring to my bosoms, but since I have a concave chest, there wasn’t enough evidence there to hang my hat on. Besides, his pale blue eyes were focused quite clearly on my probing proboscis.
“Why, I never! It is an honest Yoder nose. Just consider yourself lucky, buster, because you Berkeys have a little Yoder blood too.”
Strubbly Sam seemed startled. Then I remembered that he was not originally from around these parts, but from one of those far-flung Amish communities, like Nebraska or Paraguay. According to what Mama told me, Strubbly Sam had been on his way to Lancaster to visit some distant relatives, and when it was almost dark, sought accommodations with an Amish family for the night. The family he picked just happened to be the bishop, who just happened to have three of the most beautiful daughters ever to descend from Eve. Strubbly Sam never made it to Lancaster, and never returned to Paraguay, or Nebraska, or wherever he was from. Perhaps those foreign Berkeys lacked Yoder blood.
“Okay, so maybe there aren’t Yoders where you come from, but you’ve seen plenty enough here to know that my nose is not unique.”
“Ach, it isn’t just me who speaks of Big Magdalena.”
“What? You mean the entire community gossips about my shnoz?”
He removed his hat, revealing strubbly hair. “But there are six Magdalena Yoders in Bedford County, and nine in Somerset. It is only a name, Big Magdalena.”
“Don’t call me that!” I snapped.
He twirled the straw hat on his left index finger. “You are angry with me now, yah?”
I remembered the eggs. “Merely miffed, dear. So, Strubbly Sam, what is it you have on your mind?”
He gazed at my new bread-maker, a machine Freni refuses to use. “You are having guests, yah?”
“That’s what an inn is all about, dear. But I hate to dis-appoint you if you think you’re going to get a glimpse of Hollywood. For one thing, no one has arrived yet, and for another, this is not a Hollywood crowd.”
“Soldiers, yah?”
“Why, that gossipy little Freni! And they’re not soldiers—they’re veterans.”
“But veterans of a war, yah. Is that such a good idea?”
“Not you too!” I wailed.
“Big Magdalena—”
I glared at him.
“Ach, Magdalena, our people are committed to peace.”
“Quite true, dear, but these are elderly men converging to reminisce. They’re not going to be waging war on the countryside.”
“Yah, but—”
I held up a quieting hand. “And if they do, you can take refuge in my basement.”
Strubbly Sam smiled sadly. “What does Lustige Freni have to say about this?”
“Merry Freni? Boy, do you have a wrong number!”
He frowned, obviously confused.
“That woman is as merry as a mule with a burr under its saddle,” I said kindly.
“So she’s against it, yah?”
“Is that what you think? Well, she’s coming in to work today,” I said smugly. “Why don’t you ask her yourself?”
The threat of a chance encounter with Merry Freni sent Strubbly Sam speedily on his way. In fact, he left so quickly he left behind his wire basket.
Samantha Burk and her husband, John, were the first guests to arrive. I was amazed at how tiny Samantha was—even her hair was short. I couldn’t imagine how such tiny hands, barely larger than cat paws, could span an octave under any circumstances. But I was downright taken aback by her striking resemblance to an acquaintance of mine.
“Say, you wouldn’t happen to be related to Abigail Timberlake?” I asked as I wrote down their license plate number.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Feisty little southern gal, owns an
antique store called the Den of Antiquity?”
“Never heard of her.”
“Hmm. You’re the spitting image of Abby—well, except that you have almond-shaped eyes and are a good ten years older.”
Samantha smiled. “The ‘almond’ eyes, as you so nicely put it, are the result of one too many facelifts.”
I clamped a hand over my mouth, lest my other foot try to get in as well. I should have known better, of course. I’ve seen movie stars whose eyelids close automatically whenever they open their mouths. The Good Lord only gave us so much skin to play around with, for heaven’s sake.
“Oh, that’s all right,” Samantha said quickly. “I’m not at all embarrassed by the subject. I had a face lift so I could look younger for my public. Many people don’t realize it, but concert pianists are celebrities. We have fans. We have images to uphold.”
I must say that I had never thought about concert pianists being celebrities. No doubt she was right, however; the mountain of luggage her husband had piled next to the front desk confirmed her celebrity status. I made a mental note to be nicer to Vladimer next time he called asking to reserve a room.
A car door slammed outside. Then another. Then the sound of raised voices, possibly even an argument.
“It seems like the next batch of guests has arrived,” I said brightly.
“Please, miss,” John Burk said, reaching for the as yet unproffered key. “Could we hurry this along a bit?”
Those were the first words the man had said. I was be-ginning to think his was a forced retirement from the history department at Duquesne. Mute professors have got to be a liability.
I stared at him. He was taller than me, and I’m five-ten. He was a good fifty pounds overweight, something I cannot be accused of being, and had scarcely any hair. Trust me, I have plenty of that, and in all the right places. But there was something ominous about him, something I can only describe metaphorically. John Burk looked like he walked around with a little rain cloud, not much larger than a powder puff, suspended above his head.
“What a charming accent,” I finally said. “Are you originally from Minnesota?”
