by Tamar Myers
Toy chuckled. ‘Hernia! I still can’t get over the name of this village.’
‘Please, dear, show some respect. It was named in honor of my great, great, great-grandfather, Jacob Yoder, who got a hernia while building his log cabin up on Stucky Ridge. As you know, there’s a picnic area up there now, as well as a cemetery. There’s also a brass plaque at the exact spot where the unfortunate incident is supposed to have happened.’
Again Toy chuckled. ‘Sorry. I couldn’t help it. It’s just that I love quirky things.’
‘Quirky? Let me get this straight, Toy. You find us quirky?’
At least he had the decency to blush. ‘Yes, ma’am, but in a good way.’
‘Harrumph. Well, that is certainly more than I can say for Ramat. Do you know what she was going to originally call her tell-all book about life in Hernia?’
He nodded. ‘Fifty Grades of Hay.’
‘Thank heavens she didn’t; it would have made us all look like hayseeds – like the country bumpkins that we are!’
‘So,’ he said, ‘instead, she titled her book Butter Safe Than Sorry.’ Toy looked straight at Granny then, but of course he didn’t see her, or else he would have jumped out of his non-regulation kidskin loafers. ‘Miss Yoder, before we go any further, there is something I need to tell you. You’re going to hear about it anyway, so you may as well hear it from me.’
‘Stop right there,’ I said, holding up my large, shapely hands. ‘The fact that you’re gay is none of my business. “Gay, schmay, have a nice day” – that’s what I always say. Besides, Jesus never said one bad thing about you homosexuals, and he had tons to say about us divorcees. Although my divorce was purely fictional, given that it happened only in the pages of Butter Safe Than Sorry.’
First Toy reddened, then he turned even whiter than ricotta cheese, and lastly he jumped to his feet. It is quite possible that he even leaped out of his loafers – well, maybe just a millimeter. My point is that I have never in all my forty-nine years seen someone that scared, and it had nothing to do with his sexuality.
‘I see her! I see her! There she is!’
Indeed, he was pointing right at Granny Yoder whom, I might add, was a pacifist by conviction, but not adverse to stoning homosexuals if the Old Testament decreed it. Believe me, there were many others on Granny’s stoning list, perhaps even including myself, and they were all drawn from the Bible. I think maybe it’s because she didn’t have a chance to get her rocks off at said sinners that Granny’s spirit stayed behind when her heart stopped beating. It’s just a theory, mind you; I can’t find any literature to support this.
At any rate, this was the first time that anyone else had ever seen Granny since the day that she’d been laid, ever so carefully, into the ground, as per her sixteen pages of instructions. Needless to say, I was gobsmacked. I was not, however, speechless.
‘Oh happy day!’ I sang out in my strong, but perhaps slightly off-key soprano.
Granny cringed.
What mattered is that Toy found his tongue. ‘M-Miss Yoder, h-how can you just sit there so calmly with her in the room?’ He was, of course, standing. He was also back safely in his loafers.
‘She can’t hurt you, dear. She doesn’t exist – not really.’
‘Who am I to disagree with my elders?’ he said disagreeably. ‘But we’re both looking at a ghost right now.’
‘Then again, we are and we aren’t.’
‘Forgive me, Miss Yoder, but what you are is not making any sense.’
‘This Apparition American – ghost as you called her – resembles my Granny Yoder, and would lead us to believe that this phenomena really does exist. Yet the majority of both Amish and Mennonites would reject such a belief, and if they were in this room with us, at this very moment, they would be unable to see my granny. So I ask you, what is the truth?’
Far be it for me to speak ill of the dead, but Granny Yoder was not the brightest candle in her candelabra while she was alive and, now that she was dead, her attention span was even much shorter. No doubt it was the word ‘phenomena’ that sent her flying from the room in a flurry of dust motes.
‘You know, Miss Yoder,’ Toy said, resuming his seat, ‘I must have been hallucinating, or daydreaming or something, because I don’t see anything weird anymore. Do you mind if we get back to business?’
‘Indeed I do not!’
‘Good, so moving right along, here is a list of suspects that I have drawn up based on my reading of Butter Safe Than Sorry. I thought it was an excellent novel, by the way. The mystery element kept me turning the pages so fast that they were smouldering. I thought, “Dang,” ’ I groaned inwardly at Toy’s use of the offensive word, ‘ “this would be a great book to take on a wilderness backpacking trip.” You know, just in case no one remembered to bring matches! Hey, don’t you think that what I just said would make a great book review?’
‘I most certainly do not.’
‘Now, this list I’m giving you concentrates on the folks living in Hernia and its environs, as these are the people who have suffered the most from all the negative publicity this book has received. I have omitted anyone from Bedford because they’re not quite the itty-bitty ink spot on the map that we are. Besides, from what I hear, motels along the Pennsylvania Turnpike in either direction, as far away as Carlisle and Youngwood, have been jam-packed for the two months since the book has been out. How about you, Miss Yoder? I bet the PennDutch Inn has been booked solid, hasn’t it?’
‘Stuff and nonsense,’ I said nonsensically. It was a phrase I’d read in an old English novel somewhere; I hadn’t the slightest idea what it meant. Toy, apparently, didn’t give a plump Turkish fig what it meant either.
‘Good, like they say, a high tide floats all boats – well, something close to that. Unfortunately, your cousin-in-law, Dorothy Yoder, is on my list of suspects, as is your delightful mother-in-law, Mother Malaise of the Convent of the Sisters of Perpetual Apathy.’
‘She’s as delightful as a tick in one’s underwear,’ I said, without a shred of undeserved malice.
‘Miss Yoder, do I detect a little bitterness there? I thought you Amish were supposed to be a kind, gentle people.’
I was careful to bite my tongue first before answering. I bit it hard. I have bitten it so many times over the years that there are permanent indentations into which various teeth now fit into rather neatly, and thus the pain is really minimal. As I bit, I counted to ten in English, Pennsylvania Dutch, Spanish, and French. One may rest assured, however, that my watery blue eyes remained focused on his face to let him know that he had stepped over the line. Finally, I cleared my throat, and hoped that whatever wattles I might have accrued over my forty-nine years were vibrating with authority.
‘Young man, as I have explained to you at least a dozen times: I am not Amish, although my grandparents were. I am a Mennonite. I happen to be amongst the more liberal sort of my Old Order brethren. We Mennonites do not ride around in horse-drawn buggies. Having suitably rebuked you, allow me to remind you that I am indeed a kind and gentle person. Unless you have walked a mile in my size forty-four brogans with Sister Malaise as your mother-in-law, you are in no position to judge me.’
‘Yes ma’am,’ Toy said, for apparently I had managed to stare him into a state of semi-submission. He tried slumping in his straight-back chair as if he were a teenager with a strand of spaghetti for a spine. Much to my secret amusement, the chair refused to cooperate and Hernia’s new Chief of Police slid off it and onto the floor.
I glanced over at Granny, who had reappeared. For the first time ever, her perpetually downturned mouth was a straight line! Arguably, one corner might even have qualified as ‘slightly askew.’
‘Moving right along,’ I said, looking at the list Toy had given me, ‘you have my best friend down as your number three suspect. Why is Agnes on your list?’
‘Duh,’ Toy said, having regressed even further in my book for using that loathsome word, ‘Ramat made her out to be
a total loser. It’s no wonder she can’t marry. I sure wouldn’t date her.’
‘Well, of course you wouldn’t; you’re—’
‘Gay? Actually I’m not.’
‘But you just said you were!’
‘No, I didn’t; I simply didn’t deny it. My generation doesn’t make a big thing of being gay like yours does. Now, what do you think of the last suspect on this list?’
‘Doc Shafor? You have got to be kidding! He’s an octogenarian, for crying out loud!’
‘Octogenarian, huh? Never heard of it, Miss Yoder. But sadly, I’m beginning to think that a person’s religion doesn’t have much to do with whether or not he could commit murder.’
‘It’s not a religion you – you – Chief of Police!’ All right, so I hissed like a goose sitting on her nest. At least I hissed with a soft ‘c.’ One should always be careful not to be tricked into hissing whilst reading sentences that lack hissing sounds.
Toy, who resembled a much younger version of Justin Bieber, shrugged. ‘Whatever. Let’s see, in my notes I’ve also got down that Doc Shafor is sort of an old guy. Is that true?’
‘Yes, dear. As I said, he’s an octogenarian. He and Columbus – the one who discovered America – were childhood playmates.’ That was not a lie; it was an absurdity. Surely, even someone of Toy’s mental capacity would never believe that Doc Shafor had been around in the 1400s.
‘No way,’ Toy said. He sounded truly impressed.
‘Would I lie?’ I said, still without fibbing. Meanwhile, Granny Yoder rolled her eyes.
‘I’ve also got down that he’s a skirt-chaser,’ Toy said.
‘A what?’ I said.
‘He likes the ladies,’ Toy said.
‘Oh, that,’ I said. ‘Yes, that’s quite true. I remember hearing the names Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria.’ Never mind that those were the names of Christopher Columbus’s three ships, the ones he sailed on his maiden voyage to America. The fact remains that I did hear those names – back in grammar school.
Chief Toy’s smooth, boyish hand skipped across his pad a few more times. ‘One last question,’ he said as he lifted his pencil, ‘and I’ll make myself scarce. Word has it that the doctor was one heck of a good cook, and that pie-making was one of his specialties. Can you confirm this?’
I thought about my dear friend, who was also my many times distant cousin. He was a lovable, lecherous old goat if ever there was one, who’d spent a lifetime treating goats. Doc was a veterinarian, not a medical doctor, but like some veterinarians are fond of saying, ‘Veterinarians have to know everything an MD does, and more, because animals have all the corresponding parts that humans possess, but without the ability to describe what ails them.’
So Doc was certainly smart as a whip. He was also a widower, who missed his wife terribly, and I think that he transferred some of that grief to his female friends, where it was expressed as physical passion. Either that or Doc was just plain horny. But he was good company and always stuck loyally by his friends, just as close as lamprey eels stick to sharks.
I squared my scrawny shoulders and tossed my asymmetrical head. That last move nearly threw me off balance enough to dislodge me from my own less-than-comfortable perch. Trust me: even after much practice, a posture of defiance does not come easily to those of us who are aesthetically challenged.
Doc might have been an old goat, and I was becoming an old fool, but I knew exactly what Toy was after: my so-called ‘expertise.’ Ever since Hernia had a Chief of Police – or just a police officer – that person has approached me when the going got tough and asked me to get going for him or her. The reason is simple: I have both the mouth and the moolah. Moolah, by the way, is American slang for money, a term that entered into the lingo via the mouths of cinematic gangsters circa 1939. Why it is that a good Christian woman like me should know this word is really no one’s business but my own, if you were to ask me. At any rate, I just knew that Toy was going to come up with an excuse that would saddle me with the job of grilling the village folk, making enemies out of my friends, and possibly even angering my husband. But what I absolutely refused to do was to rat on my friends. Magdalena may be many things, some even ending with an ‘itch’ – but she is not a snitch!
‘Burn me at the stake,’ I bellowed. ‘Stretch me on the rack,’ I rasped. ‘Pull out my fingernails and call me Portulacca, but I will never turn on my friends. Never in a million years. Not for all the money in China!’
Chief Toy rose calmly. His soft features registered no emotion whatsoever, so I had no idea how he was reacting to my outburst. For all I knew, I’d gone completely bonkers and had never uttered a single word of it aloud.
‘You may drive the cruiser car,’ the chief said.
I jiggled my pinkies in my ears to make sure they were both working. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Really, Miss Yoder, I’d rather not be seen in that old clunker. I bought a lightly used Mercedes sedan for my own use, and I’m having it painted and outfitted with the appropriate lights, sirens, GPS, communication systems and what have you.’
Even I can be speechless. If this condition persists, onlookers can sometimes become concerned. Such was the case that fine afternoon.
‘Miss Yoder,’ Toy said, after some time had elapsed, ‘you are a handsome woman, but this is not one of your best looks.’
‘How rude!’ I cried.
‘I’ve already installed the safest infant seat on the market,’ my trim and tiny tempter said.
‘Get behind me, Satan!’
‘Since you don’t have any official police training, you can’t wear a uniform, but I don’t see anything wrong with you wearing something that approximates a uniform.’
‘Approximates?’
‘I was thinking a longish navy skirt, a button-up navy shirt and one of our official navy police caps, but with the insignia removed. However, I’ve heard rumours that you may have the third largest head in America. Therefore it is possible that none of our caps will fit you.’
‘That’s OK, I’ll cram my foolish noggin into that cap, you’ll see! I’ll get my head shrunk; I’ll do whatever it takes, I promise!’ Truthfully, I am a sucker for a uniform, but I still wasn’t going to snitch on my friends, no matter what I turned up wearing!
There you have it; this then is the perfect example of the ability of power to go straight to one’s – er – head. Suddenly, I wanted a uniform more than anything. Who knows, to obtain my goal of being a pseudo-law enforcement officer, I might have gone so far as to hike my hemline up to my knees and perform a sinful Irish jig, possibly even a Scottish reel or, heaven forbid, I might have gone so far as to gyre and gimble in the wabe.
Toy could see that I was tempted. ‘How does that sound?’
‘Like a dream,’ I purred, and then ground the heel of one of my sensible black brogans into the toe of the other. Of course the act of trying to stifle my sinful nature only served to spark another question. ‘What about shoes, dear? Do official shoes come with that getup?’
‘Uh – yeah. Actually – no.’
‘You’re talking like a sausage, dear.’
The poor boy looked away. ‘What I’m trying to say is that the very practical things that you have on now will do just fine.’
‘That’s OK; you may call them clodhoppers if you wish,’ I said. ‘And feel free to make gagging sounds if it helps.’
‘Well, OK, thanks,’ he said.
‘Do you want me to wear white socks or navy?’ I said.
‘It doesn’t matter, Miss Yoder. Wear whatever you like.’
‘Well, it matters to me, dear. If I’m going to yield to temptation, then I’m going to sin all the way.’
‘Then definitely wear white socks,’ he said. ‘White is a racier color than navy. By the way, did I tell you that even though you won’t be authorized to pull anyone over to the side of the road with the cruiser car, as a private citizen, you are always permitted to make a Citizen’s Arrest?’
‘With han
dcuffs?’ I said. Hope springs eternal, even in the flattest of breasts.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Toy said, ‘providing the accused cooperates and allows you to put the cuffs on him. Even if they don’t cooperate, those handcuffs over there will look really cool hanging from the navy-blue belt of your navy-blue skirt.’
I could feel myself beaming like a lighthouse on the Isle of Wight. Over the past dozen years as Hernia’s mayor, I have had the distinct displeasure of finding myself embroiled in every manor of mayhem, from mud-raking to murder. Throughout the years the Good Lord has blessed me financially to the point that I am by far Hernia’s wealthiest citizen. Because we have fewer than 3,000 souls living within the greater community, we cannot afford to staff a full-time police department without help from the ‘private sector.’ When saying those last two words perhaps one should pause and think of me fondly – or at least pause. Sad to say, people are seldom grateful for what is truly free. Case in point: not once had I ever been offered the chance to drive the police car, which I’d paid for entirely with my own money.
Therefore, can you not see, that when the smooth-skinned Justin Bieber doppelgänger of yesteryear offered to loan me both car and cuffs, I had to consider the possibility that he really was Satan. And no, I am absolutely not making light of what was a serious situation. Consider this: the Devil – with a capital D – can assume many guises other than serpents. Take, for instance, Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin and Robert Mugabe. Since the Bible states unequivocally that God is a He, I say thank heavens that Satan is a He as well. Otherwise, we women would be blamed for even more than we already have been, thanks to Eve and her desire to eat healthy. At any rate, it is the Devil’s male gender that accounts for the fact that one doesn’t find any women on my list of the Devil’s most notorious aliases. Now, where was I? Oh, yes, until proven wrong, I was quite willing to believe that Toy from Charlotte was the Great Tempter.
On the other hand, it was possible that he was merely an unusually canny young male, entirely human in nature, having an invisible bag of tricks up his short white polyester sleeves. Whatever his shtick (a lovely Yiddish word, thanks to my dear Jewish husband), it behoved me to play along with Hernia’s Chief of Police upon whose chest hung the shiny silver badge of officialdom. Either way, Devil or man-child, he had come to me seeking my help, and offering me an enticing bribe. Believe me, gift horses with perfect teeth don’t come trotting into my stable just any old day.
