No Use Dying Over Spilled Milk (20 page)

Before I could wheel again and complete my exit, the bishop put up a hand.

“Please, Miss Yoder. I can see that we have a lot to talk about. May we start again?”

I shrugged. “It depends. Will you give it to me straight?”

“I try only to speak the truth,” he said softly. He looked genuinely offended.

I stepped away from the door and the freezing wind. “Then why the hell are you so damn hard to pin down on this possession thing?”

Believe me, I was more shocked than he at what had just come out of my mouth. My first swear word ever, and it had to be addressed to a bishop. On the bright side, Mama would undoubtedly start spinning in her grave so fast that she’d spin all the way through to the other side of the earth and out into orbit. Maybe then her grip on me would be loosened.

The bishop, however, seemed unfazed. “Yes, I do believe those two men were possessed.”

“You do?”

“I do.”

“And the girl?”

“Yah, her too.”

“Then why didn’t you just say so?”

“I didn’t expect you to understand.”

“Because I’m only a Mennonite?”

“Yah.”

It was as simple as that. Despite our common bloodlines and shared values—such as pacifism, humility, and an emphasis on spiritual rather than material wealth—Bishop Kreider saw me as an outsider. Someone who couldn’t be trusted with the truth. Perhaps he expected me to run to the press with this revelation. Maybe he feared that by confiding in me, he would be opening the door to network television shows broadcasting remotes from cow pastures and cornfields all over the Farmersburg area.

“I am offended,” I said. There was no need to elaborate.

He looked away. “I’m sorry. What else was I to think? In a world where so few truly believe in God, how many do you suppose believe in the power of the devil?”

“Not many, but I do. Mennonites do.”

“Yah.” The bishop gestured to the bale of hay, but I shook my head.

“May I?” he asked, sitting down. “It’s been a long day, and my arthritis has been acting up. I expect we’ll have snow here before morning.”

“By all means, make yourself comfortable. Now can we talk? I mean, really talk?”

“Yah, now we can talk.”

“Remember, you promised the truth,” I reminded him.

It was important that I believed the bishop. The world is a much tidier place when clergymen tell the truth. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case. I will admit to having my faith shaken once before by a minister. In fact, everyone in Hernia was stunned when Reverend Detweiler, whose teeth I found in the cup, skipped town with the church’s building fund and a lover named Pat. After that, however, they barely blinked when Pat’s wife became an atheist and moved to Texas to be near Madeline Murray O’Hare.

Bishop Kreider is no Reverend Detweiler. I am convinced that the man is without guile. He most certainly is without lust. Not so much as a lustful thought was directed my way, at least not that I could tell. Jimmy Carter would have been proud of both of us.

We talked calmly and seriously for a long time.

“Do you really think you can escape the devil by running off to Indiana?” I asked finally. It may not have been a tactful question, but he got the point.

“No, of course not. The devil is everywhere. However, I do think that by moving to Indiana we can escape a lot of the temptations we have here. Temptations that the devil feeds on.”

“Temptations? Here?” I didn’t mean to snort. But even I, who is as innocent as a day-old chick—or so says Susannah—could not see Farmersburg as a hotbed of temptation.

“Pride,” Bishop Kreider said.

“Pride?”

“Pride in our cheese. In Indiana the cheese won’t be so good. It was our pride that led to the possessions.”

I nodded. I understood perfectly now. An Amish person—indeed, even most Mennonites—would rather walk naked through Times Square than be proud. Even if that pride is somehow justified. Utter humility is our ultimate goal. We are, as Susannah puts it, proud of our humility.

I glanced at my watch. Almost six hours had passed since Hooter Faun had said the magic words that were destined to change my life. Of course, the words weren’t hers, but Aaron’s, but you know what I mean. The point was, even if he jogged all the way from Hernia, Aaron was going to arrive sooner rather than later. In the meantime, I had a lot left to do.

“Thanks for everything,” I said.

I was being sincere. Bishop Kreider had at least convinced me that he was an honorable and God-fearing man. If, however, he ran off to Indiana with a parishioner named Pat, I would have to reconsider my opinion.

“Godspeed,” the Bishop said. “It’s too bad you aren’t Amish, Miss Yoder. I have a brother-in-law, now a widower—”

I left the bishop to his Haufa Mischt. I have nothing against Amish men, but Aaron Daniel Miller was closing in by the minute. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I could feel his body heat. Waves of it were wafting in from the direction of Hernia, undoubtedly melting the snow and hastening my Pooky Bear’s arrival. The last thing I wanted to do was stand by a manure pile while an Amish yenta fixed me up with a widower in black suspenders.

Blissfully I made a beeline for my car and boogied on in to Farmersburg.

Although I could feel Aaron’s approaching body heat, nobody else in Farmersburg could. Certainly not the thermometers. The one on the aluminum hinge attached to the knee of the Daisybell Dairies cow read six degrees. Wisely I refrained from sticking out my tongue and licking the monstrosity.

When Shirley Stutzman licked the flagpole during recess in third grade it took two thermos bottles of hot water to thaw her loose. Even then, part of Shirley’s tongue decorated the pole until the next warm spell. After that, every time we lined up to say the pledge of allegiance Miss Kuntz put Shirley in the place of honor, directly in front of the pole. After all, it was because of the pole that Shirley Stutzman could no longer say her s’s.

Much to my surprise, Arnold Ledbetter seemed glad to see me.

“Come in, Miss Yoder. Here.” He pushed some papers off a leather armchair and pulled it in front of his desk. “Sit down. I’ve been hoping you’d drop by.”

“You have?”

“Yes. I have some news for you about Mr. Hem.”

“Is Danny Boy all right?”

“Fine as frog hair,” Arnold said. He had the nerve to laugh at his own little joke. “You see, frogs have such fine hair that it can’t be seen!”

I gave him my best Sunday-school-teacher look. “Actually, Mr. Ledbetter, the speckled Congo cavern croaker has an epidermis covered with very coarse hair. Only the reticulated blue-and-green Bulgarian bullfrog is more hirsute. In fact, up until 1927 it was believed to be a species of small porcupine.”

“You don’t say!” His look of respect should have made me feel guilty, but as long as public libraries exist in this country, the truly gullible deserve their fate.

“But I do say. And not only that, if you ever get the opportunity, take a good look at the woolly Siberian catfish. It will knock your socks off. Of course, I’m not here to discuss zoology, am I? Somehow we got steered off the subject at hand.”

He rubbed a stubby hand across his own hair, which formed a black island on the very top of an otherwise bald head.

“Yeah, well, we were talking about Mr. Hem. I was about to tell you that he’s been located.”

“In Aruba?”

The dark eyes which peered out from under the inverted half-moon glasses contained not a glint of humor.

“No, in Charleston, West Virginia. He has a sister there he’s very close to. Someone he can turn to in times of need.”

“Danny Hem is in need?” I asked. “Did the backseat bar in his Mercedes run out of peanuts?”

“Very funny, Miss Yoder. I’m not talking about a man’s material needs here. As it so happens, Mr. Hem is in a state of emotional pain.”

“So he isn’t fine after all. What gives?”

He wagged a short fat finger at me. “You. You’re what gives. It’s you who are responsible for Mr. Hem’s condition.”

“I?”

“Yes, you. You were the one who introduced him to your sister.”

“I most certainly did not! I simply went to park my car, and when I saw Susannah again, the two were entwined like vines on an unpruned trellis. I take no responsibility whatsoever for their liaison. And what does this have to do with emotional turmoil, anyway?”

“Ha! Denial seems to be the disease of the nineties, doesn’t it? Well, just to refresh your memory, your sister set a trap for Mr. Hem, and once she’d caught him, she heartlessly let him go. Broke their engagement just like that.” He tried in vain to snap his pudgy fingers.

Thank goodness I didn’t have any brothers and Papa, despite Mama’s protests, had taught me how to snap my fingers, as well as whistle and launch a mean spit wad. In all modesty, the snap I produced then sounded like a chicken bone cracking.

“Have you got it wrong, buster! It was Danny Boy who dumped Susannah. Not the other way around. And it is I who should be consoled. Because of your boss, my baby sister is off in Aruba consummating her marriage to an inept sheriff.”

Arnold smiled, proving he had lips. “You mean, our sheriff? Marvin Stoltzfus?”

“Yes, good old Marvin Stoltzfus, who missed his calling. Somewhere there is a circus cannon waiting to lob him across center ring. So you see I’m the one who’s supposed to be upset here, not Danny boy.

“And speaking of whom, what’s his sister’s number down in Charleston?”

“It’s an unlisted number.”

“What’s her address then?”

“Sorry, but I’m not privileged to divulge that kind of information.”

“I see. Well then, do you have anything to prove that Danny Hem is even alive, much less staying at his sister’s place in West Virginia? I mean, for all I know he could be inside one of your cheese presses getting the headache of the century.”

Arnold jumped up and practically yanked that leather armchair out from under me.

“I don’t have to take this kind of abuse, Miss Yoder. You want to make your snide little accusations, you take them outside. Mr. Hem is fine, like I told you. Now get the hell out.”

I am all for liberated women, but the fact remains, the average man is stronger than the average woman. Still, the shoe marks on his office linoleum attest to the fact that, by becoming dead weight, women can retard the process of eviction. As for the teeth marks on his hands, I plead the Fifth Amendment.

It was getting dark by the time I knocked on Annie Stutzman’s door. I don’t blame her for being cautious, but there is a limit, you know. She made me stand outside in the bitter cold while she grilled me like she was the Gestapo. Understandably, I was slow to reveal a few identifying facts about myself.

“Okay, my middle name is Portulaca, and I’m forty-six. But I won’t tell you my weight.”

“Then you’re not coming in!”

“All right. I weigh one hundred and ten in my clothes and ninety-nine dripping wet.”

“You do not! You might be flat on top, Magdalena, but you’ve definitely got a Yoder bottom.”

“Aha! So you do know it’s me. Now open up, Annie, before I freeze to death out here. It’s almost zero degrees.”

The door cracked just wide enough to tease me with a ribbon of warm air and the smells of supper.

“You by yourself, Magdalena?”

“Yes. Please, Annie, let me in. I need to talk to you.” The door opened wide enough for one of my shoes, and it was all over but the pushing. Once I was inside, Annie seemed glad to see me.

“I was expecting company, but it looks like they won’t be coming after all. You want to stay for supper?”

“That depends. What’s cooking?”

“Skillet pot roast. It was my Samuel’s favorite.”

“What’s for dessert?”

“Chocolate crazy cake. I just baked it this afternoon.”

“Well—”

“Please. I’ll even whip up some cream for the cake.” I relented and sat down to a sumptuous feast that couldn’t possibly have been intended for one woman alone. The crazy cake, when it was served, seemed to confirm this observation. Although it had been freshly iced, I detected several dozen little holes, about the size made by birthday-candle holders.

“Annie, dear,” I said over my third helping of cake, “you wouldn’t by any chance consider yourself a nosy, interfering gossip would you?”

“Why I never, Magdalena!”

“Of course, I meant that as a compliment, dear. Some people are just more observant than others. There are those who say it’s a gift.”

“Oh well, that’s true,” she said, “but I would hardly call myself nosy. And I’m certainly not a gossip!”

“Of course not, dear,” I agreed. “But it would be a shame if those astute observations of yours were kept all to yourself. Nobody would benefit from them, right?”

“Right.” Annie folded her napkin into precise thirds before carefully tucking it into a wooden ring.

“On the other hand, if some of those observations were inaccurate, and they involved your friends and neighbors, and you passed them along anyway, then you could be accused of spreading rumors.”

Annie’s fork froze just outside her mouth. “Now what’s this about me spreading rumors?”

“Oh, did I accuse you of spreading rumors?”

“Don’t you be coy with me, Magdalena. I’ve known you since you were in diapers.”

I licked both sides of my fork. That frozen stuff in tubs can’t hold a candle to freshly whipped cream.

“It’s just that a number of people have quoted you as a source of misinformation on a very sensitive subject.”

“They have?”

“Yes, dear, they have.” I pointed politely to my upper lip.

Annie, sharp as a tack, wiped the whipped cream off her mustache. “What have these people been saying?”

“That you’ve been telling everyone Levi Mast was possessed.”

“But he was! I saw him myself. Flapping his arms and crowing like a rooster. That’s something only a possessed man would do, isn’t it?”

I caught her gaze and did my best to hold it. “Is it? Do you honestly believe that Levi Mast was possessed, dear?”

“Well, uh—”

“Or was he acting like those hippies sometimes acted? You know, the ones who led your Samuel astray.”