Tea with Jam and Dread (15 page)

‘That pretty little foreign girl is the one who’s telling the truth,’ someone said.

‘
What?
’ I said. I clapped both my ears to make sure that they were working correctly.

‘In fact,’ the speaker said, ‘I’ve seen this skinny, funny-looking foreign man, and he’s kinda struggling with this other man – he too was a foreigner. You can tell by their noses, I always say. They both had noses on them like the sails on one of them small boats, so I think they was British – yeah, like this man.’ She pointed directly at Sebastian, who, admittedly, possessed a bit of a shnoz.

It is common knowledge that all English males have prominent proboscises, having only to lie on their backs in a stiff breeze and they can hitch a free ride to France across the Channel. In as much as that is true, it is common knowledge that all American women are loud and brassy and socially unacceptable, along the lines of Wallis Simpson. It is a fact, and so I state this out of a heart filled with charity, that Daphne Diffledorf is one of the loudest, brassiest, coarsest, crudest, homeliest – oh, but now I am beginning to judge.

The church members, who were dangerously close to crowding us all off the cliff, roared with excitement. They claimed to have witnessed fisticuffs, grappling and shoving, even Brit-on-Brit murder! Surely there could be no better way to spend an afternoon in Hernia, Pennsylvania. After Daphne started the ball rolling, it didn’t stop until sixteen other people claimed to have seen poor, plain Mr Sebastian push his titled brother over the edge of Lover’s Leap.

I wouldn’t have blamed the younger son for making a run then, even if he wasn’t guilty – and I was sure that he wasn’t. After all, what was he supposed to do, just stand around and twiddle his thumbs? Was he supposed to wait for some overly excited male version of Daphne Ditherspoon to push him over the edge? Of course, no blue-blooded Brit could ever just melt into the American landscape, for we are a tacky and somewhat wacky people who do not put baked beans on our toast, nor do we eat with our forks held upside-down. Sooner, rather than later, Sebastian would be outed for his superior manners and I would still be no closer to finding Yoko-san’s killer.

‘I did no such thing,’ Sebastian said. Then, quite unnecessarily, he added: ‘You silly American cow.’

That did it; that sealed the young man’s fate! Name-calling is one thing but bovine references in a dairy-farming community are beyond the pale. It’s a wonder that some of the most bullish of our youth didn’t tackle Sebastian right there and then. Fortunately, I was able to steer them away from such a foolish course of action but only by insisting that Toy apprehend Sebastian as a murder suspect in the death of his twin brother.

‘Although it won’t hold up,’ I shouted in Toy’s ear, ‘unless we find a body at the base of this cliff.’

‘Or parts of one,’ Toy said. ‘This reminds me of Crowder’s Peak in Gastonia. It’s not nearly as high as this but it still manages to keep the buzzards happy.’

‘All God’s creatures have to eat,’ I said. I cupped my hands to my mouth and let out a yell that scared the feathers off any buzzards within a two-mile radius. Even a couple of trees dropped their leaves.

‘People of Beechy Grove Mennonite Church and anyone else who can hear me, including atheists, pagans and members of the Church of England, let us all go quietly and respectfully, back to our vehicles. The picnic area will be officially closed shortly. Those of you who so desire, and who are over the age of eighteen, may join a search party that will form at the small parking lot at the base of Stucky Ridge. If the parking lot fills up, park single file along Stucky Ridge Road.’

‘That’s
single
file!’ Toy interrupted. ‘Folks who
double
park will be ticketed.’

‘Amen to that,’ I said. Beechy Grove members are pious folks, and so as long as Toy and I spoke in preacher voices a sacred hush prevailed which allowed me to continue. ‘At the west end of the parking lot – west being where the sun sets – you’ll find a little path that skirts the ridge. The path is sandwiched between the ridge and the south end of Rudy Swinefister’s hayfield. Do not trample Rudy’s hay! Ever since you voted him out of the church on account of him being a homosexual, he has become very bitter against we Old Order Mennonites.’

‘It’s not our doing; it’s God’s law,’ someone whispered.

‘Who said that?’ I said, perhaps a tad too sharply. When no one answered, I continued, ‘Odd then that Jesus, who was also God, had nothing to say on the subject.’

‘Don’t preach to us, Magdalena,’ someone else said. ‘You’re going off topic.’

I was beginning to think that I was too liberal to remain an Old Order Mennonite. Perhaps it was time for me to shift gears and move into the Mennonite mainstream. By and large, even though mainstream Mennonites did not approve of gay marriage, neither were they opposed to inquisitive lay folk delving into ancient history – just as long as they didn’t take it seriously.

The Babester pointed me to one text that suggested that the prohibitions against male homosexuality in the scriptures might have been based on male prostitution, as practiced in surrounding cultures. I can’t begin to explain how confused I was after ‘stretching’ my mind that far. It is said that if you open your mind too wide, your brain will fall out. I am afraid that this might have been the occasion when the Devil jumped in and made himself at home.

‘Given the fact that I pay half of Pastor Diffledorf’s salary,’ I said, ‘and all of the church mortgage and maintenance fees, I believe that I have a right to preach.’

‘Touché,’ mumbled one of my few ardent supporters. No doubt it was a close cousin, one whom I supported financially.

I am happy to say that, for the most part, the congregants were well behaved and strayed from the path only when anatomical dictates, such as extreme obesity or
tri
pedalism made sticking to a narrow Indian foot path an impossible challenge. Fortunately the latter case involved only one individual: Cornelius Gerber, whose mother was a notorious chocolate addict. Although this most unusual case is still being hotly debated in scientific circles, the majority opinion is that the vast amounts of dark chocolate consumed by Prunella Gerber during her pregnancy must have been in some way responsible for the perfectly formed,
additional
, left foot that Cornelius possesses. It connects to his left leg at the ankle, and is rather like a second tyre on the rear of a lorry.

I feel that I must reiterate: I am not given to prejudice, nor do I set much stock in physical appearances. Indeed, as it says in the First Book of Samuel, chapter sixteen, verse seven: ‘For man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.’ That said, two identical feet working against one does tend to make even a well-intentioned young man walk in circles. At last, much to the relief of everyone, Cornelius made it safely to the base of Lover’s Leap where the search had commenced.

As I said, the people of Hernia, and especially the members of Beechy Grove Mennonite Church, are good folks. Sure, if you’ve read some of the terrible books written about us, you’ll discover that we’ve had a few rotten apples amongst us. But consider this: every barrel has at least a few rotten apples in it, and they’re usually found at the bottom. Everyone at the base of Lover’s Leap, early that Sunday afternoon, wanted to be helpful.

These good-hearted people had been willing to give up their picnic lunch in order to help search for the smashed remains of a
foreigner
. An English-English is about as foreign as one can get these parts; most of our foreigners are from countries like Hawaii and New Mexico. At any rate, every inch of the clearing was searched, and even some very careful forays were made into Rudy Swinefister’s hayfield.

Finally, approximately two hours after we’d heard Lady Celia’s ear-piercing scream, Hernia’s Chief of Police, the devilishly handsome Toy Graham, blew on a small silver whistle that hung from his neck. Everyone seemed to freeze in place, reminding me of the game ‘statues’ that we used to play when we were children. As it happened, at that very moment I was standing not even an arm’s length away from Lady Celia, who was weeping softly.

At the shrill blast of the whistle, she practically lunged into my arms and began to sob. ‘Oh, it’s horrible news; I just know that it is.’

‘There, there,’ I said helplessly as I patted her slender back.

‘I’m afraid I’ve got bad news,’ Toy said a moment later. ‘No, make that terrible news.’

Lady Celia screamed one more time and then slumped in my arms, dead away. Seconds later, the dead weight of her dragged us both down onto the granite slab which formed the base of the cliff, with her lying on top of me. Unfortunately, Lady Celia’s rosy English cheeks belied a youthful body that was no stranger to vigorous exercise, and I found myself trapped between a rock and a hard place.

I
t took two Mennonite men, one Mennonite woman and one
lapsed Episcopalian to pull that pile of flailing noble limbs off me. It took one Jewish doctor, with our eighteen-month-old son strapped to his back, to pull my bruised and scraped carapace up, and enfold it, ever so gently, in his healing arms. Then finally it took the sometimes too timid, although always polite, Southerner, Toy, to blast away at his whistle yet again.

‘Shut up, everyone,’ he said. ‘If you please. Especially you, young lady – Ladyship, whatever. You have no reason to be carrying on like a toddler with a popped balloon. It was Magdalena who took the brunt of the fall. You don’t seem to have a scratch on you; clearly nothing’s been hurt, but your pride.’

‘It’s her brother, you blithering idiot!’ the earl roared. ‘My son! He’s been hurt; he’s lying down here, no doubt broken into a million pieces. You’re supposed to be searching for my son, not paying attention to the women. You find my son, and in one piece, or I’ll have your head served up on a silver platter, I will.’

‘Sir,’ said Toy, his own cheeks drained of blood, ‘your son must still be up there.’

‘This is outrageous,’ the earl shouted. He seemed to inflate with every word. ‘Are you calling my daughter a liar?’

‘No, sir,’ Toy said as he appeared to shrink. But I’ve searched the parameter of this clearing and I’ve climbed those rocks, and nothing has disturbed that hayfield. Even if your son was pushed with great force off the top, he wouldn’t have made it further than the edge of the field.’

‘What a preposterous claim,’ Lady Aubrey whispered. ‘How could this young man possibly make such a claim?’

‘
Because
,’ Toy said, ‘every spring, at graduation time, the high school boys throw a pair of fully-clothed store mannequins off Lover’s Leap. Each year they try and set a distance record: which class can get their mannequin to land closest to old Swinefister’s field. A mannequin weighs less than a human body, by the way – even less than a skinny English boy, like your la-dee-da lord of a son.’

‘He was a viscount,’ I interjected, to keep the record straight.

‘Whatever,’ Toy said. His left jaw muscle was twitching like the nose of a rabbit that has smelled a fox. This served to make Toy even more handsome than usual, but I knew him well enough to know that his jaw-twitching was an involuntary response that happened only to his left cheek. It could also be a precursor to tears of extreme
frustration
(but make no mistake, Toy was all man).

By now the earl was so overwrought that he was downright incoherent. Little puffs of steam escaped from between glimpses of yellowed teeth as he waved a fallen branch as a cudgel at us. Whereas once I had thought of him as dull and pompous, now he was dull, pompous
and
dangerous. Had we been living in England during medieval times, Toy would have been strung up in the earl’s dungeon and I would have been packed off to a convent: the sort of convent in which women wore clothes.

Poor Toy. It is times like this when I regret having hired such a young man for the job of Chief of Police, especially given the fact that he is the
only
police officer in the department. It takes a certain amount of life experience, or perhaps just the right combination of DNA, to give one the strength to stand up to the sort of bullying that the Earl of Grimsley-Snodgrass so excelled at. Given that I shared my birth mother with the evil murderer, Melvin Stoltzfus,
and
that I had also survived an uncanny number of attempts on my life by Melvin and other villains almost too numerous to count, I was indeed a strong woman. In other words, no one has the right to holler at my employees –
except
for me.

I set about selecting one of my long, slender digits to waggle in the earl’s face, and being that I am a good Christian woman, and after a long struggle with the Devil, I settled on my
right
index finger. ‘Shame on you for bullying this poor boy,’ I said. ‘Pick on someone your own size, you – you, Duke of Earl!’

Now I don’t know why on earth those three words should have popped into my mind in that order, if it hadn’t been for the Good Lord diffusing the situation on my behalf, even though those words, when strung together, form the title of a secular song. By the way, this isn’t just a regular secular song, like ‘You Are My Sunshine’. No, siree Bob, to use an American phrase, the former is the type of song once found on dance records. Folks with longing in their loins pressed those longing loins together – sometimes with disastrous results – and did wicked things with said body parts, as well as with their tongues, hands and other appendages – most notably protuberances composed of adipose fat and baby-feeding milk ducts. Rock and roll was the Devil’s music, and anyone who tries to tell you different is either my dear husband, the Babester, or else someone working for the Devil himself.

Now, where was I? Oh, yes! Speak of the Devil, one wouldn’t think that many Old Order Mennonites would have even heard the song titled ‘Duke of Earl’, but apparently a number of them had once been young, and more than a few of them had been a mite rebellious. All at once, out there between the base of Lover’s Leap and Rudy Swinefister’s hayfield, a dozen harmonizing voices began to sing.

‘
Duke, duke, duke
…’

To be honest, it was quite a pleasant experience. Borderline thrilling, actually. The harmony was superb; the deep baritone voices of George Plimpmeyer and Jonathan Throbswart, the sublime falsettos of Tim Hickey, Andy Cluckluck, and Geraldine Duwop, plus everyone else. Even Beverly O’Shea, who only sings in American Sign Language, was in fine fiddle that day as she belted out the lyrics in her incomparable bass. To have all these dear people, fellow church members, one and all, spontaneously sing this secular song – why, it was almost like sinning and yet not sinning. I was living wild, for a change; I was living on the edge. Surely my meaning is a familiar one. It’s walking on the line that gives it the thrill, isn’t it? Taking my example one step further, it’s akin to placing a crisp one-hundred-dollar bill in the offering plate at church but hesitating a second before letting go of it. Oh, what a sinful woman I can come close to being when I put my mind to it!

Needless to say, you can bet your bippy that the Grimsley-Snodgrass clan did not enjoy this wonderful entertainment. To the contrary, the earl began to inflate like a helium-filled birthday balloon. The two obviously surviving siblings
spittled
and
spattled
, which is a description totally original to me, but which, I feel, should substitute rather nicely for the phrase ‘sputtered with rage’ and thus should be incorporated into our mother tongue to help keep it fresh. That said, even the historically amiable Aubrey appeared nonplussed; a word, by the way, which is often used incorrectly.

‘Magdalena,’ she said tremulously, ‘please forgive me for saying so, but you white Americans are a very strange lot. Before coming here I thought that you were merely transplanted Europeans with good teeth, who were addicted to gun possession—’

‘Gums and good teeth are part and parcel of the same thing, dear,’ I said.

‘I said
guns
, Magdalena, not gums. Bang, bang, muck up the world kind of guns.’

‘Well,
excuse
me, Your Ladyship,’ I said. ‘I happen to be a pacifist, as has my family for the past five hundred years. That’s one of the reasons that we came to America. Anyway, if it hadn’t been for American guns, we might not be having this conversation, and if we did, you’d be speaking in a heavy German accent to say the least.’

Score one for Magdalena. Or not. The Book of Proverbs warns us that pride precedes destruction, and since I immediately saw that my sharp words and gloating tone had wounded my new friend just as surely as any gun, I felt deep remorse.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘Running off at the mouth is one of my main forms of exercise.’

Aubrey may not have heard my apology, however, due to the competing sounds of grunting and heavy breathing that were emanating from somewhere back down the trail we had just followed. Between Rudy Swinefister’s wheat fields and Stucky Ridge grew a strip of woods – some of it rather dense and jungle-like – with the trail serving to separate the two. My first thought was that the strange noises were coming from a wild boar or possibly even a bear. Granted, both cases were highly unlikely, but not an impossibility. To my credit, it took me at least five full seconds before I
jumped
to the conclusion (another frequent form of exercise for me) that Janet Ticklebloomers and Norman Cornbrakes were breaking one of the ten big commandments, and maybe especially so, given that they were married to each
other’s
spouses. Sadly, jumping to wrong conclusions has been known to add weight, rather than burn calories. Had I but waited five more seconds I could have positively identified the panting party as my best friend Agnes, who, of course, had lagged far behind, along with her new best friend, the vociferous Daphne Diffledorf. They had to walk single file, of course (Agnes in the lead), with one hip brushing against bushes and brambles and the other hip laying low a swath of Rudy Swinefister’s wheat. Someone was not going to be a happy camper.

The two women, however, seemed oblivious to any environmental destruction. ‘Cheerio,’ said Agnes with her flat American vowels, although no doubt she thought that she sounded ‘tebbly’ British. Given her laboured breathing, the word came out in three distinct syllables.

My doctor husband made both ladies sit on smallish boulders and took their pulses, while Pastor Diffledorf dabbed at his dearly beloved’s brow with a white cotton handkerchief that was clearly in need of laundering. Meanwhile, my fellow church members milled about anxiously, and heedlessly, which is never a good idea when one is at the base of a granite cliff. Folks stumbled, ankles were turned, knees were scraped and little children cried out in pain – all this before either of the latecomers were capable of extended coherent speech.

It was the loquacious Mrs Duffleburger who truly found her tongue first. ‘Why are there children here? They shouldn’t be allowed as much as a peek at this poor boy’s mangled corpse. Magdalena, I am putting the blame for this squarely on your broad but bony shoulders.’

There you have it in a nutshell; it was comments like this from Daphne, as well as others made by her pastor husband, that had been getting under my paper-thin skin with increasing frequency. Could it have been all my fault because I was aging and my skin was literally getting thinner, or could it be that since I’d hired Pastor Diffledorf (with the elders’ approval) the couple’s behaviour had actually changed? We Mennonites are supposed to be soft-spoken, gentle, turn-the-other-cheek type of folk. True, I’ve sometimes been accused of being highly opinionated, and in possession of a sharp tongue, but I prefer to think of myself as being a woman who simply gets straight to the point.

Thank the Good Lord for my never-wandering Jew. ‘You will apologize to Magdalena,’ said my hero of a hubby.

Daphne
guffed
– that is to say, she gasped while she huffed. ‘This is an outrage; I most certainly will not!’

‘Wife,’ said Pastor Diffledorf, ‘that woman is not to blame –
this
time. I am afraid that a rather thorough search of the area has failed to turn up a mangled corpse.’

‘Or even a slightly dented one,’ I said. Heaven help me, I try so hard to be a good Christian but I am a hopeless case when it comes to my clergyman and his wife. And I am at least to blame for whatever comes out of my mouth, because I am the one who is responsible for bringing the Diffledorfs to my tiny piece of paradise on earth.
I
am the one who heard him preach a stirring sermon on ‘the widow’s mite’ while visiting a cousin over in Holmes County, Ohio. The couple was originally from Xenia, believe it or not. It was
me
who convinced our sceptical board of elders that a Buckeye minister with his big city ways could mould himself enough to fit into our little inbred village of Hernia, Pennsylvania.

‘B-b-but,’ my dearest friend, Agnes, sputtered into speech like an old lawnmower when the ignition cord is pulled. ‘M-Magdalena, I know that Daphne is not your favourite person, but you have to give your pastor’s wife credit for possessing an eye as good as yours. Like you, she can literally find a needle in a haystack.’

The murmurs of renewed awe and support for my Mennonite nemesis were practically unbelievable. Had no one else in the congregation seen through this woman’s thin veneer of peace and love? Was I yet again the most judgemental member of Beechy Grove Mennonite Church, the only black sheep in a flock of snow white, frolicking lambs?

‘Why me, Lord?’ I wailed, casting an eye to the heavens.

I’ve often heard it said that God answers prayer in one of three ways: yes, no or not yet. But apparently there is a fourth way, and this one stung my left eye and elicited peals of laughter from my supposedly pious peers.

‘Stop laughing at my mom,’ Alison said. ‘She can’t help it if pigeons hate her.’

As a matter of fact, it isn’t true that pigeons hate me. And another thing: the dirty bird in question was a passing starling, one of a flock of thousands. The common starling, an alien species from Europe, made its debut in North America in 1890 when one hundred of them were released in New York City’s Central Park. It is alleged that the chairman of the American Acclimatization Society wanted to import every kind of bird mentioned by William Shakespeare. The starling was mentioned in Henry IV, Part 1. Today millions of starlings thrive across North America, and outcompete many native species for food and nesting sites. Of course, they are good for the owners of automatic carwashes but not much else.

‘Shame on you people,’ my doctor husband said sternly. ‘This is no laughing matter. Would you be laughing if she got an eye infection? And here I thought that you were her friends.’ Most fortunately for me, the Babester
also
carried a man’s white cotton handkerchief, which he immediately put to good use.