Tea with Jam and Dread (21 page)

‘Toy! Just pay attention –
please
. I need you to go across the road to the Convent of Dismal Anarchy and tell Gabe that I’ll be staying the night over here. Tell him not to worry; that I’ll be all right. You got that? Tell him that if he gets scared his mother keeps
Winnie the Pooh
videos in a big wicker basket, located up in the coat closet of the main sitting room. And tell him that I said that it was OK if she cuts his meat for him just this once.’

‘Hmm,’ Toy said. ‘I thought that they were vegetarians.’

‘Not all of them. Just some of the leadership.’

Toy sniffed the air, even though we were too far away to pick up even a trace of a scent. ‘I wonder what the meat choice is for tonight,’ he said.

A
n empty inn c
an seem as large as Buckingham Palace. Granted, I’ve never been to Her Majesty’s house (I’m still waiting for an invitation) but I’ve read that she has a pack of corgis barking at her heels and servants melting in and out of the woodwork just as regularly as the ants climb up my walls. I rather enjoy my own company, being the cheerful soul that I am, but my periods of solitude are usually short-lived and definitely bracketed by my family’s comings and goings, not to mention the many volunteer tasks I undertake on behalf of Beechy Grove Mennonite Church. Now, with most of my family under the stubby wings of Ida Rosen, aka Mother Superior, and most of my church members being difficult, thanks to the daffy Daphne Diffledorf, I was largely by myself.

Of course, I wasn’t
all
by myself, because I had Little Jacob with me. That little Cutie Pie is always doing
something
kinetic. He slobbers and kicks when he is asleep, but when he’s awake he toddles, babbles, plops, cries, sings, grabs, scrabbles, laughs, reaches, climbs, screams, eats, poops and, well, I guess that his Grandmother Ida Rosen was right; the two of them
do
have a lot in common.

Perchance I longed to hear the voice of another adult, then there was Granny Yoder’s ghost to keep me company. If one is in the mood for a lecture, she’s good for several hours of entertainment at one sitting – but mind you, one must be sitting straight, lest bad posture become part of said lecture. Granny, however, never leaves the parlour, so that she can be easily avoided, if that is what one so desires, and that is exactly what I intended to do that night.

As for the ghost of poor Yoko-san, how could I really be sure that she existed without experiencing her myself? Just because Lady Celia had claimed to converse with her, even divulging information that she could not have been privy to, that was no reason to be convinced that the Japanese girl’s spirit had remained stuck to my lift. No siree, I take pride in being a sceptical woman, and if I want to believe that dinosaurs coexisted with man, despite the fossil evidence, or that somehow Noah managed to take woolly mammoths, as well as Asian and African elephants, and their subspecies, aboard the ark, not to mention all the giraffe and zebra species – since there is no such thing as evolution and therefore they could not have evolved
after
the flood – nevertheless, I am a very logically-minded and sceptical woman. I will admit that sometimes, when I ponder that there are perhaps a million species of animals overall – well, never mind.
Faith!
We must have the faith of a small child! And blinders! In my humble opinion every new Christian should be issued a pair of metaphorical blinders, so as not to be unduly frightened by logic and reason. After all, we Amish and Mennonites put blinders on our horses before taking them out on the highway so that they aren’t frightened by cars.

Suffice it to say, I fully intended to keep my promise to Toy. The master bedroom was an afterthought when the farmhouse was converted into an inn, so it is on the ground floor and can be reached only by going through the large country kitchen. We like it this way, as it makes it inaccessible to guests, whom Freni shoos out of ‘her’ kitchen with the business end of her broom. After fixing comestibles for the little one and myself, I retired to the bedroom to eat and – there is no way to say this without sounding worldly – watch a little television.

But let me hasten to add that I do not countenance programs that contain violence or sexual acts of any kind. Why, once I even turned off the television after watching a nature show that dared to air a clip of two rhinoceroses doing the horizontal hootchie-cootchie. When the Babester demanded to know my reason for this, I said that if the Good Lord had wanted us to view this act, He would have seen to it that we were born in the African bush. While it is true that I was born and raised on a dairy farm, there is no comparing the bulls of the two species when it comes to their endowment. It is said that rhinos have poor vision, and this is surely a blessing bestowed upon Mrs Rhino by The Creator. For if Mrs Rhino could see that Mr Rhino had five legs, she would run until she encountered an ocean and then swim until she drowned. Forsooth, it is no wonder that they are such crotchety beasts.

Now, where was I? Ah, yes, I was set to have a quiet evening with a suckling babe at one breast and a copy of the Good Book propped against the other while I played a rousing game of Bible Roulette. The rules are very simple: one simply flips the pages at random, stops, places a finger on a verse, without looking at it, and then tries to determine what message the Lord has for you embedded in that verse. I decided that in order to be fair to the Lord, I’d give Him three chances to get His message across to myself.

The text that my bony index finger happened to pick first was Proverbs chapter twenty-five, verse twenty-four.
‘It is better to dwell in a corner of a housetop, than in a house shared with a contentious woman.’

‘No fair,’ I wailed aloud. ‘That doesn’t count; that was just a practice prophecy, Lord. I want three more verses –
please
!’

I laid Little Jacob on the bed next to me – he had somehow managed to fall asleep – turned my Bible upside down and gave it a good, if somewhat useless, shake. Then I righted the book and, sight-unseen, flipped through it forwards and backwards before picking my next verse. But again, it was from Proverbs; this time it was Proverbs chapter twenty-six, verse eleven.
‘As a dog returns to his own vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.’

‘OK, I get your point, Lord,’ I said. Frankly, I wasn’t just disappointed; I was a bit miffed. Like any good Christian, I am constantly in conversation with my God and always striving to grow in my faith. But God is my father, and just as any child might feel, it stung a little bit to be reproached by my Father in Heaven.

No sooner had I uttered those words, however, than I heard a noise emanating from somewhere in the house – somewhere other than the bedroom! I yanked the sheet so that it covered Little Jacob up to his button nose and then slid out of bed. While it is true that my feet are the size of tennis rackets, I can tread as soundlessly as one of our American mountain lions. It is a skill honed from years of creeping up my impossibly steep and creaky staircase to check on my guests’ welfare. I feel that I should explain, perhaps even illustrate, although I’m quite sure that one example should suffice.

For instance, on one occasion I heard loud, angry voices coming from room four in the wee hours of a morning. I also heard what sounded like the breaking of glass and the splintering of antique wooden furniture. The room had been rented over the telephone to Donald Mallard and Mozella Whiplash, both of whom were winners of the Universal Sausage and Bacon Eaters Championship. I had been loath to rent them a room, for fear that my stairs would collapse or, Heaven forfend, the toilet would be smashed into smithereens. I was quite shocked when the couple presented themselves at my front desk.

Donald did indeed resemble a soccer ball, albeit an angry soccer ball, with sausages for arms and legs, but Mozella was a tiny thing. What a strange pair they made; a fat barnyard goose with a fledging sparrow chirping along behind it! That night I must have sneaked up my impossibly steep and squeaky stairs a dozen times in order to check on poor Mozella’s undoubtedly pitiful plight, given the girth of her husband, and the gruffness of his demeanour and earlier behaviour. I have had a few too many murders committed under my roof to sleep easily when I sense an emotional storm brewing overhead.

At any rate, on my final check, after hearing my property being destroyed, it was not the mere slip of a lady whom I found to be in need of protection but her half-tonne hubby. That little gal had him pinned to the floor like a roped steer, and had tied him up, hands and feet, with one of my best buttercup yellow guest sheets.

‘This varmint ain’t running off nowheres till he gives me my half of the winnin’s,’ she said.

‘Run off?’ I said. ‘I don’t mean to be too rude but I rather doubt that a man his size is capable of running at all.’

‘Ma’am,’ Donald said, ‘I’ll have you know that I am a good Christian man who don’t gamble, take up with loose women, drink or smoke on account of my body is a temple for the Lord. If I want to eat me some grub, then I say ‘Praise the Lord and pass the mashed potatoes.’

It took me a second or two to scan Donald’s entire body. ‘Mr Mallard,’ I said, ‘if your body is a temple for the Lord then you’ve been building him a mighty large annex.’

Mozella yelped with delight. ‘You hear that, Donald? I always told you that you was an—’

‘That’s not what I said, dear,’ I cried, absolutely mortified. I won’t even allow Alison to shorten the word ‘buttocks’ in my presence.

‘We ain’t married,’ she said. ‘We lied so as we could save money on getting only one of your famous rooms.’

‘And now you have none of my famous rooms,’ I said as I dialled the police.

It may appear that I have digressed, but once again there is a method to my madness. The point was to illustrate that it is quite possible to navigate my impossibly steep stairs undetected
and
that looks can be quite deceiving. Therefore, when I heard the noise again, and it seemed to come from above, I had to seriously give credence to the possibility that an intruder had already managed to gain access to the second story of my pseudo-historical, Pennsylvania Dutch inn.

A much more comforting thought was that the End Times were at last upon us and that the Rapture had begun. Perhaps a brief word of explanation is in order for non-Christians, and those eighty percent of folks in the UK who are too lazy to go to church. I am referring to the day when Jesus Christ will return triumphantly to the earth and true believers everywhere, even the dead ones and perhaps a few Roman Catholics, will rise up to meet him in the air. The Bible does not go into details, but I should think that roofs will have to come off buildings and vehicles and soil off the tops of graves in order for this to happen. Faithful Christians across the globe have been eagerly waiting for this event their entire lives, as have their forbears for millennia.

The question remains, however, at least in my mind:
where
in the sky will Jesus reappear? If he makes his landing over the Holy Land, as he promised his disciples, the curvature of the earth will prevent
me
from witnessing that great event over here in Hernia, Pennsylvania. And if
I
rise straight up through a hole in my inn’s roof, no matter how conveniently it is prepared for me, I might miss the great reunion, since I would have no idea how to steer, once I was airborne, and thus I might shoot straight out into Outer Space and spend all of eternity on some distant planet. Oh, the thoughts that trouble this woman’s soul; it is a wonder that I can function at all!

Since the Rapture happens as quick as a blink, and I heard no further preparations on an exit hole, that left the first theory as the most likely: I had an intruder. I lunged for my bedside telephone. The line was dead. No signal. I looked around for my cell phone. Ding, dang, where was my cell phone? Oh, yeah, I’d tossed it on the kitchen counter while I’d heated up some supper for Little Jacob and myself. We don’t get very good cell reception in the inn anyway, and the phone was constantly banging against the cupboard doors, which I found most annoying. Truth be told, by then I was easily annoyed, and the little phone was not behaving, as inanimate objects are sometimes wont to do. Even when I slammed it on the counter it skittered to the edge and slid to the floor, where I just left it. If that’s where it wanted to stay the night, so be it. I wasn’t about to continue a battle with five inches of steel and circuits.

Then, horror of horrors, I heard a sound directly outside my bedroom door.
Rap, rap, rappity-rap
. It was faint, to be sure, but it certainly wasn’t the blood throbbing in my temples or the more familiar sound of wood-eating termites.

It was high summer, and since I eschew paying a premium for electricity, I had to keep the windows open rather than turn on our central air conditioner. In Hernia, where even our heathens are generally law-abiding (aside from the odd murderer) the only people with locked doors are those folks engaging in various forms of sexual expression. So it was that it did occur to me that perhaps a raven had chosen to share my home for the night. And yes, I do possess a healthy imagination, but I owe this train of thought to my eleventh-grade teacher, Miss Lehman, and a rather unusual bout of irrationality brought on by fear.

‘Say something, you stupid bird,’ I shouted through the door. ‘Don’t just stand there rapping. Identify yourself! I have a cudgel here in my hand and I’m not afraid to use it.’ To be honest, I didn’t even know what a cudgel was, and I was actually gripping the wire handle of an old flyswatter that we keep on the window ledge by the bed.

The raven mumbled something which I couldn’t understand, then it continued to destroy my antique door with its sharp, corvid beak.

‘Can’t you at least say “nevermore”?’ I hollered.

‘Nevermore,’ came the faint response.

That did it; a massive dose of adrenaline kicked in and I yanked open the door with such force that the raven barrelled into me, almost knocking me over – except that ravens don’t barrel, they fly, and they certainly don’t look like Lady Celia Grimsley-Snodgrass.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said in a flat American accent. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘I think I’m having a nervous breakdown – in which case, you’re a figment of my imagination.’

‘Miss Yoder, I’m quite real, I assure you. May I come in?’

‘You’re already in,’ I said. ‘Can I pinch you?’ Under the circumstances it seemed like a very reasonable request to me.

‘Uh, I’d rather that you didn’t,’ the young woman said.