Batter Off Dead (24 page)

“Maybe you’re right.”

“Aren’t I always?”

“Doc, if I recall correctly, you predicted that a moon landing would lead to the moon veering out of orbit, and that it would most probably head to Earth and kill us all within two years.”

“Yeah, but ‘one swallow doth not a summer make.’ William Wordsworth, by the way.”

“Yes, but he was misquoting Aristotle, who said ‘one swallow does not make a spring’—of course not in English.”

Doc grunted. “And you wonder why I find you so dang attractive. Now’s your chance, Magdalena. Get rid of that interloper from out of state, then marry me. With your looks and brains, and my life experience—the world would be our oyster.”

“You wouldn’t need oysters, Doc—not with your libido. And in any case, I couldn’t keep up. You were born into the wrong culture; you should be living someplace where you could have a harem.”

“Hmm, maybe I’ll look into that. More pound cake and strawberries?”

“Thanks, but no. If I’m going to put the screws to Elias this afternoon, I need to get home and feed Little Jacob.”

“You can feed him here if you like.”

“Doc, he’s nursing. Feeding him here would be like waving a flank steak in front of a lion.”

Doc sighed. “Perhaps you have a point.”

I jumped up and gave him a kiss on top of his hoary, horny head. Immediately after that I scooped up the joy of my life and skedaddled while the going was good. I knew from experience that Doc would refuse help with the dishes, and that me lingering any longer would simply be torture for the man with the iron willy.

 

 

There is no satisfactory way to explain marital separation to a child. Alison, as was her right, jumped to conclusions, just as quickly as I tend to do. Although I view my sudden leaps as a form of exercise, and thus defend them vigorously, I felt responsible for Alison’s frame of mind. Especially since she came down on my side of the finish line.

“I’m never going to forgive him,” she said.

“You
what
?”

“How can I? He didn’t just walk away from ya, Mom; he walked away from me too. And my baby brother.”

“But I’m sure that wasn’t his intent; he just needed to get away from me for a while. He’ll be back to see you two all the time. Or you can go over there.”

“Yeah? Then why didn’t he come to school and tell me that?”

“Because it just happened this morning. He hasn’t had time to think it through.”

“Ya always defend him, Mom. Ya know that?”

“Well, maybe that’s because he’s a good man.”

“Then how come ya treat him like a baby?”

“I most certainly do not!”

Alison has shot up in the last year, so that now at five foot seven, while still as thin as a rotisserie spit, she can do a decent job of looking me in the eye. Her eyes, by the way, are a light Caribbean blue. One of my guests once described them as the color of a Paraiba tourmaline. When she trains those eyes on you, you realize that it’s not a matter of
if
you’ll get around to seeing things her way, but
when
.

“Mom, ya do so treat him like a baby! Ya make fun of him because Grandma Ida cuts his meat for him.”

“Yes, but isn’t that justifiable? I mean, a grown man! That’s just ridiculous.”

“Yeah, but ya shouldn’t do it in public; that’s the thing.”

“I don’t do it in public.”

“Ya did that time at the church supper when all youse ladies was talking about your pet peas.”

“The word is
peeves
, dear—Wait a minute, you
heard
that?”

“Mom, the way ya were mocking Grandma Ida and her accent, the whole church heard ya.”

I slapped the offending mouth in question. “Oops. I guess I got carried away.”

“Yeah, well maybe she deserves it now, because I’m mad at her too.”

“Yes, I can imagine how hurt I would be if my grandmother hadn’t said good-bye to me.” The truth is that I would have been immensely relieved if Grandma Yoder had not paid any attention to me when I was Alison’s age. The woman had passed on when I was just nine, and although her bones lay moldering in the grave atop Stucky Ridge, her controlling spirit had yet to budge an inch outside the parlor where she allegedly gave up her ghost. I couldn’t even run through that room without feeling Grandma’s icy talons digging into my shoulders and hearing her ravenlike voice cawing in my ears.

“It ain’t me, Mom, that I’m mad for. I’m fourteen, so I’m all growed up. I’m mad on account of Little Jacob. He ain’t never going to know what having a grandma is like—well, except for Freni. But she ain’t our grandma, ’cause she’s some kind of a cousin.”

My heart overflowed with love for the girl I had taken in. Instead of focusing on herself, as could well have been expected, her concern was for the baby, even though he was still not legally her brother. And given the sad state of my marriage, Little Jacob might never officially be her sibling.

“You’re darn tooting,” I said.

“Wow, Mom, ya just swore!”

“Just this once. And just to show you that I agree with you; you
are
all
growed
up.”

“Mom, the word is really
grown
; I hope ya know that. I just say
growed
to get a rise out of ya. But anyway, since I am an adult and everything, can I go out tonight with Ronny Dietrich?”

“That high school boy on the basketball team? The one whose hands hang down past his knees?”

“Yeah, but he’s, like, only a sophomore, on account of he flunked two times in junior high.”

It’s conversations like these with Alison that can take a reasonable woman, such as me, zooming from Point A to Point Z in a split second. “You’re not even allowed to date!”

“But ya just agreed that I was an adult. Adults can do what they want, can’t they? Besides, I’ve decided that I’m Jewish, and when Jewish girls turn twelve, they become adults in the eyes of the community.”

“Give it up, Alison. Even if you were allowed to date, which you’re
not
, I wouldn’t let you date someone that much older, and even if I did, which I
won’t
, it wouldn’t be Ronny Dietrich. Not after what he did at the Fifty-Second Annual Hernia Daze Picnic last summer.”

“Youse old ladies didn’t really think that was lemonade, did ya?”

“Mrs. Hurley almost had a heart attack after swallowing some.”

“No offense, Mom, but Mrs. Hurley was a witch—and I mean that with a
B
.”

“Don’t you dare talk like that in front of your brother!”

You see how our conversations seem to ricochet from one subject to another? Before we knew it, we were arguing over how much bare midriff was the maximum amount any self-respecting girl (either Mennonite or Jewish) could wear to school (my answer was none), and the evening just seemed to slip away.

I slept fitfully until about two o’clock, when the need to micturate and some exceptionally bright moonlight rescued me from a string of mildly unpleasant dreams. In them Susannah, working in cahoots with Ida, had managed to physically restrain me—tying me up with old toaster cords—and forced me to convert to Apatheism. Needless to say, it was not a religion I embraced wholeheartedly. I was even ambivalent about my habit, which unlike those of the other sisters, was puke green. Strangely, Little Jacob was not in the dream, nor was the Babester. At any rate, I was just about to take my final vows of poverty, temperance, and irrelevancy, when the need to pee roused me—thank heaven.

Finally, at about ten o’clock, when both children appeared to be down for the count, I slipped outside into the cold night air. From my vantage point on the front porch, I could look through the still, leafless trees, across the road and Miller’s Pond, and see the distant lights of the farmhouse across the way. Somewhere in that house my beloved ached for me—or not.

Or
not
? How could such a thought even pop into my mind?

“Get behind me, Satan!” I said.

Immediately the phone rang.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” I said. “You’re not fooling me; I know exactly who you are.”

But instead of switching over to message mode after five rings, that instrument of evil kept at it: over and over again. Unless I hustled my bustle back in and answered the ding-dong thing, the cherubic Little Jacob and annoyingly adolescent Alison were both going to be awakened, and then the rest of the night was for sure going to be ruined. I wouldn’t be able to get a single page of reading done, not even the charming southern mysteries of Carolyn Hart, the chocolate-coated tales of Joanna Carl, or the exotic world of Manhattan as delineated by Selma Eichler.

Seeing that I had no choice but to let Lucifer have it with both lungs, I virtually flew back into the house and snatched up the nearest phone. “It’s not funny, you idiot!”

“Uh—”

“By the way, is it hot enough for you?” I slammed the receiver down, shaking with anger and trepidation. After all, it’s not every day that one yells so directly at the Big S, and Heaven only knows what torments he’s capable of enacting as earthly revenge.

Within two seconds the horrible machine that Alexander Graham Bell invented rang again.

“Miss Yoder, don’t hang—”

The Devil sounded maddeningly familiar. But since deception is what he does best, that wasn’t too surprising.

“I’d tell you where to go, except you’re already there,” I cried. “So, with all due respect—oops, there isn’t any—get thee to the St. Louis Airport, Concourse A.” Again I slammed the receiver into its cradle.

They say that the third time is a charm. I won’t agree in this case, but at least by then I thought to turn off the ringer, if need be, rather than smash my phone or rip the cord from the wall. As for simply unplugging the jack, what kind of satisfaction would there be in that?

“Look, you asp,” I screeched into the receiver, “you two-headed son of a viper—”

“Elias Whitmore is dead.”

“You’re going to kill him just to get back at me? Well, I have news for you, buster; even if you do, the Lord will still claim his soul. Elias Whitmore is a bona fide born-again Christian.”

“No offense, Miss Yoder, but have you ever considered seeing a shrink? Sometimes you make less sense than a single copper penny.”

“Good one, Chief—
Chief
, is that you?”

“Of course. Who did you think it was?”

“Not the Devil—I mean, how silly do you think I am? Magdalena Cuckoo Yoder is not really my name, despite any rumors you may have heard.”

“Miss Yoder, please quit babbling, and just listen for a change.”

“Will do, buckaroo—er, Chief—not that anyone really says
er
, except in works of fiction.”

“Did you hear me say that Elias Whitmore is dead?”

That’s
when his words first sank in. “
Dead
dead, as in
really
dead?”

“Totally dead. Can’t get any deader. As a matter of fact, I want you to come up here and take a look before the sheriff gets here.”

“Where are you?”

“Halfway up Buffalo Mountain, on Zigler Bend Road at the second turnaround.”

“I’ll be right there, dear.”

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t enjoy looking at dead bodies—or corpses, if you prefer—but I do find them rather interesting. What fascinates me is how
un
lifelike the empty human shell is, even just a second after death. There isn’t a mortuary beautician in the world capable of making human remains really appear as if the deceased is merely sleeping. The truth is, either we are corpses or we aren’t, and the transformation is instantaneous.

 

 

All of Hernia seemed to be asleep, making the swirling red light atop Chief Ackerman’s squad car all the more startling. I pulled over as soon as I found some shoulder and walked up the rest of the way. The last fifty yards I had a flashlight shining in my face.

“What are you trying to do, dear, blind me?”

“Why did you stop so far down the road?”

“I didn’t want to inadvertently drive over any evidence. Where is he?”

“You’re going to need to steel yourself, Miss Yoder. This isn’t pretty.”

“I’ve seen ugly before.”

“Not like this. You might even vomit—like I did.”

“Please be a mensch and don’t let me step in that.”

“What?”

“Just tell me where to walk.”

The chief took my elbow and gently led me toward the outer edge of the turnaround. The clearing is a semicircle carved into the woods and is meant not so much as a second chance for fearful or fickle drivers, as a place to pull over in emergencies, such as failing brakes. The surface of the turnaround is flat and smooth, chiseled out of solid bedrock, but it is surrounded by a low stone wall that defines its boundaries and gives at least the illusion of safety.

Halfway to the perimeter I stopped on my own. “Oh no, his car went through the wall and over the edge. How awful! What do you think happened? Did he fall asleep?”

“He didn’t go over,” the Chief said.

“Oh. But his car did, right?”

“No. His car is still up at his house.”

“Then I don’t get it.”

“That damage was most probably done by a steamroller.”

“Elias was driving a steamroller? But why? Aren’t they used to flatten things—like dirt and freshly laid asphalt?”

“Elias wasn’t
driving
it. Magdalena, look straight ahead and on the ground. Look carefully. And I’m here to brace you.”

“Okay, but all I see is black rock and some wet, dark mud, and some rags—oh, my Land o’ Goshen!” I started to sway like a young pine in a late March wind.

“Easy there, Miss Yoder. Take a deep breath. Remember, I’ve got you. You’re not going to fall.”

“But I am going to hurl!”

“I thought as much.”

And retch I did. However, young Chris Ackerman is a gentleman and even offered me his shirt upon which to wipe my face when I was quite through. His mother should be very proud of him, even though he has stolen from her the “right to be a grandmother,” and she has had to change churches twice in order not to hear sermons preached against her son.