No Use Dying Over Spilled Milk (26 page)

Arnold, however, had the heart of Satan. “Now get in the car, suckers,” he said with a wave of the gun.

“Ach, Arnold, please. Two deaths are enough. At first you said nobody had to die.”

“Those two dying was their own fault. I never pushed Levi from his damned silo, and I sure as hell didn’t hold Yost under in his milk tank.”

“But the drugs—”

“The LSD was your idea, remember? Something you picked up from watching those hippies camped out on that farm next to yours.”

“Annie Stutzman’s place?” I asked. After all, why die ignorant?

Stayrook glanced at me and then down at his feet. “Yah. When they took that stuff they acted crazy. Like they were possessed. I wanted Yost and Levi to act like that, not to kill themselves.”

“Drugs kill, Stayrook. Or haven’t you seen those commercials on TV?” Arnold laughed wickedly.

“You bought the stuff,” Stayrook said, a catch in his voice. “I only saw to it that they took it.”

“So you’re blaming the apple on Eve, are you, Rev?”

“Ach, but Arnold—”

“Then get in the damned car with them, if that’s how you feel. What’s it going to be, Gerber? You want to live and own the largest dairy farm east of the Mississippi, or do you want to start your eternal roast a little bit early?”

“Come on, Arnold, I have a wife and kids. You know that.” Despite a temperature hovering around zero, Arnold’s face looked like Niagara Falls.

“I’m sure they’ll be very proud of you, whatever you choose,” I said meanly.

“Well, if we’re going to die, let’s get it over with,” Susannah said sensibly. “This cold air is chapping my face.”

We three pseudo-Amish climbed into the car. I, of course, climbed behind the wheel, since it would make more sense to find my remains there. Danny, of course, climbed into the backseat, where most of the bottles had been dumped. Susannah, as my sister, should have claimed her rightful place at my side, but I cannot fault her choosing to die in the backseat. People facing death often reach out for the familiar.

While Stayrook made one last pitiable plea for mercy, I fished out my car keys and slipped the appropriate one into the ignition. Not even Susannah, who was still conscious, saw what I had done.

My detractors would claim that I am far from being a saint. I would have you know, however, that I counted slowly to ten just before I pumped the gas and turned over the ignition. Just as the engine caught, the front door flew open and Stayrook jumped in.

I shifted into reverse and pressed the pedal to the metal.

My vehicle might have front-wheel drive, but on the snowy lane that led from the barn to the highway, it performed with about as much accuracy as a carnival bumper car. But it was the very erraticism of my driving that made it impossible for Arnold Ledbetter to hit his mark. That and prayer.

Farmersburg County does not generally plow its minor roads, but Highway 5 had been cleared, and once on it we had smooth sailing. The only question was where.

“Keep going east,” Stayrook said. “We’re only eight miles from the county line. We can ask the sheriff there for help.”

I stifled nothing. “Ha! Right, like we should trust you? For all I know this is another trap.” I began looking for a spot to turn the car around.

“Yah, I don’t blame you for not trusting me. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“What? That’s it? No argument?”

“No argument.”

That did it. I stomped on the brakes, but even with the road cleared, we skidded fifty feet farther than I’d intended. Stayrook was playing mind games again. Undoubtedly Marvin, or some other criminal crony, was just down the road lying in wait. Stayrook wanted me to doubt him, and then feel guilty for it, and second-guess my better judgment. Of course, Stayrook knew I was smarter than that, and had gone one step further in his thinking. Being a stubborn Yoder, he reasoned, I would overcome my guilt and do the opposite of what he suggested anyway. Then he would have me in his trap. Boy, did he think wrong.

“Don’t you think you’ve fooled me for a minute,” I snapped. “We’re headed east, and that’s that. You don’t like it, you can jump out.”

“Yah, east is good.”

I covered my right ear with my right hand. “I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you!”

A mile or two down the road I glanced over at Stayrook. He was sitting silently, tears streaming down his cheeks.

I removed my hand from my ear. “Nice touch, dear, but I don’t believe it for a second. Save your tears for the next sucker.”

He said nothing, and his silence was deafening. “Susannah, dear,” I called, “how you doing back there?”

Neither my sister nor Danny had uttered as much as one word since our escape. In both their cases it was close to a record.

“I think they’re asleep,” Stayrook said quietly.

“Asleep?” I snarled. “You mean zonked out with the tranquilizer. Come to think of it, I’m starting to feel kind of funny too.”

“Magdalena, there’s something—”

“I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you!”

Stayrook covered his face with his hands. It was a shame well deserved.

I fought the tranquilizer as long as I could. Despite my rather large frame, and the quaint way I sometimes chew my food, I am not a cow. Undoubtedly the drug worked a lot faster on me than it did on its bovine victims. The numbness began in my feet and spread upward through my body, and I had trouble feeling both accelerator pedal and the steering wheel. My eyelids must have become numb too, because they kept drooping and obscuring my vision. Each time they drooped they became hard to open, and I was convinced that in a minute or two I would be out like a light. Still, I had to get across the county line.

I was weaving badly, fading off into the twilight zone, when I saw the store up ahead on the right. Tacked on a post just in front of the store was a new county sign. I breathed a prayer of thanks, took my foot off the pedal, and coasted into safety.

“Not here!” Stayrook said sharply. “It’s too close.”

“It’s here or nowhere,” I said. I unbuckled my seat belt, laid my seat as far back as it would go, and settled down for a long winter’s nap. At that point I was so far under that ten Arnolds and all the guns in the world wouldn’t have roused me from my slumber.

Stayrook certainly tried. “Wake up, Magdalena. Wake up!” He shook me, like I used to have to shake Susannah every school morning.

“Go away, Stay, and stay away.”

“Magdalena, there’s something I have to tell you.”

“Tell me anything you want, dear, just let me go back to sleep.”

“Magdalena, that wasn’t tranquilizer in the syringe.”

I smiled. Intense drowsiness breeds benevolence. “Yes it was, dear. It was cow tranquilizer. You put it in there yourself, and then you gave it to me. Right here, in the arm. Moo.”

“It was water, Magdalena. I couldn’t go through with it.”

“What?”

“Arnold wanted you sedated before he threw you into the river—his original plan—but I couldn’t go through with it. You would have drowned. That was his point. And I would have been a part of it.”

I began to wake up. “Water? There was nothing but water in that syringe?”

“Yah. Clean water. I boiled it first.”

I was wide awake. “Then why am I asleep? I mean, was.”

“Ach, that must be just stress. I’m very sorry, Magdalena. I really am.”

I put my seat back into its upright position. “Well, I had you fooled now, Stayrook, didn’t I? I knew it was water the whole time.”

“Yah,” he said kindly. “You had me fooled.”

“Don’t you take that tone with me, buster. You’re still going to be in a heap of trouble, you know.”

“I know.”

I started to open the door, but he grabbed my arm. “This really isn’t such a good place, Magdalena. I know the owners. They buy from the dairy. Friends of Arnold, I think. There is a better place just down the road, once you cross the interstate highway. A busy place, lots of customers. You can call the sheriff from there.”

“Tough cookies, toots,” I said. What good is having a younger sister if you can’t borrow a phrase from her now and then?

I should have gotten right out of the car, but I guess I really am a sucker. Either that, or too proud to stop trusting my instincts. So even though I knew that Stayrook Gerber was a Judas and a snake, I let the sound of his voice and the hurt in his eyes give him one more chance.

There was indeed a very popular spot just east of 1-77. The twelve-foot-high black concrete pot with the words “Dutch Kettle” painted in white on it must have been easy to see from the interstate, because the parking lot was jammed. A smaller sign advertising “authentic Amish cooking” was held rigidly in place over the door by two very tall wooden Amish figures, one male, one female.

“Cigar-store Indians,” I said.

“Ach, the English will do anything for a dollar.”

“Do I hear the pot calling the kettle black?”

Stayrook blushed a pleasing shade of red.

We had to circle the parking lot three times before a van of Canadian tourists, their funny vowels trailing them, left me a spot right next to the front door with its two behemoth guardians. The fact that it was a handicapped space does not make me feel guilty one whit. If a middle-aged Mennonite in an Amish costume, with an arm full of water, who is running for her life from a diabolical dairyman does not qualify as handicapped, then who does?

I insisted that we leave Susannah and Danny sleeping peacefully in the backseat. In case it was a trap, it was better that we split up. Although just what the two of them could do to protect themselves was anybody’s guess. Throwing Molotov cocktails is a learned, not an instinctive, behavior.

Just inside the door a massive woman, no doubt the inspiration for the figures outside, stopped me with an outstretched arm. Like me, and the statue, she was supposed to look Amish.

“You my replacement?”

“Pardon me?”

“You’re seven minutes late, dearie. Being late your first day as hostess is definitely not cool. Thelma’s gonna stick you back in the kitchen if this happens again.”

I glared up at her. “I am not a hostess. I just want to use your phone.”

“The phone is for customers only, dearie.”

“Then I’m a customer. Where’s the phone?”

“Ah, a customer. You have reservations?”

“For breakfast? You’ve got to be kidding!”

“Big Bertha doesn’t kid, dearie. You don’t have reservations, then scram. And take him with you. This here is a very popular place.”

I tried to push gently past her, but Bertha the Hun wouldn’t budge.

“You want me to throw you out myself, dearie?”

“No dear, certainly not. Call the police instead.”

The crabby colossus wouldn’t cooperate. “All right, dearie, it’s out on your ear, if that’s the way you want it.”

I folded my arms across my meager chest and puffed it out as much as I could. “You wouldn’t dare throw out the entertainment, would you?”

“Huh? What kind of entertainment? I don’t know anything about any entertainment, and I’ve been working here going on four years.”

“We’re Amish folk singers, dear. Hired just last night.”

Brunhild grunted and eyed Stayrook suspiciously. “He don’t look Aymish to me.”

I smiled patiently. “He’s a Mennonite, dear. You can tell by the nose.”

“Funny, but the owners didn’t say nothing to me about no folk singers. You sure this is for real?”

“See for yourself, dear. These folks have come for miles around just to soak in the atmosphere. That’s why Johnny, here, and I have been hired. We’re your breakfast duet. In fact, you were supposed to help us set up.”

“Ach!” I had the feeling Stayrook would rather be staring down the barrel of Arnold’s gun.

“Who hired you?”

I pointed to a mean-looking woman in a gray business suit that I had observed slip behind the register counter several times to harangue the cashier.

“Mrs. Wilson?”

“Herself. Can we get started now?”

“ ’Spose so. Where would you like me to set up?”

“Drag a couple of chairs over by the breakfast buffet,” I said. “Now may I use the phone? I need to call our manager.”

“After you perform, dearie.”

I was just about to tell Goliath’s mother what she could do with her phone—in a ladylike manner, of course—when the door opened and in walked Arnold and Marvin.

1 cup flour

2/3 cup sugar

3 tablespoons cocoa

2 teaspoons baking powder lh teaspoon salt

½ cup milk

3 tablespoons melted butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

Topping:

½ cup brown sugar

¼ cup white sugar

3 tablespoons cocoa

1 teaspoon vanilla

¼ teaspoon salt

1 ¼ cups boiling water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift dry ingredients in the first list together. Add liquid items in first list and blend well. Pour mixture into an 8-inch-square greased glass baking dish. Combine ingredients in second list and sprinkle evenly over the “cake” mixture. Pour the boiling water over this but do not stir. Bake for 40 minutes. A fudge crust will form on top, with a thick sauce underneath. Allow to stand for 15 minutes before serving. Delicious served warm or cold, with or without whipped cream or ice cream.