No Use Dying Over Spilled Milk (7 page)

“Ach, there you are,” she said when she saw me. “Why weren’t you at the funeral, Magdalena?”

“Well—uh—it wasn’t in English, was it? Anyway, Susannah and I went to the burial.”

“I didn’t see you.”

The women dispersed to allow us some privacy. “I was there, Freni. I was standing near the gate.”

“Late again, Magdalena?”

I struggled to curb my temper. It is Susannah who is habitually late, not me, and Freni should know that. “No. And I want to talk about something else. I called home this morning.”

Freni laid a knife dripping blueberry filling on a cake with white icing. I said cutting was her specialty, not overall neatness. “Did you speak to Mose?”

“No, I spoke to Aaron.”

Freni gave me one of her “aha” looks. “And?”

“And we can’t go back to Hernia tonight. Western Pennsylvania is snowed in. In fact, it looks like we might be stranded here for a couple of days.”

The corners of Freni’s mouth began to twitch. “Several days? Why, that’s too bad.”

“You don’t look heartbroken to me, dear.”

Freni’s mouth had contorted into a rare smile. It was one of the few times I’d seen her teeth when she wasn’t yawning. “Of course I miss Mose and all but if you ask me, Ohio is the place to be. Hard work gets appreciated here.”

I was stunned. Not only do I pay Freni well, but I am not shy with the compliments. Well, at least I don’t intend to be. “Just what is that supposed to mean?”

Freni sliced the white cake, leaving a smear of blueberry on the first several pieces. “Maybe instead of me going back, Mose should come here. We could retire here. Sarah needs someone to help her with the chores, now that Yost is gone.”

Freni may have sliced through my heart. “What are you talking about? How can you retire here and expect to fill in for a young man at the same time? Are things so bad in Pennsylvania? Am I that hard to work for?”

Without wiping the knife, Freni began to work on another blueberry pie. “Our son John could come too. He’s young and strong.”

“And married!” I said. Freni’s daughter-in-law Barbara is a sweet girl whose only discernible flaws are that she comes from Iowa and that John loves her.

“Well! At least people here see my side of things. At least here people care. Unlike some, who don’t seem to care at all.” She pointed the knife at me for emphasis. Globs of blue and white goo clung to it precariously.

I successfully resisted my urge to shake the little woman. The dress I was wearing was still quite new, and I didn’t know how easily it would shed icing.

“Freni, you can’t pull up stakes and move to another state—especially at your age—just because you don’t get along with your daughter-in-law. Have you considered family counseling?”

I might as well have asked her if she had ever considered a career as a belly dancer. Freni began gasping and puffing. She reminded me of Susannah that one time I held her head underwater too long at Miller’s Pond. Let me hasten to add that I was a child then, and cannot be held accountable for those intentions now. At any rate, I knew that it was time for me to scoot out of the kitchen. Three hundred years of pacifism have not altered our genes to the point that a full-fledged pie-and-cake fight is out of the question.

Harriet from Goshen was the first to leave after the meal. She left sometime in mid-afternoon, which just goes to show that she had been exaggerating about those Irish wakes. Even I stayed on until after dark.

Okay, I will confess to being the second to leave. Too much food and the body heat generated by all those mourners had combined to make me sleepy. I know you expect me to say that I was bored, like Harriet, but I truly wasn’t. Emma Hertzler saw to that when she accidentally spilled a bowl of cole slaw on the bishop’s lap, and if things lagged off a bit after that, they certainly picked up when Jonas Mast choked on a chicken bone and I had to perform the Heimlich maneuver. Unfortunately, Jonas is a widower, quite handsome, and about my age. Even more unfortunate is the fact that no one who witnessed the incident had ever heard of the Heimlich maneuver, and until that bone popped out of Jonas’s mouth and bonked Esther Gingerich on the nose, my reputation was at stake.

Even after the procedure, when the more astute were hailing me as a humble hero, tongues wagged mercilessly about the implications of such a thing. No, I assured them, I did not expect Jonas to propose marriage, and yes, it was the first time I had ever put my arms around a grown man other than my father. To fortify myself against the inquisition I had two pieces of pie and three pieces of cake for dessert. So I was both stuffed and sleepy when I staggered out into the starlit night. But I was certainly not bored.

The air temperature must have been about ten, and I remember the crunching sound my shoes made on the frozen grass. I never lock my car doors in weather that cold, lest the locks freeze shut, and so I didn’t get my keys out of my purse until after I had slid behind the wheel. I was fumbling around trying to fit the key into the ignition when I felt a tap on my right shoulder.

My scream was almost loud enough to wake the dead. Had it been any louder, the funeral would have all been in vain.

Sarah Yoder’s Amish Sauerkraut Salad

3 cans (approx 16 oz.) sauerkraut, drained and chopped

1 red bell pepper, diced

1 green bell pepper, diced

1 large red onion, diced

3 stalks celery, diced

Combine the sauerkraut and diced vegetables.

Dressing for sauerkraut salad:

1 ½ cups sugar

½ cup salad oil (extra-light olive oil may be substituted)

2 cups white vinegar

3 cup water

1 teaspoon caraway seeds

Heat and stir the above five ingredients until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture is well blended. Pour over the vegetable mixture and toss to combine. Refrigerate 24 hours before serving. If kept in glass container, the salad will keep in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.

“Shhhhh!” Stayrook clamped a beefy hand over my mouth. “Somebody might hear you. If I take my hand away, will you promise not to scream?”

I nodded.

Stayrook removed his hand, which, by the way, smelled curiously like licorice.

“Do that again, buster,” I hissed, “and somebody will be digging your grave.”

My vehemence must have taken Stayrook aback some. He didn’t say anything until he’d slipped out of the backseat and around to the front.

“Drive,” he ordered.

I’m no expert on Ohio, but I doubt that even there it is customary for Amish men to hijack cars. If I laughed, it was because I was feeling such immense relief that it was only Stayrook who had waylaid me. That, and I could appreciate how ridiculous the situation was.

Stayrook could not. “Do you want my help, or do you just want to laugh at me?”

I bit my tongue, and my laugh sputtered to a stop. Even in the dark I could see the hurt look in Stayrook’s eyes. “Yes, I want your help.”

“Then drive. We can’t talk here.”

“Where to?”

“That way,” he said, pointing north. “When we get to the second crossroads, turn left. Then your first right.”

Stayrook’s directions brought us to the end of a narrow gravel road that petered out in a streambed. Tall, gaunt trees stood sentinel above dense underbrush. The only lights to be seen were those in the sky, and the place felt wild and forlorn. It was hard to believe I was still in Ohio.

“This is where the young folks come to court,” Stayrook said matter-of-factly.

I recoiled in shock. For all their strictness, my Amish relatives were surprisingly relaxed when it came to the latitude they allowed their teenagers. Not that their teenagers would do the same things you’re thinking of, but still, it was a lot more than my Mennonite parents would have tolerated. I tried unsuccessfully to conjure up images of black buggies filled with amorous Amish teens, boldly holding hands. It was too much for my blood.

“Here?” I asked weakly.

“Yah.” Stayrook grinned. He had straight white teeth, or at least that’s what they looked like in the dark. “But don’t worry, they won’t be here tonight. Because of the funeral.”

That relaxed me a little. I certainly wasn’t up to a hijacking and a passionate display of manual interdigitation. Not on the same night. “So, tell me all you know about my cousin’s death,” I said. I felt a need to be in charge again.

Stayrook glanced about, as if even there, beyond the pale of civilization, danger might be lurking. “Magdalena, you were right. I do know something more about the deaths of Yost Yoder and Levi Mast.”

“Yes?”

“They were not accidents.”

“You don’t say.” Sarcasm is an art form, and Susannah, my tutor, is one of the masters.

Stayrook shifted nervously. “You must give me your word that my name will not be brought up in connection with this matter.”

“You have my word,” I said solemnly. From one of the gaunt trees an owl hooted.

Stayrook took a deep breath. “Yost, Levi, and I all used to supply milk to Daisybell Dairies. So did our fathers. In fact, most of us in Farmersburg County were connected to this dairy in one way or another. Those of us who didn’t supply milk worked in the factory.”

“The place that makes the fancy cheese.”

“Yah, but that was back when Mr. Craycraft was in charge. Wesley P. Craycraft III, who founded the dairy. He was an Englisher, of course, but like the salt of the earth. He cared about the cheese, and he cared about his workers too.”

“Go on.”

“Then Mr. Craycraft died, and his nephew from West Virginia came up and took over. Things were never the same.”

“How so?”

“Mr. Hem—Danny, he wanted us to call him— started taking shortcuts. Shortcuts that he thought would save him money.”

“What kind of shortcuts?”

I could feel Stayrook’s gaze boring into me. He must have thought I was stupid. “You ever make cheese, Magdalena?”

“Yes.” That wasn’t a lie. Once, after Mama died, Susannah and I tried to make cottage cheese by pouring sour milk into a sock and then hanging it up to drip.

“A good Swiss has to age, you know.”

“Of course.” Our cottage cheese had started out plenty aged, if you ask me.

“Mr. Hem didn’t think so. He wanted to cut the aging time from six months to three. Then he cut it back to two. Imagine that!” Stayrook laughed, and the owl hooted along with him. “Two months is not Swiss. Not Farmersburg Swiss!”

“Certainly not,” I agreed. Come to think of it, that sour milk might have been in our fridge for two months before we tried to make cheese out of it. After our parents’ deaths, before Freni bustled her way into our lives, I sort of lost track of things.

“So, it was false advertising, you see. Mr. Hem was selling this nothing cheese as Farmersburg, and in the beginning he made a lot of money. Without an aging period, he could produce a lot more cheese in the same amount of time.”

“Couldn’t the public tell the difference?” Once as an economy measure at the PennDutch, I tried serving my guests instant coffee, instead of the real McCoy. That I survived that mistake is due only to the fact that I know a good hiding place or two around the inn.

Stayrook sighed. “Of course the public could tell the difference. Sales started to drop, but not as fast as you would think. A good reputation is a hard thing to overturn.”

I certainly hoped so. I planned to be in business a long time. “Well?”

“Well, although sales had begun to taper off, Mr. Hem was still making more money than his uncle ever had. Of course, it wasn’t honest money, and that bothered us. Some of us talked about not selling any more milk to Daisybell Dairy. We even took the matter to the bishop.”

“And?”

“The bishop said that we should stop selling our milk to Mr. Hem unless he agreed to age the cheese at least four months. Even that would be cutting it close.”

“And did he?”

“We never got a chance to see. Before the four months were up, Mr. Hem made improper advances to one of his factory employees. A young woman named Elsie Bontrager.”

“Amish?”

“Yah. A good woman. Elsie had just been baptized, but she wasn’t married yet. To put it frankly, Magdalena, I have three Holsteins with faces prettier than Elsie Bontrager.”

“Tsk, tsk,” I chided. “There is no correlation between marriage and looks. Some of us have simply chosen not to tie the knot.”

Stayrook coughed politely. “Yah. Anyway, when Mr. Hem bothered Elsie, that was the last straw. All the Amish that worked for Daisybell Dairies quit and we formed our own cooperative.”

“Aha. But did Elsie Bontrager press charges against this Mr. Hem?”

I could see Stayrook squirm. “She has gone to live with an aunt in Indiana.”

“I see,” I said, but I didn’t. If Mr. Hem had laid one finger on me, he would now be missing it. In jail, if possible. Perhaps it was just as well my branch of the family was no longer Amish; even as a Mennonite, my attitude was an anomaly. Perhaps I was really destined to be a Presbyterian. I would have to talk to Susannah about it sometime.

“Anyway,” Stayrook went on, eager to move the story away from Elsie, “we elected Levi and Yost to head the cooperative, because the actual processing was going to be done on their farms, and because they were younger and had more knowledge of the way things worked.”