“Bring them both, dear. After all, I’m one of those folks with a one-word title.”

“Which is?”

“Boss.”

“ ‘Bossy’ is more like it,” someone said, but I ignored whoever it was. With hot cocoa and two kinds of cookies in my near future, I could afford to be generous.

14

Amy was adamant about having never seen any of the bank robbers before. She said that about a quarter of her customers were Amish, most of them men. All told, she said, she knew the names and faces of at least eighty percent of the people she dealt with, because they were repeat customers. First Farmer’s Bank was a workingman’s institution, where laborers came to store their hard-earned money in lieu of tucking it in the mattress. It didn’t offer fancy services, and it had no gimmicks.

When I grilled her about the way Pernicious reacted to the attempted robbery, Amy got green in the face, and for a moment, it looked like she was going to lose the two gingersnaps and one windmill cookie she’d eaten. Wisely, I held my plate well away and aloft.

“I can’t ascribe motives to someone else’s behavior,” she snapped.

“Of course you can, dear. Why, just now I’d say you’re trying to cover something up.”

“I bet she’s having an affair,” Dorothy mumbled.

Agnes gasped. “Is that true? I swear, there’s more hankypanky going on in this world than I ever dreamed of.”

“Why don’t you two take a walk?” I said. “You know what they say about a watched pot and all that.”

“She’s not a pot,” Agnes pouted.

“Of course not,” I said, “but the same principle applies to weenies.”

“Weenies?”

“Grilled weenies,” I growled. “Now am-scray, the two of you!” I could see the light click on in her head. “All right,” she said, “but you don’t have to be rude about it.”

“ Magdalena ’s nuts,” Dorothy said, but I chose not to take offense. After all, it wasn’t every day that a genuine harlot called me names.

“Now where were we?” I said when we were alone. “Oh, yes, did Pernicious threaten you in any way?”

“Miss Yoder, are you related to him? I mean, you know, yinz have the same last name.”

“Yinz? Amy, you’re originally from Pittsburgh?”

“Yeah, I moved to Bedford when I was twelve.”

“I see. To answer your question, virtually all Yoders in North America are descended from a pair of brothers who emigrated from Switzerland almost three hundred years ago. But since both our forebears settled in Pennsylvania, we are more closely related to one another than to those Yoders living in other parts of the country.”

“Uh-huh. Well, it wasn’t Mr. Yoder who threatened me.”

“Was it the clueless guard?”

When she shook her head, her mousy brown hair parted in greasy clumps. “No. It was some guy on the phone-a foreigner, I think.”

“You mean like Al Qaeda?”

“No, more like Al Canadian.”

It was then that I realized that Amy, as sweet as she was, did not genetically descend from Alfred Einstein. “What? You mean, French?”

“I don’t know-it was different, that’s all. Anyway, he wanted to speak to Mr. Yoder, so I put him through. He called three times after that, and each time he asked for Mr. Yoder’s direct number, but I refused to give it out, on account of Mr. Yoder says I’m not supposed to. Even if God calls and asks for it, he says I’m supposed to make Him wait a few minutes and then put Him through. But never to give out that number. Ever.”

“Why, that’s just plain sacrilegious, not to mention the fact that Mr. Yoder could well be imperiling your soul. I mean, what if the Lord did call, and you put Him on hold? Think what would happen if He turned the tables on you. Let’s say that you’re taking off from Pittsburgh airport, headed for Charlotte, when your plane gets hit by a flock of geese. So you pray for deliverance, but God says, ‘Just a minute, Amy,’ so when your plane goes down, it doesn’t come in for a textbook landing on top of the mighty Ohio River. It plows up mud on the bottom, and all this because you put the Good Lord on hold.”

“Holy crap, Miss Yoder, I hadn’t thought of that!”

“That’s no reason to swear, dear. It’s just something to think about. Like wearing underwear at all times.”

She chuckled knowingly. “Yeah, in case I get hit by a car.”

“No, in case of the rapture. When you’re floating up to Heaven, you don’t want the people left behind getting some final thrills they don’t deserve, do you? And of course this underwear rule applies doubly to men. I mean all that business swinging free in the breeze-what if they hit a tree branch? No, a rupture during the rapture must surely be avoided.”

“Miss Yoder, you’re awful!”

“Just practical, dear. Think how embarrassed that Spears woman would have been.”

“Somehow I don’t think so-I mean I think she intended for people to get a peek. Anyway, are you going to let me finish?”

“Go for it!” I cried.

“Miss Yoder, you’re weird.” The greasy locks got another workout. “As I was about to say, the fourth time that foreigner called-after he spoke to Mr. Yoder-he starts lecturing me, telling me my phone manners aren’t what they should be. Then he tells me that it was my fault that I got shot in the robbery attempt. My fault! Can you imagine that?”

“I can, but only because I’ve met some folks in my time who are even weirder than I.” Really, the nerve of that whippersnapper calling me weird, and here I always thought she was such a pleasant young woman.

“Hey, you’re not the one who should be bent out of shape. I was just doing my job when those three men came in and pulled out their guns. But that’s not the whole thing!” She paused to glance out the window. “You see, this guy on the phone said that I wasn’t allowed to say one more word about what happened that day to anyone-or else.”

“Or else what?”

“You know.” She made a slicing motion across her soft white throat.

“He said that?”

“Well, maybe not in so many words, but isn’t that what ‘or else’ means?”

I thought back to when Mama used to threaten me with those very same words. Would she have sliced my scrawny tanned throat for not picking up my woolen stockings, or for sticking the hanger through only one side of my dress, or for leaving a soap ring around the edge of the tub, or for answering her nervous calls as slow as a “drugged seven-year itch”? Somehow I don’t think so. However, she would have-and did-warm my bottom with a willow switch or, if one of those wasn’t handy, the palm of her hand.

“What did you say in response?” I asked.

“I hung up. Then I went to see Mr. Yoder, only he said I should stop making things up-if I wanted to keep my job.”

“Now that sounds like an ‘or else’ to me.”

“Huh?”

“Go on, dear.”

“Well, there isn’t much more to tell, because I kept my mouth shut. Even when the police came a third and a fourth time, I just kept giving them the same old answers, even if that did make them kind of pissed-Oops. Sorry, Miss Yoder.”

I scowled obligingly. “Just don’t let it happen again. Foul language is indicative of either a foul brain or poor dental hygiene. Either way, it is not to be tolerated.”

“Forgive me, Miss Yoder, but you’re such a prude.”

“And you’re such a disappointment, dear. You’re not at all like the sweet young thing that used to work behind the counter at First Farmer’s.”

“I guess a bullet wound to the arm will do that-make one rough around the edges, I mean. Or maybe this is the real me. Anyway, you seem to be missing the point.”

I sighed, before slapping my own mouth. I did it gently, of course. She was quite right on that score. It wasn’t the first time that my priggish, obsessive-compulsive need for civilized discourse had led me down meandering paths of judgmental verbiage.

“Please elaborate, dear. Nary a word shall pass these shriveled lips till thou hast completed thy elucidation.”