33

“Put your hands up, Yoder, and get in the back.”

“Mantis-I mean Chameleon-I mean Melvin! Where did you come from?”

“I’ve been sitting here the whole time, Yoder-slouched, of course.”

“And you didn’t see me either,” the craggy Carl Zambezi said, “although I was barely slumped.”

“Right. Well shame on me for not seeing either of you!”

“What’s the matter, Yoder? You going blind in your old age?”

“Au contraire, I have fifty-fifty vision. I see the half of the world that is good and kind and nourishes my soul, and the scum-sucking evil elements-like you-I just naturally overlook.”

“Now that was hurtful, Yoder,” Melvin said.

“Yeah, we watched you kill George Nyle,” Carl Zambezi said.

My heart leapt into my throat. As hard and small as my heart is, there’s always the danger that I’ll accidentally disgorge it, perhaps during a phlegm-producing cough. I shudder to think of the consequences. Besides the obvious physical difficulties this would present, what about the emotional and theological ramifications? For instance, it would put a whole new spin on Valentine’s Day-

“Yoder, are you in even in there?” Melvin barked.

“Of course, I am; and shame on you, because you should know by now that I engage in rather lengthy inner dialogues. That’s what makes me so interesting-at least to myself. And I didn’t kill George Nyle. I mean that if I did, it certainly wasn’t intentional. Shall I go back and see?” For the record, I still hadn’t as much as stuck one foot up into the SUV.

“George can take care of himself. Now get in before I blow your copulating head off!” Melvin actually used a far more vulgar term to express his anger, one that has never passed these lips.

“Double shame on you, Melvin,” I said, as I grudgingly climbed in. “Are those the same mandibles with which you kiss your mother?”

“Oy, such a smart mouth on you. You’ll get us both moidered yet.”

I jerked my head around to look at the seat beside me and then did a double take. “Ida?”

“No, it’s da Queen of Sheba.”

As my eyes and brain adjusted to my new surroundings, I could see that it was indeed my scrappy little mother-in-law, and that her hands were bound behind her, as if she were a hostage or a prisoner of war. Ida was a survivor of the Holocaust, and to be restrained like that had to be torture for her. Whilst she is not my favorite person-she is perhaps number twenty-six down the list-I cannot stand to see someone truly suffer. To say that my hackles were hiked is like saying that Hitler was a bad boy.

“Melvin Lucretius Stolzfus III! What have you done to this poor woman?”

“She tried to scratch me,” he whined.

“Untie her!”

“You can’t tell me what to do! You’re my prisoner.”

“Then I’ll untie her,” I said. Which I did.

Melvin’s response was to press the pedal to the metal and peel out of my long driveway amid curtains of gravel. Thank Heavens he wasn’t driving my car.

“Are you going to let her get away with talking to you like that?” Carl snarled, once we were on Hertzler Road and headed for the bridge over Slave Creek.

By the way, this is the only route out of Hernia, unless one has the patience to meander all the way over to Somerset past myriad Amish farms. Passing buggies might be fun for tourists, but believe me, it gets old-as do some of the buggy drivers, and as a consequence, they don’t hear one coming up behind them and so don’t move away from the center of the road.

“Heck no,” Melvin said. Again, he used extremely foul language. “Yoder, don’t you ever talk to me like that again.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. Melvin was immune to sarcasm. (Try it on either a praying mantis or a chameleon sometime, and you’ll see what I mean.)

“T’anks,” Ida whispered when I released her bonds.

“What happened?” I whispered back. “What did you do?”

“Don’t whisper,” came the command from the driver’s seat. “Speak so that we can all hear.”

“I vas doing nutting vrong. I vas only coming to see eef my Gabeleh vas home. Your phone eez not vorking, Magdalena, und az you know, I dun’t haf a cell.”

“The woman is a menace,” Carl said.

“No comments from Olivia’s erstwhile spouse, dear,” I said.

Melvin laughed long and hard. That is to say that for at least a minute, it sounded like there was a cicada loose somewhere in the car.

Most folks respond better to pleasant speech than they do to inflammatory words, so for once I decided to give that tact a try. Besides which, I had both the “brother” and the “local” cards going for me. After all, most folks root for the home team, don’t they?

“Where are we going, brother dear?” I asked sweetly.

“Shut up, Yoder,” Melvin snapped.

It was Carl’s turn to laugh long and hard; he sounded like the Bontragers’ male donkey come the first warm days of spring. He can be glad that Melvin was driving with one hand and holding a gun with the other, and that I was a good Christian woman. Honestly, I was tempted to lunge over the seat and smack the hee-haw right out of him.

But Carl answered my most burning question for me as soon as we turned right on Route 96, going away from Bedford. “Melvin says he knows this cool place that has lots of sinkholes where someone almost died last year. We’re going to throw you guys down one of those holes, but not before we torture you first to find out where that brat of yours is hidden.”

Ida jumped to her feet, her head still not touching the roof of the SUV. “You vant my grandchild? For vhat?”

“Because he witnessed the-”

“Sinking of the Titanic,” I said loudly.

“No, Yoder,” Melvin said, disdain dripping from all three syllables, “the Titanic sank in the nineteen fifties-your kid isn’t that old.”

“My kid is your nephew,” I said. “Remember?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Melvin said, waving the gun impatiently. “Anyway, the little brat was there when we-”

“Ate all the chocolate brownies,” I said.

“What?” Melvin barked. “Yoder, you’re nuts.”

Ida clapped her wee spotted hands to her weathered cheeks. Not to be judgmental, but the woman really ought to consider wearing sunscreen, given the amount of time she spends gallivanting outside.

“You ate all zee brunies und he had nahsing?” she said.

I could have called Melvin a ding-a-ling, but I prayed for patience-yet again. I pity the Lord on account of He’s had to listen to this prayer a billion times; it’s no wonder that He so often chooses not to answer it. However, this time, a sweet peace seeped into my pores as an idea formed in my weary brain.

“Ee-shay oesn’t-day oh-nay at-thay ou’re-yay obber-rays.”

“Darn it, Yoder, we’ve had this conversation in the past. How many times do I have to remind you that I don’t speak Pennsylvania Dutch?”

“It isn’t Pennsylvania Dutch, you ding-a-ling. Think again.”

“Oh, I get it now-you’re talking Jewish to your mother- in-law.”

“And it isn’t Yiddish, you numbskull!” You see what I mean about my prayer for patience going unanswered?

“You’re really trying to tick me off, aren’t you?” Melvin said. He was actually exhibiting more of the P word than was I at the moment.

“It’s Pig Latin,” Carl growled impatiently. “I can speak it.”

“Then you whisper in his ear,” I said.

Much to my surprise, he did as I directed. He may have said a few other things-things that Melvin vehemently disapproved of-because the car weaved back and forth across the road several times, throwing me up against poor little Ida, and almost provoking me to throw up on her as well.

Finally Melvin turned his attention to me. “Yoder, are you speaking from the perspective of an ex-law enforcement officer?”

As thrilling as it was to hear him say those words, they weren’t true. I acted-and still do-as a liaison between the community and the Hernia Police Department. The unofficial post was created back when Chris Ackerman was chief. Young Chris hailed from California -the land of fruits and nuts-and he had no idea how life in a barrel of sour Krauts was lived. (During Melvin’s administration, I was the brains.) But it behooved me naught to set him straight. In fact, it could be the difference between life and death.