Batter Off Dead (28 page)

“Don’t be ridiculous; of course I’m coming. You’re going to need my brain to make yours a whole wit. But first, don’t you have to use the bushes?”

I glanced around. “For what?”

“To relieve yourself, dummy. Isn’t that what you were grimacing about?”

“Why, I never!”

“You do too; you always look constipated.”

“Why, so help me, Wanda, I’m going to huff, and then I’ll puff—”

“Stop it,” Agnes hissed. “Both of you. You’re getting louder by the second.” She paused just long enough to catch a breath. “Look! Over there to the left. Isn’t that smoke? And I hear something; something other than yinz excessive chatter. It sounds kind of like an engine. You don’t suppose she—or he—could have hidden the bulldozer underground, do you?”

“The smoke is coming out of a flat expanse of rock,” Wanda snapped. “You’re starting to sound as crazy as Magdalena.”

“Au contraire,” I cried. “Agnes, you’re on to something!”

Wanda was every bit as much afraid of gaping holes as was Agnes’s nude uncle, Uncle Remus. Although she’d lived her entire life within an easy drive of Thousand Caves Road, and the weird limestone formations, she’d never even been tempted to mosey on out and take a peek, not even during the height of the development scandal. Once, when Wanda was a junior in high school, her parents dragged her on a family vacation to Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. A terrified Wanda took only a couple of steps outside the car, threw up, and then spent the rest of the day sobbing in the backseat.

A control freak with a phobia is not a pleasant creature. Although she refused, at first, to set foot off the road, neither would she consent to being left behind. Wanda mumbled and grumbled, and uttered some words that even a liberal Mennonite had no business knowing.

Meanwhile, Agnes moved like a hound to the scent. Of course the trail of a rumbling, smoke-belching steamroller is not exactly hard to follow, even if it has been dumped in a large sinkhole.

About ten yards from the cavernous opening, Wanda stopped abruptly. “I’m not going any farther.”

“Fine,” I said. “Just wait here.”

We were in an open area of flat, smooth limestone that crowned the rise of a low hill. The only trees were stunted pines that grew in places where, eons ago, eddies of water had carved out pockets, which were now filled with soil, but drought and infestation of foreign beetles had killed more than half of the pines, eventually turning them into bleached skeletons. With a sigh of relief Wanda sat shakily on one of these fallen trunks that had long since shed its bark.

Agnes, however, was as unstoppable as a bulldozer. Had I grabbed one of her pants legs (the poor misguided soul is a Methodist) and hung on tightly, I could have gotten a free ride. As it was, I had to trot to keep up, and I weigh a full one hundred pounds less than she does.

Still, the woman has to be admired. She didn’t stop until she was standing on the rim of the abyss, staring down into the blackness, from whence came the sound and the smell of a crashed bulldozer. But then, instead of recoiling due to a bout of dizziness (like any normal woman), Agnes got down on her knees and peered into Satan’s domain. Clearly, she was a woman possessed.

“Magdalena, come quick!”

“Don’t rush me; I’m coming as fast as I can.”

“But somebody’s down there.”

“What?
Who?
”

Agnes wouldn’t say another word until I dropped to all fours beside her. “Look, Magdalena; what do you see?”

“An upside-down bulldozer with smoke pouring out of the engine.”

“Not that, silly. There, to the left.”

“Oh
that
: that’s Frankie Schwartzentruber, our one female member of the Beechy Grove Mennonite Church Brotherhood.”

“You don’t seem surprised to see her!”

“I’m not; in fact, she’s why we came out here. I just didn’t expect to find her holed up in a—allow me to say it, please—a hole.”

“Wasn’t she the one who drove the bulldozer over that young, and extraordinarily handsome, Elias Whitmore?”

“Indeed.” I reared back just enough to cup my hands to my mouth. “Oh, Frankie! Frankie, dear.”

Although the roar of the bulldozer’s engine drowned any echo, I was nonetheless heard, and the murderess looked up for the first time. It was obvious from where we knelt that the sinkhole extended a couple of feet beneath the ground, at least on one side, but Frankie did not seem interested in hiding. Instead she waved her arms and jumped up and down.

“It looks like she’s glad to see us,” Agnes declared happily.

“Can you hear what she’s saying?”

Agnes cocked her head. “She’s saying ‘It will blow.’ ”

“Does a bulldozer have a whistle, Magdalena? I would have thought it had a horn.”

It took a few seconds for my thoughts to catch up with my cranium. “Oh, my stars,” I croaked. “She means the engine is going to explode; it must be leaking fuel.”

“In that case, Frankie should climb out of that hole.”

For a fraction of a millisecond I wanted to push Agnes
into
the hole for stating something so obvious. Instead, I took a deep breath and shouted down to Frankie.

“How can we help?”

“Don’t be a dolt, Magdalena; I need a rope.”

I gazed at the walls of the sinkhole. They were almost as smooth as the Babester’s chest that time he waxed it as a joke and got a terrible rash for the effort. There was one narrow ledge, a calcified swirl of limestone that began almost directly below us and followed the curve of the wall, widening as it descended, until it melded with the floor. An ancient whirlpool (not more than five thousand years old, of course) had carved this sinkhole and left an impression that looked for all the world like a giant scoop of soft-serve ice cream. Well, then again, we nursing mothers can never get too much to eat.

“Frankie,” I bellowed, “can you climb up on that shelf?”

“It’s too narrow! I keep falling off.”

“You need something to steady yourself with.”

“I need a ding-dang rope!”

“With language that blue, dear, you’ll not being having a white Christmas next year.”

“Magdalena, you’re the biggest boob to ever walk the earth. If you don’t shut up and get me out of here, we’re all going to blow.”

“Okay, but there’s no need to get nasty. Where can I find some rope? In your truck?”

“Like I said, you’re an idiot,” she screamed. “It’s going to blow any second. I need some rope
now
!”

“Let’s take off our clothes,” Agnes said calmly, “and tie them together in a knot chain. I saw that once in a movie.”

“Did it work?” I said.

“Yes, until one of the sleeves ripped, and the hero plunged to his death.”

“This is impossible, then. We’ll just have to wait until help comes.” I do have one foot in the twenty-first century; maybe one hand as well. I was wearing my cell phone in a flowered pouch dangling from my dress belt, and as I spoke I got it out and speed-dialed 911, even though I knew it was hopeless.

“I already tried that,” Agnes said. “You were right; there’s no service out here. This place is like the Twilight Zone.”

Meanwhile, Frankie’s cries for help were getting louder and more desperate. Something had to be done, even if it was drastic and full of risks.

“Oh, Lord,” I prayed aloud, “give me clarity of vision and the wisdom of Solomon.” I paused to tuck a wayward strand of hair back behind a clip. “If a clothes rope is the way to go—” The annoying strand slipped right out, forcing me to pause again.

“If you don’t quit fussing with your hair,” Agnes said, “any answer to your prayer will be a moot point.”

Hair!
That was it! Does not the Lord work in mysterious ways?

“Agnes,” I cried, “how strong is human hair?”

“That depends on the human. There are many types, you know; straight, curly, fine, thick, black, blond—”

This was no time to update the encyclopedia. I raced back to Wanda. The restaurateur was lying in a heap, her face buried in her arms, and panting like a woman in the advanced stages of labor. Clearly she needed a project to take her mind off herself.

“Wanda, how long is your hair?”

“What?” she gasped.

“Your hair, dear. This is a matter of life and death. If you undid that beautiful mound, how long would your hair extend?”

She looked at me, color creeping back into her cheeks as her suspicions rose. “It’s twelve feet, three inches,” she hissed. “What about it?”

Agnes caught up with me. “How do you feel about saving somebody’s life?”

As Wanda’s head swiveled, her enormous bun teetered precariously. “Whose life? How?”

“Frankie Swartzentruber is down that sinkhole,” I said. “The only way for her to get out is to climb up a very narrow ledge with nothing to hold on to. We—
she
needs you to let down your long hair so that she can keep her balance.”

“Like Rapunzel,” Agnes said.

“What?”
Wanda snapped. “You want her to climb up my hair?”

“Absolutely not, dear,” I said soothingly. “She merely needs to steady herself.”

“In a pig’s eye!”

“Wanda,
please
,” Agnes pled. “Surely you don’t want her to die.”

“What about Magdalena’s hair? How long is it?”

“Eighteen inches, tops,” I said quickly. “I cut it when I was pregnant.”

“Well, too bad, then, because I’m not going to have someone yanking on my hair. And FYI, I don’t even like Frankie Schwartzentruber.”

I opened my mouth to give Wanda a piece of my mind, but a sequence of misfired synapses contributed to an “aha moment” that got me sidetracked on a more productive tangent. It occurred to me that there is only one thing that can change a Hemphopple mind, once it’s been made up, and that is flattery.

“Wanda, dear,” I said, “how would you like to become a famous hero?”

“Cut the crap, Yoder. I know what you’re trying to do.”

“Yes, save a life. And do you know how many people are saved each year by a beautiful woman who lets her hair down into a limestone washout?”

“None, I bet. So what? I’m still not doing it.”

“Not even to be on the
Today
show? Take it from me, dear, Matt Lauer is one long, tall drink of water.”

“You don’t even watch TV, Magdalena.”

“He stayed at the inn once.” It was only a small lie; I’m sure that he had once stayed at
some
inn,
some
where in the world. “As for Meredith Vieira; she’s not my brand of tea, but if she was, I’d drink a full pot, and then some.”

“Do you really think they’d have me on?”

Agnes threw herself into the game. “If not them, then
Good Morning America.
I bet they’d put you on the evening entertainment shows too. And of course you’d be all over the national news and in every newspaper.”

“How would you feel about
People
magazine doing a spread?” I said. “I’m sure you could convince them to do several shots showing the Sausage Barn. But oh, my stars, then you’d be rich, and not everyone is cut out to be wealthy; not everyone can handle things the way I can.”

Wanda’s eyes blazed. “You think you’re special, don’t you?”

“Well, you have to admit; I haven’t let my staggeringly large fortune change my standard of living a great deal. Sure, I drove that sinfully red BMW, but that was for a very short time. With the exception of Big Bertha, my whirlpool bath with more heads than Medusa’s snake, I really haven’t splurged at all. I still live in the same old farmhouse—well, a facsimile thereof—dress the same, and eat the same food. One might say that I live the lifestyle of ‘old money,’ rather than that of the nouveaux riches. It’s quite an art, you know.’ ”

“And you think I can’t do that?” Wanda was on her feet and had begun tearing out her hairpins. “Magdalena, I can out-rich you any day of the week.”

“Show that stuck-up Goody Two-Shoes,” Agnes hissed. She was, perhaps, getting too good at this game.

Wanda had no patience for us now. They say that love conquers all, but I do believe that greed and its lesser brother, envy, are both more powerful. Wanda and I have competed since we were both in pigtails, and now that we wore buns, she was determined to prove that hers was made of steel. Despite her fear of gaping apertures, my nemesis ran for the sinkhole, and we practically had to tackle her to keep her from going over the edge.

Once at the edge of the abyss, rather than giving us a hard time, she merely closed her eyes and instructed us to each grab a foot and to hold on tight. That said, she unloosed the final pins, and hair that had not been freed from its mooring in three, maybe four, decades cascaded like a waterfall into the chasm below. Unfortunately—and I had expected this—Wanda’s inverted crown of glory did not quite reach the grasping hands of Frankie Schwartzentruber.

“We’ll have to lower you by your ankles,” I shouted over the roar of the engine.

“What if we drop her?” Agnes said. In all fairness, she had to speak loudly to be heard over the roar of the engine and Frankie’s scream.

“I heard that,” Wanda shouted.

“We won’t drop you,” I shouted back. “Because then how would Frankie get out?”

“Ha-ha, very funny. That woman’s a murderess. And just so you know, I wear panties with the days of the week embroidered on them; my mother-in-law made them for me last year for Christmas. I even wear them on the correct days, except that for some strange reason she forgot to include a pair for Thursday. So that’s when I go au naturel.”

“That’s nice, dear,” I bellowed impatiently. I wasn’t about to get my brains blown out over a prolonged discussion on cute lingerie. “You ready? Because here we go!”

Working smoothly in unison, Agnes and I each grabbed an ankle and propelled Wanda forward. She shrieked like a teenager in a bathtub full of spiders, and like spiders, her hands clung to the walls as we lowered her slowly downward. We jockeyed her forward until we were lying on our stomachs, and Wanda was dangling parallel to the wall, her skirts fallen about her head and shoulders (alas, I had quite forgotten that today was Thursday).