No Use Dying Over Spilled Milk (25 page)

“Shoot if you must this old gray head,” I said, “but then you’ll have to shoot three more. Right, guys?”

“My head is not gray,” Susannah said. “Come to think of it, yours isn’t really either. Except for that one small patch—”

“Danny, dear, are you ready to stand up and be counted?”

“Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer—”

“Stayrook, dear, you, of all people, are not afraid to die for truth and justice, are you?”

“Actually, the truth is that I’m on his side,” Stayrook said.

“I beg your pardon?”

Stayrook ignored me and turned to Arnold. “Where’s Marvin?”

“Damned bastard is chickening out on us. Says he’s done too much for us already. Doesn’t want to be part of anything else.”

“Ach, I was afraid of this. What do we do now? With them?”

“Can we sit down?” Danny whined. “My feet are killing me.”

“Try walking a mile in my shoes,” Susannah snapped.

Without waiting for permission, I sat down, but first I scraped my jaw off the floor. I will confess to being just as shocked as you must be. I, of all people, should have known that the Amish, like any group, have both their saints and their sinners. Still, that an Amish man, a minister even, could be involved in multiple murders stretched even my imagination. One thing that wasn’t hard to imagine was the speed at which Stayrook’s mama was spinning in her grave. Finally, thanks to Stayrook Gerber, my mother would be shamed into retirement.

“On your feet, Yoder!”

I reluctantly obeyed. When a man with upside-down glasses waves a gun at you, it is probably best to appease him. After all, I still had a sore spot on my ear to remind me he meant business.

“Now listen up, everybody. You’re going to be taking a little trip. Anybody here in the mood to visit the pearly gates?”

“Ach! You aren’t going to shoot them, are you?” The concern in Stayrook’s voice suddenly gave me hope.

“Nah, got something better in mind this time, Stay. Especially for the good-looking one in the funny shoes. You”—he pointed the gun at Susannah—“sashay on over here and give Big Daddy a closer look at the goods.”

“Please, Arnold, you promised there would be no more violence.”

“I said get over here!”

My dear sweet sister tottered bravely over to the gunman. “Good cop, bad cop,” she said solemnly.

“What?” The gun swayed in her general direction.

“Stayrook is playing good cop, and you the bad. Saw it once on a TV show. But it isn’t working, you know. You’re both rotten to the core. And so is Marvin Stoltzfus. Anybody who would separate a mother and baby deserves to fry right along with the two of you.”

Arnold seemed surprised. “Thought you two were sisters. Oh, what the hell, the old one can strut her stuff too if it will make her daughter happy.”

I don’t think I’ve ever been so insulted. At least that time when Eugenia Rupp, our church secretary, refused to include my picture in the church directory on the grounds it might scare away prospective members, she did so privately over the phone. You can bet I would have given Arnold a good chunk of my mind if Susannah hadn’t come to my defense.

“Oh, you are just too stupid,” my brave sister said. “Do you think she looks like a dog? I mean, a small dog? Besides, Shnookums wouldn’t be caught dead with hair like that!”

“Et tu, Brutus?”

In the event that we survived, Susannah’s allowance was in for a major downward readjustment.

“Was that little animal you had a dog?” Danny demanded. “I thought sure it was a rat. It had teeth like—”

“Shut up, all of you!”

I don’t think Arnold had just cause to fire his gun then, but even so, a gentleman would have aimed at the hole in the roof. The avalanche of dust that followed made Susannah’s comment about my hair prophetic— Shnookums probably wouldn’t be caught dead with a mop like that. As for the rest of us, it’s a wonder none of us died from fright.

I would like to say that none of us screamed at the resounding crack, but who would I be fooling? A gunshot in an enclosed space would turn even Margaret Thatcher into a quivering bowl of jelly. At least I can say Danny Hem screamed the loudest. Susannah, of course, screamed the highest. As for me, just because I screamed the longest does not necessarily mean I am any more of a coward than the rest. You would scream too if a 180-pound Amish man, having fallen into a dead faint, was lying across your arches.

After that, Arnold Ledbetter turned nasty. He whipped that little gun around like a flashlight in the hands of an overzealous parking-lot attendant. He called us names that made even Susannah blush and left Danny asking for explanations. Then he ordered us to pick up Stayrook and carry him outside.

“Hey, that’s my car,” I said. “That’s stealing, you know.”

He laughed cruelly. “As I recall, you abandoned it along the road last night. Finders keepers, Yoder. Anyway, your car has front-wheel drive, unlike mine. And now your car has some first-rate scratches and dings, unlike mine. This barn is not the most accessible spot, you know.” He had the nerve to laugh again.

“Well, never mind,” I said charitably. “Hop in and we’ll all go get some breakfast.”

“Excellent idea,” Arnold agreed. “About you three hopping in. Stayrook and I will stay right here.”

“You sure? Pauline makes a mean stack of pancakes, although you do have to ride her on the bacon. Tends to make it too crispy for my taste. Sausage is always good though.”

I’m not a total idiot. Of course I knew something was wrong with his offer—I was just stalling for time. There was always a chance—albeit a slim one—that my Pooky Bear would come riding up over the white horizon in a sleigh. There was even a slimmer chance that either Susannah or Danny would come up with a brighter idea of their own. They didn’t.

“Shut up, Yoder.” He jangled my keys wickedly and then flung them out over the snow. “Now the three of you push that car up against the barn.”

We did what we were told.

“Now hop in.”

“Knock the snow off your feet first,” I told the others sternly.

“Wait! What are you doing?”

It was Stayrook, come back to life. Apparently a dead faint is hard to feign when you’re lying face down in the snow.

“Well, well, well. Sleeping beauty finally wake up from her nap? Just in time, Stayrook, to watch these three take a final ride up to those pearly gates we were talking about.”

“Ach! You promised no more violence, Arnold, remember?”

“I promised not to shoot them, and I won’t. Not if they behave. But is it my fault the old one accidentally drove her car into the side of a barn and it caught on fire?”

“You can’t kill me,” Danny said, hiccupping between words.

“Says who?”

“She says so.”

All eyes turned to me. All except Danny’s were focused.

“Hey, it’s true,” I hastened to explain. “You can’t kill Danny Hem until he signs the deed handing over Daisybell Dairies. Right?”

“Wrong!” Arnold was as gleeful as Rudy Tramp was when he stole that shiny red apple out of my lunch box in the fourth grade. What Rudy didn’t know—until he took a big bite—was that the apple was wax.

“I’m not wrong. If you kill Danny now, you’ll be killing the goose that lays your golden eggs.”

“Not a goose,” Danny slurred.

“You were, but your laying days are over,” Arnold said cruelly. He turned to me. “Penmanship was always my best subject. All it took was a little practice, and now even Danny boy can’t tell mine from his. You care to see a sample?”

It was time to switch tactics. “No one is going to believe it was an accident if I’m found dead wearing Amish clothes.”

“That’s right,” Stayrook said. “We had them dress that way so we could drive them over to the border and dump them in the Ohio River. Next to where you had me hide that buggy.”

I shook a finger at the only real Amish there. “Why, Stayrook Gerber, I am ashamed of you. And you said no more violence.”

“Well, at least no more violence in Farmersburg County,” he said, with a whine in his voice. “I plan to keep living here, you know.”

“Shut up! All of you. No one’s going to tell what they’re wearing when I get through with them. They’ll be burned to a crisp, like Pauline’s bacon. Won’t be able to tell one from another.”

I took a deep breath and steadied myself against the car. “Well, so long, sis. It’s been an experience knowing you. And I do love you, I hope you know that. Even if I wasn’t always as patient as I might have been.”

Susannah had the decency to burst into tears. “You were right, Mags, there is a God after all. At least my little Shnookums doesn’t have to die.”

“Mind if I have just one more drink?” Danny asked politely. “There’s still a bottle of good scotch back there in the hay that I’d hate to see wasted.”

Arnold smiled broadly. “Damn good idea. Bring all the bottles. Wouldn’t hurt for them to find the car filled with the stuff.” He waved Danny into the barn.

“Must be a dozen bottles in there,” I said quickly. “I’ll give him a hand.”

I darted in after Danny before Arnold could fire a shot. I finally had a plan.

I might have left my car keys behind when I fled, but I didn’t leave my purse. There isn’t an American woman over forty who can step outside without her purse. It is, of course, a political legacy that dates back to the beginning of our country. Whereas our founding fathers claimed the right to bear arms, our founding mothers claimed the right to bear purses. So entrenched did this idea become that at the height of McCarthyism, or so I’m told, a woman outdoors without a bag on her arm was immediately branded a Communist. Some intensely patriotic women, like Mama, go so far as to be buried with their purses.

This anti-Communist gesture has spread to other Western nations. Now even the Queen of England carries a purse, although what she puts in it is anybody’s guess. The British tabloids have told us everything there is to know about the insides of the royal bedrooms, but nothing about the insides of the royal pocket books. Susannah insists that the Queen carries a pooch in her purse. Who knows, she may be on to something. Some of the pocket books I’ve seen that grande dame toting lately could accommodate a small corgi. On the other hand, they might simply be filled with tissues, given the sad state of her family’s affairs.

At any rate, my purse was still in the banr, and in it was an extra set of car keys. Although I had my doubts that Arnold would let me back out of the barn toting my bag, there was no way he could stop me from smuggling out my keys. Thanks to Susannah, I knew that bras made excellent substitute purses (which leads me to conclude that some of the bra-burners back in the sixties might indeed have been Communists).

We emerged from the barn with our arms full of bottles and dumped them into the back of the car. Arnold had Stayrook frisk us both, which is kind of like what I would imagine sex was like between my parents. My bra went undisturbed.

“Now line up, folks,” Arnold said, pulling a syringe from his coat pocket and handing it to Stayrook. “Time for those flu shots.”

“I already had mine, dear.”

“Not one like this, you haven’t. Thanks to my comrade here, today’s selection includes the finest in cattle tranquilizers. We originally intended it to sedate you while you took the big swim. But as you see, I’m flexible.”

“I hate needles,” Susannah said. “I think I’ll pass.”

Arnold clicked the safety off. “Actually, the shots are not optional. How else am I going to keep you in a burning car? So it’s either a nice, relatively painless shot, or a bullet to the head. What will it be?”

Susannah calmly took off her bonnet and patted her hair. “I’ll take the bullet then. I told you I can’t stand needles.”

Stayrook was obviously distressed. “The injection will hardly hurt at all,” he said. “I give them all the time.”

Susannah held her head high. “Yes, to cows. But I’m not a cow. And anyway, I don’t know where that needle has been. What about AIDS? Go ahead and shoot, Arnie.”

I was horrified. My plan did not call for Susannah to throw in the towel so quickly.

“She doesn’t mean it, Arnold.” I winked at Susannah. “She would really rather have the shot.”

“I would not!”

“You would so.”

“Would not, and what’s wrong with your eye, Mags?”

“Piece of hay, dear.” I moved closer to Susannah so I could whisper to her, if not kick her.

Arnold was no fool. “Get back, Yoder, or you buy the farm now. Kinda make your choice easy for you.”

I had been thinking the whole time, and now I started praying as well.

“I’ll take the first injection,” I said. “If it doesn’t hurt too bad, promise me you’ll take it, Susannah.”

My sister rolled her eyes, possibly for the last time. It was a strangely touching sight.

“All right. If you take the shot, I’ll take it. But I’m warning you, I might faint.”

“Good girl. All right, buster,” I said to Stayrook, “sock it to me.”

It was hard to tell that Stayrook had ever injected a cow by the way he handled that syringe. He was almost as incompetent as old Nurse Schrock, before Doc Gingerich made her retire. Of course, both nurse and doctor are dead now, but a generation of Hernians, Susannah included, have left arms that look like they have been pressed up against miniature waffle irons. Arnold had to do a lot of stabbing before he got the blunt needle to penetrate my clothes.

Of course the injection hurt. A cattle syringe is just barely smaller than a pastry funnel. At least it felt that way. But even though my teeth drew blood, I kept my mouth shut.

“Next!”

Dear Danny was obviously in his cups, and he responded as if Arnold were passing out free drinks. Fortunately for him, his inebriety was in his favor, because he seemed to feel nothing.

“Piece of cake,” he said, and wobbled aside. Susannah screamed. This was not one of her run-of- the-mill screams intended to attract attention or sympathy. This was a scream generated by pain and abject terror. My heart went out to her.

Even Stayrook, criminal that he was, appeared moved. He dropped the syringe like a hot potato and steadied Susannah with both hands.