"If it does snow, I can lend you a pair of galoshes," I offered gallantly.
"But Miss Yoder," he said laughing, "I wear a size twelve. Men's twelve. I doubt if even your feet are that big."
"Thank you, sort of. But these aren't mine really - these were my father's."
"In that case, thank you. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you."
"No offense taken. Well, speaking of feet, I'm dead on mine. If you want to tell the others about breakfast, young Linda and Mr. Grizzle are still in the dining room quilting away like they were at a bee."
"Linda and Billy?" He sounded genuinely surprised, but recovered quickly and said good night. I got the impression he would continue reading until milking time. Young people these days don't seem to need any sleep. It must be all that fluoride they've been getting in their water.
As I closed the door behind me, all I could think about was crawling into my warm, snuggly bed. Then I remembered that I was going to have to share my bed and choked back a yelp of dismay.
8
If you've never had to share a bed with Susannah, count yourself lucky. I hate to say this about my own sister, but unfortunately each year fewer and fewer people can count themselves lucky. Of course I don't share Susannah's bed in the same way these people do, but, still, I feel a weird sort of bond with them.
If you survive the night with Susannah, chances are that you will emerge with enough bumps and bruises to draw looks of sympathy from total strangers, and undoubtedly will be a good deal deafer to boot. Susannah thrashes and snores like nobody's business. When Mama and Papa were alive, we had a sow named Susannah, and its name was no coincidence. It is a pure wonder that Susannah's precious little Shnookums sleeps with her every night and still survives. But per- haps this explains why the mutt is so high-strung he can catch kites on a windless day.
"Susannah," I warned her that night for the millionth time, "unless you want to sleep on the floor, stay on your side of the bed. And for pity's sake, sleep on your left side. Otherwise you sound like a pond full of bullfrogs."
Despite her claim to tiredness, Susannah had been awake and watching "Murder, She Wrote" on her portable TV. "Dishes done?" she'd asked callously when I entered the room. I said nothing and let her finish the program while I undressed. Just having the TV on, especially on a Sunday night, made me feel guilty.
"Well, if we're not going to be chatty, all right if I stay up and watch the movie? It's about this woman who finds out her husband's having an affair, and she decides to get even by having an affair of her own, except that the man she chooses is the husband of the woman her husband is having an affair with. So, at one point they figure it out and - "
That's when I made her turn off the TV and scoot over. "Susannah dear," I said, trying to imitate Mama's voice, "let's say our prayers now and get ready for the sandman."
"Is he cute?"
I simply refused to answer. Cute is not what Susannah is after. John Stutzman, who goes to our church, is cute, and he's all eyes for Susannah, but she pays him no mind. Not that Susannah goes to our church anymore anyway. My point is that
Susannah is turning her back on our people and our traditions to such an extent that, as awful as it is to say so, I am glad Mama and Papa are not here to see it. That old adage about the apple not falling far from the tree is plain baloney. Susannah's apple rolled out of the orchard and into the world the year Mama and Papa died.
I eventually quit fuming about Susannah and fell asleep. Both she and Shnookums beat me to it, however, and when I did drift off, it was to the alternating rhythm of Susannah's deep throaty snores and Shnookums's pitiful pips. At some point I dreamed that I was stranded in a rowboat without oars in the world's largest frog pond. Maybe it was even an ocean, except that it was shallow enough for cattails and fresh enough for millions of croaking, squeaking, and bellowing frogs. Then, suddenly, all the frogs but one fell silent, and the one, in a startlingly human voice, began to scream for help.
I woke up and turned on the bedside lamp. Not surprisingly, Susannah and Shnookums were still sound asleep. Of course, it wasn't their dream, but not that it made any difference. It is those with the most on their consciences who sleep the soundest, or haven't you noticed? Anyway, I was just about to turn off the light and try to go back to sleep when I heard the scream again. This time I was definitely not dreaming.
I put on my slippers and threw on my heavy corduroy robe, which doesn't at all compromise my modesty, and set out to investigate. The scream seemed to have come from upstairs, possibly from the new wing, above the new dining room. As soon as
I had negotiated the impossibly steep stairs, it was immediately clear that I was on the right track. Joel and all three members of the Ream party were standing in the hallway looking toward the new wing.
"What the - " began the Congressman, but I cut him off.
"It's okay, folks, I'll take care of this." I mean, what's the point of standing around and scratching your head when all you have to do is check something out?
The scream, a sort of garbled "help," was emitted one more time, and then I immediately knew where it came from. I headed straight for Susannah's old room, with Joel at my heels.
The door was open, and the reading lamps on either side of the bed were turned on. Centered in the bed, but with her back pressed up against the headboard, was Linda McMahon. She seemed to be staring fixedly at something on the quilt that covered her legs.
"Linda!" Joel pushed past me and raced to the bed.
"Help!" she screamed one more time. So intently was she staring at whatever it was, she didn't seem to be aware of our presence.
I went around to the other side of the bed and tried to follow the angle of her gaze. She was staring at something just below her knees, at some point in a strip of blue and red calico. Then I saw it too, but, I'm ashamed to say, I started to laugh.
"What's so funny?" demanded Joel.
"It's only this." I took off one of my slippers and laid it gently on the quilt, atop Linda's shins. When I removed it a minute later, there was a little brown, eight-legged creature clinging to it. "A little itsy-bitsy, teensie-weensie spider."
Joel recoiled as if I were waving a snake at him, and Linda somewhat ironically began to open and close her mouth like a baby bird begging to be fed.
"Come on, folks, get a grip on it," I said in my best Susannah imitation. "This is a harmless little house spider, just out to get himself a midnight snack. And I don't mean you," I hastened to assure Linda.
"Where did he come from?" Joel had backed far enough away from the bed so that I was having to lean way over it just to allow him to get a good look.
"Probably from up there," I said, pointing to the ceiling. "He really is harmless, I can assure you. He eats things too small to even see. In fact, some folks consider them to be lucky spiders." I wasn't really lying. Susannah did consider it lucky when I didn't make her sweep down all the cobwebs that eventually collected in her room.
"Well, I consider it a health hazard and a menace," said the Congressman, who had apparently been standing in the doorway for some time. "You will, of course, be calling an exterminator in the morning." It was a directive, not a question.
I simply stared at the Congressman in his peacock-blue silk robe, not quite sure what to say. At last the lovely Lydia intervened by slipping her arm through her husband's and pulling him gently away. "Come on, dear," I heard her say as she led him down the hall, "you've got to get some sleep if you're going to bag that eight-point buck in the morning." Wordlessly, their loyal aide trotted after them.
"What are you going to do about him?" asked Joel. "Ignore him, I guess."
"No, I mean him." He pointed to the spider, which was still clinging to my slipper.
I glanced down at the little critter, which by then was crawling up the slipper toward my hand. "Open the window, please!"
"Oh, no," cried Joel. "You can't do that! It's November. Arachnids can't take freezing weather."
I headed resolutely for the bathroom. "Not that, either, Miss Yoder." He took a couple of deep breaths and seemed to calm down a little. "I mean, please. Can't we release him someplace safe and warm?"
I practically thrust the slipper at him. "Here, you release him. Try the cellar-through the kitchen, but before the porch."
Joel took the slipper, handling it as gingerly as Susannah handles the poop-scoop on those rare occasions when she stoops to clean up after Shnookums. But once it was in his possession, he took off at a sprint.
I sat down on the edge of the bed to attend to young Linda. She had ceased gaping like a hungry fledgling and was by this time gasping like a dying fish. I patted her shoulder and tried to look sympathetic. Admittedly, nurturing is not my forte.
"There, there," I said somewhat lamely, "it'll be all right."
"But he might die down there," she finally managed to say.
"Don't worry," I hastened to assure her, "there are plenty more where that one came from."
Linda began gasping and gaping again, and it took me a couple of minutes to get her coherent. "Not the spider! Joel!"
I patted her a little harder. "Joel will be just fine. The cellar stairs aren't that much steeper than these, and Mose promised me he would fix both the loose steps."
"You idiot!" said Linda rudely. I must have looked shocked, because she almost immediately apologized. "But don't you see," she added, "poor Joel could get bitten by that horrible thing and die?"
I smiled kindly. "Absolutely not. That little spider couldn't even kill a fly. I've been bitten by them oodles of times. Of course it hurts, but all that happens is that you get a little lump that goes away in a couple of hours. Joel will be just fine."
As if on cue, Joel popped back into the room with my slipper in hand. "All's well that ends well," he said, perhaps a little out of breath.
"Thanks, Joel."
"No problem, Miss Yoder."
"Yeah, thanks, Joel." Linda seemed to be breathing normally again.
I figured it was a good time for me to leave. "Well, good night, then."
"Good night, Miss Yoder. I'll stay with her for a while."
Linda smiled appreciatively up at Joel. Perhaps I had been wrong about some of my early assumptions. "When you assume," Papa used to say, "you make an ass out of u and me."
I said my good nights and had just started down the hall when something occurred to me. I turned back. Both young people were just as I had left them. "Say," I said hesitantly, "isn't it a little odd that with all the commotion, Ms. Parker doesn't seem to have awakened?"
"Not at all," answered Linda. She sounded just a wee bit smug. "She usually takes a 'chill pill.' "
"A what?"
"A tranquilizer," translated Joel. He looked to Linda for confirmation.
She nodded. "Jeanette, I mean Ms. Parker, has a chronic back problem. It's exacerbated by stress. A Xanax now and then relaxes her and helps her get to sleep."
"I see," I said, but of course I didn't. I generally disapprove of any kind of medication. Oh, not on religious grounds, I assure you. It's just that Granny Yoder was a hypochondriac. At one time I counted thirty-seven different bottles of pills and vitamins in her medicine chest. If the old lady had simply let nature take its course, she might have left the planet years earlier and spared us all a lot of grief.
I was coming out of Linda's room when I noticed that the fire escape door at the end of the new wing, right next to Miss
Brown's room, was slightly ajar. My first thought was that the reclusive Miss Brown had slipped out for a breath of fresh night air.
After all, moths are most active at night. But then I noticed a thin trail of sunflower seeds and concluded that young Joel was the insomniac I'd suspected him to be. I made a mental note to talk to him in the morning. If Crazy Maynard got in and showed young
Linda what he showed me, she might scream for days.
On the way back to my bedroom, I tripped and nearly tumbled down the impossibly steep stairs. I was thinking about
Susannah, and how Ms. Parker had nothing on me when it came to stress and back pain. So it wasn't until I'd crawled back into bed that I remembered two other people hadn't turned out in response to Linda's arachnophobic screams.
9
Hardly more than an hour had passed when I was partially awakened by a loud pounding noise.
"Be still, my heart," I murmured, and turned over to go back to sleep. It wasn't my fault, and therefore not a sin, that I had been dreaming about the not-unattractive Billy Dee Grizzle.
The pounding persisted, and eventually it became clear to my sleep-deprived brain that someone was hanging on the door and shouting. In my dreams, Billy Dee had only grunted.
