No Use Dying Over Spilled Milk (4 page)

Lizzie beamed. “It’s the extra cinnamon. And just a pinch of ground cloves.”

“And this bread! Even Freni Hostetler can’t make a loaf this light.”

Lizzie blushed deeply. “It’s store-bought. What with the wedding to cook for and Levi passing last week, I didn’t have time to bake.”

I nodded. Amish weddings, I knew, demanded copious amounts of food. I had no idea who Levi was or what he had passed, but if it was important enough to cause an Amish woman to stop baking, it had to be a matter of consequence.

Suddenly Isaac stopped whimpering. “Is Uncle Levi still dead?” he asked.

Samuel patted his eldest son’s head. “Yah, he’s sleeping in the ground. But soon he’ll be with God.”

I carefully swallowed a rather large bite. I had heard nothing at the gathering about a man named Levi dying recently. Of course, I had spent most of the time avoiding conversations, and the gal from Goshen, an outsider like me, was apparently in the dark as well.

Lizzie seemed to sense my curiosity. “They’re talking about Levi Mast. Samuel’s first cousin. He died last Tuesday. Exactly a week ago.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” I turned and looked sympathetically at Samuel.

“Yah, he was a good man,” my kinsman said. He didn’t return my glance.

I took another big bite, chewed it slowly, and swallowed. “How did he die?”

The room was suddenly as silent as the cemetery where Levi Mast slept. Seven pairs of eyes, and that included the baby’s, were trained on Samuel’s face.

It was a rather handsome face, topped by a salad bowl of blond hair and ringed at the bottom by a light brown beard. Like all Amish men, Samuel had no mustache.

“It was a farming accident,” he said slowly.

I could tell he was hedging, practically begging for a question or two. “What kind of an accident?”

“Silo,” Samuel mumbled.

I nodded. Levi Mast wasn’t the first farmer to slip and fall off a silo ladder. Jacob Berkey back in Hernia fell twenty feet from his and would undoubtedly have been transformed into a paraplegic if he hadn’t landed on his wife, who had come to call him to dinner. Thank goodness Rachel Berkey had a strong constitution and drank plenty of milk. The clever way she sewed her aprons did a lot to camouflage the fact that her posture was no longer ramrod-straight.

“A tragic thing,” Lizzie said. She wiped at least a pint of apple butter off the baby’s face and sighed deeply. “On his wedding day a nice young man like that turns into a pretzel.”

Suddenly seven pairs of eyes were trained hungrily on her face. It would be vain of me to say Lizzie is attractive, because I think she and I bear a strong family resemblance. Suffice it to say she has the Yoder nose and light brown hair. The Creator neither smiled nor frowned when he made our mold.

“He died on his wedding day?” I blurted out.

“He was supposed to marry Barbara Hooley that morning.” Lizzie was suddenly bitter. “It was a very inconvenient time.”

The five youngest pairs of eyes now focused on my face. Undoubtedly my mouth was wide open.

“Yah, a terrible thing,” Samuel said. “His mother found him when she went to call him in for breakfast. His head had broken open like an egg.”

Neither parent seemed at all concerned about discussing gruesome subjects in front of the children. It was the Troyer genes again. Susannah and I had been habitually banished by our parents whenever the table talk strayed from food, farm, or faith. It was no wonder the five little Troyer boys were basket cases.

I picked up a fifth slice of bread and slathered it with the thick red apple butter. “What was he doing on top of the silo, anyway? I mean, on his wedding morning?”

Samuel shrugged. “Who knows? The Masts have always been a little strange, if you ask me. Maybe he was trying to see Barbara’s farm from up there. At any rate, it resulted in a tragedy.”

“We had all been cooking for a week,” Lizzie added peevishly. “Relatives had come from as far away as Iowa and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. There was even a family in from Hernia. Jonas and Lydia Zook. You know them?”

I nodded absently. Of course I knew them. I knew all the Hernia Amish. “What happened to all that food?”

“Ach, the food!” said Lizzie. “That was saved for the funeral meal. What a waste that was. Food tastes better at a wedding, don’t you think?”

“I’m sure it does,” I said agreeably. Although if it was canned sardines she brought to the wedding, unless she had opened them three days earlier, it probably didn’t make any difference.

“My sardine sandwiches were all dried out by then,” Lizzie said sadly, “so I had to bring eggs.”

“Uncle Levi’s head cracked open like a broken egg,” Isaac said and giggled. His four brothers giggled along with him.

I cast the urchins a quick, disapproving frown. Clearly, it was possible to be corrupted without the aid of television.

“I suppose there was a thorough investigation,” I said.

The parents of the errant boys volleyed glances, but said nothing.

“Well?”

“Yah, the Farmersburg deputy took care of everything. He ruled it an accident, and there was no problem.”

“And of course it was an accident, right?”

“Yah,” Samuel said, but he refused to look me in the eye.

We ate in silence for a while. There was obviously more to Levi Mast’s death than I’d been told. But I knew enough about human nature, if not my kinsmen, to know that I wasn’t going to force any more information out of them. When the time was right, one or the other would supply me with all the important details.

“I have a confession to make,” Lizzie said suddenly, much to my surprise.

“Yes?” I hoped it didn’t sound too eager.

“That isn’t apple butter you’re eating.”

I swallowed quickly. “Oh?”

Lizzie looked away. She was obviously embarrassed. “Our apple crop was miserable last fall. Full of worms, and as coarse as corncobs. I decided to make up a batch of mock apple butter.”

I tried to preempt the rest of the confession. “Well, it’s just great. Now tell me, who was that pretty young woman with the twin babies I saw this afternoon?”

“Zucchini,” Lizzie said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“That’s what’s in the mock apple butter. Zucchini.”

“But it’s red!”

Lizzie smiled. “Cherry Kool-Aid.”

“You don’t say!” I picked up my knife and discreetly scraped off what I could from the bread on my plate.

“Time for dessert!” Lizzie said, getting up, and the boys all smacked their lips and rubbed their hands together in anticipation.

She returned from the kitchen with a huge pan of warm bread pudding, my favorite dessert. It was studded with raisins and smelled delicious, so I decided to risk it. After all, I had just survived a pint of Kool-Aid-flavored zucchini—what possible harm could Lizzie’s bread pudding inflict on me? Just to be on the safe side, however, I carefully picked out all the raisins.

Susannah and I and the mangy mutt all shared one double bed. Susannah’s snores generally sound like a pig fight at a slop trough, with the occasional snore reminiscent of that time Papa accidentally backed over our prize boar, Samson, with his tractor. Shnookums snores as well, but because of his smaller size, his slumber sounds are softer. Nails raked across a chalkboard seems to describe it about right.

Before you start feeling too sorry for me, I feel obligated to point out that Amish houses don’t have central heat. In fact, generally only the ground floor is heated, by a large stove, or sometimes a fireplace. Occasionally kerosene space heaters are placed in upstairs rooms, but not in the Troyer manse. And since it was February, after all, the proximity of another warm body, and a two-pound hair ball, was better than nothing.

Despite the racket next to me, I did eventually fall asleep. But before I did, I replayed the day’s events many times over in my mind, and true to form, I generated more questions than a four-year-old is capable of thinking up.

Why hadn’t I heard a peep about Levi Mast’s death from other Amish that afternoon? Why had Levi Mast climbed to the top of a corn silo on the morning of his February wedding, when it was in the autumn that farmers filled their silos from the top? And why would a strong young man, who had undoubtedly climbed silos many times before, lose his grip on the ladder and split his head open like a cracked egg? And why would Sam and Lizzie Troyer, who were obviously a little cracked themselves, bring the young man’s death to my attention? And what were sardine bones doing in the bread pudding?

Breakfast was toast and sardine omelettes. I was not surprised. The five Troyer boys resumed howling the moment they saw Susannah, and my poor sister was forced to take refuge on the front porch again. I am convinced that the cigarettes she buys are vitamin-enriched, since smoke is about the only thing that passes her gullet on a typical day. If it weren’t for all the tar in Susannah’s lungs, even just a gentle breeze would inflate those yards of flapping fabric in her frivolous frocks to the extent that she might well float far away. The two pounds of barking ballast in her bra would not be enough to keep her grounded.

During breakfast I tried unsuccessfully to get back on the subject of Levi Mast. It was like trying to get chickens to talk. There was a lot of clucking and a little crowing, but nothing specific said. I had the impression that the couple, especially Sam, regretted having opened up to me the night before. I decided to let the matter roost until later.

After breakfast I helped Lizzie do the dishes. Since the Troyer house does not have electricity, we did it the old-fashioned way by heating water on the stove and washing them in the sink. I washed while Lizzie dried. In fact, I insisted on that, even though the bottom of the omelette pan sported a crust of egg and fish a quarter inch thick. It is my belief that the best way to get people to share their innermost secrets is to perform their hardest chores for them. Guilt and gratitude go a long way toward relaxing even the most restricted larynxes.

“I can certainly understand how frustrating it would be to cook for someone’s wedding, and then have him die,” I said, holding up the gleaming frying pan.

“A real waste,” Lizzie said. She reached for the pan, but I held it just out of reach, a reminder of what I had just done for her.

“You don’t suppose that young Levi might have changed his mind about the wedding, and didn’t know how to back out gracefully?”

Lizzie stared with her mouth open. Her orthodontia confirmed that we were indeed kin. “Suicide?”

I nodded sympathetically. Per capita, the Amish have an astonishingly high rate of suicide. Like everything else, conformity comes with a price.

“Ach, no,” Lizzie nearly shouted. “Levi was very happy. He and Barbara Hooley made a perfect couple. They were so much in love, it was almost shameful. They were like me and Sam in the beginning.” She blushed.

“Appearances can be deceiving,” I pointed out. “I know of a married man who would much rather spend time with his buddies—one in particular—than with his beautiful wife.”

“Ach du lieber! Is that how they talk in Hernia? Well, Magdalena Yoder, you should be ashamed of yourself, speaking of the dead that way. Levi Mast had eyes for only Barbara. His death was no suicide! If anything it was pos—” Her jaws clamped shut so hard I could hear her teeth click.

“What did you say?”

“I said that Levi didn’t commit suicide.”

“That’s not all you said.”

Poor Lizzie reminded me of the raccoon I once cornered in my henhouse. Had it been able to speak, no doubt it would have denied killing my prize hen, Pertelote, despite the feathers stuck in its teeth. While Lizzie didn’t have any feathers in her mouth, it had betrayed her nonetheless. “I am not the person you should be talking to,” she said. It was an admission of guilt.

I handed her the gleaming pan. “Oh? Who is then?”

“Stayrook Gerber,” she whispered.

By the set of her jaw I knew our conversation was over. Fortunately, after the frying pan, there were no more things to wash.

Susannah and I elected not to attend the funeral itself, because it was in German and would last for several hours. Besides which, at the burial there would be another, much shorter service, and we could just as well pay our respects there. Of course, this meant taking my car, not that there would have been room in the Troyer buggy for Susannah and me and five bawling boys.

It was just as well we took separate vehicles. I needed to make a phone call, and Susannah needed a last puff on a cigarette before we hit the cemetery. It had been hard enough getting my sister to dress appropriately for the funeral. Fortunately Lizzie just happened to have twelve yards of black material, and Susannah, once she had skeptically draped herself in it, decided that she looked like some TV character named Morticia. She thought it was highly appropriate for the occasion, and for once I didn’t comment. The real secret of happiness, I’ve finally discovered, is knowing when you’re ahead.

I found a gas station on the way that had a public telephone, and I dialed while Susannah dragged.

“Hello, PennDutch Inn,” the voice on the other end said.