No Use Dying Over Spilled Milk (8 page)

“With the world, you mean?”

“Yah, with the world. And things worked very well. Since we had eliminated the middleman, we were able to age our cheese the proper length of time, and still sell it for less than what Daisybell was selling theirs for.”

I sat up straight. “Daisybell continued to make cheese? How could they do that when you stopped supplying them milk?”

Stayrook shrugged. “Other farmers, English farmers from outside the county, they trucked their milk in to the dairy. But I heard it wasn’t the same.”

I had to stifle a chuckle. “Amish milk is somehow better?”

Stayrook nodded. “Amish milk in Farmersburg County is.” He was quite serious. “Some say it is the richest in the world.”

That was quite a claim, coming from an Amishman. Unless it was absolutely true, Stayrook was guilty of pride, the worst of Amish sins.

“Perhaps it is something in the soil,” I suggested.

“Yah, perhaps. Anyway, Mr. Hem was not happy with our success. Twice he came to see Levi at the farm when I was there delivering milk, and once I saw him at Yost’s place.”

“Did you hear what he wanted?”

“Yah, and it was always the same. He wanted to buy out the cooperative and for us to start delivering milk to him again. Of course, we refused. Even after he apologized for what happened to Elsie, we refused.

“Mr. Hem didn’t understand that. ‘You Amish are making a big mistake,’ he said. ‘You are in far over your heads.’ We told him that we could all swim and would have to take our chances. ‘Then you’ll pay for this,’ he said. That was the second time I saw him at Levi’s farm.”

“Sounds like a threat to me.”

Stayrook nodded silently.

“You have, of course, told this to the sheriff,” I said needlessly.

The sharp sound of Stayrook sucking in his breath startled me. “Ach, no!”

I was incensed, but not surprised. “Stayrook Gerber, the sheriff has to be told if there was a threat. And this is not just an Amish thing anymore. Murder is a capital crime, a crime against the state. You can’t sit on evidence out of religious conviction.”

Stayrook turned and faced the window. Since it had fogged, I knew it wasn’t because something outside had suddenly caught his eye. “Magdalena, the Bible says that God will seek his own judgment in his own time. It is arrogant and sinful for a man to interfere with God’s plan.”

“Ha!” I could no longer restrain myself. “So now what are you going to do? All start working for Mr. Hem again? He could be a murderer, you know, or doesn’t that bother you? I suppose you see him as part of God’s plan as well.”

The Stayrook Gerber who turned from the window and faced me again was a different man. The big brawny gravedigger had somehow shrunk considerably and was now a scarecrow propped up on the seat. “We are going to sell our farms and move.”

The owl hooted mournfully.

“What?” I spoke loud enough for the owl to hear me, and he obliged me with an answering hoot. I ignored him. “You are all going to sell and move? To where?”

Stayrook answered in a voice that matched his diminished size. “To Indiana. La Grange County. Most of us have kin there anyway—”

“So what? So do I, but you don’t see me living there, and believe me, I’ve had my life threatened a time or two. What does the bishop think of this?”

Stayrook’s voice dropped. “The bishop thinks that Levi and Yost may have been possessed. He thinks that if our people move to Indiana, they can leave behind the forces of evil.”

“And you?”

He shrugged. “Have you come across evil before, Magdalena?”

“Have I ever! But I didn’t move.”

“It is God’s will for us.”

“Says who?”

“The elders. They are all in agreement with the bishop. That is how we know it is God’s will. Part of his plan for us.”

I observed a rare moment of silence. I bit my tongue and counted to ten. Twice. The counting, I mean, not the biting. “Well,” I said calmly, “maybe I am part of God’s plan as well. In fact, you may henceforth refer to me as Phase One.”

“Ach du lieber,” Stayrook moaned. “As if we don’t have enough problems right now. Just who do you think you are, Magdalena Yoder?”

“Whoooo?” the owl echoed.

It was time to turn around and drop Stayrook off at the Yoder farm. If my instincts were right, life was going to be complicated enough without my having to dodge rumors that I was having an affair with Stayrook Gerber. In the words of Susannah, I “peeled out of there and burned rubber” all the way back.

It wasn’t yet nine o’clock when I got back to the Troyer farm, but they were already home and in bed. I felt deliciously guilty as I slowly opened and then closed the front door behind me and crept up the creaky wooden stairs. If that had been Mama’s house, she would have been out of bed and swinging a rolling pin seconds after the first creak. The pin, by the way, would have been meant for my backside, not a burglar.

Either the Troyers were all asleep or else they were totally uninterested in disciplining me, because no one intercepted me, smelled my breath, or checked my seams. For one intense moment I allowed myself to envy the Troyer boys and the relative freedom they would experience when they hit their teen years. Then I remembered the sardine omelettes. Mama might have been strict, but she was a first-rate cook. Love can come and go, after all, but a stomach is forever.

I was dreaming that Aaron and I were trying to ice-skate on Miller’s Pond, in our bare feet, when Susannah crawled into bed and stuck her icy feet against mine. It took me a minute or two to become fully awake.

“Susannah Yoder Entwhistle!” I glanced at the luminescent hands of my watch. “It is four thirty-five in the morning! You should be ashamed of yourself!”

“For what?” she asked sleepily.

Then for the first time I remembered who it was Susannah had been out with. It was the murderer himself, Danny Hem. Even if it wasn’t him who pushed Levi from the silo, or held Yost under as he drowned in milk, it was him who had ordered their deaths. I was positive of that. My baby sister, whom I was supposed to protect now that Mama and Papa were gone, and who surely couldn’t look out for herself, was dating a cold-blooded murderer. Mama must be spinning in her grave so fast that the people in Tokyo undoubtedly were feeling the vibrations and expecting a tidal wave.

“Susannah, you can’t—” I stopped. What my baby sister didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. At least not yet. But her relationship with Danny Hem could help lead to justice for the Amish community of Farmersburg, whether they wanted that justice or not. Foolishly I kept my big mouth shut.

The next morning I passed on the sardine omelettes and left the house while Susannah was still sawing logs. However, that’s not saying much. Once, shortly after she graduated from high school, my sister slept for thirty-six hours straight. Aaron tells me that she was probably drunk and none of us knew it at the time, but I don’t think that had to be the case. Susannah slept so much when she was a baby that Mama, who was going through the change of life and was easily distracted, forgot to feed her for an entire day. Of course, she hadn’t checked Susannah’s diaper either, and wouldn’t you know, at the end of the day it was still dry. One thing for sure, my sister has a world-class bladder.

Outside it was just beginning to get light and promised to be another cold but clear day. Over in the mountains of Pennsylvania, according to my car radio, eight more inches of snow had fallen overnight, and six more were forecast. It was as if Hernia were in another part of the country altogether, instead of just two hundred miles away. It seemed bizarre to be driving on flat, clear roads when back home everyone was snowed in. I said a quick prayer for Aaron, Doc, and Mose, who were undoubtedly cooped up with restless guests and numerous complaints.

Farmersburg is easily twice the size of Hernia, but it certainly is no Pittsburgh. Even Somerset and Bedford dwarf it. That was fine with me. I am not a fan of big-city driving, and Farmersburg was just my cup of tea. For a real cup of tea I stopped at Pauline’s Pancake House, right where U.S. Route 62 comes into it from the west. Frankly, I didn’t expect much from Pauline, but after eating with the Troyers, it couldn’t help but be a pleasant surprise. The pancakes were light and fluffy, the butter real, and the syrup warm. That the syrup was only two percent real maple didn’t matter to me. Mama gave us only corn syrup when we were growing up; the maple she saved for when we had company, and to this day I can’t imagine eating the real thing unless the table is decked out in its finest and I am in my Sunday best.

Pauline, the proprietress, was a plateful herself. I could hear her gum snapping from three tables away. There is something palpable, perhaps a pheromone, that proprietresses emit, and that others of their ilk pick right up on. Whatever it is, Pauline made a beeline for me.

“Hey, hon, where you from?”

Since I could read between the lines, I cut straight to the chase. “The PennDutch Inn, Hernia, Pennsylvania, and I’m only here for a few days.”

Pauline’s smile of relief was so wide that her gum fell out, but with a practiced hand she caught it and popped it back in her mouth, without missing a beat. “Then welcome to town, honey. It’s always good to see a visiting face.”

Between the lines that meant she could relax now that she knew I wasn’t competition moving in on her territory.

“This is a charming little town, and quite a place you have here, dear. You get a lot of tourists?”

Between the lines I meant that Farmersburg was about as far off the beaten track as one could get, her restaurant was more than adequate, and did outside troublemakers show up with any regularity?

Pauline slid into the red vinyl seat across from me. “May I, hon? Most of my Joes are home-grown, but we get a few cameras now and then, usually in the summer. The tourist you’re talking about is from West Virginia.”

“West Virginia?”

Pauline nodded, and her beehive hairdo tilted precariously. Fortunately it was stanchioned with enough bobby pins to secure the Empire State Building in gale-force winds. “Big tipper, but a slow eater, if you know what I mean.”

I did. “So he’s here for a while,” I said. “What’s his game?”

Pauline tapped the creamer in front of me. “A little squeeze from the cow, but he’s squeezing more than that if you ask me.”

Not one to decline an invitation, I asked, “Who’s in the juicer, dear?”

“The Aymish.”

I gritted my teeth, but held my tongue. Clearly Pauline had once been a tourist herself.

“Do tell, dear.”

Pauline glanced furtively around, as if trying to spot eavesdroppers. To be really thorough she might have tried jabbing her hair with a fork. An entire CB unit could have been hidden in that hill.

“The Amish supply me with most of my basics. You have bacon with that?” She pointed at my plate, which had been scraped so clean that even a forensic dietician would have been at a loss to recreate my meal.

“Two orders of bacon,” I said proudly. The experts won’t agree, but in my opinion fat is where it’s at. Better a short, fat-filled life than a long dotage filled with iceberg lettuce. “Let us pray” is all I need of that vegetable.

Pauline snapped her gum extra loud in appreciation. “Good for you, girl. Anyway, what I was saying is I’ve been buying from those people on a regular basis, so I’ve gotten to know some of them pretty well. Not that you can ever really get inside their heads, on account of they’re so different and all. Sort of like the Japanese, I guess. You know what I mean?”

“What an interesting observation,” I said kindly. Professional courtesy prevented me from rolling my eyes even a quarter of a turn.

“Yeah. Anyway, things used to be different before old man Craycraft died. Over at Daisybell Dairies. He was their biggest customer. And not just milk, either. I understand that a lot of them worked at the plant.”

“Yes?”

And then she did pick up a fork—fortunately a clean one—and jabbed at the base of the hive. The tines clinked melodically against the metal hairpins. Either that or she was harboring some real bees.

“New dandruff shampoo,” she said by way of explanation. “Not as effective as my regular brand. Now, where was I?”

“You were telling me about Daisybell Dairies. How things have changed there.”

“Yeah, that’s right. You see, when Craycraft died, his nephew came up from West Virginia to run the place. He’s the tourist I was telling you about.”

“I see.”

“Yeah, well, a lot of us wish he had stayed home. The Amish feel that way too. You can tell. Something tells me they weren’t given a fair shake over there at the factory, and then there was that business about the girl.”

“Oh?” I tried to sound mildly curious.

Pauline gave the hive a final hard jab. If any bees had been in residence, they were certainly dead now. “From what I hear, our tourist, Danny Hem, put the moves on this Amish girl he had working for him.”

She paused for dramatic effect, and I obligingly looked shocked. I was shocked, of course, but somehow, when hearing about it for the second time, it didn’t quite ring true.

“Go on,” I said.

“Well, no sooner did that happen than all the Amish working at the factory quit, and his milk suppliers—all of them Amish—quit their deliveries. Last I heard they was forming their own company. You know, one of them—them—”

“Cooperatives?”

“Yeah, that’s it. You gotta admire the Amish. They’re real hard workers. It’s in their blood.”

“You don’t say.” So it wasn’t just wishful thinking, after all. Susannah was adopted!

“Yeah, well.” She stood up without checking for clearance. It was a good thing her place lacked ceiling fans. “You stop back in the next few days, okay?”

I got up as well. I had room for another order of bacon, maybe even a short stack of it, but Pauline’s prices were far from puny. Then I remembered something.

“Pauline, dear—do you mind if I call you that?”

She snapped her consent.

“You said before that you thought the Amish were in the juicer. You think they still are?”

“That’s Aymish, hon. Yeah, I know they’ve got this cooperative and all, but something still ain’t right. They look kinda scared. Like they’re afraid of their own shadows, if you ask me.”