Freni met us on the front porch. "You're late," she said without preamble. Freni doesn't even own a watch, but she glanced at her wrist nonetheless.
"It's her fault," I said pointing to Susannah. Might as well let the blame fall where it's due.
"She wouldn't let us drive over," Susannah whined. But Freni had already turned away and was headed back inside. Unlike me, who somehow feels guilty about our parents' death, and therefore somehow responsible for Susannah's moods, Freni simply won't tolerate any of my younger sister's negative behavior. "A dog whines," Freni once said to Susannah, "and that's why its place is outside." Of course, this didn't sit well with Susannah, who not only keeps her dog inside, but inside her bra. Which is not to say that the two women aren't fond of each other; I'm sure they love each other dearly. But I'm just as sure that if Freni ever found that little pooch of Susannah's unattended, she would feed it to the barn cats.
"You're late," said Barbara Hostetler, nee Zook. I pointed at Susannah again.
"Sit," said Mose.
"Yah, sit," said John. John is a very quiet young man, and I was surprised to hear two consecutive words come out of his mouth. It was clear he was feeling anxious about the evening.
After grace, the two Hostetler women passed around platters of cold meat loaf and homemade cheese, homemade bread, and enough pickled vegetables to make a platoon pucker. We all dug in like hogs at a slop trough.
"It's a beautiful day, isn't it?" said Mose when, after a good ten minutes, no one had spoken.
"It's too hot," said Freni. She brushed back a wisp of graying hair and tucked it into her prayer cap.
"It's a lot hotter than this back home," said Barbara, even though her mouth was full.
"I think it is delightful," I said, braving Freni's glares. "I love summertime and sunny days."
"It shows," said Susannah rudely. "Sun is bad for your skin, you know. It causes wrinkles. And you don't have wrinkles, Magdalena. They're canyons. The National Park Service should offer mule trips down your face."
I was too mature to fight back. Susannah would have to wait and find her bed short-sheeted.
"Autumn is my favorite season back home. I love the cool days and crisp nights. And of course the changing leaves," said Barbara. She sounded genuinely wistful to me. Maybe even homesick.
"You mean you have trees on the prairie?" Freni asked.
"The corn looks good this year, doesn't it? I think it's going to be a good harvest," Mose said quickly.
"So do I," said John. Three consecutive words was a definite record. Any more and he'd turn into a veritable blabbermouth.
"Back home we grow wheat," Barbara said between bites. "And corn too."
Freni glared at her daughter-in-law. "Home is where your husband is."
Barbara returned Freni's glare. "Home is where you feel comfortable, if you ask me."
"Which no one did," said Freni.
"Please pass the cheese," said John desperately. "Of course, dear," Barbara said. She handed her husband the cheese plate, and as she did so, she leaned toward him so that her sleeve brushed up against his.
Even I was shocked. I had never before heard, or seen, such a public display of affection from someone sharing my genes, Susannah excluded. Perhaps Barbara's looks were coincidental. Perhaps she was really adopted - or stolen from the English as a baby.
Part of me still holds out the hope that this is the case with Susannah. It would, after all, explain a lot.
Even though I was ten years old at the time of her birth, I hadn't had an inkling that Mama was pregnant. But then, why would I? Mama had always been a large woman, to put it kindly, and as for the origin of babies, I believed until my eighteenth birthday that angels brought them down from heaven, all washed and clean, and waiting to be fed. When Mama sat me down on that auspicious day and told me that Papa had given her seeds, which she had grown in her tummy, like watermelons, I wanted to barf. Anyway, I could just imagine how shocked Freni must have been at Barbara's display of wantonness.
"Why, I never!" she gasped. Her face had turned as white as her prayer cap.
"I bet you didn't," giggled Susannah.
I kicked her under the table.
"She is my wife," John said. His lips began to twitch and his eyes glazed over. "Mother, you will have to accept her, or we will go and live with her folks until we can afford a farm of our own."
We all, John included, sat in stunned silence. It was almost as bad as the time Helen Gingerich, Reverend Gingerich's wife, lost her panties on her way up to play the organ. Fortunately, on that occasion the choir soon diverted our attention with a rousing a cappella rendition of "And the Walls Came Tumbling Down." But Freni's house lacks a resident choir - she doesn't even own a radio. Being August and all, we stood a good chance of choking on flies unless someone, or something, diverted us.
I did what I could. I began to sing the theme song from Green Acres. It is, after all, one of the few secular songs I know. Admittedly, mine is not the best voice, but it is not the worst either. Contrary to what Susannah says, I do not sound like a cat in a blender.
I think it was very rude of Susannah to laugh at my singing in front of the others. It was just as rude for John, Barbara, and Mose to join in the laughter. I would still be mad at the four of them if Freni hadn't cracked that smile. The crisis, at least for the moment, was under control.
-19-
After supper we sat outside on the front porch and watched the August moon rise. Out in the yard the fireflies danced, crickets chirped, and in the patch of woods an owl awakened and began to hoot. On a distant farm, a dog began to howl. I love spending summer evenings outside, and would have been even more blissful if I hadn't had a sneaking suspicion that our sudden adjournment to the great outdoors was somehow related to my singing. Perhaps they figured on using the night noises as camouflage should I suddenly burst into song. Still, one must take pleasure where and how one finds it, as long as it is clean, of course.
We were all comfortable in Mose's handmade rockers, except for Susannah. My sister has never learned to enjoy times of quiet conversation, or to commune with nature. I blame it on television, mostly the commercials. If it isn't new and improved, or fifty percent off, Susannah simply can't be bothered.
Somehow the conversation meandered around to veterinarians. "Oh, by the way, Doc Shafer sends his regards to you, Mose," I remembered to say. "He says next time you need Matilda and Bertha bred, he's got a bull more than willing to do the job." For some reason, it is quite acceptable in my circle to speak of animals in the lewdest terms, while we humans only get to pass seeds around.
"Tell Doc thanks," said Mose. He seemed grateful for my efforts. "I'll keep it in mind. But speaking of Matilda, all those folks milling around out there by the barn are making her crazy. Even keeping her in the pasture doesn't help much. Her milk production is down by fifty percent. Her teats are hard as wood."
"You don't say," said Susannah.
I couldn't see her face, but I was sure she was rolling her eyes. I tried kicking her for good measure, but banged my foot on a rocker strut instead.
"Actually," said Mose as he began to stroke his beard, "Matilda started acting funny before I put her out to pasture. It was that morning before the Englishman died that she started getting real nervous." He gave Susannah what for Mose was an accusing look. "It might have been all your trips in and out of the barn."
Susannah quickly sat up straight, so quickly, in fact, her rocker almost dumped her out on the porch. I could see the bulge that was Shnookums shift in her bra. Half empty bras must hold terrors that none of us except Shnookums can even imagine. "I went out to the barn only once," she said emphatically. "And that was when I discovered the - well, you know what."
"The body," said Mose gently. "Susannah, we are your family here, there is no need to lie. I saw you go into the barn three times that morning, not just once."
"Three times?" I piped up.
Mose nodded. "I was mending the pasture fence on the south side of the barn. The top wire has been down in one corner for some time now, and Bertha likes to step right over the bottom wire and into the corn field. That morning I decided to keep the cows penned up in the milk shed while I worked. Bertha gets kind of pushy sometimes, and if you're not looking - "
"I went out to the barn only once," repeated Susannah. She said it softly, like she didn't expect us to believe her. But of course I did believe her. It's when my sister protests loudly that my antennae go up their highest. Liars pay the highest price of all for freedom of speech.
"Go on with your story," I urged Mose.
Mose glanced at Susannah, and then quickly away. His antennae were not tuned in to her station. "Like I was saying, I was mending the fence when I saw Susannah go into the barn the first time."
"About what time was that?"
Mose doesn't wear a watch either, but he can read the sun almost as well as I can read my quartz. "About ten maybe. Anyway, Susannah goes in, but I get busy with my mending, so I don't see her go out. But I know she's in there, because I can hear Matilda bawling the whole time. Matilda's very sensitive, you know. Even though there's a wall between the milk shed and the hay barn, she can tell if someone's in there."
"Wrong!" said Susannah.
Mose looked to me for encouragement before continuing.
"Go on, Mose," I said. "So, when I finish the job I look up and there I see Susannah again. Headed for the barn. I think to myself that this is kind of strange, because Matilda's been bawling the whole time, but Susannah's been gone for a while. Then I notice that Susannah is carrying something."
"Double wrong."
"What kind of something?" I asked.
"I don't know, maybe a purse or something."
"Come on! Why would I carry a purse to my own barn?" asked Susannah quite reasonably.
Mose shrugged, which was his way of saying he thought Susannah was capable of anything - that is, short of murder. "Maybe it was a box, then."
"Right, like a coffin," snapped Susannah.
I patted my sister's arm in a motherly fashion, until she snatched it away. "I happen to believe you, now let Mose get on with his story."
Mose was still stroking his beard. "So, I start to wonder why Matilda has been bawling the whole time, and then I figure that maybe it was because I forgot to milk her."
"Ouch." Although I've never been a milk cow, I understand that if they are not milked regularly, twice a day, the pressure on their udders can be quite painful. I suppose it's something like the time Susannah drank a two-liter bottle of pop while we were on a car trip, and I wouldn't stop to let her use the bathroom.
"I do remember milking Bertha," said Mose defensively.
I smiled reassuringly. "And it was delicious. Now, please, finish your story."
"Funny thing is that when I did milk Matilda, she was pretty much dry. Anyway, I was just coming out of the milk shed when I saw Susannah going into the barn for the third time. But she was in there only about a minute, when she ran out screaming."
"You would too if you saw what I saw!" said Susannah.
"Yah, maybe I would."
"You mean you didn't go into the barn to investigate?"
Mose spread his big wrinkled hands in a gesture of surrender. "Yah, maybe I should have. But, Susannah, well, she - "
"Tends to get hysterical over the slightest thing?" I supplied.
"Yah. I thought maybe she had seen a mouse."
"You see! Nobody ever takes me seriously!" Susannah pounded one of her not-so-dainty fists on the arm of her rocker, and in so doing she must have jarred Shnookums, because I heard him yip. Fortunately Freni didn't seem to hear it.
"I take you more seriously than you'll ever know," I said. I turned back to Mose. "Okay, so you saw Susannah enter the barn three times that morning - "
"Once! And whose side are you on, Magdalena, anyway?"
I ignored my sister. "But did you see Don Manley go into the barn?"
Mose shook his head. "I had my back turned some of the time."
"And now you're turning it on me," cried Susannah.
I felt terrible for Mose. Ever since Papa died, he has been a surrogate father to both Susannah and me. Mose and Freni never had any daughters, just the one son, John, and, well, how much comfort can a monosyllabic son be? I knew Mose cared deeply about both of us, although I've long suspected that Susannah was his favorite. When Susannah was a little girl, Mose used to let her ride on his plow horse - something he never let me do. Susannah was allowed to help him milk too, until the time she almost drowned one of the barn kittens by putting him in a half-full milk pail. But my point is that despite her wild and English ways, Susannah has always been the apple of Mose's eye, albeit a crab apple in recent years.
