The Crepes of Wrath (17 page)

Were the kids spaced out on drugs? I couldn’t say for sure, having never used the stuff myself. But from what I had read, and from what little Susannah had shared of her life, I suspected that was the case.

So now what was I supposed to do? Sneak back through the milking room, trek across a pitch black field, and trust three bald tires, just to inform an incompetent police chief that something appeared amiss? Or was I to take the matter into my own hands?

There was only one dilapidated bright yellow Buick parked behind the barn. There had been no need to lock it—or so the Keim boys thought. I opened the left rear door cautiously, flicked on my light, and peered inside. The faux leather of the seat was ripped in several places and there was enough hay scattered about to feed a horse for a week, the consequence no doubt of using a haystack as a garage.

Then I saw the mouse. It was all I could do not to scream. Lest you think it silly that I should be afraid of such a small creature, let me remind you that even elephants are supposed to be afraid of them. According to legend, the tiny rodents have a penchant for running up the inside of a pachyderm’s trunk. This may, or may not, be true. But since I have the Yoder nose, I wasn’t about to take any chances.

“Shoo!” I hissed. “Scat! Scram.”

The little rodent looked calmly up at me with beady eyes.

“I’m coming in,” I warned, “and you don’t want to mess with me. I may be a Mennonite through and through, but my pacifism does not extend to animals.”

The mouse squeaked and skittered off beneath the
front seat. I climbed gingerly into the back. There I settled in for a long wait. A
long
wait.

After an hour of intense alertness, I found myself getting drowsy. To stay awake I recited Bible verses, hummed hymns softly to myself, told ghost stories to an audience of six—there was an entire family of mice living under the front seat—and even went so far as to make a mental list of my enemies and subsequently forgive them. In the end there was nothing I could do to keep awake.

When I awoke, the sky had cleared and there were faint remnants of morning stars. It would be dawn within the hour. I roused myself, brushed hay from my lap, and studied my environs through the open window. What I saw in the growing light gave me such a shock I nearly bumped my head on the sagging padding of the Buick’s roof. The little improvised parking lot was all but empty. No horses and buggies remained, and there was just one other motorized vehicle, a sleek blue late-model car. Somehow I had managed to sleep through all that, whereas at home, a guest snoring, upstairs and three bedrooms away, can keep me up all night.

I was at a loss for what to do. Had the Keim boys discovered me and then hitched a ride with somebody else? Should I check to see if they were still in the barn? Should I count myself lucky and make a beeline for the cornfield and my red BMW? Or should I stick with my original plan?

The sound of two young male voices speaking Pennsylvania Dutch settled that. Plan A was on again. I settled back into the seat and sat as still as Lot’s wife,
after
she’d turned into the pillar of salt.

Before clambering in, the boys needlessly stomped their shoes against the running board. A dead leaf or a few particles of dirt were not going to mess up their car any. I must say, however, that I was surprised and pleased to see them buckle their seat belts. I was even more surprised when Elam, the driver, didn’t even
glance in the rearview mirror, before starting the engine. I waited until he turned on to the highway before making my presence known.

“Gut marriye,”
I said in a loud, clear voice.

The car swerved and I, who was not belted in, got a good strong dose of side-to-side whiplash.

“What the hell?” Elam said in English.

“Gotte en heimel!”
Seth cried.

“Indeed He is, but I’ll thank you not to take His name in vain. And you,” I said, poking Elam with a bony finger, “should not swear.”

Elam slammed on the brakes and my head got a chance to shoot forward and back. “Miss Yoder, it is you!”

“As big as life and twice as ugly.” It’s all right to say that about one’s self.

“What are you doing in our car?”

“Will you tell Papa?” Seth asked, his voice breaking into an adolescent squeak.

“I will do the talking,” Elam said sharply to his brother. He turned to me. “
Will
you?”

We were sitting in the middle of the road, mind you. At any moment someone could have come along in a car and hit us. Sure it was still only daybreak, but by Hernia standards it was the top of the morning.

“Why don’t you drive someplace, dear, and we’ll discuss it along the way.”

“Ach, but it is getting light. Someone will see us.”

“ ‘Light has come into the world,’ ” I said, quoting from the third chapter of John. “ ‘But men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.’ So that’s what you’re afraid of, right? Of being exposed.”

Elam’s dark face, originally just a blur, was acquiring features. “What is this exposed?”

It occurred to me that he might not be familiar with the passage. “Don’t you read the Bible?”

“Yah, but in German.”

“It means to be seen. You’re afraid to be seen in this car because you know you shouldn’t have it in the first place, and in the second—well, you know what you were doing in the barn is wrong.”

“Ach!” Seth squirmed in his seat. “She knows, Elam!”

“I said to shut the mouth,” Elam shouted.

“Easy,” I said. “Just start driving down the road and I’ll tell you what I know.”

“Where do I drive?”

“How about Stucky Ridge? If you take Hershberger Road, there’s less chance of being seen.”

“Maybe we go back to the barn.”

“I don’t think so, dear. Not until you tell me who the owner of that blue Chevy is.”

“I cannot.”

“Somehow I didn’t think so. In that case, press the pedal to the metal. The fuzz is still buzzing, if I know my brother-in-law.”

“Miss Yoder,” he said, still not cooperating, “you speak in riddles, yah?”

“Yah—I mean, yes—I mean, do I? Okay, let me put it another way. Drive fast because Melvin Stoltzfus, the Chief of Police, is still sleeping. You don’t have to worry about getting a ticket, and if you drive fast enough, no one will recognize you.”

“Yah?”

It was without a doubt the stupidest advice I ever gave a teenager. As far as I knew, the boys had just been doing drugs, and I knew for a fact that Elam had never taken a driver’s education course. He certainly didn’t have a driver’s license.

I searched desperately for a seat belt as we careered and careened down Hernia’s byways and then up the steep winding road that led to the dizzying heights of Stucky Ridge. Alas, there was no belt. Perhaps there had never been one, or perhaps the mice had eaten it. Immodest as it was, I lay on my back with my feet in the
air. Should we crash, it was better that something sturdy went through the windshield first.

At the top of the ridge, Elam squealed to a stop in the picnic area parking lot. “We talk now, yah?”

“Not yet, dear. Drive
slowly
over to the Settlers Cemetery. We’ll talk there.”

You may think I was being picky, but allow me to explain. The picnic area is only occasionally used for the consumption of food. Instead, the young people of Hernia have turned it into an open-air den of iniquity. Kids have been known to go far beyond hand-holding. Intense osculation has been observed from time to time and—you may find this hard to believe—I heard that a few of these children have even gone beyond that stage.

Sure, Gabe the Babe and I were going to have our picnic up there, but that is a different matter altogether. We are mature adults, and know when to stop. But heaven forbid I give Elam and Seth the wrong idea. After all, I am an attractive woman, still in my prime. If I caused either of them to think lascivious thoughts, the sin would be on my head.

Besides, the cemetery gives me comfort. It is where my parents are buried, and their parents before them, stretching back six generations. Now I don’t believe in ghosts, mind you, but if I really needed her, Mama would somehow come to my rescue. Papa too. But Mama is capable of producing earthquakes by rolling over in the grave, something which she does on a regular basis, whenever I say or do something which displeases her. Just how a woman who was squished to death under a milk tanker can manage to roll over is beyond me, but trust me on this one. She does.

Seth jumped at the word “cemetery.” “Ach, not the English cemetery.”

“It isn’t just English who are buried there,” I corrected him. “All the original settlers of Hernia were Amish, my people included. That all changed less than a hundred years ago.”

Elam shrugged. “The dead are dead,” he said and followed my instructions.

We pulled into the parking space closest to my parents’ plots. “Okay, dears, now we talk.”

“It is not Seth’s fault,” Elam said the second I closed my mouth.

“What isn’t?”

“The drugs,” Seth said.

“Shut the mouth!” Elam ordered.

The back of Seth’s flaxen head disappeared as he slumped into his seat. It registered with me that the boys were hatless.

“Really, Elam, I’m surprised at you. Yelling at your brother like that! For your information, I know all about the drugs.”

He turned so that I could see his dark, handsome face in profile. Not a drop of Yoder blood in that one.

“This is a trick, yah?”

“No trick, dear.” So maybe it was, but it’s okay to fib when you’re intervening to save a young person’s life.

“Ach, the drugs. They are a terrible thing. I know that now, but now it is too late.”

“What do you mean?”

“They are like a bitch.”

“I beg your pardon!”

He flushed. “The female dog is called that, no? When she is in heat, there is no stopping her.”

“I only have a cat,” I said dryly. “I wouldn’t know.”

“These drugs—it is too hard to stop. I have tried many times.”

“What about you, Seth?”

Seth remained silent.

“I will speak for my brother. For him there is still time.”

“Is that true, Seth?”

Silence again. I kicked the back of the boy’s seat.

“I know you speak English, dear. I demand that you answer me.”

Seth mumbled something unintelligible.

“Louder, dear.”

“I think maybe it is hard for me too.”

I kicked Elam’s seat. “You see what you’ve done? You’ve gotten your younger brother hooked on something that could kill him.”

It was light enough by then to see the tear that rolled down Elam Keim’s right cheek. “Yeah, maybe.”

“No maybe about it, dear. You heard what he said. And you the oldest child, for crying out loud.”

I felt strangely betrayed by Elam. The oldest child gets inexperienced parents who experiment on her, and then she is supposed to toe the line, to carry on the family tradition. It is the youngest child, the pampered one, who gets the privilege of being the black sheep. Ask any psychologist or psychiatrist. Ask the Drs. Hanson. Or better yet, look at Susannah and I.

The oldest by almost eleven years, I did everything my parents asked of me. I attended Bedford Community College as a commuter when I really wanted to go away to school, to try my wings at the University of Pittsburgh. I stopped seeing Henry Blough at my parents’ request because he belonged to the First Mennonite Church of Hernia, which is a tad more liberal than Beechy Grove Mennonite Church.

But what did Susannah do? She barely even graduated from high school. In fact, she wouldn’t have, had Principal Potter known that it was Susannah and her cohorts who put the dead opossum in the heating vent. And as for her choice of boyfriends, not only did my sister marry a Presbyterian right out of the gate, but since our parents’ death has slept with more men than Rock Hudson. One, I think, was even a Catholic.

“Miss Yoder,” Elam said somberly, “will you tell our parents?”

“I’m afraid I have to.”

He turned in his seat to face me. “It will kill Papa.”

“Your papa is stronger than you think. If you keep
taking drugs, it will kill you. What you need is help—some kind of program. Your parents are going to have to know.”

“Then I will tell them.”

“When?”

He shrugged.

I leaned forward, bracing a hand on the back of his seat. “We can tell them together.”