Butter Safe Than Sorry

The invasion of unfettered flesh might have been far more time-consuming for me, and traumatic for most Herniaites, had it not been Fred and Alice Rosenthal. The couple are retirees, refugees from the Big Apple, who’ve sought out small-town living because of our clean air and quaint old- fashioned ways. Imagine their surprise to look up from their New York Times and spot a horde of pasty white bodies running down the road in their direction, whoosits and whatsits flopping joyously, just as freely as the ears on a cocker spaniel.

But instead of being scandalized, the Rosenthals went out on their porch, where they commenced laughing. And laughing. And laughing. By the time I got there, poor Fred had practically laughed himself sick, and Alice, bless her heart, found that she needed to change her designer blue jeans.

The nude missionaries, however, were not amused. The laughing duo offended them so much that they stopped in their tracks to argue, the whole bunch of them. Then along came a buggy, driven by Amish teenagers. The occupants hooted and jeered at the escapees with the Haight- Ashbury frame of mind. One by one the nudists hung their heads in shame, and that was how another cult bit the dust.

It wasn’t until I got home and saw the ship’s clock on the parlor mantel that I realized just how time- consuming it was to have the Sisters of Perpetual Apathy directly across the road from the PennDutch Inn. If it wasn’t nude nuns, then it was plumbing issues-either Ida’s own or her establishment’s-but there was always something coming along that demanded the full attention of either Gabriel or myself.

I slumped onto a hard, unforgiving Victorian chair. Following my great-granny Yoder’s example, I kept the furniture in my sitting room as uncomfortable as I could and still have it appear cozy. Great-Granny believed that a body should rest only after death; I merely see the value in keeping guests from congregating. Heaven forefend they should collect in numbers and conduct a full-scale revolt over some imagined mistreatment at my hand.

At any rate, I was so upset by that time, I didn’t see Olivia Zambezi enter the room from the other direction. In my defense I shall hasten to explain that the woman favored pastel dresses that hung nearly to the floor. Today it was pale gray, with darker gray crosshatches. Her hair was steel gray and, frankly, so was her complexion. While I’m hardly a proponent of makeup, if one is going to wear it, one should at least pick a flattering tone, shouldn’t one? In short, Mrs. Zambezi resembled the battleships I’d once seen while on a cruise of Norfolk Harbor more than she did a flesh-and- blood woman her age.

Not that I’m a fashion icon, to be sure. However, one can never go wrong with a modestly cut navy blue broadcloth dress, and one’s hair-it is after all, a woman’s crowning glory-braided and then swept securely into a bun, over which is pinned a white organza prayer cap. This simple way of dressing flatters every body type, and women of every walk of life and religious persuasion could do worse than adopt it as their daily uniform.

Now where was I? Oh yes, in my understandably self-absorbed state of mind, I got up from my chair and ran smack into Olivia Zambezi with enough force to knock Arnold Schwarzenegger on his keester.

“Dang you, Yoder,” she swore in a shockingly deep voice.

“I am so sorry, Mrs. Zambezi.” I would have asked her if she was all right, but I didn’t want to plant any suggestions in that old gray head.

And speaking of her old gray head, I seemed to have knocked it a bit askew. That is to say, her noggin was no longer sitting directly on top of its pedestal-No wait, silly me-of course! Olivia Zambezi wore a wig, and I had knocked the dang thing practically off her head. Suddenly she no longer resembled Olivia from New Jersey at all. Still, she was very, very familiar.

But what to do? What to do? The poor woman seemed entirely oblivious to the hair- raising situation at hand. Perhaps her face stung too much from slamming into mine. Should I say something to her, or just reach out and give the rug a tug-taking care not to burn my hand on her whiskers. Her whiskers! Land o’ Goshen! Olivia Zambezi was sporting five o’clock shadow, and here it was only six minutes past three-give or take a minute.

I’ve known some hirsute women in my time-Gloria Crab-tree comes to mind-but none quite as hairy as the one I beheld. Then again, her face was missing a swath of pancake makeup an inch thick where mine had swiped it, which meant that half of me undoubtedly resembled a Kabuki performer. I pulled the collar of my shirtdress out to where I could see it.

“Oh Fudgsicles,” I cried. “Now see what you’ve done!”

“Me?” Olivia boomed. “Yoder, it was you who ran into me.”

It was the way “she” said Yoder that tipped me off. The person masquerading as Olivia Zambezi managed to make my maiden name sound like a curse. Factor in her large feet, large hands, odd stance, and eyes like those of a lobster on steroids, and even a heavily sedated zombie would be able to tell that I was face- to-face with none other than the maniacal Melvin Stoltzfus.

28

My blood froze. I know that’s just a figure of speech, and I have a tendency to embroider mine at times, but I’m not exaggerating now-well, sort of almost not. It really did feel like I had icicles in my veins. But at the same time, my frozen limbs were anything but stiff; my legs, for instance, felt like they’d been sculpted from whipped butter. (Although, to be honest, it’s very hard to determine whether or not these feelings are accurate. I have never actually had even one leg sculpted from whipped butter, and seldom, if ever, do I insert icicles in my veins.)

“Oh my gracious, oh my soul,” I said. “There goes Alice down the hole.”

“Where?” Olivia, aka Melvin, glanced around the parlor. His panic was practically palpable, just like my shock.

“It’s just a kid’s rhyme,” I said. “I couldn’t think of what else to say, and since I’m never speechless, something had to slip out.”

“Yeah, you’ve got a tongue that can cut cheese. But this time, Yoder, I outsmarted you. Admit it.”

“I will admit nothing to you!” There is a theory that cold water boils faster than warm. It may not be true, but the ice in my veins had turned to steam in a matter of seconds. “You killed Amy, didn’t you?”

“She was a nosy girl who deserved what was coming to her.”

“She was a young girl just getting started in life.”

“Boo-hoo. Your sister rots in jail and you waste emotion on a kid from the wrong side of the tracks?”

“And what side would that be? We don’t even have tracks in Hernia!”

“You want to get riled up about someone, Yoder, get riled up about Mary Berkey. Now there was a fine woman-good breeding hips on her too. It was a shame she had to go.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. The evil man was making a full confession, but there were no witnesses besides Yours Truly. My kingdom for a tape recorder. Or even just a number two pencil!

“Why did she have to go?” I said, as I edged for the back door. “She wasn’t nosy. She had nothing to do with the bank robbery.”

I’d already figured out that Melvin had been one of the three armed robbers. If he could convincingly pass himself off as a matron from the Garden State for several days running, pulling off the role of a hit-and-run Amish man must have been a piece of cake. (In for the penny, in for the pound of makeup, it seemed.) As much as I hate to admit it, his ability to disguise himself had kept him a free man for past five years.

Melvin pulled his wig back into place before answering. “Yeah, too bad. Mary was a class act. And with all those kids to support. How many were there? A dozen?”

“Six,” I hissed.

“Yeah. She ought to have thought about them a little more and a little less about what I was up to.”

I was flabbergasted. “So it’s her fault that she’s dead.”

“Yeah, basically. For starters, she should have refused to make you that silly outfit that you’ve got on now. Don’t think you fooled anyone, Yoder. You look like the Halloween version of a Beverly Lewis book cover.”

I thought I heard footsteps in the kitchen. In any case it was to my advantage to keep the kook yammering on as long as I could.

“I didn’t think that you could read, Melvin, and just so you know, this outfit happens to be very authentic. You said ‘for starters. ’ What else did she do to irritate you?”

“What do you think, idiot? She saw through this getup! Well, not exactly this getup, because she made me strip down to my bra and panties when she measured me for my Amish dress.”

“Your Amish dress?”

“Pretty smart, huh? Local banks might be suspicious of Amish men for a while, but no one would suspect an Amish woman. And I have you to thank for it, Yoder. You’re the one who put the idea in my head.”

“And here I thought it was impenetrable.”

“But Mary had to go and ruin it, on account of she had eyes like a hawk.”

“On either side of her head?”

“And all because she saw my hairy chest. Somehow that got her attention right away. It was like she got fixated on them.”

“Three hairs will do that to a gal. Trust me, four hairs and she would have swooned.”

“Very funny, Yoder. No need to remind me why I hate you so much.” He reached down the front of his frumpy frock and pulled out a pistol, which he aimed at my head.

“But, Melykins, I’m your flesh-and-blood sister, remember? Our birth mother, Elvina, was quite sure of the gory details. And if that’s not enough, please cogitate on the fact that I am the only sister-and friend-of your darling wife, Susannah.”

I’ve often (quite unkindly, I admit) likened Melvin to a praying mantis because of his bulging eyes, which operate independently of each other. I was wrong; I should have compared him to a chameleon-one from the island of Madagascar. That’s because apparently he did cogitate, and while he did, the longest tongue I’d ever seen came slithering out between slightly parted and extremely pointed teeth. This serpentlike appendage proceeded to lick his dry lips and clean crusted bits of lunch from the corners of his mouth before slithering back into its den.

“Does Jack Hanna know where you are?” I said. Sometimes I just can’t help myself.

“What’s that supposed to mean? Was that a put-down?”

“Is a put-down like a touchdown? Does it count for, or against, me?” One can always be hopeful, can’t one?

“I’m going to put you down, Yoder, and Susannah’s never going to know that I did it. Now move!”

I read somewhere that one should never, ever go with a gunman. Apparently the odds are that what happens after abduction is invariably worse than what would happen if one tried to make a break for it while at the original site of the crime. After all, it is extremely hard to hit a moving target. This is excellent advice, but it’s better suited to areas other than small Victorian parlors.

Much to my dismay the chameleon was able to move with lightning speed. I felt the barrel of the gun against my back while in midlunge. By the time my size elevens hit the ground, I was indisputably his prisoner and his temper was nowhere to be found.

“Now you’ve done it, Yoder. Any mercy I might have shown you at the last minute, you just threw away.”

I could definitely hear someone else moving about in the house. Was that a chair scraping in the dining room?

“I can’t believe you used to be the chief of police,” I said, speaking just as loud as I dared. “When folks were in trouble, they would call the police, and that was you.”