Butter Safe Than Sorry

“No, it’s da Queen of Sheba.”

As my eyes and brain adjusted to my new surroundings, I could see that it was indeed my scrappy little mother-in-law, and that her hands were bound behind her, as if she were a hostage or a prisoner of war. Ida was a survivor of the Holocaust, and to be restrained like that had to be torture for her. Whilst she is not my favorite person-she is perhaps number twenty-six down the list-I cannot stand to see someone truly suffer. To say that my hackles were hiked is like saying that Hitler was a bad boy.

“Melvin Lucretius Stolzfus III! What have you done to this poor woman?”

“She tried to scratch me,” he whined.

“Untie her!”

“You can’t tell me what to do! You’re my prisoner.”

“Then I’ll untie her,” I said. Which I did.

Melvin’s response was to press the pedal to the metal and peel out of my long driveway amid curtains of gravel. Thank Heavens he wasn’t driving my car.

“Are you going to let her get away with talking to you like that?” Carl snarled, once we were on Hertzler Road and headed for the bridge over Slave Creek.

By the way, this is the only route out of Hernia, unless one has the patience to meander all the way over to Somerset past myriad Amish farms. Passing buggies might be fun for tourists, but believe me, it gets old-as do some of the buggy drivers, and as a consequence, they don’t hear one coming up behind them and so don’t move away from the center of the road.

“Heck no,” Melvin said. Again, he used extremely foul language. “Yoder, don’t you ever talk to me like that again.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. Melvin was immune to sarcasm. (Try it on either a praying mantis or a chameleon sometime, and you’ll see what I mean.)

“T’anks,” Ida whispered when I released her bonds.

“What happened?” I whispered back. “What did you do?”

“Don’t whisper,” came the command from the driver’s seat. “Speak so that we can all hear.”

“I vas doing nutting vrong. I vas only coming to see eef my Gabeleh vas home. Your phone eez not vorking, Magdalena, und az you know, I dun’t haf a cell.”

“The woman is a menace,” Carl said.

“No comments from Olivia’s erstwhile spouse, dear,” I said.

Melvin laughed long and hard. That is to say that for at least a minute, it sounded like there was a cicada loose somewhere in the car.

Most folks respond better to pleasant speech than they do to inflammatory words, so for once I decided to give that tact a try. Besides which, I had both the “brother” and the “local” cards going for me. After all, most folks root for the home team, don’t they?

“Where are we going, brother dear?” I asked sweetly.

“Shut up, Yoder,” Melvin snapped.

It was Carl’s turn to laugh long and hard; he sounded like the Bontragers’ male donkey come the first warm days of spring. He can be glad that Melvin was driving with one hand and holding a gun with the other, and that I was a good Christian woman. Honestly, I was tempted to lunge over the seat and smack the hee-haw right out of him.

But Carl answered my most burning question for me as soon as we turned right on Route 96, going away from Bedford. “Melvin says he knows this cool place that has lots of sinkholes where someone almost died last year. We’re going to throw you guys down one of those holes, but not before we torture you first to find out where that brat of yours is hidden.”

Ida jumped to her feet, her head still not touching the roof of the SUV. “You vant my grandchild? For vhat?”

“Because he witnessed the-”

“Sinking of the Titanic,” I said loudly.

“No, Yoder,” Melvin said, disdain dripping from all three syllables, “the Titanic sank in the nineteen fifties-your kid isn’t that old.”

“My kid is your nephew,” I said. “Remember?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Melvin said, waving the gun impatiently. “Anyway, the little brat was there when we-”

“Ate all the chocolate brownies,” I said.

“What?” Melvin barked. “Yoder, you’re nuts.”

Ida clapped her wee spotted hands to her weathered cheeks. Not to be judgmental, but the woman really ought to consider wearing sunscreen, given the amount of time she spends gallivanting outside.

“You ate all zee brunies und he had nahsing?” she said.

I could have called Melvin a ding-a-ling, but I prayed for patience-yet again. I pity the Lord on account of He’s had to listen to this prayer a billion times; it’s no wonder that He so often chooses not to answer it. However, this time, a sweet peace seeped into my pores as an idea formed in my weary brain.

“Ee-shay oesn’t-day oh-nay at-thay ou’re-yay obber-rays.”

“Darn it, Yoder, we’ve had this conversation in the past. How many times do I have to remind you that I don’t speak Pennsylvania Dutch?”

“It isn’t Pennsylvania Dutch, you ding-a-ling. Think again.”

“Oh, I get it now-you’re talking Jewish to your mother- in-law.”

“And it isn’t Yiddish, you numbskull!” You see what I mean about my prayer for patience going unanswered?

“You’re really trying to tick me off, aren’t you?” Melvin said. He was actually exhibiting more of the P word than was I at the moment.

“It’s Pig Latin,” Carl growled impatiently. “I can speak it.”

“Then you whisper in his ear,” I said.

Much to my surprise, he did as I directed. He may have said a few other things-things that Melvin vehemently disapproved of-because the car weaved back and forth across the road several times, throwing me up against poor little Ida, and almost provoking me to throw up on her as well.

Finally Melvin turned his attention to me. “Yoder, are you speaking from the perspective of an ex-law enforcement officer?”

As thrilling as it was to hear him say those words, they weren’t true. I acted-and still do-as a liaison between the community and the Hernia Police Department. The unofficial post was created back when Chris Ackerman was chief. Young Chris hailed from California -the land of fruits and nuts-and he had no idea how life in a barrel of sour Krauts was lived. (During Melvin’s administration, I was the brains.) But it behooved me naught to set him straight. In fact, it could be the difference between life and death.

“Yes. As far as I know, I’m the only one who knows the whole story: I’ve connected all the dots, and I know who all the players are. Little Jacob doesn’t know that-he doesn’t even remember your name.”

“He doesn’t?” Heavens to Betsy, I almost felt sorry for the Murdering Mantis; that was how sad this bit of misinformation seemed to make him.

“Of course, he doesn’t. Why should he? You’ve been on the lam his entire life. And you’ve been staying at the inn; did you see any pictures of you around?”

Would that the little munchkin had never seen a likeness of his evil uncle, but, alas and alack, he had a Granny Stoltzfus who insisted on showing him snapshots of his “flesh and blood.” Truthfully, I’ve considered raiding her assisted- living apartment and confiscating this album in the name of human decency, but two things hold me back: the love of my son (prison would keep us apart) and the fact that I look hideous in stripes.

“Shoot, Yoder,” Melvin said, a tremble in his voice, “it isn’t right; a boy growing up and not knowing about his uncle.”

“That’s why you don’t want to compound any possible charges. Look, I’ve got an idea.”

34

“Yeah?”

“Don’t listen to her,” Carl said.

I clenched my teeth but, other than a short-lived growl of my own, said nothing offensive. “Melvin, what you do is release Ida-just dump her along the road, anywhere here is fine-and the three of us immediately head for the West Virginia border. You know I’ve got enough money to qualify for a government bailout. You get me to a bank in West Virginia, and I’ll make a series of withdrawals that will set you up for life.”

“Yeah? And then what?”

“Then you kill me, of course,” I said. “Two’s company. Three’s a crowd-isn’t that what they say? Of course this is all predicated on you swearing-on your mama’s life-that you’ll leave Little Jacob out of this.”

“Why West Virginia?” Carl said. “You have to get provisions if you’re going there, and all we have is half a roll of tropical-flavored Life Savers and a warm can of Diet Coke.”

“Because, dear,” I said, not even making an attempt to mind my spittle, “ West Virginia is a wild and woolly place. It’s got all those hills and forests and who knows what stretching as far as the eye can see. The long white arm of the law will never find you there.”

“Yeah, but it’s the ‘who knows what’ that’s got me worried, Yoder,” Melvin said. “Remember that girl in ninth grade whose father had to have a hole cut in the back of his pants so that his tail could hang out? Wauneta somebody. She was from West Virginia.”

Melvin forgot that I was eleven years older than he, but yes, I remembered Wauneta Beecher. How could anyone forget a girl with a father like hers? I read somewhere that, briefly, in utero we all possess tails at some stage of our development, and that this is a legacy of us having evolved from lower creatures. This article went on to state that in a certain percentage of the population this tail gene does not get switched off, and that’s why certain individuals are born this way. But since evolution is pure fiction, and the Devil is not-Well, what other conclusion can a reasonable person draw from this?

“Melvin, dearest,” I said, “if lasses who look like Lassies have you worried, then simply keep right on driving. Before you know it, you’ll be in North Carolina, a state that has the highest mountains east of the Mississippi, hundreds of miles of beautiful coastline, and inexplicably still finds itself in the clutches of the tobacco companies.”

“So what are you saying, Yoder? You want me to die of cancer?”

“No, no! I want you to live happily in a beautiful place.”

“Can Susannah join me?”

“She’s got a lot better chance of doing that if I stay alive,” I said, “and work it from this end-but I meant what I said before. You can kill me, if that means that you spare Ida’s hoary head.”

“Vhat? You hear how dis von talks about me?”

Melvin also gasped. “And you had the nerve to criticize my mouth! Ha, what a hypocrite you are.”

“It means ‘gray,’ ” Carl said. “Like from old age.”

“Yeah? That’s a good one, Yoder. I’ll have to remember it.” My would-be killer with the seventh-grade sense of humor turned his attention to his partner in crime. Mind you, this was while we were hurtling down a winding road at a speed so fast that the shadow cast by the SUV we rode in was now several car lengths behind. “Carl,” Melvin said, just as coolly as if he’d been discussing