“That ain’t a good excuse to be moving things around. Someone with bad intentions could sneak right up on you, and you wouldn’t see them coming. On account of that, this here tree is what we call an ‘unsafe situation.’ ”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now I’m going to move this tree back to the corner where it belongs, but before I do, I want you to tell me what I just said. What kind of situation do we call this?”
“An ‘unsafe situation,’ ” Amy said in a loud parrotlike voice.
“Good. Now let’s not let it happen again.”
“No, sir-I mean, yes, sir. Whatever, sir.”
As the guard picked up the tree, I jumped up and put my weight on the pot. I only did so because I didn’t know how fast he’d walk, and I didn’t want him to bowl me over with the canopy of cheap silk and badly formed leaves.
“Ugh,” he grunted, “this thing weighs a ton.”
“How rude!” I thought. Of course I said nothing.
“You know,” he said, obviously to himself, “this thing stinks. I really ought to take this piece of crap outside and give it a good hosing off.”
Believe me, it wasn’t the cheap tree that reeked, or even my purse; it was Johnny, the guard. I could see his name tag through the branches, all three of his chins, and the dark brown, almost black, ring around his collar. Both Johnny Ashton and his clothes needed a bath something awful.
Sometimes my mouth gets ahead of my brain. “Johnny, dear,” I heard myself say, “a good scrub in a tub wouldn’t hurt you either.”
“Ma! Ma, is that you?”
What in tarnation? Could this man possibly be more simple-minded than me? I’ve been known to hear the Good Lord’s voice emanating from all manner of objects, and I once mistook my sister for an angel, but this poor soul appeared to think that his mother’s voice was coming from a tree-really not much more than a large bush-with a middle-aged Mennonite woman clinging to one side of it.
“Yes, dear, it’s me,” I cooed, trying my best to throw my voice, although I knew darn well that ventriloquists don’t actually throw them, since voices aren’t objects one can physically grasp. Instead, it’s all about illusion, and focusing the attention on the dummy’s lips. In this case Johnny was the dummy.
“Oh, Johnny, you have a cold sore,” I said.
“I do?”
“I know you can’t see it, but your ouchy-ouch must really hurt.”
There isn’t a man alive who doesn’t like to have his ouchyouches and boo-boos validated by a sympathetic woman. It doesn’t even matter if he has them or not; he can always store up the sympathy for a later date, because he can never have enough sympathy.
Johnny traced his lips with his middle and ring fingers and then halfway around his mouth seemed to find a tender spot. “Yeah, it hurts like the dickens, but what can I do? I gotta come in to work, so I got no choice but to suck it up.”
“That’s my John-boy!”
“Ma! I hate it when you call me that.”
“You do? I’m sorry, son. I forgot-you know with the excitement of seeing you again.”
“Ma, how come I can’t see you?”
“Now, think about that; where am I?” Oops, that was indeed a stupid question to have asked. Even George Bush might have thought to walk around my bush and would thus have exposed me.
“You’re in Heaven, Ma, aren’t ya?”
“Why, indeed, I am. Which is why you should be keeping your eyes on the ceiling, Johnny, because Heaven is
“How come Heaven ain’t up for them as well, Mama?”
“Oh, my sweet son, where did I go wrong? Did I fail to send you to Sunday school?”
“No, ma’am, you sent me every Sunday-even when I was sicker than a dog.”
“Well, then, we know that Heaven is not above Sydney or Melbourne, because when the world ends, Jesus will come floating down to earth on a big white cloud that will be seen by Christians all over North America, but due to the curvature of the earth, the poor folks in the antipodes will not be able to see the cloud. That’s how we can deduce that Heaven is not located above them.”
“Ma, you always did talk so fancy. Can you see angels?”
“I most certainly can. In fact, I’m looking at one right now. She’s a very special angel who is allowed to come to earth on special assignments. In fact, she is going to pop into your bank at any moment and ask a very big favor of you.”
“But, Ma, I don’t want to birth no babies!”
“Hush up, John.
“But, Ma, if she looks like a woman, instead of an angel, how will I know if she’s the right one?”
“Because she’ll appear in the bush you’re clutching with both hands-as if it were a harbor buoy and you were a drowning man. Oh, oh, gotta go-good-bye, dear!”
For the first time Johnny Ashton began to see my bush and its many branches. At the same time I made a great show of shaking said bush and moaning, as if I had just fallen into it, before crashing out the other side. It was a pitiful performance, but by the same token, it was quite up to the performance level of my audience.
“Ah-unh-what a landing,” I groaned.
Young Amy raced to my side. “Are you all right? Let me help you up, Miss-Uh, what does one call an angel?”
“Your Flyness,” I said without missing a beat. I am, after all, known for being rather droll.
“Ma said you wouldn’t have any wings,” Johnny said, “but you really do look very humanlike. What do you eat?”
I pretended to recoil in horror. “Oh, Johnny, dear, what a horrible thought. We don’t eat! If we ate, then we’d have to eliminate. You wouldn’t want to have to imagine an angel on the potty now, would you?”
He blushed. “Sorry, ma’am. I ain’t such a good thinker.”
“That’s all right, dear. Did your ma tell you that I have a very special favor to ask and that you are obligated to say yes?”
He nodded vigorously. “Yes, Your Royal Flyness.”
“Good. I like your insertion of the word ‘Royal’ by the way. Now to the favor: I’ve come to get a copy of the security tape for the day the bank was robbed.”
“Which robbery would that be, Your Royal Flyness?”
“There’s been more than one?”
“Ma’am, Pennsylvania is the Keystone State, but when Mr. Yoder refers to us’ens as the Keystone Kops, I think he’s like making an illusion to something else.”
“Quite possibly so. Well, this would be the time, just a few months ago, when three Amish robbed it, and this pretty cashier here had a bullet graze her arm.”
“Oh, yeah, and there was an old lady and her grandson in here, and she like tripped and fell and nearly got them both killed on that account.”
“Listen, buster, in the first place she wasn’t
“Uh-I’m sorry, Your Royal Flyness. I know I promised Ma, and you oughtn’t to go back on your promises to the dead, but if I give you that tape, Mr. Yoder will kill me, and I’m not so sure I’m going to Heaven.”
“But that’s the easy part of being a Christian! We can all be assured of our salvation; all we need to do is to confess our sins and believe that Jesus is our Lord.”
“No offense, ma’am, but you ain’t seen my lists of sins. Besides, what you just said don’t seem very fair to me. Ain’t that an invitation for someone like me to go out and do all manner of sinning, and when they figure they’ve had enough under their belt,
“Yes, but what if you got hit by a truck in the first five minutes of living your sinful life?”
“I’ll take my chances.” He gave me a manure-shoveling grin. “You know, you’re kind of pretty for an angel. You allowed going out on dates?”
“Verily methinks I desire naught but to retch.”
“Ma’am, I don’t speak that Bible talk, so you’re going to have to give it to me straight.”
“Give me the robbery tape and we’ll see.”
“I can’t.”
“Johnny, I didn’t want it to have to come to this, but it looks like I’m going to have to tell Ma.”
“I’m sorry, pretty angel, but I’m a man of my word, and you see this really big guy came in and made me and Mr. Yoder swear that we wouldn’t show nobody nothing, and besides, I ain’t in charge of the tapes.”
“Who changes them out?”
“I do, but I hand them all over to Mr. Yoder.”
“What’s this really big guy’s name?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“In that case I’m calling your ma right now.” I inhaled deeply, to get a lot of calling power, but unfortunately inhaled a lot of dust as well. “Mrs. Ash-choo! Achoo! Achoo!”
My sneezes always come in threes, but the third one in this case was particularly hard-hard enough to knock me out of the bush and onto the cold marble floor. I wasn’t seriously hurt, but my jig was up.
“You ain’t no angel,” Johnny roared.
“Johnny, angel,” I said repeatedly as I scrambled to my feet. Perhaps if I set the words to music I’d have the beginning of a hit rock-and-roll song.
“Get out now, before I call the police!”
I got. In more ways than one. As I hobbled through the rest of the lobby and out the foyer, I stuffed my purse with all manner of free brochures. I know, that was childish of me, and it was a very nongreen way of getting back at Mr. Yoder, and it certainly did nothing to retaliate against Johnny Ashton or the “really big guy,” but it obviously served a need in me at the time.
What’s more, after my fiasco of a visit to the bank, I began to truly let go and heal. Oh, what a blessing that was. Every morning I woke up with a smile on my face, and if there wasn’t already one on it, in fifteen minutes or less, the Babester could put one on that would last all day. Folks actually began to call me cheerful-and mean it!
But all that began to change the week that the three couples from New Jersey came to stay as guests of the inn. Need I say more?
