The Death of Pie (8 page)

‘Magdalena,' Freni said, suddenly sounding completely resigned to her miserable lot as the downtrodden housekeeper, ‘I work my fingers to the bone all morning making the stew, and what do I have to show for it?'

‘Bony fingers,' I said helpfully.

‘Yah, and they are crooked too with the authoritis.'

I have spent decades gently trying to correct Freni's pronunciation of certain words, but to no avail. An inflammation of published writers and painful swollen finger joints – perhaps in the grand scheme of things, there is no difference.

‘Now I feel really guilty about not going with you back to the PennDutch,' Agnes whispered. Alas, Agnes whispers as softly as a flock of scrapping seagulls.

‘
Gut!
' Freni said decisively. ‘That one can come and eat for how many people that she likes.'

‘But I
need
carbs, Mags,' Agnes begged. ‘I'm a grieving woman; I
need
pancakes, not stew.'

‘What?' Freni roared. ‘Pancakes in the middle of the day? Whoever heard of such a thing?'

‘Freni,' I said in my most motherly, intentionally soothing voice, ‘lots of people eat pancakes and waffles in the middle of the day. This is a free country, after all.'

When Freni makes her ‘disgusted' face, her thin, gray lips take on the shape of a well-weathered volcano as seen from above. A dozen or so fissures suddenly appear around the perimeter of the volcano's cone and a smattering of white hairs give the illusion of a dusting of snow. Of course, I couldn't see Mt. Frensuvius over my car phone, but I could picture it in my mind's eye, which routinely performs with HD clarity.

‘It is a sin, if you ask me,' Freni said.

‘
What
did you say?'

‘You heard me; it is a sin that so many things must change all the time.'

‘Well—'

‘First Agnes wants her pancakes for lunch, then maybe one day for supper. Who knows, is it not possible that one day she wants only pancakes? Pancakes, pancakes, pancakes! Magdalena, I ask you, is this healthy? Is this what Gott wants us to put into our bodies? This kind of thinking is the way of the world, Magdalena. They even have a name for it: they call it Edenism. These Edenists think that pleasure is a good thing! Imagine that! You must not be reduced by such thoughts, Magdalena.'

‘Freni, dear,' I purred, ‘I hardly think that eating pancakes three times a day will have much impact on reducing me.'

There followed a moment of silence in which I knew that I had gone too far in teasing my mentor and my friend. ‘So now you mock me?' she finally said. ‘Shame on you, Magdalena Portulacca Yoder Rosen. You are better than this.' Then she hung up the phone.

To be honest, the vehemence of Freni's response embarrassed me. Yes, I'd known Agnes my entire life. We'd been bathwater babies – literally shared the same washtub as infants – and gone to school together, laughed together, cried together, fought each other, lied to each other
and
once we even snuck off to a dance together, but I still hated being treated like a child in front of my best friend. I especially chafed at her last line. Those were words that I'd heard a million times growing up, and I had not been a troublesome child; merely ungainly and awkward, with atrocious handwriting.

As I sat there for a moment pondering my next move, I felt an annoying tear escape from my right eye and slip boldly down my cheek. No one, but no one, gets to see Magdalena cry in public these days. In another second I would have blotted that tear with a man-size handkerchief had not my spherical, sister-under-the-skin interrupted my thoughts.

‘Mags,' Agnes said, ‘I just felt a goose walk over my grave.'

‘Why you?' I wailed. ‘You're not the one who is at fault.'

No doubt there are still those who claim that people are incapable of wailing; only sirens can wail, these folks say, and then they toss heads and stick their noses in the air in such a manner that one would think that all of France agrees with them. Well, these people may be right about everything else in life, but they have never been near Magdalena when she is feeling guilty for having hurt an old woman's feelings. Nor have these dismissive people been around Magdalena's lungs when she realized that by conducting an investigation she will miss out on spending time with the little fella who, until recently, has spent more time inside her than out of her. So
wail
she did!

‘Dang it!' Agnes said and clapped her shapely but plump hands right in my face to snap me out of my reveries. ‘Does
everything
have to be about you, Mags?'

‘
Whuh?
'

‘Remember, you're not the one whose fiancé just got killed in a fatal motorcycle accident while racing back to the castle to fetch the family doctor.'

‘I thought you said it was a car accident. And he wasn't your fiancé; he was an actor, for Pete's sake!'

‘Just step on the gas, would you? I'm starving.'

Because I did as my friend bade, I was not saddled with the title of World's Worst Friend. What's more, because I held the pseudo-official, almost-legitimate, genuinely faux rank of Assistant Investigator and Honorary Dog-catcher, and was driving a car outfitted with all the bells and whistles, I was able to realize speeds heretofore unrecorded in Hernia.

Wanda Hemphopple was an English Englishwoman. That meant that she was neither Amish nor Mennonite, and her ancestors actually hailed from across The Pond. However, like just about everyone else in this valley, Wanda's ancestors made the trip over during the reign of King George III. During the interim, one of Wanda's English forbearers mated with one of the more unfortunate European races – quite possibly a Frenchman. The resulting mongrel was not tall and sturdy, and did not possess the classic rose-pink cheeks of the English. Au contraire, poor Wanda was a short, wiry woman with a beak for a nose. Neither was she blessed with an Englishwoman's sense of decorum. Oh no, Wanda Hemphopple was born with a burr under her saddle, sand up her bathing suit and a splinter under her thumbnail – in other words, in a perpetual state of grumpiness that I seemed to exacerbate. But other than the fact that I invariably drove her up the wall, I'd say that we were close friends. As a matter of fact, she was my second-best friend, after Agnes, of course.

A fellow businesswoman, Wanda was the sole owner and proprietor of the Sausage Barn, Hernia's nearest restaurant. This eatery is actually located in Bedford, up near the Pennsylvania Turnpike and just past the charismatic Protestant church with thirty-two words in its name.

This restaurant is a traditional American
diner
in that it began as the dining car of a train. Of course, much has been added, and today one would be pretty much hard-pressed to detect ‘diner' from ‘add-on' when viewing the inside. Originally, in the tradition of American diners it served a wide range of food, from breakfast to sandwiches, meat and potatoes, and was open twenty-four hours a day. But then gradually – and only the Good Lord knows exactly why – this diner became regionally famous for its breakfast sausage and pancakes. Americans, you see, have a perverse fondness for mixing savoury and sweet in the same meal.

Perhaps this perverse characteristic will help explain my relationship with Wanda. She was the fraternal twin sister I've always had but never wanted. We were always friends, but we began being best enemies in grade school, beginning with the day she dipped one of my braids into a pot of bright blue poster paint. I retaliated by mashing a wad of chewing gum into the base of her ponytail. To say that we developed a hair fetish might be going too far, but we were still pulling pranks in high school, when I might have stepped over the line a wee bit.

Wanda must have been about seventeen then, and she wore her long, hardly-ever-been-washed hair in a rather loose French twist that we, her classmates, all called her ‘hot-dog bun.' Well, one day the Devil got into me and I slid a
real
hot dog, a one hundred percent meat wiener down into the space created by the twist. The fact that Wanda's hairdo managed to keep its shape must be credited to the great number of hairpins that she used, plus all the accumulated grime and oil which must have acted as a sort of cement. Nonetheless, the weight of a plump wiener composed of pig lips, jowls and usual by-products caused the ‘bun' to sway this way and that, like the cradle in the nursery rhyme.

However, much to my relief, the bough did not break and the baby did not fall – if you get my drift. Thankfully, no one saw me do it, except for God and maybe Granny Yoder. The latter's malevolent, but unseen presence in our school cafeteria might explain the horrific taste of just about everything that was served, or at the very least why the milk in those little cartons was invariably spoiled, no matter what due date was stamped on them.

Now where was I? Oh, yes, because my crime went undetected, and because the Hemphopple family were hygienically challenged, the presence of a wiener in Wanda's wobbly wonder was not immediately detected. In fact, it wasn't until a full week later, on a warm spring day in boring Mrs Lehman's boring American History class, that a stray cat jumped through an open window and headed straight for Wanda's hair. I've been told that it was like a scene straight out of a movie. If indeed this is the case, then I can see now why it is that so many people pollute their minds with cinema. I'm telling you: Wanda's battle to save her bun from the destructive forces of a hungry pussy was extremely thrilling to watch.

‘
Brava!
' I'd cried, temporarily forgetting the depth of our schoolgirl antipathies.

Unfortunately, the pussy had prevailed, pulling open Wanda's pungent bun, thus releasing the rotten weenie, which had somehow managed to catapult over to boring Mrs Lehman's desk and land in the middle of her open copy of
American History for a New Generation
. In that moment Mrs Lehman ceased to be boring. Although Mrs Lehman was a faithful Mennonite who did not believe in dancing, she did a jig of sorts while bellowing like a bull that had just been made into a steer. She was obviously trying to flip whatever it was off of her book, but when that didn't work, she took the next logical step and chucked history out the window altogether.

‘You!' she roared, then able to focus her attention on Wanda. ‘March to the principal's office.'

Somehow, also in that moment, Wanda immediately knew that the origin of the fetid food was none other than Yours Truly. She arched her back, looking so much like a cat that the authentic feline in the room hissed, and leaped through the back window.

‘You!' Wanda then screeched at me. ‘It was
you
who put that thing in my hair.' She whirled and faced Mrs Lehman. ‘Magdalena Yoder put a human finger in my French twist, and that's what landed on your book, Mrs Lehman!'

Upon hearing Wanda's imaginative assumption, Mrs Lehman, whose undercarriage had been designed by her Creator along the lines of the pygmy (but still rather sizable) forest elephant, had fainted dead away. It only was because the Good Lord had seen fit to give her the thick ankles of her Alpine peasant ancestors that she remained aloft long enough to make us think that she had fallen asleep whilst standing. Consequently, when Mrs Lehman had fallen, it was with a resounding, skull-fracturing thud. Poor Mrs Lehman was out of commission for the rest of the term. Meanwhile, we had to put up with a substitute teacher named Cynthia Kettles-Brooke – a hussy who wore red lipstick, and who hinted that she might actually believe in evolution.

Sadly, Wanda never forgave me for that unfortunate incident, but nonetheless we managed to forge a friendship of sorts. As it turned out, the Good Lord blessed both of us with entrepreneurial skills: I created a charming bed and breakfast and Wanda built her Sausage Barn. Truly, we have never thought of ourselves as business competitors. For one thing, the Sausage Barn does not offer accommodation, and the guests who stay at my inn almost always avail themselves of a second breakfast over at Wanda's, if only to get a decent cup of coffee.

A scrupulously honest Magdalena would admit that Wanda and I were competitors when it came to everything else. But I will not admit to this, because in my community of believers,
competition
is a sin. Many of us have been known to vie for the position of being the least competitive person in the church. However, there is nothing wrong with
out-performing
someone else with one's God-given talents. It is all in how one slices the onion, don't you think?

I am always ready and eager to out-perform, so when Agnes and I showed up in the squad car at the Sausage Barn late that morning, you can be sure that the siren was wailing and the red lights on the roof were flashing. The sight of us was certainly arresting. If only I had had the nerve to arrest someone as well. That would have shown Wanda!

Nonetheless, Wanda and thirty-eight customers came pouring out like killer bees from a toppled hive. Last to emerge was her shirtless and very hairy fry-cook. Within seconds, nineteen of those customers ran to their cars and drove away. One would think that I'd busted up a drug ring or a gambling parlour, not merely just showed off at a high-stakes, heart-attack-on-a-plate dining establishment.

Since the squad car was equipped with a bullhorn, I was tempted to use it for some clean, Christian fun. You know, like saying: ‘Freeze! Immigration! Papers, everyone!' Harmless things like that.

Wanda also has a bullhorn; it's attached to her lips. ‘What the heck is going on?' she bellowed. (Sadly, Wanda, who is a Methodist, used a stronger word than ‘heck.')

Then she got a good look at me, resplendent in my faux but officially approved police attire, and puffed up like a bantam rooster on steroids. ‘What did you do with that boy, Toy – I mean, the Chief of Police?'