Free Funeral Hotdish by Jana Bommersbach Page B

learning to make pierogies, and she’s pretty good,” she bragged at another. Everyone knew Amber wanted to teach third grade because Gertie had told them. Again and again. She and Amber had started collecting the new state quarters—they already had Delaware, New Jersey, and Connecticut—and Amber vowed to collect all fifty over the next ten years and use them to teach her third graders history. North Dakota’s State Quarter wasn’t scheduled to be released until 2006, and Gertie hoped she’d still be here to see that happen.
    But that didn’t make any difference anymore. Now, those stories were done. Now she had nothing—and nobody. If she let herself dwell on that, she knew her heart would stop.
    Gertie knew it was coming, and she vowed she wouldn’t listen when the women got around to talking about what everyone in town was talking about. I’ll just close my ears , she said to herself, as she turned red meat into browned hamburger.
    The women in the dining room—women out of earshot of Gertie—started it. But eventually, everyone joined in. And of course, Gertie listened.
    “I don’t even know what Ecstasy is,” one of them said, and neither did anyone else, but somebody heard it was supposed to make you “feel good.”
    “I hear the entire class took it.”
    “Not everyone, but most of them.”
    “What were they doing?”
    “Somebody said it was just a goof. Their senior prank. They thought all the kids in the cities were doing it, so they’d try it too.”
    “It’s supposed to be safe.”
    “You’re not supposed to die from it.”
    “Who got it for them?”
    “Where did it come from?”
    “Can you believe there’s stuff like that here?”
    Someone—doing a quick survey to be sure there were no Roths in this circle—offered, “That Johnny Roth was the one behind it, I’m told. He got it from some kid in town who’s selling drugs. Can you believe that? We’ve got a drug dealer in town!”
    “It’s the kid they call Crabapple.” That was Maggie Bonner, who’d come into the dining room to share some of her knowledge. “He’s one of those Harding boys—the one Huntsie hired at the body shop.”
    “Oh, my God. I know him. He worked on my car!” Angie spit out the words like she was guilty of something for having the boy fix her transmission.
    “It’s Darryl. I think he was the youngest—they farmed the old Hermann place north of town.” Norma could always be counted on to know the location of any family in these parts. “But they lost it in the eighties—remember, his dad shot himself in the barn the day of the auction?”
    “That’s him? ”
    “Yeah. They had four boys in that family—three girls—they all left after the foreclosure. Except this one. He was just a little boy then. Stayed on with his grandma, but she’s gone now. He lives north of town on the old Johnson place.”
    “How old is he?” Nobody knew for sure, but Norma guessed in his early twenties.
    “You know, they suspected him for a long time but Sheriff Potter just sat on his hands.” That was Maggie again, offering only a thimble of what she knew.
    “They did? Who?”
    Maggie stayed quiet, thinking it best not to tell too much just now. But she did offer the latest news. “Oh, he skipped right away, that’s what I heard.”
    “He left town?” Angie wondered if her Earl knew.
    “Yeah, they say he was at the dance and he ran as soon as he saw what was happening. He’s not only a pusher, he’s a coward.”
    “If he’s smart, he’ll never come back here.”
    “I hate to think what would happen to him if he did.”
    “I hope they catch him and put him away forever.”
    “Better that than letting someone get their hands on him.” That caused a pause, as each woman of the Judith Circle imagined a town full of someones.
    In the kitchen, Gertie had big pots of water boiling as she finished browning the meat. “Bacon,” she yelled, and Maggie rushed back to deliver the bits. They spit as