Free Just Plain Pickled to Death by Tamar Myers Page B

soon as I get out of debt. Farmers don’t have pensions.”
    I stared back. I felt like I had that time, after Susannah’s divorce, when she stopped by the inn on a pretense of borrowing a vacuum cleaner. I should have bolted the doors and piled heavy furniture in front of the windows. I should have had my mail held and my phone disconnected. I should have remained in seclusion, until somebody—perhaps God Himself—sent a white dove down the chimney with a note attached telling me that Susannah was now a safe six states away, married, and the mother of five children.
    Imagine! Susannah Yoder Entwhistle wanting to borrow a vacuum cleaner! Imagine Aaron Miller Sr., a man of fewer words than Michelangelo’s David, pouring out his troubles to me. And broke? Mennonites may be poor, but they are too frugal ever to be broke. Or so I had thought. Yesiree, if I had had half the sense of a heifer, I would have hoofed it out of there right then. I would have galloped right past Aaron, thrown everyone out of the inn, and barricaded the windows and doors just like I should have done with Susannah.
    “Just what is your point, dear?” I asked kindly.
    Aaron Senior swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing like a tied cork with a big bass on the other end.
    “I’m asking you and Aaron to take me in, Magdalena.”
    I’m sure my Eve’s apple bobbed a few times at that point. “Me? Us?”
    “Yes.”
    “But what about your sisters?”
    “They wouldn’t have me. Far too much resentment. On all our parts,” he added with admirable honesty.
    “Your nephews and nieces?” I asked. Hope does indeed spring eternal—especially when in-laws are involved.
    He shrugged. “I’ve never been close to any of them. Besides, Aaron is my son. Folks would expect him to take me in first.”
    To his credit, Aaron Senior stopped just short of saying that it was his son’s duty. It might not seem like that to you now, but believe me, there is a world of difference between performing an act of generosity and an act of duty. The former might possibly stir up feelings of noble pride in one’s breast, the latter only resentment. Again, I am talking about in-laws.
    The rock and the hard place waited patiently for me to answer while I gasped, snorted, cleared my throat, and repeated the combination in every possible sequence. Eighty years had given him a different perception of time.
    “Well,” I said at last, “Aaron and I would be delighted to have you come and live with us.”
    “You would?”
    I broke the ninth commandment twice in a row.
    I’m not saying the blue returned to his eyes or his shoulders stopped sagging, but Aaron Senior suddenly seemed years younger.
    “I wouldn’t be any trouble, honest. And I promise not to give you unsolicited advice about your marriage.”
    “And think twice about solicited advice,” I warned him. “I’ve been known to kill the messenger—so to speak.”
    “I understand.”
    I took a deep breath. “But of course it will cost you.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “What I mean is, I need something from you in return for free room and board for the rest of your life.”
    The poor man blushed deeply.
    “Why, Pops Miller, watch what you think! I’m talking about some information.”
    He sighed. “Freni told me you’d ask. The truth is, Aaron really is two years younger than you.”
    I waved a hand impatiently. “I don’t care about that,” I said, breaking that same commandment yet a third time. “I want to know what really went on between your sisters and that accordion-playing evangelist, Benjamin Somebody-or-another.”
    “Ah, that. It’s important, is it?”
    “If you want a roof over your head, it is,” I said. I didn’t mean to be insensitive, it just slipped out. “You see, I don’t feel right marrying your son until we’ve had a funeral for your niece, and—”
    “Rebecca did not run off to the Poconos with that two-bit, small-tent evangelist,” he said emphatically. “I know