Butter Safe Than Sorry by Tamar Myers Page B

certifiably nuts," I heard somebody grumble from the dark privacy of the stairwell.
    "Indeed, I am," I said with satisfaction. Yes, sir, it had all the makings of a blessed week.

    I didn't even have a clue that something had gone terribly wrong with my game plan until the sheriff's car pulled up my long gravel driveway. It happened just as I had begun to say grace. I feel compelled to explain here that the enormity of such an interruption cannot be overemphasized. My guests, as it turns out, were all papists, given to a brief prayer accompanied by a hand gesture known as the sign of the cross.
    But since they had all signed up for the full Mennonite experience, I was determined to give them just that. A proper grace--that is, a Protestant grace--should be long enough to wilt a crisp tossed salad and turn mashed potatoes into concrete. If at least one person in attendance does not come close to fainting, it fails the test. For one must not only ask the Lord to bless the food, but to calm Aunt Wendy's eczema, cure Uncle Walter 's halitosis, and find some way to talk some sense into Cousin Leona, to stop her from marrying that gold digger from Chile with the red toupee and the extra pinkie on his left hand.
    Finally, when the time comes to wrap it up and say amen, the attendees are so famished that they will eat anything --perhaps even one another, like the survivors of an Andean plane crash--and they are grateful putty in your hand. Oh, what delicious power! Like a skilled conductor with an orchestra, one can prolong that moment of intense anticipation until it bursts into a collective gasp, quite like that moment of marital bliss that one experiences when--
    "Magdalena!"
    "Shhh, I'm praying."
    "Sorry, hon," my Beloved whispered, "but the sheriff said he's not falling for that ruse this time."
    I opened one eye and looked down the long table that my ancestor Jacob the Strong had built in the nineteenth century. The papists along its length, like their distant cousins, the Episcopalians, were not keeping their eyes closed. Believe me, a Baptist, or a Methodist, would have to have his or her eyes pried open during a prayer, lest the Devil somehow distract him or her. If, however, they prayed that the English would adopt some gender-neutral pronouns--
    "Mags, hon, this is serious."
    I closed my wandering eye; I never should have opened it. I was still returning thanks for the Good Lord's bountiful goodness, by whose hand we all were fed, and had yet to even touch on familial maladies.
    "--and bless the plump little hands that kneaded this bread," I intoned. "It is, by the way, excellent bread, even if Freni did get the loaves a wee too brown on the bottom this time around, so I fully expect that we, your grateful servants gathered here, will partake thereof. And with gusto . But as for the beef stew--Mmm, mmm, mmm, does that smell good! No need for divinely inspired gusto there, Lord."
    "Miss Yoder?"
    "Yes, Lord?"
    At least five out of six of my guests were rude enough to laugh at that point. One can be quite sure that both my eyes flew open in righteous annoyance.
    "Over here, Miss Yoder," said the sheriff. He was standing in the doorway of my dining room, and in so doing re- created a scene from my worst nightmare. That nightmare, of course, had to do with the day Mama and Papa died, squished to death as they were between a milk tanker and a semi- trailer truck loaded to the gills with state-of-the-art running shoes. That evening as well a sheriff had stood in the dining room of the PennDutch Inn, twisting his cap in his hands.
    "I can see you," I said as an aside to shush the lawman up. "Now, Lord, about the mashed potatoes: it really is a shame you didn't have potatoes in ancient Palestine. You would have loved these. They are smooth--"
    "Mags, hon," Gabe hissed from eight feet away, "I don't see any potatoes on the table."
    The sheriff cleared his throat. "Tell Miss Yoder," he said, "that if she doesn't join me in her parlor,