No Use Dying Over Spilled Milk by Tamar Myers

interpretation, I wasn’t really lying. I did have business to conduct with Stayrook, it just had nothing to do with farming. And even then, you’ll have to concede that my motives were pure.
    “Yes, it is important that I speak to him,” I said.
    “In that case, you might have spoken to him a few minutes ago. That was him who just left.”
    I looked closer at the bishop. Behind the parchment skin of old age, and camouflaged by the boyish voice, there was a shrewd and wary mind. For some reason it pleased me that an Amish man could be so cagey.
     

Chapter Nine
    I didn’t expect to run into the gal from Goshen at the funeral meal. If she had possessed any class she would have hung out in her motel room and watched whatever it is Susannah watches on daytime TV. I realize that most of those programs would make even the whore of Babylon blush, but Harriet obviously didn’t have any morals or she wouldn’t have hired herself out as a motorcar-driving mercenary for Mennonite money.
    Harriet was certainly glad to see me. “There you are, dear! Honestly, I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you. These folks”—she dropped her voice a decibel or two—“might be the salt of the earth, but they are B-O-R-I-N-G.”
    “This is a funeral, Harriet,” I reminded her.
    “Not like any of the funerals I’ve ever been to. Now, an Irish wake, that’s what I call a good time. Sometimes they go on for days. Are you Irish, Magdalena?”
    “Not by a long shot, dear.”
    “You sure? Magdalena sounds Irish to me.”
    “I’m sure.”
    “Ah, Jewish. Of course, the nose.”
    Had I not been both a lady and a pacifist, I would have punched Harriet’s nose. Many of my regular customers at the PennDutch are Jewish, some even my friends. Their noses come in all shapes and sizes, but the one thing they all have in common is that they don’t stick them into other people’s business.
    “For your information, my last name is Yoder,” I said. “I am a Mennonite. These boring people here”—I waved at the crowd—“are my family.”
    “Well,” humphed Harriet, “I should have known as much. After all, you don’t have a sense of humor.”
    I shrugged. “Or else you’re simply not funny, dear.” I went off to look for Stayrook Gerber.
    I found Stayrook in the mudroom talking about the coagulative property of rennet with several other men. He looked as if he’d been expecting me.
    “Stayrook Gerber?”
    “Yah.”
    “I’m Magdalena Yoder, from Hernia, Pennsylvania. Yost was a cousin of mine.”
    “Yah, I know who you are.”
    That didn’t surprise me. What did surprise, and please, me was that the other men regrouped and turned their backs on us so that we would have some privacy. Of course, they didn’t leave us alone on the mud porch; that would have been unseemly, and neither of us would have wanted that. If any of them eavesdropped, that was simply the risk I took. It was my conversation, after all.
    “Mr. Gerber—”
    “Stayrook, please.”
    “And please call me Magdalena. Stayrook, I don’t know exactly where to begin, or how to say this, except to come right out and state that I don’t think my cousin accidentally drowned in that milk tank. Nor do I think that Levi Mast fell from his silo.”
    Stayrook’s big face remained placid, but I saw his eyes widen in the shadow of his hat brim. “Why are you telling me this, Magdalena?”
    I’m sure it was only my imagination, but the backs of the other men seemed to stiffen, and there was a brief pause in their conversation. I waited until someone spoke again.
    “Someone brought you to my attention,” I whispered.
    He took a big step backward and nodded almost imperceptibly at me. I obediently closed the gap.
    “I am a married man with four children,” he said softly. “It is foolish of me to even talk about this.”
    “Silence won’t keep you safe,” I said. I know now that it was a pompous thing for me to say. Who did I have to lose? Susannah? She