The Crepes of Wrath by Tamar Myers Page B

don’t mean to be rude or anything, but it’s getting really late, and I have to be going. I don’t suppose you could persuade one of the boys to lend me the key.”
    That nearly brought on a second near heart attack.
    “That’s okay,” I said, “I’ll think of something else. Perhaps you could drive me in your buggy. Just as far as the nearest phone.”
    Benjamin nodded. “Yah, Joseph Mast has a phone.”
    “He does have a phone,” I agreed, “but he’s as stable as a skyscraper made of cottage cheese.”
    “What means this?”
    “Never mind, dear. Perhaps you’d be willing to drive me a little further. After all—”
    “Benjamin!” Catherine called from the back porch. “Benjamin!” The stress in her voice was almost palpable.
    “Uh-oh,” I said, “sounds like there’s a crisis brewing inside.”
    “Yah.” Benjamin looked at his wife, back to me, and then at his wife. The poor guileless man was torn between familial duty and the commandment to be hospitable to strangers. It was a painful struggle to watch.
    “That’s all right, dear,” I assured him. “You go on in where you’re needed the most. I can hoof it all the way home if I have to.”
    “Thank you, Miss Yoder.” He needed no further urging, and bolted for the house as if his life depended on it.
    I started down the long dirty driveway, praying that the Good Lord would send a car my way to give me a lift. Any car, just as long as it didn’t belong to Joseph Mast or Lodema Schrock. Then, for some inexplicable reason I burst into a rousing rendition of the old spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”
    Ask, and you shall receive, the Bible says. It also says something about God working in mysterious ways. Well, let me tell you, these words are all true. I had just set foot on hard pavement, still singing, when the Good Lord sent a sweet chariot to carry me home.

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    Strictly speaking it wasn’t a chariot, but an Amish buggy. But it was awfully sweet of the driver to stop, although the fact that I was standing in the middle of the road, arms and legs spread, may have been a determining factor.
    “Good evening, Miss Yoder. Is something wrong?”
    I recognized the handsome face of Jacob Troyer, the young man who had asked to borrow my phone earlier that day. Sitting beside him on the front seat was his mousy little wife, Gertrude.
    For some reason I have always disliked the woman. Perhaps it is because—and experts will back me up on this—we instinctively have a visceral antipathy toward approximately twenty percent of the people we lay eyes on for the first time. At any rate, there is something about Gertrude’s scrunched-up face, her tiny eyes, and pinched lips—oh and that ridiculous button nose—that just sets my teeth on edge. It is nothing personal, I assure you, since I had never, until then, actually met the woman, but only seen her around at places like Miller’s Feed Store, Yoder’s Corner Market, and the county fair. And just so you put it out of your mind, my negative feelings had absolutely nothing to do with the fact thatsuch a plain Jane had somehow managed to snare the most gorgeous man in the county, Gabe the Babe included.
    I smiled pleasantly at the handsome man and his homely wife. “There’s more wrong than you could shake a buggy whip at, but the bottom line is, I need a ride.”
    “How far?”
    I glanced at my watch. Alas, it was already twenty-five after six. Gabe would be well on his way to Stucky Ridge. So what was there to be gained by stopping at the nearest house with a phone? Hernia had no professional mechanics and the garages in Bedford were already closed. Why prevail upon a guest, or an untrustworthy sister, to pick me up, when a leisurely ride through the countryside might actually soothe my soul?
    “To the PennDutch,” I said decisively.
    Jacob nodded, and had a mumbled, and somewhat belabored conversation with his wife. A paranoid Magdalena might well have suspected that said