But Billy Dee was at least a cooperative conspirator. “Sure thing, Miss Yoder,” he said hopping up. “I been meaning to talk to you about that myself.”
“Did you get a chance to talk to Miss Brown?” I asked when we were alone.
“No, ma’am. I knocked on her door a couple of times, but either she ain’t in, or she’s out like a light. A lot of them reporters have drinking problems, you know.”
I didn’t know, but now I certainly hoped it was true. When Susannah comes home in her cups, I can count on her sleeping for at least the next twelve hours. With any luck, and if what made Miss Brown’s suitcase so heavy was booze, the retiring reporter might be out of commission for most of the week. Of course I am theologically, as well as personally, opposed to alcohol, but the good Lord is just as capable of using the devil’s tools to his advantage as anything else.
“Say, Miss Yoder,” added Billy Dee as an afterthought, “I’d like to do me a little pole fishing tomorrow evening when we get back. Any ponds around here?”
“Miller’s pond is just up the road about a mile and a half. He doesn’t mind if you fish it, as long as you close the cattle gate behind you.”
“Sure thing, ma’am, thanks. But, say, you wouldn’t happen to have an empty jar or something I could keep my bait in? You know, with a lid.”
I refrained from laughing. “It’s November, Mr. Grizzle. If you’re looking for night crawlers, you may have to dig down to China.”
“Name’s Billy Dee, ma’am, remember? Anyhow, I bet that cow manure out there back of the bam keeps the ground as warm as toast. Might have to wrestle me those worms out of the ground, they’ll be so big.”
He was probably right. Papa used to fish in November, and with night crawlers too, I think. “I keep some empty jars in that old cabinet on the back porch. Help yourself. You need a flashlight?”
“Naw, but thank you, ma’am.”
“Just turn out the lights when you leave.”
At the rate they were working, the quilt might well be finished by the time they turned in.
By then I was pooped, so I headed circuitously for bed. We have no night clerk here at the PennDutch. There is no “vacancy” sign for me to turn on or off in the evenings. If all the guests have arrived, I am free to toddle off to bed whenever I feel like it. All the guests have their own keys to the front door and are free to come and go as they please. Once or twice I might get up in the middle of the night to see if the front door has been locked, but this is only a recent practice. I know every single solitary soul living in Hernia, even the three Baptists, and if it hadn’t been for the rape and murder of Rachel Zook by an itinerate vagabond last year, I wouldn’t bother to lock up at all.
After locking the front door, I turned off the lights in the main sitting room and then popped into the parlor. The parlor has always been the parlor. It too is located at the front of the house, just off the sitting room, and back when the sitting room used to be the dining room, the parlor was where we entertained the non-eating guests. Eating company, as Mama called the others, had no need to use the parlor. But for non-eating guests, the ones you only wanted to stay for an hour or less, the parlor was the perfect solution.
The parlor was smaller than the dining room but had a lot more personality. Although it had its own entrance off the front porch, we never used it but always entered through the old dining room. I think that in the very old days the parlor used to be the kitchen, because the wall opposite the dining room is dominated by an enormous hearth. The hearth is mostly filled in now with bookshelves, but the center portion has been kept open as a fireplace.
Back when Grandma ran the show, the parlor was furnished only with straight-back, uncomfortable chairs. Any visitor who managed to survive sitting in one for an hour without squirming was a candidate for elevation to an eating guest. But when Mama took over, she changed all the rules. Out went the straight-backs and in came the overstuffed. Comfy furniture was Mama’s one concession to decadence.
I must confess that I have taken Mama’s drastic changes a step further, by the addition of two La-Z-Boy recliners. It was in one of these chairs that I found Joel Teitlebaum.
“Oh, good evening,” I said. It had been an evening of surprises and I was a mite startled. I am, after all, easily lost in my thoughts.
"Good evening, Miss Yoder,” Joel said cheerfully. He had apparently been reading one of the books from the hearth and munching on sunflower seeds. A little stack of empty shells lay on an end table next to him.
“Is it a good book?” I asked lamely. I am always at a loss when talking alone to a man, even one young enough to be my son.