3 tablespoons cocoa powder

1/3 cup milk cup chunky peanut b.u.t.ter 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 stick margarine

3 cups rolled quick oats

Mix the sugar, cocoa, and milk together in a heavy pot. Boil for one minute. Stir in the peanut b.u.t.ter, vanilla, and margarine. Remove from heat and add the rolled oats, mixing well. Using a teaspoon, drop the still-warm mixture by the spoonful onto waxed paper.

When cool, peel off the waxed paper and enjoy.

16.

It got a little crowded in the kitchen around six p.m. Since Billy Dee Grizzle had a stew to make, he'd got there first and had appropriated the left front burner of our six-burner, inst.i.tutional stove. Billy had started browning his meat around five, and by six his stew was well underway, filling the kitchen with a heady, but not altogether disagreeable odor.

Delbert James was the next cook on the scene. His macaroni-hamburger ca.s.serole required some stove-top cooking in its initial stages, but was eventually transferred to the oven to bake. The cheese-topped concoction was already merrily bubbling and browning away in the oven when Jeanette and Lydia showed up at the same time.

"What the h.e.l.l is that stench?" demanded Jeanette. "This room is fouled with the odor of simmering flesh."

"It smells delicious to me," said Lydia firmly. "Just how the h.e.l.l am I supposed to cook with that stuff stinking up the joint?"

"No need to," said Billy Dee warmly, "there's plenty in this pot to go around. Just put up your dogs and relax for a spell. Let us men do the cooking."

"Like h.e.l.l I will."

Normally I didn't tell my guests how to talk, but this was Mama's kitchen, and poor Mama had already done enough turning over for the day. If someone didn't make Jeanette put a lid on it, Mama would soon be spinning so fast she might start generating electricity.

"I don't allow swearing on these premises, Ms. Parker," I said as graciously as I could.

Jeanette's face turned as red as her hair, but she shut up for a minute. I wish Lydia had.

"What's in your pot, Mr. Grizzle?" she asked politely. Billy lifted the lid and deeply inhaled the escaping steam. "Venison stew, ma'am."

"Deer meat?"

"That, and a few onions, carrots, and spuds."

"Bambi?" Jeanette almost shrieked. "You're cooking Bambi?"

"I knew a Bambi once," said Billy Dee pleasantly. "Things were definitely cooking with her."

"That's disgusting, and so is your stew. I thought you'd given up hunting, Mr. Grizzle. After what you did to your daughter."

A muscle in Billy's left cheek twitched slightly, but other than that, he managed to keep his cool. "I have given up hunting, Ms. Parker. This is just something I sc.r.a.ped up off the road."

Jeanette looked as if she were about ready to toss her cookies. Instead, she tossed her flaming red hair out of her eyes, stomped over to the fridge, and demanded to see what vegetables I'd come up with. Humbly I showed her.

"You call that bok choy? That's as limp as Delbert James's wrist."

"Hey, I heard that," Delbert called from his position by the stove. Surprisingly, he didn't seem at all miffed. If anything, he sounded amused. I, for one, was not amused. It meant that Susannah had got her information right, and that Billy Dee probably did have a girlfriend. Not that it concerned me, of course.

"And are those supposed to be Chinese pea pods? I've seen pureed vegetables crisper than these!" shouted Jeanette.

"Children, children," said Lydia gently. She turned to me. 'Would you happen to have any clarified b.u.t.ter, Miss Yoder? I need it for the curry."

I confessed that all my b.u.t.ter was blurry. "Can you make your curry without b.u.t.ter? Then maybe everyone will eat it."

Lydia smiled patiently. "But the curry contains yogurt. If they won't eat b.u.t.ter, they certainly won't eat yogurt."

"Keeping animals penned up is a form of slavery, and forcibly taking milk from them is a form of abuse," Jeanette b.u.t.ted in, "possibly even s.e.xual abuse. And besides which, dairy products clog one's arteries, not to mention, milk is a leading cause of flatulence."

"Do you have any olive oil then?" asked Lydia graciously. How I admired that woman!

"Yes, I do," I said happily. I normally don't stock the stuff, but this bottle was left behind by a guest, an Italian count, who had a fetish for anything extra virgin. The two-liter bottle he left behind was hardly compensation for all the times he chased me around the inn. Had he not been an octogenarian, or at least a little cuter, he might have caught me. "Good. Olive oil will do just fine," the saintly woman said.

That settled, we all set back to work. In a few minutes we were joined by Joel and Garrett. Then by a disgruntled Linda.

"There isn't any dandelion vinegar in the cellar, Ms. Yoder. Just millions and millions of horrible spiders. You must call an exterminator!"

I could see that she was shaken, and her face was the color of a peeled leek bulb, but I hadn't heard any screams. "Are you sure you went all the way to the back, to those shelves behind the furnace?"

"Ms. Yoder, even Indiana Jones couldn't do that! The place is crawling With those things. I insist that you call an exterminator."

Those were pretty strong words coming from a mere snippet of a kid, if you ask me. "Ms. McMahon, I am shocked at how you talk. And I thought you reverenced life! Killing spiders, indeed. What, pray tell, is worse? To kill a nasty old cow for food, or to slaughter an entire community of innocent insects?"

"Spiders are not insects! And they aren't innocent. They're horrible!"

"Have you ever been bitten by one?"

"No."

"Mugged, raped, or otherwise accosted?"

"Very funny," said Jeanette. That woman b.u.t.ts into more things than a drunken billy goat. "Leave the poor kid alone. She's absolutely right. This place is a dump. What a dump!"

"Bette Davis you're not," said Delbert gaily.

"But dumpy's another thing." I think I said that.

"What?"

"If you don't have any basmati rice, then ordinary long grain will do," said the ever vigilant and cooperative Lydia.

"Now where are those canned beans I'm supposed to doctor up?" asked Garrett impatiently.

Before I could reply, Susannah and Shnook.u.ms meandered in. At first I could only a.s.sume that Shnook.u.ms had accompanied her, but it would have been a safe bet. Susannah was wearing enough yardage to conceal a Great Dane. Just thinking that made me count my blessings. If Shnook.u.ms had been a Great Dane, those wouldn't have been pellets I found on my pillow the week before.

Billy obligingly transferred his stew to a cast-iron Dutch oven, which he then stuck in the oven, so as to open up more stove-top s.p.a.ce. I made Susannah say thank you.

Because Susannah is anything but competent, and claims to be more anemic than a perpetual blood donor, I myself got out the huge pot for her cookies. Susannah did, after all, want to make a double batch.

Susannah's recipe only requires a few minutes at the stove, but my sister was determined to make them count. Quite unexpectedly, she burst into a high-pitched wail. I'm sure the sound startled everyone in the room but me, who immediately recognized it as a tune from the centuries-old hymnal, the Ausbund. This, isn't even a Mennonite hymn, but an Amish one, and I can only guess that Susannah's motive was to give her captive audience the authentic flavor of Pennsylvania Dutch life, which her cooking couldn't deliver.

That Susannah even remembered the hymn surprised me. Mama used to sing it to me as a child, but I am ten years older than Susannah, and I can't remember Mama singing it after I reached my teens. At any rate, the hymn, like many others in the Ausbund, I sounds more like keening than singing to English ears. And while Susannah's rendition was neither musically nor lyrically accurate, it definitely was loud.

I scurried over to the stove to tell her to put a lid on it, before someone else did. But before I could even open my mouth, Susannah opened hers even wider. What seconds before had been keening was now genuine screaming. I'm sure that at first I was the only one who could tell the difference.

I grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her around. "What is it?"

Susannah wrenched free and faced the pot again, her screams louder than ever. Then she began to gesticulate wildly at the pot, almost as if she were trying to do the b.r.e.a.s.t.stroke. Perhaps there was something about the pot that was not quite right. I bent over and examined its contents closely. Then it was all I could do to keep from screaming myself.

There, blinking up at me, totally covered with chocolate and peanut b.u.t.ter, was Shnook.u.ms. His little mouth was open too, and he would have been screaming as well, except that it was clogged with peanut b.u.t.ter.

Without even thinking, I yanked the pot off the burner and dumped its contents into the sink. Then I turned on the cold-water faucet as far as it would go and aimed the sprayer hose at the half-cooked canine. Susannah, in the meantime, had fainted. Fortunately, Billy Dee managed to grab her before she had a chance to slump over the stove.

'What the h.e.l.l is going on now?" Jeanette demanded.

"Go away!" I snapped. The cold water wasn't doing much to dissolve the hot goo from the dog's coat. I switched to warm.

Jeanette pushed into my s.p.a.ce. "What the h.e.l.l is that? I demand to know. My G.o.d, it's a rat!" she shrieked. She too began to faint, but when n.o.body made a move to catch her, she revived in time to brace herself against the sink.

"This is not a rat!" I shouted, so that everyone could hear. "This is Shnook.u.ms, my sister's dog."

Linda gasped, and although my back was turned, I'm sure she tried her hand at fainting too. "First spiders," I heard her say, "and now rats. I'm calling the board of health myself."

Just about then, I stuck my finger in the little dog's mouth and dislodged a glob of peanut b.u.t.ter. Immediately I heard Shnook.u.ms wheeze, and then his little chest began to move up and down. Seconds later he was revived enough to get loose with the most pitiful yowl I have ever heard. Even I felt sorry for the matted mutt.

"It is a dog!" I heard Lydia say.

"Rats can sound like that too," Jeanette and Linda said together.

Susannah had, by then, regained consciousness and was struggling to her feet. Billy Dee, ever the gentleman, was concerned that she might collapse again and was trying to coax her to remain p.r.o.ne. "Please lie still, Miss Entwhistle," he begged. "You're paler than a Yankee come February."

"Let me go!" she screamed. "That's my baby over there!"

At the sound of his mistress's voice, Shnook.u.ms began to wail even louder.

Reluctantly Billy Dee helped Susannah to her feet and walked her over to the sink. By then I had managed to do a fair job of cleaning the canine, and he bore at least a faint resemblance to Shnook.u.ms. Of course, any small animal, dog or cat, looks half their size when wet. Frankly, I've seen rats twice the size of the soggy Shnook.u.ms.

"See! It is a rat!" shrieked Jeanette. "It fell right from the ceiling into the pot. G.o.d knows what all we'll be eating tonight."

"I think I'm going to be sick," moaned Linda. Susannah grabbed her baby out of my hands and held him to her face for close inspection. He continued to wail. She began planting kisses allover his tiny body. He wailed even louder.

"I think you'd best take him to the vet," suggested Billy Dee.

Now Susannah began to wail. "My baby, my poor little baby, and it's all your fault."

I think she meant me. After all, it had been my idea that she cook something for supper. Of course she wasn't being fair, but this was no time to point it out.

"I'll get our coats and then we're heading straight for Doc Shafer," I said calmly. "Lydia, would you mind seeing to it that supper gets on the table and everyone gets a chance to eat? Mr. Grizzle, would you please call Dr. Shafer and tell him we're coming? I think he closes at six. His number is by the phone at the front desk." Papa would have been proud of me for my level-headedness. I think I got that quality from him. Anyway, acting calm in a crisis and delegating responsibility seem to come naturally to me, except when something really serious comes along, like being shot at. Papa always used to say I should become a manager and manage something, like a business or an organization. Susannah, on the other hand, says I should manage my own business. Mama probably agreed more with Susannah than with Papa, but she was too gentle ever to say such a thing.

While Susannah and Shnook.u.ms wailed, I calmly drove them to Doc Shafer's, who lives six miles on the other side of Hernia. Old Doc is primarily a farm vet, whose specialty is delivering breech births in cows. Doc has been treating our livestock since before I was born. In recent years, however, his arthritis has prevented his getting down on his knees and reaching up the birth ca.n.a.l of a Holstein, so he's shifted his focus to treating pets.

"Evening, ladies," said Doc cheerfully. Neither Susannah nor Shnook.u.ms were at all coherent, so I filled Doc in on all the details. "I immediately got the chocolate mixture off and rinsed him with cool water," I concluded.

"You did fine, Magdalena. I always said you would have made a good veterinarian."

I felt myself blushing. By and large I get fewer compliments than Saddam Hussein. "Thanks, Doc. Are the b.u.ms bad?"

He shook his head. "As far as I can tell, mostly first degree. With these smaller breeds, the problem is shock as much as anything else. What I'd like to do is give him a sedative and keep him overnight for observation. But I think he'll be as good as new by tomorrow."

You would have thought I'd plopped her pooch in a bun and smeared him with mustard the way Susannah carried on. "I won't leave without my baby!" she screamed. "My baby! My precious little itsy-bitsy baby! My Shnook.u.ms Wook.u.ms!" I had never, ever seen an adult woman carry on that way. If she had been a character in a movie or a book, someone would have slapped her silly to get her to stop. Although I doubt if it would have done any good.

"What you really need to do is give Susannah a sedative," I couldn't help saying.

"I could give her a shot of something to calm her down," Doc agreed. He gestured at the rows of bottles on the shelves behind him.

"Would that be legal?" I asked hopefully. "I mean, I don't want to be doing anything wrong."

Old Doc smiled. "I'll be eighty-two next month. If they take my license away, I'll retire. So, who are you going to trust, me or the legislators?"

I thought for a second about Garrett Ream, and decided to choose Doc. It was either that or leave Susannah with him for the night. I simply did not have the energy to sit up with her screaming all night.

"Stick it to her," I said.

Susannah never saw it coming, but undoubtedly she felt it. But only for a second. Almost immediately her screams faded to sobs, and then weak little whimpers. Amazingly, Shnook.u.ms quieted down too, and soon it would have been impossible to tell, had I been wearing a blindfold, which sound was coming from whom.

"Are you sure she'll be all right?"

"She'll sleep like a baby. Actually, maybe more like a lamb. That was my best sheep tranquilizer."