Just Plain Pickled to Death Read Online Free PDF

auntie. It smelled like the perfume counter at J. C. Penney.
    “Yes, terrible,” Uncle Manasses murmured, but he didn’t sound convinced.
    Then again, poor Sarah had gone missing—and was presumed dead—twenty years before. It is hard to maintain grief that long, and unless you have a body in a barrel to jolt your memory, it is hard to recapture grief that is two decades old.
    “Well, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” Aunt Lizzie said, patting a stray platinum puff back into place.
    “Amen,” Uncle Manasses said. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a coffin nail.
    “I don’t allow smoking indoors,” I said calmly.
    Six pairs of eyes turned to stare at me. Susannah was the only one who snickered.
    “Well, you know what the surgeon general says. Smoking is not only hazardous to your health but also to mine.”
    “Magdalena, please,” Aaron begged, his voice barely a whisper.
    Uncle Manasses regarded me with the same detachment I am used to receiving from Matilda and Bessie, my milk cows.
    “A week of secondhand smoke isn’t going to hurt you at all. I’ve been smoking for fifty years, and I’m fit as a fiddle.”
    I smiled pleasantly. “That may be, dear, but you smell like an ashtray. You want to smoke, then go outside. This is my house.”
    “Honey, he’s my uncle.”
    It was the “H” word again, but I would not be swayed. “I don’t care if he’s the president of the United States. No one smokes in my house.”
    “You go, girl!”
    Six pairs of eyes, including mine, turned to Aunt Lizzie. No one snickered.
    Auntie Lizzie smoothed her perm, pleased with the attention.
    “I’ve been telling Manasses the same thing ever since we got married, only he won’t listen to me. But he has to listen to you.” She swatted at the air with a hand reminiscent of a tennis racket. “Sometimes the smoke gets so thick I could cut it with a knife. I’m glad that finally somebody else has the moxie to stand up to him.”
    Thereafter, Auntie Lizzie and I became firm friends. But I’m afraid my standing up to Uncle Manasses put the strain back in my relationship with Aaron. Thanks to the aunties—and ultimately to Sarah in the kraut—the week preceding my wedding was not progressing as smoothly as I had planned.

    Auntie Lizzie and I were just finishing up the dishes—Auntie Leah can cook, but you’d think she’d never seen a sponge—when the last of the Beeftrust appeared.
    Auntie Magdalena arrived not with a bang but with a whimper. Who knows how long the woman had been standing there in the kitchen door, whimpering like a frightened puppy, before I turned and saw her.
    “Auntie Magdalena Fike?”
    “Yes. Who are you?”
    “Magdalena Yoder. Aaron’s fiancee.”
    The woman sighed a couple of times, whimpered something that I couldn’t understand but that sounded like “Please pass the cheese,” and then sighed again. Each time she sighed, the largest bosom I’d ever seen rose and fell like ocean waves after a storm. I don’t mean to be indelicate here, but a brassiere that size could hold a full-grown cocker spaniel—though nothing else, of course.
    “Is Uncle Elias here as well?” I asked pleasantly.
    At the mention of his name Uncle Elias stepped smartly forward. Like the other uncles he was on the short side and dressed in a suit and a tie, but unlike them he was a very handsome man. He was also very black.
    I confess that I was shocked, and even though she vigorously denies it, so was Susannah. The truth is, up until that moment, neither of us had ever seen a black Mennonite. Of course they exist—ours is not a closed denomination—but not in Hernia. I, for one, had never heard of a Hernia Mennonite marrying a black Mennonite.
    The truth is, I was speechless.
    “Did you get a chance to eat a proper breakfast?” Aunt Lizzie asked politely. Obviously she had seen Uncle Elias before.
    The Fikes had come the farthest. From what I understood, they had flown into