Nina Wright: Whiskey with a Twist

“Turn there?” MacArthur asked, flipping on the blinker.

“No. I just remember it, that’s all.”

He turned off the blinker.

We rode in silence for at least five more minutes as I desperately scanned the landscape.

“Everything sure looks different from down here,” I remarked for the sake of making conversation. “Yessirree. This is like being on a road trip instead of, you know, a helicopter ride. Wow, what a difference.”

“Close your eyes-“ MacArthur said.

“How is that going to help?”

“Close your eyes and visualize what you saw from the air. Colors, shapes, sizes. What was the last thing you remember before Brad found the goat farm?”

I did as I was told and recaptured the physical sensation of leaning forward in my seat as Brad angled the chopper in widening arcs south of Route 20. I’d focused on green-gold fields and white buildings while the gray ribbon of highway receded.… I opened my eyes. MacArthur was adjusting the steering wheel and our speed to accommodate a rare bend in the road.

“This curve!” I shouted as if I were still in the chopper. “I remember this curve in the highway! I saw it from the air! We were almost directly south of here, I think!”

“I’ll take the next left,” my driver responded.

“Yes! That might be the road! But we landed on a dirt lane next to a cornfield. And hiked in from there.”

“Let’s use the front door this time, shall we?” MacArthur said.

I liked that idea. We bumped along our unnamed road past tidy rolling fields in various shades of green, copper and brown. This late in the season, many acres had already been harvested.

“Amish homestead up ahead,” MacArthur announced as we drove over a low hill. “Does this look familiar?”

“I never saw the house,” I admitted. “Only corn, goats, and the back of a barn.”

“We got corn and a barn,” MacArthur said. “That’s two out of three.”

He pulled into the driveway just far enough to clear the road, adding, “We’ll stay back to show respect for their ways.”

Too little too late. Not only had I inflicted my loopy dog and precocious neighbor on them, but-thanks to me-their teenage nephew had flown off in a chopper and been busted for drinking beer in Elkhart. Oh, yeah, if this was the right house, I could only imagine how pleased they’d be to make my acquaintance.

I was about to close the passenger-side door behind me, when a familiar roo-roo reached my ears.

“Did you hear that?”

MacArthur had frozen, too.

“Definitely an Afghan hound,” he confirmed. “Yours?”

And then I saw her, a flash of gold on gold. The late afternoon sun striking her back made her blonde coat glow as if lit from within. Madly she raced away from me along the edge of the cornfield on the other side of the road.

“Abra!” I shouted. “Abra! Come back here!”

Without thinking, I launched into a sprint. At first my muscles resisted, but before I’d gone twenty paces every fiber had activated. My legs and arms pumped as my feet slapped the gravel road. I kept my eyes trained on Abra.

Ahead a silver pickup truck shot out of a narrow dirt driveway, tires squealing. The truck turned toward us fishtailing wildly.

“Abra!” I screamed, terrified that she would be struck right in front of me.

The truck lurched and then backfired.

I felt sudden intense pain, a sharp sting like fiery metal scalding flesh. With my left hand I clutched my right elbow and tried to keep running.

Another boom, another flash of pain. This time in my right shoulder. I could no longer see my dog. Or call for her.

“Whiskeeeeyyyy!” MacArthur yelled, stretching my name into a dirge.

The third and fourth booms came from behind me. My legs buckled as the truck whooshed past. The last thing I glimpsed was its windshield splintering apart.

“Whitney, wake up. Come on, Whitney.”

A friendly voice was addressing me by a name used only by attorneys, preachers, IRS agents, and my mother. That didn’t give me an incentive to reply. Opening my eyes had never been such a chore. Focusing them proved even harder.

“That-a-girl, Whitney! You’re doing fine.”

Something wasn’t quite right. My elbow and shoulder throbbed when I moved my right arm. And the person coaxing me to wake up may have sounded like Chester, but he didn’t pass inspection. First, Chester’s ever-present glasses were gone. Second, his usually spiked hair appeared to be suffering from a bad case of hat head. Third, his school blazer had been replaced by overalls. And finally, Chester never called me Whitney.

“You’re at the Elijah Yoder farm,” he went on cheerfully. “And you’re perfectly safe. Mrs. Yoder put a couple poultices on your arm, so please don’t try to get up.”

Leaning closer, he lowered his voice. “Whatever you do, don’t make me call you Whiskey. It upsets the whole family.”

Groaning, I tried to find a comfortable position. Lying on my back with my arm propped on downy pillows did not exactly feel natural.

“What happened to my arm?” I whispered and realized that my throat was parched.

Chester was ready with a ceramic mug of cool well water. He helped me into a semi-sitting position so that I could drink.

“You were shot, Whitney. Luckily, both bullets just grazed your arm-one right above your elbow and the other at your shoulder.”

I drank eagerly, the water tasting better than anything I had consumed in years. Including Pinot Noir. Glancing up, I spotted a worried-looking woman somewhere between age twenty-five and forty studying me from a wooden chair in the far corner of the room. Dressed in dark clothing and wearing a small white cap, she sat with her arms crossed.

“That’s Mrs. Yoder, Rachel and Jacob’s mother,” Chester said helpfully. “She’s the one who cleaned and dressed the wounds on your arm.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Yoder,” I said. “Sorry to be so much trouble.”

I wondered exactly how much trouble I was getting credit for. Did she know about Nathaniel? And my dog?

“You can call me Sarah,” the woman said but not in a way that made me want to take her up on the offer.

I turned to Chester. “What happened to MacArthur?”

“MacArthur’s fine. He’s downstairs talking to Mr. Yoder and the elders. They’re trying to decide what to do about you.”

“What about Abra?” I whispered. “And the silver pickup?”

“MacArthur says Abra is okay. He saw her dash into the cornfield, and he’s sure she wasn’t shot. As for the driver of the pickup, MacArthur couldn’t get a good look because he-or she-was wearing a hood and dark glasses. They just kept driving.”

“But why shoot me?” I asked.

“Why not? Your luck has been pretty bad lately.”

“I mean, were they trying to shoot me? Or was Abra the target? Or MacArthur? What did they want?”

“I think you should ask MacArthur,” Chester said.

With my left hand, I grabbed the strap of Chester’s overalls, pulling him toward me.

“Where are your glasses, and why are you dressed like that?”

He grinned. “The Yoders let me go Amish! They loaned me Jacob’s clothes and straw hat. I was helping move the goats to a different part of the pasture when that brown and white one who ate your book charged me. He knocked off my glasses, and I accidentally stepped on them.”

“Your mother won’t like that.”

My response was automatic and completely irrelevant. Chester’s mother was Cassina, the perpetually self-involved, stoned celebrity who rarely remembered she had a son, let alone what he did or the fact that he owned two dogs.

Chester said, “It was so worth it! Wait 'til I tell the kids at my academy that I got to be Amish. They’d pay ten thousand dollars for a day like this!”