After a few of these trips she started to notice a strange figure in the post office parking lot. He would shuffle out of the post office, and drive away in a white Buick sedan. He stood out because he was tall, stooped, and Caucasian. Most post office customers, who were by and large the migrant workers from the surrounding orchards, were short, erect, and dark-skinned, and walked with a spring in their steps.

Teresa felt a need to identify this character. For some unexplained reason she was drawing a line connecting the man who sold her the farm to the stranger she saw at the Stampede. Teresa had never met the man who sold her the farm. Lil had acted as the go-between, and there had been no need to be introduced. And she’d never been introduced to the stranger at the Stampede. But somehow she felt they were connected. There was a vague second line connecting these two points to some third point, possibly deep in the past, that she could not quite make out.

One day she left five minutes early. She arrived just in time to meet him at the door of his Buick. Being direct by nature, she approached him directly.

“I’m Teresa Bellissimo. Who are you?”

“I’m Jebediah Mennon. What’s it to you?”

She had already confirmed her first suspicion. It was the old crook who sold her the farm.

“Why did the name on the mailbox read Jebediah Krauthammer Mennon?”

“So the mail delivery wouldn’t get confused between me and my cousin Jebediah Zweikopf Mennon who lives on Bottom Line.”

“I knew a Krauthammer once. Oberleutenant Juergen Krauthammer.”

The old man’s jaw dropped. He stood gaping.

“Teresa?”

“#%^&**% small world, if you ask me.”

“Gruss’ Gott! The last I saw you was when that Russischer mutti-focker ran me out of the village. He could have at least let me put on my uniform and march out of the village with dignity according to the Konventions. And he really #$^^&* me up with those turnips. Haven’t walked right since. Awful hard on my ass.”

Teresa thought, “He was really good to my ass…”, but she didn’t say it.

“Why don’t we go out to that donut shop on the superhighway and get caught up.”

Teresa wasn’t about to go to the donut shop. Going to the donut shop could only convey some hidden meaning, some possibility about what might happen after the donut shop, and her radar wouldn’t allow her to go there. She politely declined.

“Alright then, let’s go into the restaurant and get some borscht and get caught up.”

Teresa didn’t particularly want to go to the coffee shop either. For one thing, the borscht was usually watery. For another the service was always sloppy. She didn’t know why she accepted. But then on the other hand, she wouldn’t have known why had she declined.

It was a low-rent kind of restaurant frequented during the day by process servers from out of town, and insurance adjusters who came along afterward to assess the damage after the process had been served. The furniture was pretty beat up from being so old and kicked around so much by the servers. At night it was used for bible study classes by the congregation that was afraid to build a proper church. There was writing on the blackboard on the back wall left over from the bible instruction the previous Friday night. They took a table near the window.

Teresa’s question was crystal clear. “Why did you build the help house and the shed on top of the tile bed?”

Krauthammer took a moment to gather his thoughts.

“That building inspector Weins told me to. He told me it was a more efficient use of land, and more compact, and would help preserve the peach orchard. Then after I had them built, he came along and told me they were too close to the house, and I’d need a variance. It was a set-up, just a way for the town to make some money. I told him to go #$%^%&&* himself. He never came back. The migrants who lived in the help house never complained. Not that I would have understood ‘em, they all spoke that funny language, but they never complained. They all slept out in the orchard in hammocks anyway.”

Mother Teresa filed this information about the town away for future reference. And she made a mental note: she wasn’t going to have any helpers, and she wasn’t going to have any of those dark-skinned foreigners sleeping in the trees.

With her question answered Teresa let the conversation drift wherever it wanted to go. Krauthammer wanted it to dwell on the past. He told her his story.

After the pummeling at the hands of the Russian he’d made his way across country. His story sounded like a Kozinski novel Teresa had read once waiting for some paint to dry, except in his case the shoe was on the other foot. He eventually arrived in Kitchener.

“Kitchener?”, asked Teresa.

“That was the code name we had for the capital. We met in the capital.”

The Oberleutenant had met some associates in the capital. The associates already had a plan. They were going to Marseilles where they would catch a steamer. Their destination was Uruguay, and a life of freedom with their comrades-in-arms.

“I paid for my passage working in the galley. I got to be pretty good with a pot of kartoffelbrei.”, boasted Krauthammer.

Mother Teresa was a born-again pasta eater. She rolled her eyes.

Once he’d made some connections in Uruguay Krauthammer heard about some family named Mennon who’d made a clean break and jumped north to Canada. Krauthammer changed his name, and told them he was a member of the family. When he arrived in the village in the spring of 1952 they welcomed him with open arms.

“Big Jake figured I was related to Jakob Groskopf Mennon, and Julianus Hochhaare Mennon.” He pronounced ‘Julianus’ with a ‘sh’ sound on the end.

“I just went along with it. Most of the people in the village came here the same way as me, from Uruguay. Zweikopf Mennon is Jakob’s son. They called him Zweikopf because of the deformity. But Jake always said he’s as legitimate as they come. Julianus is Jakob’s second cousin. He’s the deputy mayor, and built that new condo for the old people. They don’t want to go back to Uruguay. They want to die here in the village.” Krauthammer was wandering, and becoming a bit sentimental.

“You got any real family here?”, asked Teresa.

“Ja, ja”, grinned Krauthammer. “I’ve got a boy, Reingold. He’s rich. He made a fortune building help houses. He figured out how to build a help house so the cost to the farmer of housing the help is an Absolute Minimum. He calculated it to the nearest nail. He’s a genius.” He poked the table with his first finger.

Mother Teresa noticed some old country inflections in the old man’s speech that gave her a tinge of nostalgia.

“He’s building some right now just outside the village in the cherry orchard that he cut down at Hunters and Gatherers Crossroads. He’s going to be so rich, one day he’ll own the entire village!” The old man pounded his fist on the table.

Teresa thought, “And chickens will fall from the sky, and lawnmowers will fly…”

“He was such a boy! He used to torment that Junior Mennon in the school yard. I told him to respect the other boys, but he called himself der kleine hundfocker and did whatever he pleased. Now he torments the town clerk in much the same way, and now that his English is better calls himself an ‘arch-capitalist’, der grosse hundfocker, and still does whatever he pleases!.”

The old man’s pride was starting to show through.

“And what a non-conformist! His house is filled with hummel figures instead of our little lederhosers. Hummel figures from the old country! He gets them from his cousin who still lives in Uruguay. She also sends him magazines from the old country. History magazines. About the time when we strode across Europe like a Kolossus.”

Mother Teresa didn’t think the Oberleutenant’s bare-ass departure from the village was much like a striding colossus, but she let it go. She was suspecting she was in the company of a person of very suspect sanity.

“And how he torments the town clerk! Always wanting his building permit… two or three days… before the building inspector… can give it to him… legally! Such a fuss… he makes…always finding more hoops… for the town clerk… to jump through! But he gets along… really well… with the new chief… building inspector. He takes him trout hunting… in the irrigation ditch… he owns… on the other side of Hard Line. Right at the corner… where Bottom Line meets… Hard Line. …Reingold loves that Hard Line! In fact… he named his company… Hard Line Construction!”

The old man was wheezing heavily between pride and spoonfuls of borscht. Mother Teresa had to use her paper napkin to deflect the deep red spray that came at her from across the table. Now she realized who owned the piercing ice blue eyes that met hers at the Stampede. And she remembered why sometimes it was better to leave the past behind.