Legends

Elkanah Macy turned out to be a retired navy petty officer who, judging from the framed photographs lining one wall, had served on half the warships in the U.S. Navy during his twenty years in the service. He had converted the atelier in the Amish school basement into a replica of a ship’s machine shop, replete with calendar pinups of naked females. “Lelia sent you around, you say?” Macy remarked, sucking on a soggy hand-rolled cigarette as he sized up his visitors through hooded eyes. “Bet she went an’ told you the goddamn whopper ‘bout Dave Sanford being her great-great-great-grand-daddy. Hell, she tells that to anyone stands still long enough to hear her out. Listen to her tell it, anybody who did anything in Belfast was her kin—Sanford’s sawmill on the Genesee, the old cheese factory out on White Creek Road. Bet she went an’ told you ‘bout the goddamn ghosts in the attic. Ha! Take it from somebody that knows, lady’s got herself a sprightly imagination. Fact is, the first Sayles in Allegheny County were loansharks that went and bought up farmhouses cheap during the forties and sold them for a handsome profit to the GIs coming back from the war. What is it you want with the Amish over at White Creek?”

Martin showed Mr. Macy the picture postcard. “You wouldn’t by any chance know where we could find these houses, would you?”

“Might. Might not. Depends.”

“On what?” Stella asked.

“On how much you be willing to pay for the information.”

“You don’t beat around the bush,” Stella observed.

“Heck, not beating around the damn bush saves time and shoe leather.”

Martin peeled off a fifty from a wad of bills. “What would half a hundred buy us?”

Macy snatched the bill out of Martin’s fingers. “The two farm houses with the barn directly across from them are about three, three and a half miles out on McGuffin Ridge Road. Head out of Belfast on South Main and you’ll wind up on 19. Look for the Virgin Mary billboard with her one-eight-hundred number. Right after, you’ll cross 305 going west, bout a half mile farther on you’ll hit White Creek Road going south toward Friendship. For some of the way White Creek Road runs parallel to the factual creek. Long ‘bout halfway to Friendship, McGuffin Ridge Road runs off of White Creek. You got to be stone blind to miss it.”

Martin held up another fifty dollar bill. “We’re actually looking for an old pal of mine who we think moved into one of the farm houses in that area.”

“Your old pal Amish?”

“No.”

“Not complicated.” Macy snatched the second bill. “All them Amish get me over to unplug the damn electric meters and fuse boxes when they move in. Amish don’t take to electricity or the things that work off it—ice boxes, TVs, Singers, irons, you name it. You can tell an Amish lives in a house if the electric counter is hanging off the side of it, unplugged. You can tell someone who ain’t Amish lives there if’n the goddamn counter’s still attached.”

“Are there a lot of non Amish living out on McGuffin Ridge Road?” asked Martin.

When the janitor scratched at his unshaven chin in puzzlement, Martin came up with still another fifty dollar bill.

“A-mazing how a picture of U.S. Grant can stir up recollections,” Macy said, folding the fifty and adding it to the other two in his shirt pocket. “Except for one house, McGuffin Ridge is all Amish. The one house is the second one on your picture postcard.”

Stella turned to Martin. “Which explains why Samat sent this particular postcard to his mother.”

“It does,” Martin agreed. He nodded at Macy. “That’s quite a fleet,” he remarked, glancing at the framed photographs on the wall. “You served on all those warships?”

“Never been to actual sea in my life,” Macy said with a giggle. “Only served on them while they was in drydock, reason being I get seasick the minute a ship puts to sea.”

“You certainly picked the wrong service,” Stella said.

Macy shook his head emphatically. “Loved the goddamn navy,” he said. “Loved the ships. Didn’t much like what they was floating on, which was the sea. Hell, I’d re-up if they’d take me. Yes, I would.”

Martin pulled the Packard into the gas station at the edge of town and bought a bottle of spring water and an Allegheny County map while Stella used the restroom. Heading out of town on 19, he felt her hand come to rest on his thigh. His body tensed—real intimacy, the kind that comes after sex, was a strange bedfellow to Martin Odum. In his mind’s eye, he thought of himself as being somewhere between Dante Pippen, who made love and war with the same frenetic energy, and Lincoln Dittmann, who had once gone off to Rome to try and find a whore he’d come across in Triple Border. Stella sensed the tenseness under her fingers. “I wasn’t lying to Mrs. Sayles,” she remarked. “It did go very nicely, thank you. All things considered, last night was a great start to our sex life.”

Martin cleared his throat. “I am not comfortable talking about things like our sex life.”