A DOZEN AMISH MEN and women sat around a wide table covered with plates of food. Emerson and Dean were seated across from each other, an Amish guard on either side. Unlike the others, they were given only a wooden spoon to eat with.
At the head of the table sat Charlie Snaps His Fingers, just settling in his chair after a long speech in German. For all Dean knew, he could have just recited the Gettysburg Address, but you generally don’t speak bow your head for that.
An Amish girl placed a bowl of milky white chicken and dumplings in front of Dean. The oniony smell reminded Dean of Funyuns and a particular gas station. This caused a few of his brain cells to drop the other shoe.
“You’re from the Kickapoo tribe!”
Charlie raised his chin and chinstrap beard. “Quite right. Don’t tell me you’re a Harvard man?”
Dean shook his head. “Tony had a picture of you on the wall of his store. He told me all about you––the great Charlie Snaps His Fingers, the Harvard cricket champion who disappeared.”
“Tony? Do you mean Tony Montana, of the Montana sextuplets? I haven’t seen them for ages.”
“So you’re that Charlie?”
The tall man nodded. “I was the greatest batsman the college had ever seen and led them to four national championships. Unfortunately, it’s cricket, so few people heard about it.”
“What are you doing here?”
“That’s a good question and it’s a long story, but as we have quite a bit of time on our hands, I will explain.” Charlie leaned his elbows on the table. “At Harvard I majored in Applied Mathematics, but was really no more than a shallow child, and floated through a myriad of social circles without a care. Girls, money, and the occasional Hyundai dropped through my fingers the same way. I was on top of the world and it was only my sophomore year. At that point I met Gerda.”
“A girl?”
Charlie nodded. “The sweetest and most beautiful creature you could ever meet. I took a psycholinguistics class just for fun and fell in love the moment I laid eyes on her. A fair-haired, blue-eyed vision of loveliness who sat in the front of the classroom and smelled of apricots. She was eating one, in fact. The only problem: she was Pennsylvania Dutch.”
Dean almost choked on his soup, but instead sprayed it through his nostrils.
“Amish don’t attend college,” he said hoarsely.
“Gerda was part of an experimental program. The administrators of Harvard had decided the college lacked diversity vis-à-vis the Amish folk. Ten young people were kidnapped from random farms in Lancaster County and sent to Harvard while unsuspecting philosophy majors were left in his or her place, four years at a time. It was a perfect plan because nobody really likes philosophy students––especially their families––and Amish are afraid of the police. Everyone came out on top, including the administrator of the program who now works for the CIA. I was young and didn’t care about all that. I fell in love with Gerda, and she with me.”
“What happened to her? I bet you locked the poor girl in a bedroom, just like us.”
“Not at all––she graduated. Gerda drove back to Pennsylvania and out of my life. All those fervent exhortations made at midnight, all the tear-soaked hugs and excited promises to the future were nothing against the wall of Amish culture. She returned home, closed all of her social media accounts apart from Twitter, and married a dairy farmer.”
“The eternal story of Kickapoo boy meets Amish girl majoring in psycholinguistics,” said Dean.
“She majored in physics, you dolt. It was an elective.”
“Sorry.”
“I was heartbroken because Gerda wouldn’t marry me. Also because she’d taken my last Hyundai, but mainly for the not-marrying thing. I gave away my trophies, clothes, even a cricket ball autographed by Shane Warne. A few weeks later my parents died in a tragic jet-ski accident, so I had no reason to return home. I wandered the interstates and cloverleaves of America for years, surviving with the skills I’d learned as a boy in the Kickapoo tribe and by teaching cricket at local community colleges. Then, under a bridge in Rancho Cucamonga, I met Sergio Martinez. He’d had a few bit parts in film since Space Trails, but not enough to feed the ego of any self-respecting former star. Sergio lay under that bridge, covered in filth and surrounded by copies of Writer’s Digest––the lowest point of his life. He’d been rejected for a part in According to Jim and savaged by a roving gang of amateur novelists.”
“Literally or figuratively?”
Charlie slammed his fist on the table. “Does it matter? Using the natural healing methods of my tribe and several McCafe iced coffees, I nursed him back to health. We became close friends. I stayed in his home in the Hollywood Hills for several months, getting a grasp on who I was as a person while running the escort business Sergio had set up through Craigslist.”
Dean stifled a yawn by stuffing a dumpling in his mouth, causing another choking spell and spray of debris from his nostrils.
“During that time in Hollywood, surrounded by C-list actors and formerly popular pop stars now forced into prostitution, I realized that I wanted to do something with my life after all,” said Charlie. “I wanted to be an astronaut, the first Native American in space. With tears in my eyes, I said goodbye to Sergio and the Hollywood Hills and traveled to Cape Canaveral. I spent five years getting my pilot’s license and doing the things nobody wanted to do at NASA: deep-space calculus, high-G experiments on a stomach full of airline food, and cleaning the men’s bathroom. Everyone liked me and I would have been green-lit for a shuttle mission, if it weren’t for one single fact: John Horse With No Name had already flown in 1997, the first Native American in space.”
“That doesn’t mean you couldn’t go.”
“I just told you they already had a first Indian to check off in their little black book of political correctness. It would have taken another decade or two and probably an engineering degree to get to space. So I decided to turn their little game to my advantage––I converted to Amish.”
“You can’t just do that,” said Dean. “I think it’s more involved than just starting a farm.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think, it matters what Samuel P. Fiddlebottom in the Public Relations Department at NASA thinks. Guess what, genius? Once I told him about my Amish conversion, he green-lit and fast-tracked me for a mission to the International Space Station nine months from now. You’re looking at the first Amish in space. And the second Native American, of course.”
“I’m looking at a madman.”
“We’re all mad at one point or another,” said Charlie. “It’s all context. Why is it okay to wear a bikini on the beach but not in Safeway? Why is it okay to shoot a man at Dien Bien Phu but not Sunset Boulevard? Why is it okay to wear a muumuu ... Actually, there’s never a good time to wear a muumuu.”
“Your examples just show that society is crazy, not that you’re a sane person. Your dream of becoming an astronaut is going to vanish when the police find out about Nando Phoenix and Nick Frost and what’s-his-name in your horse stable.”
“The police aren’t going to find out, are they? You’ll be in a ditch, Mr. Dean Cook, and your lovely wife will be wearing a French maid’s outfit and serving coffee to businessmen in Harajuku.”
Dean lowered his voice and leaned forward. “We could both do the whole coffee-shop slavery thing. I don’t really want to wear a dress, but let’s be honest––it’s happened before.”
Charlie looked down at his hands. “I’m sorry, but your fate is sealed.”