Grantville Gazette V

by Eric Flint

  Edgar Zanewicz, the vice president of the bank. Mary Ruth Caldwell, secretary to the Authority and also Thurman Jennings' daughter. She was bearing up well after the terrible injury her husband had suffered early the previous winter.

  The baseball stadium proposal, with all its associated implications for rerouting of roads and traffic, was on the floor. Carol took meticulous notes.

  * * *

  Count August von Sommersburg did not appear at the hearing in regard to the baseball stadium proposal. Indeed, on that very morning, he and his unmarried daughter Elena were running completely unrelated errands at the SoTF administration building.

  Starting in Ed Piazza's office, they left vases of fresh flowers everywhere they went. To greet the coming of spring, the count said gallantly, as he flirted with the staff, pointing out to them as he bowed that they were so essential to the smooth operation of the government, but alas so often underappreciated.

  Liz Carstairs giggled. Her husband was one of those to whom Tony Adducci had passed a comforting word about the count's unfortunate medical problems. From across the room, Mary Kathryn Riddle, just married in February to Derek Utt who was over in Fulda, winked at her. Megan Trumble, as befitted a recent widow, was subdued, but Mallory Pierpoint flirted back without the least sense of shame.

  Jamie Lee Swisher and Tanya Newcomb, who had been deemed too young and innocent to be clued in about what was going on by the others, just looked at the tableau in some confusion.

  The "guys" on the President's immediate staff, who were all down-timers, sat transfixed by the count's daughter. Elena von Sommersburg was a truly bodacious twenty-two-year-old redhead. As Tony Adducci had said to Howard Carstairs, if the count's late wife had looked anything like that, a fellow could see why he had opted to marry a girl who wasn't standesgemaess.

  * * *

  Aura Lee Hudson looked up. Idelette Cavriani was peeking around the door. She smiled.

  "Can we come in?"

  "Sure," Aura Lee said, "but who is the rest of 'we'?"

  "This is Annalise Richter. Do you know her? She is the granddaughter of Mayor Dreeson's wife and she is running the St. Veronica's schools this summer while her grandmother is away."

  Idelette paused. She was beginning to learn how to swim in the fluid currents of Grantville's various Protestant denominations with their fluctuating boundaries, matrimonial conversions, and overlapping theologies, so different from Geneva. When she met Annalise, she had at first been a little cautious, fearing that Mrs. Wiley might disapprove of friendship with a Catholic as beyond the acceptable limits. However, Mrs. Wiley had pointed out that Annalise was also the step-granddaughter of Henry Dreeson, the mayor, who was a member of their own church. Relieved, if even more confused, Idelette had been happy to have a new friend.

  Now she asked, "Do you have time to help us?"

  A half hour later, Aura Lee looked at them. "I do not believe this! Do you mean to say that she just dumped all of this on your shoulders and took off?"

  Annalise nodded. "My grandmother showed great confidence in me. And told me not to bother the mayor unless I had to because he is a very busy man. And most of it is truly all right. The part that they call policy decisions. In that, I try to think what would be best and then do it. But for all this . . ." She gestured to the piles of papers spread out on Aura Lee's desk.

  "I agree. You need some help. Yes, I will approve that as part of Idelette's training; she can assist you with the business end of running your grandmother's schools this summer."

  She thought that it was not every girl who would jump with delight and clap her hands at the prospect of taking on what was going to amount to several long evenings of extra bookkeeping per week, but Idelette did.

  Carol, that evening, mother of children who were older than Aura Lee's, asked a meaningful question. "Are you really sure that two heads are better than one when both of the heads are seventeen years old?"

  "Not really. But I am sure that Annalise probably needs some mentoring as much as Idelette does. Maybe even more. Idelette has Inez at home, at least. Annalise is trying to be a house mother, too."

  * * *

  Aura Lee and Carol decided that the girls were in need of mentoring in a lot more areas than just accounting, mathematics, and business procedures. Especially Idelette before she was tossed into the wilderness of a coeducational high school the next fall. Annalise at least had some experience at that. They started having regular dinners with talk once a week at Carol's.

  "Now Annalise," Carol said, "is sort of immunized. That is, she's persuaded herself that she is deathlessly in love with Heinrich Schmidt. Since Major Schmidt, the possibly idealized object of her affections, is safely immured at the siege of Amsterdam, she can fantasize about him all she likes without coming to any harm and it gives her a socially acceptable excuse to fend off other advances."

  Annalise did not take particularly well to this description of an infatuation that she had, with the assistance of innumerable Harlequin Romances, pumped up in her own mind to the status of an immortal love affair.

  "You, on the other hand," Aura Lee said, pointing to Idelette, "are seventeen, currently unattached, and totally inexperienced at sorting out the nice guys from the jerks. Which means that you have a lot to learn between now and the end of August. And you either learn it or, I swear, I will home school you myself."

  Carol giggled.

  "I'm not joking, Carol," Aura Lee said a little impatiently. "You at least got engaged to Ron before you started sleeping with him. Even though you were too much of an innocent to get birth control first."

  "But we didn't intend to . . ."

  "Self-delusion. 'Nice girls don't and I'm a nice girl so I won't.' Can you look me in the face and say the real words. Not 'We didn't intend to' but 'I honestly didn't expect that we would'?"

  Carol chewed on that one a while. "No," she finally said. "Of course, I didn't have any real experience in holding it off before we got engaged."

  "How come?" Aura Lee asked.

  "Because we got engaged two weeks after we met," Carol admitted. "And that was official, after we'd told our families. Ron actually proposed the night we met each other. About ten minutes after we met each other."

  This time Aura Lee giggled. "How long were you engaged?"

  "Not as long as we expected to be," Carol admitted. "About half as long as we expected to be. Because of Ronella. We were supposed to be engaged for a year after Ron finished all the paperwork for coming over to the U.S., because our families thought we should get to know one another better before we married. Because of the 'how to establish a lasting marriage' procedures manuals. The ones that urge you to get to know one another gradually if you want your marriage to last."

  "You decided to marry on ten minutes notice and then you expected to arrive at your wedding night a virgin a year later? Honestly."

  "I suppose I might have," Carol said, "If Ron had stayed in Germany and I'd stayed in America. But they did want us to get to know one another better. I was afraid that if my parents knew when he was coming, they'd come along to the airport and everything would be all stiff and miserable and uncomfortable. So when it was all done and he got his ticket, I didn't tell them. And I did know his arrival date far enough in advance that I could have gone down to the clinic and gotten the pill, but you're right. I didn't want to admit to myself what was likely to come next. The day his plane came in, I just drove to meet him all alone. And when I told him that they didn't know exactly when he would be getting in, he gave me this sideways look and said, 'In that case, I think that I am very jet-lagged and need a night to recover.' So we turned in at the first motel we saw. And when we got to the point, we sure intended to."

  Aura Lee waggled her fingers at Annalise and Idelette. "Do you see what I'm getting at?"

  Idelette nodded solemnly. Annalise looked out the window, studiously ignoring the conversation.

  Aura Lee sighed. "Pay attention, Annalise. I was exactly your age
the first time Joe and I did it together. In the back of his brother Dennis' pickup. Joe made it as nice as he could, hosed it out and everything, but it was still the back of a pickup with a camper top on it, smelling a little of oil and gas and the stuff Dennis hauled around in it. With two vinyl-covered lawn chair mattresses for padding. And since we planned ahead, we did remember about condoms."

  Both girls just stared at her.

  "That's what I mean about learning to sort out the good guys from the jerks first. Even so, I don't suppose there's a normal girl in the world who doesn't wonder what next. 'Just call me angel of the morning' and all that. The song was new back then. But Joe took me for burgers afterwards and sat with me with my friends instead of brushing me off as a fallen woman, someone to be scorned. And that evening, at the youth group activity at First Methodist, when we were supposed to present our private prayers, I sat there with my hands folded, thanked God that He'd let me do it with Joe, and prayed that He'd let us do it again."

  Aura Lee lifted her head and smiled. "Not exactly what the minister would have wished in the way of a prayer, I imagine, if he'd had any idea."

  Idelette sat there. She had a feeling that she was indeed learning a great deal in Grantville. Possibly not entirely what her father had expected.

  "The point is," Aura Lee said sternly, "that you're not to let yourself be pawed by some over-sexed young klutz. Not one who will 'brush your cheek in the morning and then leave you.' The trick is to pick one you really like and who'll be inclined to hang around for the next thirty or forty years before you do anything you can't take back. And in the absence of reliable birth control in this day and age, keep your legs crossed until you're absolutely sure. If you're not sure, bring him around and Carol and I will take a look at him for you. If he won't come, classify him as a jerk."

  Certainly, Idelette thought, this was not what her mother back home in Geneva expected when Papa assured her that her oldest daughter would be residing in the household of the Calvinist minister and his wife. It was far more enlightening.

  * * *

  Juliann Stull died on July 13, 1634. The visitation was scheduled for the afternoon of the next day, with the funeral to follow from Central.

  Dennis made it from Erfurt; he was standing by the entrance, directing people to where they could sign the guest book.

  Harlan was still over in Fulda, of course. No way he could get here for the funeral. His wife Eden was here with her parents, Nat and Twila Davis. Twila was watching the baby, just born the end of May. Joe and Aura Lee were over at the casket. Their Juliann was chasing after Eden's two-year-old, who was running around the way kids did, even at visitations for dead great-grandmothers. Especially at visitations, sometimes. Billy Lee was in a corner, dressed up, looking uncomfortable.

  An awful lot of people were here, Dennis thought, looking at the pages of signatures. Not many of his mother's friends. She'd outlived most of her own friends. Mostly people who knew him, or Joe, or Harlan from business. Paying their respects to the family, really, not to the deceased.

  Count August von Sommersburg, for example—he had almost certainly never even met their mother. But as a senator of the State of Thuringia-Franconia he had come to the visitation because she had been the mother of a cabinet minister and of the civilian head of military procurement for the state, the grandmother of the UMWA delegate in the administration at Fulda. Come early and stayed, mingling with others who came, using the event as one more chance to network.

  Dennis stood there, feeling old himself. If they hadn't been brought to this time and place, he would have been old enough to take his early social security this year. Joe was thirteen years younger. Joe had been one of those unexpected kids and because of the way things worked out, had pretty much brought himself up.

  He might have done it—taken social security early and gone to Florida or Arizona. Someplace warm. Instead of running a procurement operation in Erfurt, first for the NUS and now for the SoTF with several dozen people working for him. His people made a regular little community of up-timers in Erfurt now. He'd encouraged the men to bring along their wives and kids, start a little school, a health clinic.

  He saw Tony Adducci coming up the walk and wondered if Denise was with him.

  Denise was still at the car, getting little Rosemary into the chest sling she wore and picking up all the various impedimenta and paraphernalia that accompanied a baby through life.

  "Denise, I don't think I can do this," a voice said from the back seat.

  "Pat, if you don't, you're going to kick yourself for the rest of your life." Bernadette Adducci gave the woman next to her in the back seat an impatient shove.

  "If I do, I may kick myself for the rest of my life, too."

  "Well, at least it will be for a sin of commission rather than for a sin of omission," Bernadette said. "Get out, Pat, and walk up to that door."

  So Denise's cousin Pat got out and walked up to the door, in between the other two women.

  Thinking, when she stepped through, that it wasn't fair of God to have put Dennis right there next to the guest book.

  "I'm sorry about Juliann," Denise was saying.

  "It was better for her, in a way," Dennis answered for what seemed like the fiftieth time that afternoon. "She was able to keep going in her own house right up to the end. Ma wouldn't have liked a nursing home. Or having her mind slip."

  Behind Denise. A neat cap of gray hair. Pat?

  At the very least, Pat thought, he could have been at the back of the parlor somewhere. Maybe with his back turned, talking to Jenny Maddox. Not taking her hand and thanking her for coming.

  What were they doing, Pat wondered, the two of them, standing here, in the way of other people who wanted to come in?

  Bernadette grasped Pat's shoulders, turned her around so she wasn't blocking the door, entered the parlor, and looked for Tony. He was over next to Joe Stull and both of them were talking to the Reverend Mary Ellen Jones from the Methodist church, Henry and Veronica Dreeson, Enoch and Inez Wiley, and the two girls, Annalise and Idelette. What a world. Tony and Joe, cabinet secretaries for a cobbled-together state government in a world none of them had ever expected. Which they certainly wouldn't have been back home in West Virginia.

  Behind her, Pat was saying something to Dennis. Not a platitude about Juliann. "Noelle is thinking about becoming a nun."

  "For my part," Dennis said, "I'd rather that she managed to think around and beyond that idea. Considering that I'm a Methodist. Not that I have anything to say about it."

  "She's down in Franconia this summer working for the Department of Economic Resources. But she's thinking about it."

  "God Almighty," someone yelled from outside. "Look out. Get down."

  Bernadette turned and ran for the door, pushing Pat farther to the side and grabbing for her police revolver. She might be "only" a juvenile officer, but that didn't mean she was unarmed. Older juveniles could be dangerous, if only because they were so much more unpredictable than adults. Not to mention their parents.

  Someone out there had a gun. Joe Stull and Tony Adducci headed for the door after Bernadette. A wild shot came flying into the parlor. Maybe not that wild; two more went into the weatherboarding near the door. Then another one inside.

  In the parking lot, a man was down; another man on top of him.

  "God on earth, Keenan, what is going on?" Bernadette screeched.

  Keenan Murphy looked up. "He's been working himself up to it ever since he saw in the paper that old Mrs. Stull was dead. Saying over and over, 'She didn't come and stand by me at my father's bier. If she goes and stands by Dennis Stull at his mother's bier, I'll kill her.' He was over at Grandma's. She was trying to talk him out of it, but he's as drunk as a skunk."

  "Damn you, Francis Murphy," Bernadette said as she handcuffed him. She sounded like she meant it quite literally. "Somebody call the station and have them send an on-duty patrol over here. Is anyone hurt?"

  "I hope not," Keenan
said. "I really couldn't see that it would help things if he caused trouble here today. They've been separated for a quarter of a century. That was what Grandma said. That it wouldn't help things if he caused trouble here today and I should try to get him to come back. So I came after him. I didn't know he had a gun. That's a whopper of a handgun. I just thought he'd be likely to try to beat her up. And then he saw her, getting out of Tony Adducci's car and walking inside, and he pulled the gun out, so I tackled him. If he hit someone, I hope it was a Kraut."

  Bernadette looked down. Keenan was still sitting on the asphalt next to Francis. Keenan was hostile, not particularly bright, prejudiced, a 250 Club regular, one of the town's constant brawlers and troublemakers. He was not an ornament to the military of the State of Thuringia-Franconia in which he served. Before the Ring of Fire, he had been chronically unemployed. However, owing to the fact that he had chased Francis and brought him down before he got inside the funeral home, they had probably been spared several injuries or worse. So she swallowed her bile and said, "Thank you."