by Eric Flint
Johnny Adducci backed away from the cow, allowing Gitele to take over.
"Johnny," Basiya called. "Help me with the goats."
Yossie grinned. The eight-year-old's father was Randolph Adducci's son. Johnny lived two blocks from his grandparents, and in the past two weeks, he'd made it his business to help Gitele and Basiya with the morning milking.
The pasture now held four cows with their calves. Yitzach and Moische had completed their second trip west to the Neustadt cattle market two days before, bringing back two more cows with calves. So far, only one of the four cows needed milking. The other calves were not yet weaned.
Yossie watched Gitele and wondered how he would ever find a match for himself. He could fantasize about Gitele, but he was an orphan with no particular stature, while she was the daughter of an educated merchant, a butcher, qualified to perform kosher slaughter and therefore almost a rabbi. Yossie turned away when he realized that he was staring, and found his sister watching him.
"What are you grinning at?" he asked.
"My brother," Basiya said. "After living in Grantville for over a month . . . "
"After living here a month what?"
"You go to the mine, and work with a woman there who dresses and works like a man. You go into town, and you see women wearing clothing that would make a prostitute blush. All that, and still you look."
"He looks at what?" Gitele asked, still milking the cow.
"He looks at you," Basiya answered, giving her brother a challenging look.
"What?" Gitele pulled the milk pail out from under the cow. "I think it is time to put you to work, Yossie. Here, pour out Johnny's share and then carry this back to the house."
"Are we paying Johnny now?" Yossie asked, as they walked Johnny to his house.
"He is helping," Basiya said. "Besides, there are younger children in that family, and the milk will be good for them.
"He is learning quickly," Gitele said. "Soon, his help will really matter, when the other cows wean their calves."
"I thought you were saying that he is learning quickly, and soon we will have to watch what we say around him," Yossie said.
"That too," Gitele said with a chuckle.
"How many cattle can the pasture feed?" Yossie asked.
"In the summer? By the time the calves are grown, we'll have enough. The next trip my father makes, I guess he will sell all the cattle he brings. Come winter, I think my father will sell or slaughter half of them."
"Good," Yossie said. "I don't think I could handle more cattle."
"Yossele, you couldn't handle just one cow. Stick to being a smith at the mine."
"What? You don't want my help?"
Gitele chuckled, but said nothing during the rest of the walk home.
On any other day of the week, Yossie would have said his morning prayers before breakfast, but this was Sunday. The Adduccis always went to church on Sunday mornings, and then they went to Sunday dinner with one of their many relatives. For most of the day, that meant that Yossie and his companions could be Jewish without fear of discovery.
The men celebrated their day of freedom by saying their morning prayers in the large room the Adduccis called the family room. Had they encountered the men at prayer, the Adduccis would have been very puzzled or even alarmed. The men wore their large prayer shawls up over their heads, but the shawls didn't hide the black cubes of the tefillin strapped to their foreheads. The black leather straps of their arm tefillin were also visible, wrapped around and around their right arms from biceps to fingers.
"Why are we hurrying?" Yitzach said as he was about to start Psalm 30. "Let's take the time to study a bit of Torah."
In a minute, Yakov had his large Chumash out on the bar in the family room, along with several books of commentary. "We have a double parsha to study this week, Matos-Masei," the rabbi said, turning pages looking for the end of the book of Numbers. "Ah, here."
The Hebrew text at the top of the page was familiar, Yossie had studied the weekly Torah portions since he was a boy. "The laws of vows," he grumbled.
"And the war against the Midianites," Yitzach said. "It gets more exciting. By the end of Masei, we'll be studying the laws of criminal evidence and a woman's right to inherit. You have a good voice, and you could chant well, Yosef, with enough practice. We'll help."
Yossie set to work chanting the text from the last two portions of the book of Numbers, concentrating on the complex melody. He couldn't have done it very well from a hand-written Torah scroll, but the the printed text in the Chumash was punctuated with marks that indicated the vowels and melody. Even with the punctuation, Yossie needed help now and then.
Occasionally, Yakov stopped the chant to note an interesting interpretation from one or another commentary. Sometimes, he would refer to one of the marginal notes that filled more than half of each page in the Chumash, while at other times, he referred to one of his books of commentary.
"Abravanel has a good comment on this section," Yakov said, when Yossie reached the start of Parshas Masai. The final section of the Book of Numbers begins with a list of all the camps of the Israelites during their forty years in the wilderness.
"Abravanel said that on Israel's road to the redemption, the Lord, praise his name, will take us back to all of the places listed here. I don't know if he means that literally."
"If it's figurative, is the road from Hanau part of the road to the final redemption?" Yossie asked.
"Perhaps," Yakov said. "May the Messiah come soon and in our time."
Some time later, while they were putting things away after their prayers, Yossie paused. "Rav Yakov, that commentary you have, Is the author related to the woman the Americans call Becky?"
"Probably," Yakov said. "Abravanel, Abrabanel, Abarbanel, the name changes from place to place, but it is one family. Rivka Abrabanel has the chutzspah that you'd expect from a member of that family. Did you know that the Abravanel who wrote that Torah commentary was the banker to the king of Portugal? Even so, these stories of Rivka's betrothal . . . " He fell silent.
"To Michael Stearns, the head of the Emergency Committee?" Yossie asked.
"Yes," Yakov said. "But to speak of it would be lashon ha-ra. Even if it is true, it is speaking with an evil tongue to repeat such stories needlessly. Let's get back to work."
They had only eaten lightly before their morning prayers, so when they finally finished, their midday meal was as much a breakfast as it was a lunch. They were just finishing the long grace after meals when there was an unexpected ring of the doorbell.
Moische went to see who it was, and came back into the family room leading Bernadette Adducci and one of the Scots cavalrymen.
"Moses, Isaac Kissinger, Joseph Hanauer," she began, trying to speak in German. "This is John Leslie. Please, sit on the table. John, help."
"At the table, please," he said, correcting her. Once they were all seated, John went on, in the broken but clear German Yossie had come to associate with the Scots. "Bernadette Adducci is officer in the Grantville Police. That be what the Americans call the town guard. She tells me you three, you all traveled outside the Ring of Fire. We must know what is out there. Can you help?"
When they'd first come to Grantville from the west, Claudette Green had asked very similar questions in the Red Cross office. Now, the questions were about the recent trip Yitzach and Moische had taken west to the cattle market in Neustadt, and Yossie's trip north the week before.
For the next half hour, Bernadette took careful notes while the three of them described their trips. Bernadette's questions focused on three things. She wanted to know the names of villages, the quality of the roads and paths they had followed, and most of all, she wanted to know about troop movements.
The discussion of the road west from Badenberg to the Werra valley got into such detail that Moische excused himself to get his little book of notes. "It sounds like you're trying to make a map," Moische said, as he came back.
"Aye," John said,
and then spoke quickly with Bernadette. "The Americans," he said, after she answered, "they have maps that show all the world. The problem is, the maps show roads from the year 2000, not today. They need to put the roads of today on their maps."
"Can we see these maps?" Moische asked.
John and Bernadette conferred briefly, and then Bernadette answered. "Yes, at City Hall."
After Yossie had finished describing his trip north, John spoke for Bernadette. "Our official work is done. Bernadette wants to know, Isaac and Moses, are you going on another trip?"
"Yes," Moische said. "The market is good. Tip's Tavern will buy all the wine we can get."
"Herr Mobley has a list of idle pastures around Grantville," Yitzach said. "If we can bring cattle, he will find buyers for them."
John conferred briefly with Bernadette and then turned to Yossie. "Joseph, how is work at the mine?"
"Good," Yossie said, wondering how to explain what he was doing. "We are building an electric coal saw. It uses a washing machine motor."
The saw had been suggested by the chief miner, Ken Hobbs, and Gayle Mason, the mine electrician, had done all the electrical work. Most of the machine, though, was made of iron, and most of that had been cut and shaped in the Murphy's run forge.
"What is a coal saw?" John asked.
"It is a big saw for cutting under the coal in the mine," Yossie said. "It cuts a yard deep, so that the coal above can be broken down."
"Does it work?" John asked, after translating for Bernadette.
"Almost," Yossie said. "We tried it Friday, but we need to make changes."
Bernadette and John conferred before John asked a very odd question. "Do you like your job, working at the mine?"
Yossie was not sure how to answer. "Why?" he finally asked.
"Because there is another job. The Americans say it may be more important. They want a print shop. You were a printer?"
Yossie nodded. The Americans never seemed to grasp the fine distinctions between being a printer and merely working in a print shop.
"If you want to be a printer again, you should talk to Herr Kindred."
Bernadette handed Yossie a slip of paper with the name "Kindred" printed on it in block letters and a number. "Telephone," she said. "Paulette will help. John, we must go. Joseph, Isaac, Moses, good bye."
As John got up, he smiled. "She promised me, we eat dinner at her brother's house."
Eighth of Av, 5391 (August 6, 1631)
Wednesday morning, as Yossie rode the bus up Murphy's Run, his eyes were on the new railroad tracks parallel to the road. The salvaged rails came to an end about a mile from the mine, but Yossie could see progress almost every day. He still found it amazing that the Ring of Fire contained enough iron rail to build the new railroad.
When Yossie arrived at the forge, the hearth was cold. Thomas and Karl were already there, but nobody had started the fire. "We'll be going away somewhere," Karl said, in answer to Yossie's question. "That American, Herr Koch, said so. Some kind of emergency."
Yossie was curious, but also worried by the news. Tomorrow was the ninth of Av. From sunset to dusk, over twenty-four hours, every Jew was expected to abstain from all food and drink in memory of the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Yossie didn't want to risk missing the last meal before the fast.
Soon after Fritz arrived, a large pickup truck pulled to a stop by the forge. Ron Koch and Gayle Mason got out, along with two other Americans, Jimmy and Orval. After a brief flurry of activity collecting tools from the mine shop and forge, they all loaded into the truck. Yossie and Fritz ended up sitting on tool chests in back, next to the large round tank that held the truck's fuel, something the Americans called natural gas.
The truck took them into Grantville and then south on a gravel road up a small valley and over a ridge. As they came to the top, the view ahead was dominated by the dark face of the cliffs that marked the border of the Ring of Fire.
The height of the cliffs varied immensely. The peaks and valleys of the Thüringerwald outside the Ring of Fire didn't line up with the ridges of the Allegheny Plateau inside. On the south side of the Ring, the hills outside were far higher, and one of them completely blocked the valley ahead of them.
Downhill toward the cliff, Yossie saw water. With no exit, whatever stream flowed in the valley now fed a growing pond against the foot of the cliff.
The road came down almost to water level and then paralleled the shore of the new pond. As they approached the cliff face, Yossie noticed several huge boulders that had fallen nearby. One was at least the size of a house.
It was only after the truck stopped that he saw their destination. The structure that stood close in the shadow of the cliff was a miniature version of the hoists that stood over the two entrances to the Murphy's Run Mine. Where the cage of the main hoist at Murphy's Run might have held the truck he'd been riding, this one was hardly large enough for two men.
Ron Koch gathered them around. "Amalgamated Number Eighteen was a mine south of Grantville. The main entrance was outside the Ring of Fire, but part of it is under this valley. This shaft was used for air, to pump out water and for emergency escape.
"Now, this is our only entrance to Number Eighteen. After the Ring of Fire, there was no electricity for the pumps. When we discovered that this entrance was inside the Ring of Fire, the shaft was already flooded. Yesterday, we fixed the electricity.
"The lake is rising, and it will flood this area by winter. We want to take everything we can get before that happens. Our job today, if we can do it, is to start pulling out one water pump. The other pump will keep us dry while we work."
"Did they drown down there when it flooded?" Karl asked.
"No," Ron said. "The part of that mine under us here was all mined out and the Ring of Fire was on a Sunday. There shouldn't be any bodies down there, and ghosts are unlikely. This shaft is here because it's a low spot in the mine, the water runs here so the pumps are here."
There were two pumps. At first, Yossie thought the pumps were the man sized machines standing at the base of the hoist. As they set to work, he learned that they were just the electric motors that worked the pumps. They were nothing but large versions of the washing machine motor Yossie had already worked with. Each sat atop a vertical pipe larger than his thigh that ran down the shaft.
Gayle and Jimmy removed the wires connected to one motor. While they did that, the others rigged a chain hoist to the tower over the mine shaft and took the sides off of the hoist cage. By noon, they'd undone the bolts holding the motor to its foundation and loaded the motor and its cast-iron mount in the back of the pick-up truck.
Yossie and the others ate their noon meal while they waited for the truck to return. The four men from the forge sat together on a grassy bank looking out at the lake that was slowly rising in the valley.
"What I don't understand is, how do the motors pull the pump rod up and down," Thomas said, after washing down a mouthful.
"It's not push-pull rod," Fritz said. "It goes round and round."
"How d'ye know that?" Karl asked, between bites.
"The motor goes round like the washing machine motor, only bigger."
"Then why is the shaft right down the middle of the pump pipe?" Thomas asked.
Yossie listened with interest to their speculation. Fritz had arrived at the forge with the reputation of being able to fix anything, and Yossie could see how he'd earned it. He seemed to grasp how things worked more quickly than most people, and when he guessed, he was usually right.
By the time Yossie walked away to say the grace after meals, the conversation had turned to the stability of the cliffs that loomed above them. The fact that some huge blocks of stone had fallen was clear proof that other blocks could follow.
When Yossie returned, he found Thomas, Karl and Fritz looking his way. "What were y'doin up in th'woods?" Karl asked. "Ya always go way after we eat. At the forge, an now here."
Yossie hesitated
for a moment, and then decided that he had little to lose by telling the truth. "I was bentsching, praying."
"You're a Jew, not a priest," Karl said. "Whatcha praying for?"
All three of them knew he was a Jew. He'd found that out shortly after his trip north with Thomas. Karl and Fritz had guessed the truth shortly after they came to the forge, but had said nothing until Thomas mentioned it.
When he finally answered, he spoke very carefully. "Jews pray a short prayer before each meal and a long prayer after."
"Then how come ya go away for the one and not the other?"
"The short prayer I can just say. The long one, I have to read from a book."
"I don't see no book," Karl said.
Yossie hesitantly pulled his bentscher from his pocket. The slim little volume was worn from years of daily use. Yakov had given him the book as a bar mitzvah gift when he turned thirteen.
Karl took the book and opened it, upside down, and squinted at it. "I can't read this," he said handing it to Fritz.
"You don't know how to read," Fritz said, taking the book. "These are Jewish letters."
Thomas was looking over his shoulder. "They're not any letters I've seen." He looked up at Yossie with a puzzled expression.
"Like Fritz said, it's written in Jewish letters," Yossie said. "Can I have my book back?"
"Give Joseph his book," Ron Koch said, taking all of them by surprise. "Joseph, are you Jewish?"
"Yes," he said.
"Are they giving you trouble because of it?"
"Not really," he said.
"Good," Ron said. "Let's get to work then. We just turned on the other pump. We'll follow the water down, taking out sections of pipe while the falling water pulls fresh air into the hole."
The hoist cage was tiny, hardly large enough for two men. Yossie and his companions eyed it suspiciously.
"You're little. We'll go down first," Ron said. It took Yossie a moment to realize that Ron was speaking to him.
After they got into the hoist, Ron rapped twice on the frame with a wrench. Immediately, the cage began to drop into the shaft. Almost at once, Ron rapped again, and they stopped.
Two black iron pipes ran down the side of the shaft. The pipe below the motor that was still working hummed quietly, the other was silent. The hoist held them level with a joint in the pipes, and after they'd unbolted the joint, they chained the pipe to the side of the hoist.
