1635:The Dreeson Incident

Chapter 35

Grantville

"Good morning, Lenore. It's nice to have you back." Faye Andersen jumped up and gave her a hug. "We have an in-box waiting for you and can you work with Donella an hour or so every day? She's learning, but she hasn't had a chance to work in one of the down-time chanceries yet."

"Oh, Faye, it's so good to be back." Lenore leaned across the desk and gave the older woman a hug. "Hi, Linda Beth. Donella, I love your engagement ring. Catrina, oh golly, you have the baby right here. Isn't he a doll. I wish Bryant had let me do that after Weshelle was born. Where's Andrea? She said she still had some more forms for me to fill out."

"Meeting with the judges. You'll have to wait till that's over. Jon Villareal is our liaison with the consular service now. He's in the meeting, too. All okay at your end? No child care problems?"

"Great, Faye. Chandra is babysitting for Weshelle, so everything is smooth at home. Your problems must be nearly over by now."

"Sometimes I think they're worse when you have teenagers. Toddlers at least have the good grace to stay where you put them, so to speak, until you come back and pick them up again. Brandon and Hanna have so many activities now…"

"Are you on your own, again?" Linda Beth Rush asked.

"Bryant left for Magdeburg again the first thing this morning. He's got to make some stops on the way, though." Lenore grinned. "Give me some records to transcribe and I'll transcribe them."

"Back in the swing of things?" Chandra asked when Lenore knocked on the door to drop off Weshelle.

"Three days at work and it's as if I had never been gone."

"Did you eat breakfast?"

"You know me too well, Sis." Lenore laughed.

"Well, I'm hungry, and we have time. But I'm out of eggs. I've got to drop Mikey off anyway, and then Tom, so let's both walk downtown and stop at Cora's."

"When is she due?" Cora asked as she deposited the plates of buckwheat pancakes in front of them.

"Who?" Chandra broke a piece of hard bread in three pieces and gave one each to Lena Sue, Sandra Lou, and Weshelle to teethe on. She had dropped Mikey off at school on the way, but Tom was running around the table at a rate which made her yearn for the moment when St. Veronica's Academy would open its doors and receive him for the morning.

"Stop pretending you don't know who, Chandra. Your stepmother, of course."

"Um."

"When?"

"Late May."

"Didn't waste any time, did they?"

"Shoo, Cora." Chandra watched the proprietress head for another table, taking their coffee pot, and turned to her sister. "Cora Ennis has no shame at all."

"I think everyone in Grantville is asking the same question," Lenore answered. "And some of them are making bets on how long it took between the time they married themselves to each other and start of the pregnancy. I understand that the heavy money at the Thuringen Gardens is on fifteen minutes. The 250 Club types aren't conceding that the vows came first, on the grounds that German women are all whores." She blushed.

"Cut it out, Lenore. Why should you be sitting here blushing for Dad? We didn't have a thing to do with it."

"Except for your manipulating to send her over there in the first place. Let's hope for a week's margin. Early June."

"Kortney Pence gives them nine months to the day, and the story I heard from Mary Kathryn, who got it straight from Derek Utt, is that it was already well after dark when the kidnappers locked them into Ritter von Schlitz's pantry, so the money on 'fifteen minutes' may not be too far off the mark."

"Chandra! Stop it!"

"Oh, well. I guess I'd better write Nathan before he hears it from someone else. And you're going to be late for work if we don't get a move on."

Sandra Prickett, Nathan's mother, was happily demonstrating the workings of the Bureau of Vital Statistics filing system to an interested and admiring Jacques-Pierre Dumais. There really weren't a lot of people around who were interested in the nuts and bolts of how she spent her days. Since he mentioned that he had attended the wedding of Velma Hardesty to Laurent Mauger, she pulled out the master file card.

Jacques-Pierre looked at it with some interest for the content. Particularly the age of the bride. "It's accurate," Sandra said. "She's lived in this town all her life, so there wasn't any point in trying to fudge off a few years. I wouldn't put it past her, though, if she moves away."

His attention fixed on the meaning of the punched holes around the edges of each card.

"It's because we don't have computer systems available," Sandra answered. "Grantville wasn't maintaining its own vital statistics before the Ring of Fire. They were kept at state level. So when we set the bureau up, it was from scratch, and we did a system that was really old-fashioned back home. But it's one that any down-time office, all through what was the NUS, through Thuringia-Franconia, can maintain. We get the blank forms printed and manually punch the holes that code the data that is on each license and certificate. Each of the squares around the edge represents a specific fact."

She explained the retrieval system, saying that, for example, for statistical purposes, they could easily use this to track all up-timer/down-timer marriages, such as that between Velma and her husband. Returning the Mauger/Hardesty card to its place, she stuck her little wire rod through the cards in the drawer and pulled out all of the up-timer/down-timer marriages for the last four months, spreading them out on the table.

As it happened, this included the ceremony performed for Wesley Williams Jenkins and Clara Bachmeierin at the Methodist parsonage. The one that Jenny Maddox had filed personally and had not included in the weekly list sent to the newspaper.

Sandra picked it up and showed it to her guest specifically, simply because the ceremony had been performed by her brother Simon, with her sister-in-law Mary Ellen as one of the witnesses. "I've always been so proud of David and Simon," she explained. "My brothers were the first members of our family who ever went to college. Now David is a school administrator and Simon is a preacher."

"I'm sure that you are," Jacques-Pierre said in his oddly formal English. "Indeed, one thing that I have observed, here in Thuringia, that is not so true in France, is that many of the teachers and government officials in these small German principalities, also, are the first person in a family with a university education. Do you think it is possible that this similarity makes the cooperation between the up-timers and down-timers easier?"

This question obviously interested him. Sandra had never really thought about it, but she did her best to help him understand.

She thought that his request for a copy of the certificate, so he could study the way the system of punched holes around the edges worked, was presented almost as an afterthought.

As it happened, he wanted to study that, too. It seemed like something that would be useful for the record keeping system at Garbage Guys. Much of Jacques-Pierre's success was based on the fact that he really was interested in at least ninety percent of the topics that came up in his conversations with the residents of Grantville.

His conversations with the former Velma Hardesty excepted, of course.

"It's perfectly true," Veda Mae Haggerty said. "And him heading up that fancy initiative to make sure that all the marriages between Americans and Krauts are legal, too!"

"I knew it to start with," Willard Carson said. "I mean, I sure thought there was something funny about it."

"I don't really believe it," Lois Carson answered. "Nobody could have managed something like that."

"It was a regular coverup. Wes Jenkins and that Clara he calls his wife weren't married until they came back here in October. All hush-hush, because Wes is one of Mike Stearns' cronies, I suppose. Did anybody else count from Stearns' wedding to that Kraut Becky of his and when their daughter was born? I sure did." Veda Mae shook her head with righteous indignation.

"Do you know anything else?" Lois asked hopefully.

"Simon Jones did the wedding. Too bad it wasn't Mary Ellen; maybe we could have used it to undermine this female minister business. It was one of the United Methodist Church's biggest mistakes when that came in. She was one of the witnesses, though. Mary Ellen, I mean. Someone-I won't say who-found the copy of the marriage license in the Bureau of Vital Statistics files. Jenny Maddox signed as the other witness. She must have deliberately not included it in every week's listing of the licenses issued that the bureau sends out for the newspapers to publish, to make Wes Jenkins' Kraut slut look like a respectable woman."

Willard Carson said, "It's a conspiracy." His nose was quivering with excitement. "A real conspiracy, I tell you. Commies."

Veda Mae looked at him. "Get hold of yourself, Willard," she said firmly. She had her opinions, but she hadn't lost all grip on reality. "If there's anything that Wes Jenkins isn't, it's a Commie."

"But," Lois sputtered, "aren't all conspirators Commies?"

Veda Mae went back to the original topic. "Remember that I told you first. We've given a copy of the certificate to Roger Rude at the Grantville Times. It should be in the next issue of the paper. With a little highlighting, using that new color press that they're trying out."

Mary Ellen answered the first phone call. Then the second and the third. After that, she took the phone at the parsonage off the hook. So much for discretion.

Unfortunately, she couldn't leave it off permanently. They got too many calls that were really important. So she had to live through all the others that came in over the next week or so, because Willard Carson's conspiracy theory was generally taken up by the 250 Club types and then ricocheted all over town, which meant that nicer people kept calling up and asking her to say that it wasn't so.

She tried to explain, but the whole thing was complicated. Most Grantvillers didn't entertain themselves by reading comparative law. She reflected on everything that had been going on.

Wes went ballistic after he heard some of the insults to Clara's virtue that were being tossed around in the 250 Club. He insisted on publication of all the paperwork that followed the original marriage. Considering that the lawyer who was working for Andrea Hill over in Fulda, who had taken their affidavits after the event, didn't have any more interest in polite euphemisms than any other down-timer, the statements made generally interesting reading. Some people said that the English translation was almost as good as having People magazine back.

Victor Saluzzo sternly reprimanded the health teacher at the high school who assigned his students to take the affidavits and work through such events as timing of intercourse, progress of the sperm, fertilization, and implantation to obtain a more realistic estimate of the time of the start of Mrs. Jenkins' pregnancy than the "fifteen minutes" being bandied about at the betting sites. The reprimand went into the teacher's permanent record in spite of his protest that the project had done more to get the boys' minds focused on how all this really worked than anything else he had ever tried.

There were times she thought that if anybody opened one more phone conversation with, "My goodness, Mary Ellen!" she would stand there and scream.

Although Clara had been coming to church with Wes since they got back, she was still officially Lutheran, so Pastor Kastenmayer at St. Martin's wrote and issued a theological treatise on the Lutheran view of the matter, which came out from a press in Jena and was widely admired in scholarly circles. The pastor had served in parishes all his life, but now it seemed that he was starting to be seen as something of an expert on comparative up-time and down-time marriage law. The university invited him to give a guest lecture, which he had certainly never expected in his wildest dreams. Much less that Count Ludwig Guenther would appoint him to the Ehegericht for Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. As Kastenmayer's wife Salome was telling everyone proudly, it was a real honor for a pastor to serve on the marriage court. Kastenmayer himself said to Gary Lambert, the business manager of Grantville's hospital, that he was not quite so thrilled about the prospect of spending a lot of his time for the next several years sorting through the debris of failed betrothals and marriages.

Given that West Virginia had not recognized common law marriage, there was fairly widespread doubt among even the nicest of Grantvillers that the do-it-yourself ceremony was for real, no matter what the affidavits said. Over in Jena, Chip Jenkins, who was going to law school, wrote a treatise in English on the down-time legal view of the matter. That got published too. Down-timers admired it, but almost every born Grantviller who phoned Mary Ellen at the parsonage "figured that he owed it to his uncle, after all," so none of them were taking it very seriously.

Somewhere in the course of these developments, Veda Mae Haggerty said something about the various marriages of Willard and Lois Carsons' much idolized son Matt that caused them to declare her persona non grata in the dining room of the Willard Hotel. Common political prejudices will only take people so far and no farther. The Carsons considered Matt to be off limits.

Mary Ellen found that out the day she walked into Cora's and heard Veda Mae proclaiming that she guessed she was stuck with having to eat here again if she didn't want to pay the higher price at Tyler's, die of ptomaine at the greasy spoon, or make do with pizza, because she wasn't about to go to the Thuringen Gardens with all its racket and she'd always hated packing a lunch.

Cora didn't usually make the City Hall Cafe off limits to anyone, but she finally made an exception for Veda Mae Haggerty. Again. Much to the old hag's indignation, of course.

Veda Mae was extremely indignant. She was forced to go grovel to Lois Carson and apologize for what she said about that overaged spoiled baby who was Lois' son Matt.

At least she still had a place to eat lunch.

Pastor Ludwig Kastenmayer looked at the up-timer standing in his study.

"It said so on the radio," Jarvis Beasley said. "In one of the stories about Wes Jenkins and that woman he married over in Fulda. Or, maybe, didn't marry over in Fulda. That you're in charge of fixing this sort of problem now."

That wasn't quite the way that Pastor Kastenmayer would have described service on a marriage court.

"The story said you wrote a book about it. It's no skin off my nose, you know. I'm free to come and go. But Judge Tito told Hedy to stay inside the Ring of Fire, so she can't go to church any more. She's likely to have the baby any day now. If she can't bring it to church, she can't get it baptized. She's afraid that if it isn't baptized and then it dies, it will go to hell. Can you do something? She thinks that she's being more trouble to me than she's worth."

Jarvis frowned, a vaguely disturbed look on his face. "She's not, really. Too much trouble, I mean. Hedy's good. Works hard. Doesn't talk all the time. Doesn't drink much. Doesn't flirt with other guys. Makes good stew, even if she does use a lot more mutton than I'm used to eating. Doesn't waste money. That's why we eat so much mutton."

Pastor Kastenmayer stroked his goatee, thinking. The man's effort to catalog the merits of his concubine-she was clearly a wife under Grantville's civil law, so perhaps it would be more prudent to refer to her as his wife in this conversation-had clearly strained his analytical ability.

Jarvis went on. "Vesta, that's my boss."

"Yes?"

"She says that if you came over into town, we could have the kid baptized the way Hedy wants it at the laundry. There's always plenty of water in a laundry. Walpurga, the girl who's got her eye on Mitch Hobbs who's the manager now, says she would be a godmother. Hedy thinks the baby will need one."

"And what tasks do you perform at this laundry? For your boss, this Vesta. Her name is?"

"Vesta Rawls. She was Vesta Eberly before she married Chuck Rawls. Well, I'm the maintenance man. Not for the machines. I sweep up. If someone breaks out a pane of glass, I put in a new one. I carry things around, or if they're too heavy for that, I push them on the dolly. Stuff. It's a good job. Regular. Not like picking up odd jobs."

Not an uncommon type, Kastenmayer thought. Designed by God, in the hierarchy of being, to live and die as a day laborer. In a way, it was comforting to know that the up-timers had those also. That not everyone among them was brilliant and understood the miracles of "technology."

The man's job was regular. His employer's suggestion was irregular. Highly irregular. However, no baby should remain unbaptized longer than necessary.

"Let me know," Pastor Kastenmayer said, "as soon as the baby is born. As for the other…" He sighed. "Sorting out matrimonial problems always takes time. Usually a lot of time. Judge Tito was probably right. Tell your, uh, wife, to stay right in Grantville. I'll start arranging for collection of the affidavits and depositions. I served parishes in Saxony until I received my first appointment in Gleichen about twenty years ago. I know something of the ecclesiastical ordinances in force there, but I'll have to review them."

Jarvis nodded. He had no idea what affidavits and depositions might be, much less an ecclesiastical ordinance, but it did seem like this guy was willing to try to help Hedy. Which meant that he was probably okay. Which meant that Buster might have the right of it, some of the things he'd been trying to tell him lately.

"I'll tell Hedy to stay in Grantville." Then he said. "Um. If you come downtown and baptize the baby, could I invite a couple of people? My grandma died last fall and Gramps is taking it kind of hard. It might cheer him up a little."

Pastor Kastenmayer thought that caution was in order. "Which of the Grantville churches does your grandfather attend?"

"He ain't a church member. Never has been. None of us are."

"Very well." A third of them are heathen. "Let me get all the information I need to start. Could you spell your name, please?"

Jarvis spelled his name. He spelled Hedy's name. The recollection of a newspaper article about a brawl and an attempted beating rose vaguely to the top of Pastor Kastenmayer's mind.

"Ah. Beasley. Are you any, um, connection of Denise? Denise Beasley." He remembered Denise well. She had been to church at Christmas with Gerry Stone and Minnie Hugelmair. The girl was unusual, but not hostile. "Or of Kenneth Beasley? Of the 250 Club?"

"Denise's dad is my cousin."

That was all right.

"Ken's my dad."

Pastor Kastenmayer sighed deeply. What was the phrase that Jonas had picked up from that extraordinary woman who worked for Herr Piazza? Liz, her name was. Liz Carstairs. "We do not have problems. We have challenges and opportunities."

He would have to include thankfulness to God for so many challenges and opportunities in his morning prayers. In his evening prayers. If he repeated often enough that he was sincerely grateful, he might come to feel gratitude more sincerely, as a habitude. The catechism was correct, of course. "We should fear and love God, that. .." Sometimes the tasks to which God set his servants could be truly fearsome. While baptizing a grandchild of the owner of the 250 Club might not be equivalent to standing in defiance before the Holy Roman Emperor at the Diet of Worms, as Martin Luther had done, still… it might be an interesting event.

There was another of the up-time proverbs that Jonas had collected. "May you live in interesting times." They considered it to be a curse, Jonas said. They might have a point.