The Grantville Gazette - Vol 3 Part 3

AndMagdalena was not a neat cook. Still, it ensured that she would meet this Mitch, even if he did not want a cleaning lady.

June, 1634

Mitch thought it was really weird to be sleeping in his parents' bedroom. But that was how it had worked out. He had Ryan and his Meg upstairs, where he'd been living himself before the Ring of Fire.

He was renting the other downstairs bedroom to Errol Mercer, right now. Once Derek Blount got out, he and Errol would go shares on that room. The bunk beds had been in there, and it didn't seem worth while to do all the heaving and hauling to switch the beds around. So here he was in a double bed in his folks' room.All by himself. Once he found a job, the money end ought to be okay. But he didn't know what he wanted to do. Not go back to hauling human manure forO'Keefe's, that was sure. He hadn't been sorry to quit that job when the army had called for every able-bodied guy who could be spared three years ago. He hadn't wanted to re-up, either-couldn't figure out why Lew Jenkins and Jim Fritz did. It was the reserves for good old Mitch, from here on.

But he didn't know what he was going to do next. There weren't a lot of choices, even in a boom town, when you were a dropout. But he was not going back to O'Keefe's. That much, he knew for sure.

Walpurga watched Lisbet and the Mercer man in the corner of the living room, fooling with the musicalinstruments. It was strange, being in the house with so many people. She felt like she ought to be cleaning something. Her fingers practically twitched.

Between the times when she watched them, she watched Mitch Hobbs.

Who said that he was looking for ajob.

She had heard her boss say it so often, to people who came through the laundry. To people from whom she was trying to get "investment capital." Frau Rawls wanted to go away from Grantville, build more and more MaidenFresh Laundries in other cities. The boss wanted to move toMagdeburg . Her mouth opened. "MaidenFresh Laundries is a growth industry. Anyone who gets in on the ground floor will make his fortune."

The rest of them just stared at her. She ran through the rest of the spiel. She didn't even know that she knew it all. It even sounded like Frau Rawls, the way she said it. Then she blushed, and said in her normal tone of voice. "My boss wants to go toMagdeburg . She will need a manager for the laundry here in Grantville. Ask her. Frau Vesta Rawls."

What was that girl's name, anyway?Mitch asked himself. What he said was, "They don't hire dropouts to manage businesses."

"You have been in the army. Your grandmother works at a business, at the supermarket. I know her.

Your grandfather is in the UMWA and that means that he knows the important people. You can go back to school. And clean laundry is important.Very important."

It turned out that the Walpurga had memorized another spiel from listening to it so often. This was Frau Rawls' "sanitation prevents widespread epidemics and will save many lives" talk. She delivered the whole thing.

A sister less exuberantly extroverted than Lisbet would probably have been deeply humiliated. Even Lisbet was looking a little surprised. What would Walpurga say next?

Walpurga was saying, "Come tomorrow. I will introduce you."

Vesta Rawls was a little doubtful. But Mitch was a vet; they owed the vets.And Ken Hobbs' grandson.

Not to mention that anybody vouched for by that spot and stain fanatic Walpurga was bound to be the right sort to take an interest in laundry, she guessed. Though he had never shown any sign of it before the Ring of Fire. Maybe the army had matured him.

"I'll try you as my a.s.sistant manager.Three month probation. If you're catching on, then I'll try you as temporary manager when I go up to Arnstadt for a month.If that works, then for six months temporary while I go up toMagdeburg. But get yourself out to theVoTechCenter this afternoon. You're going to have to learn bookkeeping, at a minimum."

September, 1634

The minimum of bookkeeping had turned into a whole GED. Mitch wasn't sure how, but first he had talked to the business teacher and the business teacher had talked to the adult education coordinator and the adult education coordinator had talked to someone in the superintendent's office. All the rest of them had all agreed that he could finish in a year, in his spare time. It was a done deal before he could even open his mouth. Listening to them, he had an awful feeling that the concept of "spare time" had just gone flying out the window. Where was the idea of spending his evenings nursing a beer in theThuringenGardens , eyeing the girls? He had dreamed of that, while he was still in the army.

Instead...He was increasingly aware that he was still sleeping single in that double bed. He also was developing this strange suspicion that Walpurga Hercher intended that he should keep right on sleeping single in that double bed. Meg lived in the house, of course and her sister Lisbet spent a lot of a time there, rehearsing with her band. So Walpurga had plenty of excuses to be there. Talk about having your very own personal chaperone. Any other girl he brought in, somehow, only came once.And never got anywhere near the bedroom.

February, 1635

It wasten o'clock at night. There was something wrong with the books, which Mitch discovered atsix o'clock in the evening. He had stayed late at MaidenFresh and then later. He had pulled out his textbook from theVoTechCenter .Finally tracked it down.Then started to fix it.Finished fixing it. Management wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

The house was pretty near empty. Ryan and Meg were upstairs, he guessed-the lights were on. Derek was probably over at the Freedom Arches with Ursel. He'd pa.s.sed Errol on his way in, walking Lisbet home. He'd just not bother to eat. Not bother with a shower. Just drop into bed. He walked into the bedroom and... Walpurga was what?

In his bed.Well, standing on it.Fully clothed.

"What on earth are you doing?"

She blushed."Putting furniture polish on the headboard of your bed." She caressed the wooden curlicues.

"It is so beautiful. I want it to be perfect."

He had never though of Walpurga as sensuous before. All of a sudden, other things that people might want to havebe perfect flashed through his mind.In connection with Walpurga.

Well, maybe it was not perfect. But it had been very, very, nice.

During the months while Walpurga had been watching Mitch to make sure that he did not make anunfortunate choice of a wife ("unfortunate" being defined in her mind as "anybody else"), she had also been watching Mitch. She had concluded that marrying this man would be no hards.h.i.+p at all on his wife.

Her reaction to his new initiative had been quite cooperative. Now she rolled over and started to play with the hair on his chest, twisting it around her finger into neat little ringlets. "On Sunday," she said, "I will tell Pastor Kastenmayer that we are betrothed and arrange for you to start confirmation cla.s.s."

We are?Luckily, he hadn't said that out loud.

He thought a minute. He had a really strong feeling that if they weren't betrothed, this wasn't going to happen again. Not with Walpurga. His body was hinting that it really should happen again.Preferably fairly soon. Walpurga finished the first row of little ringlets and started on the second. He had a vague recollection that down-time girls were perfectly happy to sleep with their fiances. His body filed a memo to the effect that whatever might be going on up at headquarters, at least one regional office voted in favor of getting betrothed to Walpurga Hercher.

"Where's your dad working?" he asked. Her mom had died three or four years before the Ring of Fire, but he knew that her father was around somewhere, one of the few men who had survived the ma.s.sacre at Quittelsdorf.Because he'd gone to Rudolstadt, that day, to sell a donkey. Come back to find the bodies.Dug the ma.s.s grave by the burned-out church.Looked for the survivors for six weeks, before he found them.

But he hadn't stayed in Grantville, even though old Matthias Dornheimer had wanted him to. Walpurga's dad would never start over, not now. He had hired out as a hand on a farm, somewhere. Not too far away. "We probably ought to look him up and tell him, too."

"He is in Lichstedt. He is working for old Johann Pflaum. I will askArnold to tell him."

Pastor Kastenmayer didn't see how he could possibly get this young man ready for confirmation by April. He was starting much later than the rest of the cla.s.s. They were many lessons ahead of him.

"His grandfather," Jonas Justinus Muselius said, fighting not to clench his teeth, "is in the UMWA. Trust me. I'll get him there."

April, 1635

Mitch didn't have this stuff down anywhere near as pat as the rest of them. He was glad that they were reciting a bunch of it in unison. He mumbled. In a pinch, he looked at Walpurga, who was sitting in a pew angled sideways to most of the rest, mouthing the words.

"I believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son..."

I do? Do I believe that?Must have gone over it pretty fast in cla.s.s. G.o.d of Walpurga, if you're out theresomewhere, watching this,remind me again. What's the Holy Spirit and why do I care who he proceeds from?She?It? No offense meant.

Walpurga had a.s.sured him that it would be fine. Once he got the management of Grantville MaidenFresh Laundries down pat, they could go to Teacher Muselius's catechism review cla.s.ses on Sat.u.r.day afternoons and he could go through it all again, more slowly.

He could? Ye G.o.ds! What next?

And Some on Stony Ground: Michael Lewis Jenkins and Sabina Ottmar

April, 1632

Sabina Ottmar picked up the ten-gallon milk can easily, swinging it onto the bed of the truck.And the next, and the next. Her heavy skirts matched the rhythm of her muscular arms. The last one in, she fastened the back of the "pickup" in place with a stick rammed through the broken latch and called, "okay," to the driver. He took off for town. She went into the milk shed to clean up. If she worked fast, it would be done before lunch.

Sabina loved her new job at the dairy goat farm of Mr. and Mrs. Manning Booth. She had to remember that. Mrs. Booth. Up-time women had the name of their husbands. There was so much to remember.

She pulled the kerchief off her hair, retied it, and started to wash and sterilize the jugs that the truck had brought back from town. The kettles of water boiling on the wood-burning stove were heavy, but she could handle them. She knew that many people laughed at her looks, but if you were Sabina Ottmar, it was good to be tall and strong. You hadwork to do and no one else would do it for you.

It was good that this work was so fine. The Booths treated her as a fully qualified dairy maid, and paid her accordingly. She had a room of her own. She ate at their table. It was more than she had ever hoped for.

Sabina had never heard of a totem pole and probably never would. But if there had been one in thevillageofKeilhau , her family would have been at the bottom of it. By the time Sabina was old enough to remember, her father had been a landless day-laborer. He had once had his share of the lease, true enough, but had lived as such a wastrel that he had been forced to sell it back to his brother. Then he had died, when she was only five. He had been drunk, of course. He choked on his food.

Her oldest brother, Heinrich, was twenty, then. He had been a hard enough worker-still was, for that matter. But he was in service to another farmer. He scarcely earned his own keep. Not enough tosupport a mother, a quite young brother who was simple, and a sister much too small to be sent to work.

Her second oldest brother-carefully, she walked to the outside of the milk shed and spat, where it would not mess the "sterilization" of the jugs.

Good riddance that he had gone for a soldier.Too bad that he had taken his miserable wife and children with him. Lucky he left before their mother remarried-otherwise he would have stayed, trying to get money from her.

They had eaten, after her father died, on the charity of others. When she was twelve, she had gone into service herself.For very little wages, so young, and the daughter of Martin Ottmar the drunkard.The worst of the work; the worst of the beds; the worst of the food.

The worst of the hired men.

G.o.d was merciful, however. He proved it. She was barren.

Seven years after that, her mother had made a very fortunate marriage into Quittelsdorf. Old Matthias Dornheimer, twice widowed already, just wanted a housekeeper. But he was a very respectable man who would have no breath of scandal. He picked a woman past childbearing and married her with all the banns called. He had taken in his simple stepson (who also was his G.o.dson, and to whom, thus, he owed a duty). But he had seen no reason to take in a stepdaughter who could work.

By then, though, Sabina had reached her full growth. Scarecrow thin, but tall. Arms and shoulders formed by the hardest of work in the barns and with the cattle.

Strong enough to take care of herself.

And treated kindly by her stepsister, the well-placed daughter of a prosperous farmer.Not loved, exactly, but not scorned. That had been, perhaps, G.o.d's kindest grace of all, that Rahel did not treat her as a s.l.u.t.Though she must have known the things that had happened, at least by report. In a village, everybody did, of course. Keilhau was not far from Quittelsdorf.

Sabina's meditations continued. It was good to be working for the Booths. The cleaning crew in Grantville had not been bad, but she was very glad that the girl on the other farm, Staci Ann Beckworth she was called, had told her about this job. She would be quite happy to remain in service on this farm for the rest of her life.

April, 1634

Lew Jenkins had never been married; never wanted to be. He had been living with Staci Ann Beckworth, though, back when. Not that her parents were happy about it, but she'd been going through some kind of spasm about being adopted.

Then the Ring of Fire. It seemed that people thought that he was just a perfect example of the kind of able-bodied man who could be spared to enlist in the army full-time. They broke up. Well, after he went into the army, she couldn't afford to keep up the rent on the trailer, not with what she was earning as a waitress at Cora's, and moved back in with her parents. Then she got notions, finished her GED, learned German,married a German farmer. Lew was pretty sure the guy had ambitions. Arnold Pflaum, his name was.Old Plummy.

President of the Grange, he was now.Hadn't hurt him a bit to marry an up-time girl.

Of course, he was also wearing his feet off right up to the knees, running those farms. Farming sure wasn't a life that Lew had ever wanted. The army suited him fine.

Some of the guys in the army complained about latrine duty. h.e.l.l, before the Ring of Fire, Lew had worked for O'Keefe's. Every d.a.m.n day was latrine duty when your job was pumping septic tanks and catchment basins. In the army, at least, you had some days that weren't.

Today, for example.He went back to work. Whole barrels of uniforms had arrived, with no sizes on them. And, once they had opened a few, no consistent sizing within each barrel. He was holding each piece up against cardboard cutouts of three different sizes of soldiers; then folding them into three different piles. He got to decide which of the three guys they would most likely fit best.

Responsibility Jenkins, that's me.He grinned. He even refrained from deliberately mixing up the piles with one another.

His sister Bernita would have been proud of him.

May, 1634

Walpurga Hercher looked at the list of possible husbands that "die Krausin" had drawn up for the Quittelsdorf girls. She put her finger on Lew Jenkins's name and asked, quite simply, "Why?"