Grantville Gazette, Volume 67 Read online

  "No, sir," The garden's employee assured the patron. "They're not chilled. But we can't be running back and forth across the street with beer mugs and pitchers in this weather, now can we?" He popped the caps and started pouring the beer into the glasses Heloise fetched for him. Drinking out of the bottle really was a redneck thing in this day and age.

  The empty hot tub went back when the soup was served and it returned shortly with the kraut and sausage. It was a good thing that there was a coal pot in the tub to keep the main course warm because the party was in no hurry about eating. During the soup course, they started toasting. And these people took their toasts seriously. Then they started singing.

  ****

  While helping Ken wash the dishes after dinner, Kim said, "I wonder how the new girl is doing at the shop."

  "I thought you stayed till she was done?"

  "Well, I did mostly, but the manager from the Gardens came over and asked if he could rent the shop for an overflow party, and Heloise said she could stay."

  "You mean to tell me that you've got a party of Krauts in the club and the only one watching them is another Kraut that we don't even really know?" Ken raised an eyebrow.

  "Well, when it you put it that way?" Kim raised an eyebrow back at him. "Yes." They both laughed. "But the No Krauts and No Dogs sign ain't hanging on the door anymore." It had been on the front door when the building was a bar. The rowdy up-timers who had been Ken's regular patrons hadn't mixed well with the new locals. The new sign read Kim's Hair Salon.

  He dropped the dish rag in the sink and headed for the coat closet. "I'd better go check before they burn the place down or they walk off with the cash register." It was a mechanical brass contraption, with mother of pearl insert keys. It had been a collectible antique when he got it to begin with. Now it was a priceless up-time relic.

  ****

  Heloise heard a noise in the kitchen and went to look. An unknown man promptly asked, "Are you Heloise?"

  "Yes. Who are—"

  Ken interrupted her question with an answer. "I'm Ken Beasley, Kim's husband. I'll be at the desk in the stock room if you need anything."

  But he never got there. The Krauts were loud and rowdy. That was fine. He was used to loud and rowdy. But the tone of the toasting was belligerent. Ken's German was passable after four years of being around it. But he had no luck at all at following the dialect being spoken in the front room. He stood in the kitchen out of sight and listened with growing apprehension. One toast followed another, and each sounded more aggressive than the last. The party had that feeling which he knew all too well. He could feel it in his bones. They were spoiling for a fight and they weren't going to calm down or cool off or go home until they had one.

  Ken picked up the old rotary phone and dialed the familiar number.

  "Police station," the phone said.

  "Yeah, this is Ken Beasley at Club 250. I've got a fight brewing. I need some help."

  "Ken?" The dispatcher asked in shock. "What's up? Are you okay? Are you having a flashback?"

  "Look! My wife rented the shop out for an overflow party from the Gardens. And they're getting ready to tear the place apart. Get me some help over here now! I don't have a shotgun under the bar anymore."

  Ken heard the server from the Gardens loudly saying, "I just told you. You've gone through all three cases of beer. There's no more beer. And no, I will not go get any more. I'm cutting you off. You've had enough."

  "Shit," Ken said with a deep sense of dread.

  "It's going to hit the fan," he told the police dispatcher. "Get your asses over here RIGHT NOW!"

  Ken grabbed a case of beer and headed for the front hoping to delay things until the cops got there. He pushed through the kitchen door with the words, "Heloise, get in the kitchen, NOW!"

  At about that time the front door opened. Ken was relieved. Then he realized it wasn't the cops.

  "Oh shit!" A group of down-timers was standing in the door screaming bloody murder in the same dialect Ken had been listening to for the last half hour. A plate still half-full of sauerkraut and sausages flew through the air splattering all over the man in the lead and everywhere else. The plate bounced off the man and broke when it hit the floor. Three or four more plates followed, accompanied by a wordless bellow of rage. Screamed invectives mingled with threats of mayhem kept coming from outside with the sleet and the wind.

  The older man of the party using the salon was up out of his chair bellowing like a bull. He charged the enemy in the door, who was twice his size, in a headlong rush ending with his head butting into a stomach. This turned into a tackle filling the doorway, keeping the rest of the invading force out in the street. But it did not stop the three men who leaped up from the tables. They dashed over the two wrestling in the doorway as the wind blew sleet into the salon. The ladies were keeping three much younger boys from following. An old graybeard hobbled to the door and aimed a kick at a face. This resulted in blood on the floor.

  "Heloise, I told you to get in the kitchen!" Ken looked at the server from the Gardens. "You, too. In the kitchen. Now!"

  "Aren't you going to do something?" she demanded, as she slid past him since he was half-blocking her way.

  "I am doing something. I'm waiting for cops."

  As the Gardens' employee passed him, he shoved the case of beer at him. Then he stood there and glared at the ladies standing around the tables hanging onto the boys as the sirens outside grew louder.

  In short order, the sirens stopped. Shortly after that, the noise outside changed and then stopped. And shortly after that Lyndon Johnson came in.

  The solid, calm, and collected young man asked, "Ken, what in the world just happened?"

  The frowning younger police officer glanced at the sauerkraut-splattered walls and the sauerkraut mixed with blood on the floor. "Four men are headed to the hospital; one of them looks like he won't make it. Six men are on their way to jail." He glanced at the sheet-covered workstations of the salon. "I thought we were through with this sort of thing."

  Ken shrugged. "I don't know a whole lot."

  Dieter Schliemann showed up. Ken looked at him with a half-suppressed snarl. "These are his customers. Ask him!"

  "I'm sorry about this," Dieter said.

  "The breakage is extra," Ken replied.

  "That's fair enough." Dieter agreed with a nod.

  "Any idea what it was all about?" Lyndon asked.

  "From what little I've gathered," the manager from the Gardens replied, "it sounds like what I was told about your Hatfields and McCoys."

  A soft snort of a sound between a grunt and a growl, along with a nod, was Lyndon's only reply.

  He understood. Like a lot of people in West Virginia, he claimed some distant kinship. That is to say, he may have had some minor family connections, to one or both of the feuding parties. And anyone born and raised in the hills can tell you when it comes to feuds, what caused them is unimportant. When it came to a feud, the only thing which matters is the feud itself.

  "Herr Schliemann," the server from the Gardens said to his boss, "we didn't need to bring the food over in hot tubs. They've still got a full kitchen over here. We could have kept the food warm in their oven or on the stove."

  ****

  When Kim had heard the sirens, she came running. She took in the mess at a glance: the blood on the floor, the sauerkraut splattered on the walls and strewn across the floor, the broken plates. She shook her head. Heloise was clearing the tables so they could take their table cloths back across the street.

  "When you finish," Kim told the girl, "mop up the blood first and then clean up the mess. I'll be doing the dishes."

  She found Ken at the kitchen sink with his sleeves rolled up looking very solemn while washing soup bowls.

  She gave him a peck on the cheek and said very softly, "I don't know whether to laugh or cry."

  "They think one of them is dead," Ken replied very quietly. "I never had anybody die in a bar fight before."
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  The chief of police turned up while Heloise was mopping up the last of the blood. He, too, took in the sauerkraut and sausage mess, although he identified the sausages as wieners. He found Ken in the kitchen washing dishes. Kim was drying and putting away. Ken looked at the chief.

  "Is he—" the rest of the question hung in the air as if not asking might make it not so.

  The chief answered the question with a slow shake of his head.

  "Shit," Ken said. "I was always able to keep things under control."

  "Yeah," the chief agreed. "It's rough. I thought when you closed the bar it was over. Instead, it's gotten worse than ever."

  "Hey, it wasn't our fault!" Kim objected, on the verge of tears.

  "That's true," the chief agreed. "But we both know who's going to get the blame. And the Gardens' reputation is not the one that is going to take it on the chin."

  "That's just not fair," Kim said with silent tears running down her cheeks.

  The chief took her into his arms and held her in a fatherly hug, patting her strawberry blond head as she cried on his shoulder. "You're right," he said. "It's not fair. But that's the way it is."

  Ken grunted in agreement.

  "It wasn't fair even back up-time." The chief sighed. "And the Good Lord knows, there ain't nothin' at all fair about our being here."

  Ken watched as the police chief realized he was hugging another man's wife with the man standing there watching. The chief loosened his hold. Normally that would break the clutch. It didn't. She wasn't through using his shoulder. He couldn't just push her away. Ken kept on washing dishes, and he kept the smirk off of his face. Telling Kim no was not an easy thing to do. Eventually the chief tried, awkwardly, to engage Ken in conversation.

  "With the blood and the sauerkraut, that's quite a mess you got out there."

  "Yeah. Well," Ken sighed, "it's damned ironic. This wouldn't have happened when the sign on the door read 'No Krauts allowed.’ "

  ****

  It's the Little Things by Nick Lorance

  Grantville

  August, 1632

  To one of the up-timers, it was just a ten-foot by ten-foot storage shed behind a house on one of the hills that surrounded the town of Grantville. It was now the home of Richard Hartmann, a sergeant in what they called their New United States Army. While smaller than the average hotel room in their vanished world, it was more than enough room for him. Marta Karcher paused, catching her breath, the heavy shoulder bag she carried was filled with several small pans. The couple had gotten into the habit of having dinner together three times a week, and she was bringing it when she heard cursing.

  Marta knew Richard Hartmann was from Bohemia. But she never really understood what that meant unless he was angry. As anyone who knows more than one language, when he got angry, his mind returned to what he had been raised with, which in his case was Czech.

  And now he was cursing in Czech loud enough to be heard through the wall of his shack. She didn't understand a word, but he sounded…upset. She sighed, walking to the door and rapping on it. "—Ruka vice—Cože? What?"

  "Richard?"

  There was another muttered word, and the door swung open. Hartmann nodded, waving her in. There was a small table he had knocked together to the right of the door, and on the table a calico cat was laying on her back drooling, paws idly stroking at the air as she purred and growled. Underneath and around her were shreds of a green plant. To one side there lay a torn Ziploc bag, and what looked like a pair of eviscerated mice. Marta almost screamed, but something about the mice was wrong. She came over to the table, reaching out, then jerking her hand back as one of the paws struck out to block her.

  "Leave her alone. She will be like this for a while." Hartmann took the shoulder bag and moved to the opposite side of the door from the table to unload it on the counter. Marta came over, bumping him aside, and arranged the pans like a general marshaling her army. Hartmann smiled at her back, then went to the table. When he reached in this time, the cat deigned to allow him to pet her. "I should have never left that broth out last month. If I had not, she would be someone else's problem. Is that not right, žárlivý žena?"

  The cat merely lay limp as he rolled her aside and gently began to sweep the dried herbs from her fur and the table.

  "What does that mean? Is it her name?"

  Hartmann chuckled. "Her name is just Koča, cat. I called her a jealous wife. Have you noticed that if we are at the table, she must always use my lap? Or sit on the table so she can snatch butter to lick?" He picked up the bag and put the loose herbs atop it, nodding thank you as Marta handed him another. Once it was sealed, he put it in his pocket, then picked up the cloth mice.

  "Why did you bring catnip into the house if you knew she would act that way?"

  "I was told at the store that only half of all cats are affected by it. As for why, the store was out of tobacco, and I am told it can be smoked."

  She shook her head, serving up the stew and fresh bread. Her man was strange. But how hard could it be to buy him some tobacco?

  ****

  It was harder than Marta thought. The grocery store had sold tobacco, so had the drug store, according to Amy, the teenager who was the cashier. "When people figured we were going to run out, there was a run on all kinds of tobacco." She waved at the empty metal rack behind her. There were empty slots about three inches wide with tags for the brands that had been there. "We sold out in a couple of days. Sorry."

  Marta sighed. "Thank you." She walked to the door, then stopped. She craned to the side.

  Amy watched her curiously. "Ma'am?"

  "There is something on the floor behind the rack."

  "Huh?" The girl came around the counter, and Marta pointed. "A couple of boxes. Wait a minute." She hurried to the back of the store and returned with an older man. "This lady wanted some tobacco, Mr. Little, but we haven't got any. But lookie right there."

  The man looked, then shook his head. "Get me a yardstick, Amy." The girl hustled into the back, then returned with the item. Little tried to hook the thing they were looking at, then shook his head. "Too far." He walked around behind the counter. "I need a hammer."

  Working carefully, he pulled the front plate off the rack and bent down. "Son of a bitch." He felt around on the counter, found the yardstick, and turned back to what he was doing. A moment later, he stood three dusty boxes and a plastic pouch in his hands. "That kid who worked for me back in '98 was always knocking stuff off the top of the shelf where we kept the pouches of pipe tobacco. But he usually did it on this side, not behind it." He set them down. "Well, ma'am, we have tobacco left. But it's old, probably stale." He sighed. "Here."

  "How much, Herr Little?" Marta took out her purse.

  "Don't worry about it. Like I said, probably stale anyway."

  "After all you had to do to get it for me, I insist."

  Little sighed. "Ring them up at half price, Amy." He tapped the pouch. "Tell him this should be first. Those pouches are just folded, not sealed."

  "Thank you." She hurried out, holding her precious purchases. The pouch had a drawing of a sailing ship on it; the boxes were two different brands. Half and Half, and Mixture 79.

  She was considering which to give to Richard first when her eyes saw an old up-timer sitting in a wheelchair at a table working on a carving. Curious, she walked closer. The object was a small disc, and the knife he was using tiny. Some lens on a strap around his head were in front of his eyes.

  "It's not polite to stare." He flipped up the lens and looked up. His German was like a breath of home.

  "I am sorry. I just saw you working on that. Your German is excellent."

  "Should be. This," he waved at the world around him, "is just a trip down memory lane for me. I learned my German back in the nineteen forties." He lifted the disc, and carefully peeled away a portion. "A German POW camp in Thalia, Virginia, Camp Ashby." He saw her confusion. "We were at war with Germany then. I was guarding guys from the Afrika
Korps and spent the whole war there. One of the prisoners was a college student who wanted to learn better English, and I taught him English as he taught me German. I think he was from Halle."

  "I am from Halle!"

  He grinned holding out his hand. "Alexander McIntire." He waved toward the building behind him. "and here is my hell away from home."

  She took his hand. "Marta Karcher." She looked at the sign, but she didn't read English very well. "Bowers—"

  "Bowers Assisted Living Center. It's where you go when all you have left to do in life is, you know, stop living."

  "That is a sad thought, Herr McIntire."

  He shrugged, selecting one of the array of small knives on the table, then flipping the lens back down. "Well think of it this way, I'm eighty-one, been married to the same woman for over sixty years, raised four kids, and we're both still alive because three of them won't let us go."

  "Three? What of the last one?"

  "Evelyn is over there in the Manning Center." He motioned across the street and further down. "She is suffering from Alzheimer's. It makes you forget like you're senile, it's worse when you're only in your fifties. On a good day, she remembers us, but she hasn't had a lot of good days since the medications ran out."

  "Mary Sue has it worse. Arthritis bad enough that it hurts to dress or walk. Not that it stops her. She's a stubborn old broad. I just have no teeth left in my head, losing what little hair I have left, left hip replaced with a steel bar after it broke a couple of years before we ended up here and I have problems a gentleman doesn't discuss with a lady. The biggest problem I have is boredom, which is why I do this."

  For several moments, he carved on the delicate piece. Then he took the magnifier off. Picking up a magnifying glass, he handed the piece and glass to her. "What do you think?"

  Marta looked at the cameo in wonder. The white stone had been carved into a delicate half-profile face of a woman. "It is beautiful."

  "For Evie. She'll be like a child at Christmas, and, at least, will remember her mother's face better."