Ring of Fire IV

by Eric Flint

  Lois spoke for a while.

  “Lois, you simply must talk to Okey. If we can’t get rid of Al Green soon, the Germans are going to take the church right over!” She paused briefly. “You do that!”

  Okey Rush

  Sunday, November 25, 1635

  Okey and Vanna were driving back to Jena after a typical Sunday of church, lunch, and seeing family. It was a bit earlier than normal, but since Thursday had been Thanksgiving, they’d seen quite a bit of family. Okey was ready for some peace and quiet, and he had this week’s lesson plans to fine-tune. He still wasn’t sure that having a master’s degree in Public Administration qualified him to teach that subject at the University of Jena. On the other hand, he did enjoy the interchange with the down-timer students. They’d grown up with different approaches to public administration than he was used to. He tried not to fix the parts that weren’t broken.

  Vanna was a licensed practical nurse at the CoC clinic. She could really use a restful evening before starting another week of shifts. But evidently his wife wanted to talk.

  “Okey.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t like how things have gotten at church.”

  “I don’t think anybody likes it, dear.”

  “Well it has to end. It’s tearing the church apart.”

  “I reckon it could. Albert Underwood doesn’t need to bring it up every deacon’s meeting, though.”

  “If he doesn’t keep him honest, Al Green will get everything his way. German services on Sunday morning, people drinking alcohol…”

  “Brother said he was okay with keeping the German service in the afternoon.”

  “Well that’s not what Aunt Lois told me.”

  Okey glanced in the rear-view mirror while he framed his next question. Their daughter Lissa was engrossed in a book. “Did Lois ask Brother Green about it? Because the deacons did at the October meeting, and he said the services were fine the way they are now.”

  “That’s not what Aunt Lois said.”

  “Vanna,” he stated in exasperation, “I was there.”

  “Okey, you know how the church has always been. Families have attended for generations. It’s where everyone goes when something happens. It’s one of our last pieces of up-time.”

  Okey thought about how everyone had gathered at First Baptist after the mine accident earlier that year. Vanna was right about that.

  “If Green gets his way…”

  “Al and Claudette Green were right in the thick of it, helping out after the mine disaster,” he interrupted.

  “But if he turns First Baptist into a church for down-timers, where are the miners going to go?”

  “The UMWA gets along real well with down-timers. I don’t see why that wouldn’t work out at church.”

  “That’s not what I mean. We could lose everything that makes First Baptist special.”

  Okey sighed. After a couple minutes, he tried again. “Vanna, Green isn’t trying to implement anything different. It’s Underwood who’s trying to add things. There are down-timers coming to all the churches. We’re not even going looking for them, really. Seems to me we ought to be hospitable.”

  “I don’t mind taking them in. I mind them trying to change the place.”

  Okey figured that was probably a good place to let the conversation peter out.

  Sunday, December 2, 1635

  Okey suddenly had a lot of time to think. A few days ago Leahy Memorial Hospital had started treating measles cases, and as of this past Thursday, November 29, the Sanitary Commission had restricted travel. Jena now had cases, too. Since he taught public administration at the university, he’d gotten called in to advise the city council yesterday. But today he couldn’t go to church and didn’t have to be anywhere else, so he was staying home. Well, if you called their rented house in Jena home, that is. Vanna was on duty at the clinic, of course. He was worried about her.

  Okey prayed for the folks who had measles. Most of them were kids, and Vanna said some of them were in bad shape. Then he prayed for Vanna and the other doctors and nurses. And for the captain-general and everybody else who’d been wounded in the war. Then he decided he ought to read something in the Bible. Okey flipped some pages. He liked Acts. So did Brother Green—he preached from it a fair bit. Under the circumstances, Okey figured a rerun was permissible.

  “And on that day a great persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.” (Acts 8:1, King James Version)

  He read about Philip, Saul, and Peter—all doing big, important things.

  “And some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, which, when they were come to Antioch, spake unto the Grecians, preaching the Lord Jesus.” (Acts 11:20, King James Version)

  These were just regular guys, and they’d started the church in Antioch, the one that sent Paul and Barnabas on their missionary journeys. Now that was interesting. He had written something in the margin here. Green: God had told them to go into all the world—Matt 28:18. They couldn’t do what God wanted while they were all in Jerusalem. Antioch—fresh start, but still took care of the believers in Jerusalem.

  Huh. Grantville wasn’t Jerusalem, and he and the other deacons certainly weren’t apostles, but maybe there was something here that could help First Baptist right now. Okey didn’t see anything in the notes he’d written in the margins. Oh, here was the date—Brother Green had preached this back before the Ring of Fire. Interesting.

  So almost everybody had to get scattered before they could accomplish their mission. First Baptist had had some scattering, too—the Chengs had their own house church, the Burroughs/Alcom family was trying to do the same, and several people were either deployed out of town or had taken jobs away from Grantville. He remembered a newspaper article that called it “the American Diaspora.” He thought that word was from the Bible but he wasn’t sure where to look for it.

  Hm, then should we send out more people? Or could we try following directions by reaching people right in Grantville? Okey thought about that for a long while. Lord, which one is it? I don’t know, and I think I might need to.

  He kept thinking about it, on and off, over the next two weeks. Vanna kept him updated on what her aunt, Lois Carson, thought, too.

  Sunday, December 16, 1635

  First Baptist had a weird feel today. Attendance was low for December. There were a fair number of adults, but hardly any kids around. Because of the measles outbreak, the Sanitary Commission had closed the schools until after New Year’s and advised children to stay home. They’d made arrangements with Voice of America to broadcast church services on Sunday mornings, and even read a statement from Larry Mazarre over the air, making it okay for Catholics.

  After the singing and the prayers, Brother Green went up to the podium to give the sermon.

  “I know that between the measles outbreak and the political situation, we’re all under a lot of stress. Let’s take a few minutes and remember that it’s almost Christmas. Think back to that first Christmas. Caesar decided to have a census. They all had to go back to their families’ hometowns. Many Jews were living outside of Israel. The Diaspora, they called it.”

  Okey sat up very straight.

  “Many years later, Peter wrote his first letter to them. They were having a hard time of it, and after the last few years, I guess maybe we can feel a little of what it was like for them.…”

  Yeah, I guess we can, Okey agreed. He came back to what had been on his mind for the last couple weeks. So are we dispersed to down-time and supposed to reach out to people? Or are we dispersing out of Grantville and supposed to get to it now? He got a little distracted from the sermon and flipped back to Acts. First everybody else got dispersed while the leaders stayed. But then the leaders were going out and doing stuff. And Antioch developed its own leaders and sent out Saul…

  Okey suddenly realized Vanna was talking to him. He shook his head. The service was over
, and people were filing out of the church, shaking Brother Green’s hand at the door.

  “Are you going to sit there all day, Okey?”

  “Oh, no. Just thinking.”

  When they got to the door, Vanna said, “You seemed to have really given Okey something to think about this morning.” She shook hands and moved into the entryway.

  Okey smiled weakly as Al Green scrutinized him.

  “Actually, Brother Green, I’ve been thinking about that series you preached from Acts back in ’98.”

  Al grinned. “I’m flattered, I think. You look like you have a question or three.”

  “I need to talk to you.” Okey spoke quietly but urgently. “But they need Vanna back at the clinic this afternoon. Lots of folks coming in—a few sick and the rest worried they might be.”

  The grin was replaced by a speculative look. “I need to return some reading material to Johann Gerhard. Perhaps we could meet at the university, and I could answer your questions then.”

  “Thank you, Brother Green.” They shook hands.

  “What was that all about?” Vanna asked in the entryway.

  “There you are!” Albert Underwood clapped Okey on the shoulder. “Deacons meeting, tomorrow night. Carsons’ place at seven.” He said it so that those around could hear it.

  Okey nodded. “I’ll see you there, Brother Albert. Is there anything I can bring?”

  “Just bring yourself, young man. We’ve got a lot to discuss.”

  Vanna went in to work right after lunch. Lissa, Cordula, and Agatha were giggling upstairs.

  “Girls, I’m meeting someone at the university!” he called up the stairs. “I’ll be back before dinner.”

  * * *

  “Brother Okey.”

  “Hello, Brother Green.”

  “I take it you have a very serious question?”

  “Well, Brother Green, it’s like this…”

  Al Green listened as he explained it. By the end he was wearing a bemused expression.

  “So let me see if I have this straight. You think the church ought to let me go, because you think I—and some others—will follow the Great Commission. But if the church keeps me on, none of us will, at least not deliberately.”

  Okey flushed. “Well, yeah, that is pretty much how it seems to me. Brother Green, I’d rather you stayed…”

  “…but it might not be the right thing to do,” Green finished for him.

  Okey nodded unhappily.

  Al Green leaned back. “I think I want to stay,” he said at length. “But back in August, I knew I wanted to stay. And, well, obviously I’ve taken steps to make sure I have something of an alternative.” He thought a minute. “There’s a deacon’s meeting tomorrow night.”

  “Underwood should have waited until after Christmas and New Year’s,” Okey stated.

  “You’ll have to do what you think is right.”

  “That’s not a lot of help, Brother Green.”

  “Claudette and I figure I’ll lose at some point. Y’know, I could have resigned any day of last five months. But I think that would be seen as an acknowledgment that Underwood’s way is the right way.” He trailed off into thought again. “Tell you what. Let Claudette and me pray about it tonight. Can I call the university in the morning?”

  “They’ll send a kid over with a message. I can come over here and call you back. I’m sorry to put you in this fix, Brother Green.”

  “Done in by my own sermons from ’98.” Green laughed.

  Harley Thomas, Jr.

  Monday, December 17, 1635

  The Marshals’ Service had moved to the new capital of Bamberg with the Supreme Court, but still had an office in Grantville. More often than not, Harley Thomas was the marshal using that office. Leta Huffman tended to hand out assignments by area. Her husband Max was the senior marshal covering Bamberg, Würzburg, Ansbach, and Rothenburg. Archie Mitchell and his team handled northern Franconia, Suhl, and the other cities in the Thuringerwald. Harley and his guys had West Virginia County, the cities in the Thuringian Backbone, and, increasingly, Saxe-Altenburg and Reuss counties. People displaced by the situation around Dresden were doing desperate and sometimes stupid things, and Saxe-Altenburg and Reuss were catching the spillover.

  Harley and Vina Thomas had done the same thing as the Marshals’ Service. They’d moved to Bamberg and rented out their house in Grantville to a couple of real nice families—a brother and sister who were each married with kids. They couldn’t quite afford the place, but Harley and Vina had given them a break on the rent in return for retaining one of the smaller bedrooms for themselves, whenever they were in town. Harley got to stay in his own house every couple weeks or so.

  For the last couple weeks, he’d been enforcing what amounted to a youth curfew, put in place to limit the measles outbreak. Nobody liked it, but after the plague outbreak along the Rhine last summer, most people’s attitude was better safe than sorry. And if he spent time arguing with too-smart teenagers, it was a nice break from extraditing criminals.

  The office phone rang at 8:30 AM.

  “SoTF Marshals’ Service, Harley Thomas speaking.”

  “Harley, glad I caught you in the office.”

  “Brother Green?”

  “Have you got time for a cup of coffee at The Flying Pig?”

  “Yeah, sure. Why there?”

  “Because the name’s amusing right now, and we don’t really need to be noticed or overheard.”

  “Oh. Now I’m curious. I’ll meet you there.”

  That evening

  The monthly deacons meeting dragged on. Harley couldn’t remember how it had ended up on the third Monday of the month. He’d heard the story from his father once.

  Giving was down the past couple weeks. No surprise there; so was attendance. As soon as the Sanitary Commission gave the all-clear, both would recover. But Albert Underwood and Willard Carson needed to talk it to death anyway. Then there was some discussion about who was cleaning what and how well.

  Then Underwood put the big one on the table. “I would like to propose a vote of no confidence in the pastor.”

  “Second,” Willard Carson said.

  “Discussion?”

  By now, Harley had spent a lot of time as a marshal watching how people reacted when they were on the spot. Underwood sounded confident. Hale Myers wasn’t here—with the current political situation, the USE Army was being stingy about granting leaves. That should mean another three-to-three vote with Bert Dotson abstaining. But it was possible enough pressure had been brought to bear on Bert. He worked at the steam sawmill, and some of the up-timers there had an attitude toward down-timers.

  “I think it’s past time for the pastor to go,” said Chauncey Monroe. He was Underwood’s reliable third vote. He was about as open-minded as Willard, but while Willard’s favorite conspiracy theory was Communists, Chauncey seemed to think that down-timers were just waiting to turn into Nazis. Harley still almost chuckled when he remember how old Fred Miller had reduced Chauncey to sputtering outrage by asking what he thought about Krystalnacht.

  “…and so if he won’t keep these influences out of the church, he ought to go,” Chauncey concluded.

  “Anyone else?” Underwood asked.

  Lincoln Reynolds stirred. “I think maybe we’re debating the wrong question.” He sounded for all the world like he’d just stumbled onto something.

  “Suppose you explain that.” Underwood made it more of an order than a request.

  “Every point you raise about Brother Green really has to do with the down-timers and how you don’t want them taking over the church. The question is really, what does a down-timer have to do to be a Baptist?” Lincoln opened his Bible. “‘For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things; That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well.’ That’s Acts 15:28
-29. King James, of course. But that’s what the Jerusalem Council decided about what Gentiles had to do to become Christians. Now the down-timer Anabaptists are already Christians. So I can’t see putting any more restrictions on them than this.”

  Albert Underwood flushed. “‘Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance,’” he retorted. “Matthew 3:8.”

  “So are you saying the Council of Jerusalem was wrong?” Lincoln asked.

  Harley tuned out the resultant explosion. He’d forgotten that Lincoln could adopt that innocent tone to go with his poker face. He wasn’t noticeably cowed by Underwood’s tantrum, either.

  “Brother Albert’s right,” Chauncey Monroe said into the silence once the man ran out of words. “We can’t have just anybody joining the church without understanding what we’re like. I call for the vote.”

  Willard Carson seconded that.

  “A motion of no confidence in the pastor is on the floor. A yes vote is a vote of no confidence. A no vote means you have confidence in the pastor,” Underwood stated. “I vote yes.”

  “Yes,” Willard said.

  “No,” Lincoln countered.

  “Yes,” Chauncey Monroe stated.

  After Harley said, “No,” there was a pause.

  “Well?” Underwood prompted.

  Bert Dotson fiddled with his watch. “Yes.”

  Underwood grinned. That was four.

  “Yes,” Okey Rush stated.

  “The motion is passed, five to two. The deacon board will request the pastor’s resignation. If it is not provided, a congregational meeting will be called as soon as possible.”