by Eric Flint
Kloee braced herself for Granny's tirade about the evils of tobacco and the hell fire and damnation that accompanied its use. That lecture rated right next to drinking moonshine and listening to non-religious music.
Kloee wasn't disappointed. Granny Murray filled her ears with how those who smoked and chewed were accepting the Devil's temptation, and that led to worse things. Things a girl her age shouldn't be exposed to.
After twenty minutes of Kloee pledging not to ever do any of the things she was condemning, Granny Murray agreed to allow them to harvest a little of the corn early. But they were not to use the pipes themselves. Well, Freddie Bates could; but only because he was a godless heathen like his Papa JJ. It was bad enough they were helping sinners go to hell and burn in eternal fire, but they didn't need to accept temptation.
Granny Murray smiled. "Make sure you have someone sell plenty of pipes to them godless heathen that hang around the bars and taverns in Grantville," she said. "They can't get no worse. They're already on the road to ruin. Don't none of you go around them places though."
Granny Murray was on a roll again and Kloee braced herself once more. She was relieved to finally dry the last dish and head for home.
Monday Afternoon
Kloee shifted the backpack to make it more comfortable. She was trying to work up the courage to enter the exchange. She peeked through the large window of the building and saw Helene putting out the lamp on her desk. It looked like she was getting ready to leave for the day, so Kloee waited by the door for her oldest cousin to exit the building.
"Howdy, Helene," Kloee said as her unofficial cousin stepped through the door.
Helene looked surprised. "Good evening, Kloee. "
"Can I ask you for something, Cousin?" Kloee asked sweetly, ignoring the airs Helene was putting on.
Helene seemed to think for a minute as she stood in the doorway of the Exchange. "Depends on what it is. I have to meet Anton at Cora's for dinner, then I have to get home before my grandmother starts asking questions."
"I can walk along with you," Kloee volunteered. "We can talk on the way to the restaurant."
Helene looked at her in irritation. "I have a date with Anton, and I would appreciate some privacy. It's hard enough getting any time with him without my grandmother getting wind of it."
"No, no. I don't mean I'll go into Cora's with you," Kloee responded rapidly. "I just need you to talk to your grandma for me. I need to get her help with something."
"Well, explain it to me, but be quick. Anton is waiting by now," Helene snapped.
Kloee bit her tongue and explained about the her small group of friends going into the corncob pipe business.
By the time they arrived at Cora's, Helene had volunteered, for a cut, to help them set everything up. There was no need for bringing her grandmother into it.
Kloee agreed wholeheartedly. Frau Meyers hadn't been anyone's real favorite; but having Helene take over the business and sales part of their little endeavor relieved a large burden from Kloee's shoulders. Kloee hurried on down the street. She had to get home and take care of the chickens. It was her turn and Mama Melodie didn't like it when chores didn't get done.
Saturday
Kloee turned the meeting of the newly formed Murray-Bates Company over to Helene. She threw side glances at Anton, who had come out with Helene—not to get involved in the meeting, but to just spend a little time with her
"First thing you need to do is get your product into a limited production," Helene told the group. "Just enough for a few trial sales pitches. I can arrange for Anton to try to sell a few pipes as soon as you have them made." Helene smiled at Anton. He beamed back at her. "If the trial pipes sell well, we will go into production of enough to make a real profit."
Kloee watched Helene watch the kids for their reaction.
Freddie was the first to say anything. "We ain't startin' no big ol' business, Helene. No way. We just want to earn some money the Hun ain't goin' to put into the bank for our futures."
Dakota and Sybie loudly seconded Freddie's statement. They just wanted a little money, not a full-time job making pipes, or any of the hassle that went with it.
The arguing started and Kloee sat and listened. Freddie, Sybie, and Dakota took one side; and WB, Franz and Helene took the other. She wasn't even getting involved in this one. Both sides made some excellent points. Before she made her final decision, Kloee would have to do some hard thinking about everything she had heard.
By the end of the first meeting of the Murray-Bates Pipe Company, it had been decided to see if the pipes sold. After the trial sale, they would decide what to do next. Only WB, Franz, and Helene thought they were going to do more than make a few pipes, sell them, and be able to buy the little extras they wanted.
No one wanted Helene to go crazy like Frau Meyers and turn their little idea into another one of her big enterprises.
Kloee watched while everyone went their own way. Things didn't look as good as they had last Saturday when Dakota had described making corncob pipes. She was getting a bad feeling about this.
Late August, 1635
Kloee looked over the dried cobs that were cut in half and ready to be cleaned of their pithy centers. Papaw Murray had made them tools for the job from pieces of old hacksaw blades from which he had removed the teeth and sharpened to an edge on one side. The handles were made of leather wraps around the upper end of the tool.
The elderberry branches they would use for the pipe stems had been trimmed and hollowed with a hot wire. Four pipes were assembled and ready to go. Helene was supposed to stop by with Anton to take them out.
Helene and Anton entered the little workshop Granny Murray had allowed them to build in her barn. "Are the first pipes ready to take?" Helene asked.
"They sure are," Kloee chuckled. "They were even pre-smoked to burn out the residual pith in each pipe bowl and stem."
Freddie Bates had turned positively green from the first bowl of tobacco he'd smoked through a pipe. She hadn't thought he would ever quit gagging and coughing.
Now, he seemed to have no problem smoking the two bowls of tobacco required to pre-season each pipe. Of course, he had made off with pipe number five, claiming it was his for all the hard work he did getting the pipes ready for sale.
So far, they had invested money out of their pockets for the tobacco to season the pipes with and hadn't earned one miserable dollar. Now, the four pipes they had ready to sell were going for what Helene called advertising start-up expenses.
At this rate, they were not only not going to earn enough for her to buy a couple of new dresses and those shoes that were being sold at the Kurger Emporium, but she would be lucky to have enough chore money left to buy a glass of iced tea at the City Hall Coffee Shop.
* * *
Anton Droesseler set down the Barney lunchbox Helene had given him. A couple of up-timers had called it "the purple puke" when they had seen the pink plastic box and the faded picture and writing on it. It was lunch time and he was in the smoking area.
He opened the box and took out a smoked sausage and the thermos of beer. The lunch box was distinctive. But the small thermos bottle was still good and no one else had a lunchbox like his. For now, no one—except for Freddie—had a pipe like his, either.
He prized the ugly lunchbox, not because it was American pre-Ring of Fire, but because Helene had given it to him.
When his fellow workers finished up their lunches and broke out clay pipes Anton took his new corncob pipe from the lunch box.
An up-timer had come out to have a smoke. Few of the up-timers smoked; it had something to do with an up-timer belief that smoking was bad for you. Anton packed his pipe carefully and lit one of the Red-Devil phosphorus sticks and held the flame over his pipe. He drew in a drag and felt the rich smoke from the tobacco fill his mouth. He rolled the smoke around and let it out.
The next drag was cooler and the flavor very satisfying. He inhaled only a small amount and felt the mild euph
oria.
The up-timer came over. "Where you get the pipe?"
"Some of my fiancées family are making them," Anton said. He smiled as he exhaled smoke and took another pull on the stem. The pipe was burning smoothly; he had used it twice last night and once this morning to make sure he could use it without messing up. After all, it wasn't his clay pipe, it was one of Helene's families creations.
The man looked longingly at the pipe Anton was smoking, then at the fragile clay pipe that had gone out in his hand. "They wouldn't have a few to sell would they?"
Anton opened his lunchbox and brought out one of the samples. "Here. Have one of the spares my fiancée gave me." He passed the pipe to the man.
"Thanks," the worker said gratefully. Anton struck up another Red-Devil and relit his pipe.
Some of his co-workers now watched as the up-timer dug the tobacco from his clay pipe, put it away, then packed the bowl of the corncob.
His friend, Ernst, moved to the bench across from Anton. The two had started their apprenticeships at the same time. "How is that pipe? Is it American?"
Anton pulled out another sample pipe and gave it to Ernst.
Ernst receiving a corncob pipe started a rush on him, more out of curiosity than anything else. After he passed out the last two pipes, he explained they had come from Fraulein Helene Meyers-Bates and she was the one who knew were to get them.
By the end of the day, he heard some of the smokers talking about the new style of pipe. He even heard Ernst say how much more durable it was and how he wasn't going to use a clay pipe anymore.
Anton smiled. He would let Helene know her idea was working. She would be such a good wife and bring much to a marriage with her business skills; and he would soon be a journeyman, if he kept learning about steam engines.
Saturday Meeting of the Murray Bates Pipe Company
"I have orders," Helene crowed. "I need twenty-seven pipes. Half of those are going to the Tobacco Shop on consignment. The rest are sold for fifteen dollars each. Don't expect to keep getting that price, though. I used the old supply and demand rule they teach you in school. Charge what the market will bear. "
Kloee noticed that while Helene spoke she reminded her of Frau Meyers. Had Helene changed and become a money-grubbing capitalist like Frau Meyers?
Money-grubbing capitalist is what Uncle JJ called Frau Meyers, along with the Hag, the Old Witch, and Scum Sucker. However, if Frau Meyers caught a cold, Uncle JJ was the first one to panic. For all his show of dislike for the old woman, he really cared for her deeply.
A whoop rose from the other members of the Murray Bates Pipe Company.
"Where's our money?" became the main question.
"There is no money yet," Helene explained. "First, you have to deliver the pipes to me. I will deliver them to the customers and bring you your money next Saturday. Now, everyone get to work."
With grumbles and moans Freddie, Dakota, Sybie, and Kloee trudged toward their part of the pipe assembly line.
WB and Franz moved right to their jobs. The two boys didn't see anything wrong with turning out pipes in bulk. They actually thought all the work Helene was making for them was good.
Kloee lit the small charcoal stove and set up her burning wires. She started removing the bark from the dry elderberry branches, the first step in her work.
Beside her, Sybie drilled holes in pipe bowls, matching them to stems that had already been hollowed out.
Dakota was farther down the line, next to Freddie, using a piece of the down-timer made sandpaper to put a finish on the bowls and a piece of deer horn to polish the outside of the bowls.
Freddie hollowed corncobs and scraped out most of the pithy insides.
WB and Franz had already gone out to where the stripped corncobs were drying to select the best of the cured cobs. After they had selected the best cobs, they would go to one of the elderberry trees to gather suitable branches for stems. They had to be careful with the trees, though. If they damaged Granny Murray's elderberry trees, there would be the dickens to pay.
It looked like things were going to start paying for themselves; but it was going to be a lot of work, and their Saturdays would be gone—spent making pipes.
Kloee heard Dakota and Freddie grumbling about child labor and slave driver Helene. Well, they had agreed to start this up; now, they were going to have to find away to live with it.
Helene might be able to sell the pipes, but they had to make them. None of them had planned to make the Murray-Bates Pipe Company their life's goal.
What good was money if you had no time between school, chores, church, and making pipes to enjoy it?
Kloee decided she would talk to Papa Donnie about it. He would know how to remedy the situation. Helene would just insist they spend more time making pipes to make money. That wasn't going to work. She wasn't happy and she knew Freddie and Dakota would talk Sybie into walking out.
* * *
Saturday dinner was at an end. It was Dakota and Zackie's turn to do dishes and Emery was off with Papaw Murray.
Mama Melodie was taking DeePee over to Granny Murray's house, which gave her a chance to speak to Papa Donnie without Mama Melodie getting involved. Besides, Papa was much freer with what he said when Mama Melodie wasn't around.
Kloee found Papa Donnie out in his combination workshop/office in the barn. She also caught him pouring himself a plastic tumbler of 'shine.
Papa Donnie looked over at her as she entered his private space. "Well, Kloee, you ain't telling Melodie about this, are you?" he asked nonchalantly.
"No, Papa Donnie."
"What can I do you for, Sweetie?"
"Papa Donnie, I have a problem and I need your advice."
"What's the problem?" Donnie put the bottle behind the old lawnmower engine on the shelf to conceal it.
Kloee explained the deal they had with Granny Murray, Auntie Phyllis, and the Knapps. She told him about the kids just wanting to make a little pocket money and all the rest of it.
Donnie listened while he sipped from the tumbler. "Well, let me tell you a little story, Sweetie. Now this is not to get around or I will warm the seat of your pants, and don't ever think you're too old for that."
Kloee nodded and listened.
"Used to be I followed everything your Uncle Ronnie wanted me to do," Donnie said with sadness in his voice. "I quit doing that, but I made the mistake of thinking I didn't need any help planning things—that I could run the show on my own."
Donnie drained the tumbler and set it aside. "Well, I came up with this wiz bang plan to get rich. Everything just kinda fell apart. After that, I made sure to have people go out and look around real good before we did anything, I learned to listen to them, too; and if I didn't like what I heard, I changed my plans.
"Another thing I learned was just a few folk weren't enough to do the job. I had to recruit a whole bunch of folk to get what I wanted done or we would have been in deep kim chee.
"Well, the thing is, Sweetie. " Donnie smiled. "Don't try to do everything yourself. Get more help. Hell, girl, hire some people and train them if you have to.
"Use the ones that want to work themselves to death—like Helene, WB, and Franz—to run things. You and the rest just kind of keep an eye on the workaholics and make sure they don't get too carried away. If you let them run wild, they could cause more trouble than they fix."
Kloee nodded as she sorted out in her mind what Papa Donnie had told her.
"Look, if you don't want to be all burned out, let others do the hard work. You just kind of get together with the ones that think like you and don't let Helene take over the show and order you around. You asked her to help, not take over. Make sure that you all get together and let her know who is boss." Donnie's smile was like a cat about to eat the canary. "Remember you are my daughter and I don't want you being a door mat for no one, Sweetie."
Kloee had a bunch of questions to ask yet. She needed clarification on some of the things her father had said. By the en
d of the day, she saw what had to be done. Murray Bates Pipe Company would expand, but it was going to hire some people to do the work.
Helene Meyers Bates was going to get one-seventh interest in the company with no voting rights or they would find someone else to do her job.
Papa Donnie had said "use her ambition against her. Build up the possibilities. From what you've told me, Helene already sees big possibilities in the company. Threaten to exclude her and she'll settle for less. If that don't work, find someone to replace her."