by Eric Flint
"So we went over to Ma's and I asked her if she could watch the girls for a bit. She got up and said, 'I'm Mrs. Stull. I've got some M and Ms and we're going into the kitchen to learn how to make big cookies with smiley faces on them.' Pat and I went up to my old room. When we came back down, the cookies had been baked and eaten and Ma was teaching them to sing parts. Maggy on lead, and the other two, even little Patty, who could barely talk, coming in on, 'It was an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny yellow polka dot bikini.' They'd saved us each a cookie."
"Yeah," Joe said. "Ma deserved a better visitation than she got. There should have been more people there who remembered her. We should write Harlan over in Fulda and get him to send us his favorite 'Ma story.'"
"What's yours?" Dennis asked.
"Aura Lee's family is a little screwy, and that's the truth. Nothing wrong with Willie Ray. Ray and Marty and their kids are okay. But Vera's been high-strung all her life and she took it out on Debbie. It made Aura Lee a bit antsy about settling down with me, being afraid of all those dramatic confrontations. In '83, when the federal black lung office in Parkersburg got in touch with Ma and told her that Pa had died in Florida and she was entitled to widow's benefits, we came up to Grantville. I stayed at Ma's, of course, and Aura Lee out at her folks. Never anything to embarrass the Hudsons. Since she was an accountant, she spent all day Saturday helping Ma fill out all those forms and papers. Vera was just furious. Then on Monday—I'd taken a day of leave—we took Ma to Parkersburg to turn them in. Aura Lee's name was on the papers as the person who prepared the forms."
"I don't think I ever heard this," Dennis said.
"Ma could keep her mouth shut. The claims examiner in Parkersburg asked Aura Lee what she was. She gave them her job title and bureau. The woman said, 'No, I mean your relationship to Mrs. Stull.' The two of us just looked at one another and finally she said, 'Joe here is her youngest son and I . . . we . . .' I guess she couldn't think of any word that wouldn't sound awfully stark if she said it out loud. Ma said, 'For close to ten years, now, Miss. I trust her.' The bureaucrat wrote down, 'family friend.' When we got back to Charleston, that was when I moved into her apartment, for all practical purposes. Which was where things stayed stuck for the next four years, but it was progress."
"Yeah," Dennis said. "Ma deserved for us to make a scrapbook for the kids, at least. With her name on the front, 'Juliann Stull.' And the dates."
"What are you doing about telling Noelle?" Joe asked.
"Pat's going to write her a letter. Tony will send it down to Franconia in the government mail bag and it should catch up with her eventually. Do you know what Pat was telling me, just when the bullets started flying?"
"No. I was over by Ma's casket."
"That Noelle's thinking about being a nun."
"Now that downright sucks."
"That's kinda what I thought. Not that I have anything to say about it. Pat and I were together over a year that time. I shouldn't have left her, but it just hurt so damned much when she still wouldn't divorce Francis and marry me, after she got pregnant. I went and watched when Pat had her baptized over in Fairmont. Not sticking my oar in. I just sat on a pew way in the back of the church and watched. She's grown up to be a fine girl."
"Since you'll be marrying Pat, you probably ought to practice saying 'daughter' now. At least, if she's willing to claim you after all these years." Joe tipped his chair down again and got up. "I suppose that I ought to be getting over to the office."
"Maurice Tito's not the only one who keeps Saturday hours these days."
"There's a lot to be done. And you know what they say about the early bird catching the worm. These days, more often than not, it seems that I'm spending more time trying to dig up slimy worms than actually making progress on improving transportation."
"Well, you know that you can rely on us in Erfurt. Anything even the least bit funny looking that comes through procurement will get flagged for your and Tony's attention right away."
* * *
"Tony," Horace Bolender complained, "will you please quite humming that horrible song?"
"Tut, tut," Tony Adducci answered. "Country music covers all the emotions and actions to which human flesh is heir. Especially country oldies. 'If you've got the money, honey, I've got the time.' With a nice dose of narcissistic self-pity frequently, I have to admit. 'Honky Tonk Angel.' What do you have against 'The Green, Green Grass of Home'? Why do you object to "Long Black Veil'? How can it be that 'Ring of Fire,' of all possible selections, offends you on this fine summer morning?"
Bolender glared at him and went on down the hall toward his own office.
Tony continued his less than fully melodious greetings to a new day as he sorted through his in-box.
Country music did just about say it all. Although Ron Koch, the engineer out at the mine, maintained that no American country song ever written could quite equal the classical simplicity of the German:
Du, du, liegst mir im Herzen,
Du, du, liegst mir im Sinn.
Du, du, machst mir viel Schmerzen,
Weisst nicht wie gut ich dir bin.
You, you, rest within my heart;
You, you, rest within my senses.
You, you, cause me a lot of pain.
You don't know how good I am to you.
That particular verse, Koch insisted, grasped the whole essence of the heartbroken misery of a male faced with a female who did not appreciate him even though he thought she should. It comprised, Koch maintained, the essential Platonic Idea of a lament on this topic, without complications and specifications, requiring no particular setting, but being of universal and worldwide applicability. It could be translated into any other language with no changes required. He and Tony had addressed the matter over many a beer at the Thuringen Gardens.
Tony rather liked Koch. He mildly resented the fact that he had never come up with anything to match that song, though. Some day, one would occur to him.
He made the in-box last as long as possible. Then he resigned himself to the need to think about other things.
One of the few topics that country music failed to address was the intricacies of Catholic canon law. Tony couldn't think of a single song about that. Bernadette had really set the Jesuits in a tizzy last night. The conundrum she had set them was just the kind of moral theology puzzle they could debate endlessly.
The practical answer, however, appeared to be that since Larry Mazzare was now a cardinal, if not, apparently, a bishop, the precise status of Pat and Francis Murphy's marriage, from the viewpoint of the Catholic church, was going to have to wait for him to come back from Italy and think about it.
Tony sat down and looked out the window, wondering what Noelle was going to think about it.
Pat said she was going to write, but who knew how long it would take her to get her nerve up and put some actual words on paper.
It wouldn't be a good idea for Noelle to find out any of this by reading a copy of the Grantville Times that made it to Thuringia.
Plus, he was, after all, the girl's godfather. He had responsibilities.
He pulled out a piece of paper and started to try to think of words. Finally, he just told her exactly what Pat had said while she was sitting on the floor next to Dennis at Central Funeral Home. Sealed the letter with considerably more glue than usual. And hoped for the best when he took it down to the booth where the security guard sat and dropped it in the mail pouch.
* * *
"So," Carol Koch said, "you can see something of my dilemma. Then Aura Lee recommended that I talk to you. Natural enough, since I'm working with math and statistics and you're a math teacher. A lot more natural than if I go trekking off to talk to your father for no apparent reason."
They were in a corner of the teachers' lounge at the high school. Natalie Bellamy uncrossed her legs; then crossed them again. "I know that Arnold gets involved in this sort of stuff, to some extent. It's unavoidable, working for the Department of International Affai
rs."
Carol waited patiently. As patiently as possible, for quite a while. It didn't seem to be doing any good, so she started talking again. "We looked at all the personnel and ended up focusing on Gordon Fritz. Of the previously retired people working for the Grantville Research Center, it seems to us that he is about the only one with the background to pick up on what we'll be looking for. To see the patterns developing and the connections between one thing and the other. Proposals; financing; backers; outcomes. Connections between what crosses Laura Jo's and Beverly Kay's desks and who brings it in, who's assigned to research it."
"Dad's seventy-seven years old."
"Not too old to keep his eyes open," Carol said.
"Mom would strangle me if anything happened to him. She's only seventy and counts herself lucky not to be a widow already."
"Good grief," Carol said. "There's nothing going on here that's likely to be dangerous."
Natalie gave her a hard look. "You're not from around here, Carol. Anyone who steps between Horace Bolender and a lot of money is likely to be in danger. Probably not directly from Horace. He's not the violent type himself. But he wouldn't be past making suggestions. Giving hints. Employing a couple of unsavory types. Especially not since his father died last February and isn't around to rein him in any more."
Carol's face was a study.
"If Tony didn't tell you and Ron that before he put you onto this project," Natalie said, "then he's guilty of misleading advertising. Especially since Tony thinks that Horace is working with Dan and Delton Cunningham. Both of them have plenty of access to unsavory types. Rough types. Delton was in prison for a while before he married Bev—he was one of the people caught up in the scandals around Arch Moore's second term as governor. Dan didn't land in prison, but a lot of people thought he probably deserved to more than Delton did. He's a lot more ambitious than Delton, but he's a lot smarter, too. He probably managed to cover his tracks pretty well and was a small enough fish that it wasn't worth the while of the federal prosecutor's office to go after him."
"I probably ought to ask Tony a little more about this."
"You certainly should. And let's have dinner one day later this week. At Tyler's. I'll shovel you all the dirt you'll need to avoid ticking Dad off, if you do end up working with him." Natalie sighed. "And I'll talk to Dad about it. Open up the subject."
* * *
"So that's Dad and Mom," Natalie said after dinner. "Just as long as you stay off the topic of Arnold when you talk to him, you should understand one another fine."
"Definitely attached to one another." Carol looked around for her purse.
"Way back, after our senior prom, all of us were out in the parking lot, getting into cars to caravan over to the Methodist church for the after-party. That was when we were still in the old building, not the nice new consolidated school we have now. Dennis Stull was parked there in his pickup, waiting to drive Joe over to Fairmont to catch a bus back to Louisiana. Joe and Aura Lee kissed goodbye. Just a hug and a kiss, the kind that said, 'I love you, I'll miss you while you're gone and I hope you come back soon.' An embrace, if you want to call it that. Head to toe, but no . . . urgency. No pawing each other."
Natalie got up. "Joe's burly like most of those Stulls, but not so tall that a tiny girl like Aura Lee looked silly kissing him. He's five-seven, maybe? Not much more, for sure. I'm taller than he is when I wear heels and I'm five-six. The minute I saw it, I realized that the answer to the 'do they or don't they' question that people had been asking for a couple of years was that they most definitely did. And had. And would again. And knew it for sure. It was exactly how my parents kissed each other goodbye when Dad was going off to an insurance convention or something. A no-fuss, married kind of goodbye kiss."
"How did the rest of the kids take that?" Carol asked.
"The other kids were very unimpressed. Didn't even really look at them. Nobody else noticed except Mrs. Fielder—the mother of Marietta, at the library. I know you've met Marietta; she's about our age. Mr. Fielder was the science teacher back then. You know him, too—he came out of retirement after the Ring of Fire and started teaching again. He and his wife were chaperoning the prom, along with a lot of other teachers, of course. She was standing behind me and what she said, sort of under her breath, was, 'I wish them well. They have a long haul ahead of them if they're going to make this work.' She was an old friend of Aura Lee's mother, of course. They were in a lot of the same clubs and things. They'd even been in the same church before Mrs. Hudson changed from Disciples of Christ to Methodist when she married Willie Ray."
* * *
"I saw your friend Carol Koch having dinner with Natalie Fritz—Natalie Bellamy—at Tyler's last evening," Debbie Jenkins said to Aura Lee.
"I introduced them," Aura Lee said. "They should have a lot in common. Carol's been pretty slow to get to know people around town. Not standoffish. Just slow. Nat's more outgoing."
"Nat and you and I were in school together all the way through," Chad Jenkins said. I don't think I'd pick 'outgoing' as the right word. 'Blunt,' maybe. She always tended to say exactly what she thought whether it was suitable to the situation or not."
"How did she come to marry Mr. Bellamy?" his daughter Missy asked.
"She met Arnold up in Morgantown. He's five or six years older than she is, I think. He had an undergraduate degree in history and had come back to get his certification in secondary social studies. She married him in the Newman Center chapel the fall of 1979, part way through her senior year, with none of her relatives there except her brothers Vern and Gene, because Gordon and Verlinda Fritz weren't willing to accept a Catholic 'foreigner' from New Jersey as her husband. Though they came around, more or less, after the deed was done and he was a fact of life, so to speak."
Missy contemplated the question of why any woman, even a somewhat overweight math teacher, would want to marry Mr. Bellamy enough to defy her parents, shuddered a little, and dismissed the topic from her mind hurriedly. Some things just didn't bear thinking about.
Not that Mr. Bellamy had been a bad teacher. He'd come back to the high school to teach the intensive constitution and government course for the six "accelerated" kids who graduated in August 1633. A funny course—they had classes three or four hours a day sometimes when he was in town and then none when he was off doing other things for Mr. Piazza. He'd made it pretty plain that it was their responsibility to carry on under their own initiative when he was somewhere else representing the NUS government.
"They named her after Natalie Wood," her father was saying absentmindedly.
"Who?"
Chad contemplated the ignorant little barbarian who was also his daughter the future information librarian. "She was Verlinda's favorite actress. Rebel Without a Cause with James Dean, and a lot of other films."
"Oh. I've heard of James Dean," Missy said.
"Pity that Nat didn't turn out to look more like Natalie Wood."
"Stuff it, Chad," was Aura Lee's comment on that.
August, 1634
"Dennis is up and about and back in Erfurt," Joe Stull said. "Pat's winding up everything she does at the sanitary commission, turning it over to Marianne Dormann, so she can go up and join him. They'll get married as soon as Maurice Tito doth civilly put Francis and Pat asunder. Which he is distinctly on the fast track to do; seems to think that when a man shoots at his estranged wife, even if he misses, the marriage is essentially defunct, especially when they've been separated for a quarter of a century. And now that Pat has finally made up her mind, she's not going to wait a bit longer than necessary."
"How is this going over with all of Dennis's respectable employees?" Tony asked. "Of course, I can ask Regina if you don't feel comfortable with saying."
Regina was married to Tony's brother Nick, who was in Erfurt working for Dennis.
Almost all the civilian Grantville families in Erfurt were working with or for Dennis Stull on military procurement. The men had gone in the autumn of 1632
, right after Mike Stearns had made the alliance with Gustavus Adolphus. Dennis had encouraged them to have their families join them as soon as possible. He believed strongly that a happy work force was an efficient work force. Once Regina finished her teacher training—she had come back to Grantville as soon as the two year program for mature women opened up—the American community would have its own school. Until then, the other mothers, collectively, were home-schooling the kids using a curriculum that Laurie Beth Walker had for her children before the Ring of Fire.
Dennis had paid education costs for all of the wives, on a "no strings attached" basis. Some of them had taken CNA training before they moved, for example. They'd set up a little health clinic, open to down-timers as well.
But, as it happened, most of them were either pretty strongly Church of Christ or else nondenominational Evangelicals. Tony was a bit dubious about how well they were going to accept Pat. From the point of view of some of them, Pat would be about as fallen as a woman could get, short of being outright promiscuous. What with her having lived with Dennis before she married Francis, while she was married to Francis—two episodes of that counting the present—and, presumably, after she was divorced from Francis until they got the knot tied.