Grantville Gazette 36 gg-36

by Paula Goodlett

  What the devil was the woman talking about, Greta wondered. Nothing really grew in 'piles and piles' in her experience. Well, cucumbers could be pretty prolific, yes. But you could always pickle cucumbers.

  "Well, don't despair. There's all sorts of things you can do with those baseball bat-sized zucchini. Pickle them, fry them, grate them up and make zucchini bread. Cover it with cheese sauce, slice it up for the freezer. One thing about it, you can never run out of zucchini. Remember Cora's zucchini quesadillas?"

  Greta went out to look at that plot of surprise plant seeds. Just in case.

  ****

  "Maybe we were better off in the old days," Karl grumped.

  Greta gave him a very old-fashioned look. Then she pointed to the dish he was eating from, the Torberts Joseph was wearing, Marie's work table with its soldering iron and even to his shoes. "I don't think so, dear. Now, just eat your supper and hush."

  Karl stared down at the green and white mess in his plate. "But what is it?"

  "Zucchini au gratin is what Fanny Farmer calls it."

  ****

  "We're not going to make it," Peter said. Then, at the look from Greta, he added, "Yes, I know there is much less freezer burn this year and you will be able to sell frozen fruits and vegetables all though the winter. That's all well and good. But the debt isn't due in March of next year. It's due in October of this year. And that's when the penalty rate will kick in."

  "What about the consolidation loan that Herr Gottliebe talked about?"

  "I sent a letter to a money lender in Dresden." Peter shook his head. "He wants twenty percent."

  "What about Grantville?"

  "Wouldn't work. By the time our letters got there and their answers got back and we sent someone there to sign the papers or whatever you do, it would be October."

  "Then just go," Pastor Althus said. "Take the forms and receipts. Go try to get one of the consolidation loans if you can. If you can't, we aren’t much worse off. And if you can, you will be right there, so you can pay off the receivers for SFC."

  "I can't go. I have to be here for the harvest." Then Peter looked at him. "I think you just volunteered, Pastor Althus."

  ****

  "They're both better with English than I am," Pastor Althus explained. "And they'll be company. As well, if we're stopped, I can always explain that I'm escorting them to the University at Jena. Johan is a bit old for it, but I'm told that all sorts of younger and not-so-younger people are attending Jena these days."

  Traveling through what might become a battle zone at any moment was nervous-making for Greta and Karl, but Marie's face had lit up at the thought of actually seeing Grantville. Peter's son Johan was practically jiggling on his stool in excitement.

  "Oh, please, Papa," Johan said. "I can take the camera and have the pictures developed. Probably learn a lot more about it, too." He paused a moment. "And I'll bet that Marie can get some really good ideas for new products, too."

  As an apparent afterthought, he added, "I bet the prices are cheaper there. We could pick up more seeds and stuff. Books. We're going anyway, so we might as well bring stuff back with us. If we can afford it, of course."

  The upshot of it was that Marie and Johan would go with Pastor Althus, walking to Grantville, then possibly buying a small wagon to bring back as much as they could with them. The pastor was authorized to ask for a bit more money than was needed, in order to buy more seeds.

  Just before they left, Johan Keller approached Marie privately. He pressed a few coins in her hand. "I want chicks. I want to start a real chicken operation, now that we've got the freezer. Buy me as many chicks as you can find. The White Leghorns. They're good egg producers."

  How they were going to transport live chicks-and keep them alive-for a hundred and fifty miles through a war zone wasn't addressed. But Marie promised she'd try.

  ****

  Greta looked at the giant zucchinis and sighed. There was no way that Karl and Joseph were going to put up with yet another squash dish. She didn't want to freeze any more of the things, either. Listening to Johan Keller complain all winter wasn't something she cared to do.

  Then she looked at the family's sow and her litter. Well, why not? So she chopped the thing up and placed it in the trough.

  The pigs didn't seem to mind it at all. Greta grinned, then went off to tend the garden. The peppers were ripe and she intended to pickle as many as she could. That little bright orange pepper looked really good. Pickled whole they would make a bright addition to winter meals.

  ****

  Pastor Althus sat in a comfortable chair in the tavern in Riesa to listen to tonight's VOA broadcast. It was illegal to listen to the radio in Saxony these days, but that didn't stop anyone. "Ladies and gentlemen, forces under General Lenart Torstensson are massing near Dessau for the liberation of Saxony." What? how? Until they reached Riesa, Pastor Althus had not been worried. While they were nominally traveling through a war zone, the truth was that most of the time the army was over the horizon somewhere. Armies are pretty small things compared to whole countries. Besides, hostilities hadn't actually started yet and Pastor Althus hadn't really expected them for at least another month. Also armies moved slowly.

  Now this general's forces were on the Elbe, which meant that he, Marie and Johann were right in their path as long as they stayed in Riesa. And, as the report continued, it became clear that the enemy army was moving fast. The plan, from the radio reports, seemed to be pretty straightforward, precisely what you would expect. And the counter was equally obvious, at least according to the military commentator. The forces in Dresden would proceed down the Elbe to meet General Torstensson. They had to. If they stayed in Dresden they would be effectively ceding control of Saxony to the USE. If John George did that, he might as well abdicate.

  The problem was that one of the most likely places for the two armies to meet was Riesa.

  ****

  The next day found Pastor Althus, Marie and Johan going west from Riesa to Grimma. They had considered turning around and going back but two things had stopped them. First, they really needed that consolidation loan and they need it quickly. Second, they wouldn't be much safer back home on the Schwarze Elster, a tributary of the Elbe than they would be on the road.

  The next day they walked twelve miles to Osthatz. There was no word on what the armies were doing. Pastor Althus presumed they were staying on the river, which meant that by now the armies ought to be approaching Tordau. That was where Pastor Althus guessed the battle would take place. He wished, heartily, that this town had a radio. They did hear, through village gossip, that General von Arnim had had troops in Leipzig. They would bypass Leipzig. The next night they camped in the woods north of Wermsdorf. The next night, in Brandis, they heard that the USE Army was still several days away but wasn't, as they had thought, staying with the Elbe. It was going overland. The good news was that two more days would get them to the Saale river and the railroad.

  ****

  "Don't forget the tablets, Marie," Johan said. He reached into his pouch and plopped two water purification tablets into the bucket she'd drawn from the stream and carried to their campsite. They had shifted a good ten miles south of Leipzig and were camped by a little stream near the village of Zwenkau. "We don't have any idea how good the water is here."

  "Nag, nag, nag," Marie muttered. "Yes, Johan. I fully intended not to purify the water because I'm such an idiot."

  "Children," Pastor Althus warned. They both blushed. "That's better," he said. "Getting along together is important. I know Johan didn't mean to treat you badly, Marie, and you know perfectly well that he doesn't think you're an idiot."

  Marie waved her hand at him. "I know. I'm just grumpy today."

  When Marie stood up and walked to the bushes, Pastor Althus took the opportunity to speak to Johan. "Back off a bit, boy. She doesn't need you mother-henning her right now."

  "But what did I do?"

  It turned out that Johan hadn't paid much att
ention to the women and girls back home. As well, his mother had died when he was about five and his father hadn't remarried. There were lots of things about the female of the species that Johan didn't know. Pastor Althus enlightened him as best he could. It was not an easy task.

  Besides, they were all tired from the trip so far. Pastor Althus shook his head and left Johan to contemplate female necessities while he went to visit the necessary.

  ****

  Pastor Althus was digging the hole when his foot slipped on a damp rock and his ankle twisted. He called out and both children came running. Trying to put his weight on the foot simply demonstrated that he couldn’t support himself on that foot. By morning the ankle was swollen and multicolored, mostly purple and blue. The pastor wouldn't be walking any distance for several days. They discussed going back to Zwenkau but the reason they were camping by the creek in the first place was that the people of Zwenkau had an exorbitant notion of the proper rent on a piece of floor in the barn.

  ****

  Two days later and Johan had constructed a crutch out of some limbs and twine using his eating knife. They were discussing when they should leave when they heard the noises. The children wanted to go see but Pastor Althus had a bad feeling. "Stay in the trees, Johan. Don't let yourself be seen. Pretend you're hunting with your papa.

  "Why ca-" Marie started.

  "Enough." Pastor Althus wasn't having any rivalry right at the moment. He didn't like the tenor of the sounds he was hearing. "Johan will go and be careful. You will stay with me."

  A few minutes later Johan was back. "There's an army forming up on the far side of the creek." The creek, as they would learn later, was named the Pleisser River. Where they were camped the Pleisser was about ten feet wide and a foot and a half deep. And, precisely where they were camped, the Pleisser had few trees on either bank. Just a clump of trees suitable for gathering firewood, which no doubt the good people of Zwenkau were charging considerable rent on. Which was why they had made their camp inconspicuously within the clump of trees, rather than beside it.

  Now Pastor Althus wished they had paid the rent for the floor of Zwenkau hay barn. They couldn't move. There was an army just across the river and if they popped out of their little clump of trees, they were just likely to get shot on the assumption that they were enemy scouts. Laboriously, the pastor made his way to the edge of the creek where he could see the army-no, armies-forming up into lines of battle. It had taken awhile. By the time he got to where he could see, the armies were a confused mass of pennants and marching men, with bugles and cavalry thrown in. It wasn't quite as bad as he had feared. The battle looked like it was going to take place perhaps a quarter mile away. Which meant no one should notice them unless they called attention to themselves. Then he noticed Johan running off back to the campsite.

  "Johan, what are you doing?" Pastor Althus hissed.

  ****

  "I'm getting my Brownie," Johan said. Unlike the time he'd tried to build a radio, Johan had read the instructions that came with the Brownie camera. It used chemically-treated paper on a roll. Twenty-four exposures per roll and then you sent the roll back to the factory to be developed. And they sent you the pictures. The camera cost twenty-five dollars, the rolls two dollars each and the developing ten dollars a roll.

  It was really weird what went through your head when you were scared. Johan had buck fever and he knew it. He had a number of exposed but undeveloped rolls, and two precious un-exposed rolls. They could afford the rolls, but not the developing. He had realized that they were stuck on the edge of a battle and it occurred to him that he might actually be able to sell pictures of the battle.

  "What!" Pastor Althus hissed again.

  "I'll be with you in just a minute." Johan slipped back to the camp and grabbed his pack. Then rushed back to the river. "I can take pictures of the battle and maybe we can sell them!"

  The pastor was hissing again, but Johan ignored him as he made his way across the creek and snuggled down behind a tree with a good view of the battlefield. He was just in time to see what looked to be about a third of one of the armies change direction and head what seemed right for them. They would learn later that it was General Stearns' Third Division.

  Battles take a long time. It took a while for the Third Division to march out ahead of the rest of the USE Army, and even longer for the Saxon army to respond. Long before the Saxon army had started to move, Marie had joined him behind the tree and was hissing at him

  Pastor Althus was annoyed with him, she informed him and apparently Marie was royally pissed. Johan wasn't sure why but, oddly, it seemed a good sign. He pointed the camera at a group of officers riding out ahead of the troops that had moved toward them. He waited for the officers to stop riding around in front of the army, and then snapped a couple of shots, figuring that they must be important.

  "Pastor Althus wants you to come back where it's safe," Marie insisted.

  "You go. I'm getting some really good shots here."

  "You come back right now!"

  "All right. All right."

  They crawled back into the trees then waded across the little creek.

  It took Johan several minutes to explain to Pastor Althus what he was doing and more time to convince the pastor that he was just as safe in the trees on the far side of the river as in these trees. Then Marie had to jump in and claim that if he was just as safe on the other side of the river, so was she.

  He tried to argue that Pastor Althus needed her to take care of him and for a moment it looked like that might work. But Pastor Althus said that if it was really just as safe, then he would be fine here by himself.

  That brought Johan up short. Was it really as safe if Marie was with him? He almost gave up on the whole deal then. But the more he thought about it, the more it seemed that it really was as safe there as here. Not that either place was safe but, really, a stray round was as likely here as there.

  Johan and Marie got back into position in time for the charge of the Polish hussars. Actually, it was the charge of the Saxon cavalry including a small contingent of Polish hussars. But Polish hussars are . . . extravagant. The wings on their horses are attention-getting. Johan took three pictures of the Saxon cavalry charge, all of them centered on the Polish hussars even though they were nowhere near the middle of the cavalry. They had missed the advance of the Count of Narnia's flying artillery and wouldn't have recognized it even if they had seen it. The sound of the volley guns came as a shock. The Saxon cavalry and the Polish hussars were still moving slowly when Johan and Marie heard the unusual sound and looked back at the USE Army.

  There they were, fronted with white smoke but still quite visible from their angle. Johan snapped a shot centered on the horseman commanding the guns. Then another as the billowing smoke started to obscure them a little, adding an unreal, ghostly tinge to the scene. When he finally saw that picture he would be amazed because, by some trick of fate, the only truly clear bit of the image was Thorsten Engler pointing at the Polish hussars, surrounded by mist and shadowy volley guns. Johan turned back and snapped another shot of the hussars. That one would prove to be so blurred as to be useless.

  They stayed at their little nest though the battle. They saw the infantry under Captain Jeff Higgins, the famous husband of the even more famous Gretchen Richter. But, though they took several pictures of the infantry firing, they never got a recognizable shot of Jeff. Which was a shame. It would have brought a pretty price. They got a couple of shots of the APCs bringing the Saxon cavalry to rout, and used up every bit of film Johan had left, but every picture of the APCs came out blurry. Two of them sold because the APCs were still recognizable, but they didn't get paid nearly as much for them.

  ****

  The battle was over. Johan and Marie had retreated back across the little creek and were talking about what they had seen, the horror and glory of a battle, when the soldiers arrived. The USE Army had left a part of its supply train to police up the battlefield. The wounde
d needed treatment. Dead bodies had to be buried, dropped equipment and supplies had to be collected. And in the process of doing that, troops that hadn't had time to look for them during the battle, now saw them and wondered what they were doing there.

  "Ahem."

  They spun.

  "And what brings you folks to the battlefield?"

  Pastor Althus explained their situation. The soldiers in USE uniform listened politely but took them into custody. Just in case.

  "Well, Pastor, I think we can help you out. Considering you were going to Grantville anyway."

  That was how they ended up taking river barges upriver to the TacRail head and were given a free ride on TacRail from Penig to Gera. Where they caught a train to Jena and on to Grantville.

  At least they let Pastor Althus ride on one of the wounded wagons. They were taken to Tollwitz, which took till after dark, even though it was high summer. The next day they were ferried across the Saale River to Wengelsdorf, where they caught the train for Grantville. All while under the eye of a polite young soldier whose job, as best Johan could tell, was to make sure they really were who they said they were.

  ****

  "Well, all right, the houses are different," Marie said. "The buildings don't look as sturdy, though."

  Grantville was a bit of a disappointment in some ways. Marie had imagined tall buildings, gleaming metal, golden streets.

  That wasn't what she got. Instead, there were gray and black streets and, good grief, the place was crowded. There were some buildings that were tall, but not so tall as the cathedral in Dresden. And plain. Many of the buildings were hopelessly plain.

  But the people were nice, mostly. The prices were outrageous, and they had no idea of where to stay. The Higgins Hotel was a bit intimidating.

  "There it is," Pastor Althus said. "The Abrabanel Bank. Just where we should go, as near as I can tell. They're down-timers, just like us. Even if they are Jews."