by Eric Flint
As it happened, this included the ceremony performed for Wesley Williams Jenkins and Clara Bachmeierin at the Methodist parsonage. The one that Jenny Maddox had filed personally and had not included in the weekly list sent to the newspaper.
Sandra picked it up and showed it to her guest specifically, simply because the ceremony had been performed by her brother Simon, with her sister-in-law Mary Ellen as one of the witnesses. "I've always been so proud of David and Simon," she explained. "My brothers were the first members of our family who ever went to college. Now David is a school administrator and Simon is a preacher."
"I'm sure that you are," Jacques-Pierre said in his oddly formal English. "Indeed, one thing that I have observed, here in Thuringia, that is not so true in France, is that many of the teachers and government officials in these small German principalities, also, are the first person in a family with a university education. Do you think it is possible that this similarity makes the cooperation between the up-timers and down-timers easier?"
This question obviously interested him. Sandra had never really thought about it, but she did her best to help him understand.
She thought that his request for a copy of the certificate, so he could study the way the system of punched holes around the edges worked, was presented almost as an afterthought.
As it happened, he wanted to study that, too. It seemed like something that would be useful for the record keeping system at Garbage Guys. Much of Jacques-Pierre's success was based on the fact that he really was interested in at least ninety percent of the topics that came up in his conversations with the residents of Grantville.
His conversations with the former Velma Hardesty excepted, of course.
"It's perfectly true," Veda Mae Haggerty said. "And him heading up that fancy initiative to make sure that all the marriages between Americans and Krauts are legal, too!"
"I knew it to start with," Willard Carson said. "I mean, I sure thought there was something funny about it."
"I don't really believe it," Lois Carson answered. "Nobody could have managed something like that."
"It was a regular coverup. Wes Jenkins and that Clara he calls his wife weren't married until they came back here in October. All hush-hush, because Wes is one of Mike Stearns' cronies, I suppose. Did anybody else count from Stearns' wedding to that Kraut Becky of his and when their daughter was born? I sure did." Veda Mae shook her head with righteous indignation.
"Do you know anything else?" Lois asked hopefully.
"Simon Jones did the wedding. Too bad it wasn't Mary Ellen; maybe we could have used it to undermine this female minister business. It was one of the United Methodist Church's biggest mistakes when that came in. She was one of the witnesses, though. Mary Ellen, I mean. Someone-I won't say who-found the copy of the marriage license in the Bureau of Vital Statistics files. Jenny Maddox signed as the other witness. She must have deliberately not included it in every week's listing of the licenses issued that the bureau sends out for the newspapers to publish, to make Wes Jenkins' Kraut slut look like a respectable woman."
Willard Carson said, "It's a conspiracy." His nose was quivering with excitement. "A real conspiracy, I tell you. Commies."
Veda Mae looked at him. "Get hold of yourself, Willard," she said firmly. She had her opinions, but she hadn't lost all grip on reality. "If there's anything that Wes Jenkins isn't, it's a Commie."
"But," Lois sputtered, "aren't all conspirators Commies?"
Veda Mae went back to the original topic. "Remember that I told you first. We've given a copy of the certificate to Roger Rude at the Grantville Times. It should be in the next issue of the paper. With a little highlighting, using that new color press that they're trying out."
Mary Ellen answered the first phone call. Then the second and the third. After that, she took the phone at the parsonage off the hook. So much for discretion.
Unfortunately, she couldn't leave it off permanently. They got too many calls that were really important. So she had to live through all the others that came in over the next week or so, because Willard Carson's conspiracy theory was generally taken up by the 250 Club types and then ricocheted all over town, which meant that nicer people kept calling up and asking her to say that it wasn't so.
She tried to explain, but the whole thing was complicated. Most Grantvillers didn't entertain themselves by reading comparative law. She reflected on everything that had been going on.
Wes went ballistic after he heard some of the insults to Clara's virtue that were being tossed around in the 250 Club. He insisted on publication of all the paperwork that followed the original marriage. Considering that the lawyer who was working for Andrea Hill over in Fulda, who had taken their affidavits after the event, didn't have any more interest in polite euphemisms than any other down-timer, the statements made generally interesting reading. Some people said that the English translation was almost as good as having People magazine back.
Victor Saluzzo sternly reprimanded the health teacher at the high school who assigned his students to take the affidavits and work through such events as timing of intercourse, progress of the sperm, fertilization, and implantation to obtain a more realistic estimate of the time of the start of Mrs. Jenkins' pregnancy than the "fifteen minutes" being bandied about at the betting sites. The reprimand went into the teacher's permanent record in spite of his protest that the project had done more to get the boys' minds focused on how all this really worked than anything else he had ever tried.
There were times she thought that if anybody opened one more phone conversation with, "My goodness, Mary Ellen!" she would stand there and scream.
Although Clara had been coming to church with Wes since they got back, she was still officially Lutheran, so Pastor Kastenmayer at St. Martin's wrote and issued a theological treatise on the Lutheran view of the matter, which came out from a press in Jena and was widely admired in scholarly circles. The pastor had served in parishes all his life, but now it seemed that he was starting to be seen as something of an expert on comparative up-time and down-time marriage law. The university invited him to give a guest lecture, which he had certainly never expected in his wildest dreams. Much less that Count Ludwig Guenther would appoint him to the Ehegericht for Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. As Kastenmayer's wife Salome was telling everyone proudly, it was a real honor for a pastor to serve on the marriage court. Kastenmayer himself said to Gary Lambert, the business manager of Grantville's hospital, that he was not quite so thrilled about the prospect of spending a lot of his time for the next several years sorting through the debris of failed betrothals and marriages.
Given that West Virginia had not recognized common law marriage, there was fairly widespread doubt among even the nicest of Grantvillers that the do-it-yourself ceremony was for real, no matter what the affidavits said. Over in Jena, Chip Jenkins, who was going to law school, wrote a treatise in English on the down-time legal view of the matter. That got published too. Down-timers admired it, but almost every born Grantviller who phoned Mary Ellen at the parsonage "figured that he owed it to his uncle, after all," so none of them were taking it very seriously.
Somewhere in the course of these developments, Veda Mae Haggerty said something about the various marriages of Willard and Lois Carsons' much idolized son Matt that caused them to declare her persona non grata in the dining room of the Willard Hotel. Common political prejudices will only take people so far and no farther. The Carsons considered Matt to be off limits.
Mary Ellen found that out the day she walked into Cora's and heard Veda Mae proclaiming that she guessed she was stuck with having to eat here again if she didn't want to pay the higher price at Tyler's, die of ptomaine at the greasy spoon, or make do with pizza, because she wasn't about to go to the Thuringen Gardens with all its racket and she'd always hated packing a lunch.
Cora didn't usually make the City Hall Cafe off limits to anyone, but she finally made an exception for Veda Mae Haggerty. Again. Much to the old hag's indignation, of
course.
Veda Mae was extremely indignant. She was forced to go grovel to Lois Carson and apologize for what she said about that overaged spoiled baby who was Lois' son Matt.
At least she still had a place to eat lunch.
Pastor Ludwig Kastenmayer looked at the up-timer standing in his study.
"It said so on the radio," Jarvis Beasley said. "In one of the stories about Wes Jenkins and that woman he married over in Fulda. Or, maybe, didn't marry over in Fulda. That you're in charge of fixing this sort of problem now."
That wasn't quite the way that Pastor Kastenmayer would have described service on a marriage court.
"The story said you wrote a book about it. It's no skin off my nose, you know. I'm free to come and go. But Judge Tito told Hedy to stay inside the Ring of Fire, so she can't go to church any more. She's likely to have the baby any day now. If she can't bring it to church, she can't get it baptized. She's afraid that if it isn't baptized and then it dies, it will go to hell. Can you do something? She thinks that she's being more trouble to me than she's worth."
Jarvis frowned, a vaguely disturbed look on his face. "She's not, really. Too much trouble, I mean. Hedy's good. Works hard. Doesn't talk all the time. Doesn't drink much. Doesn't flirt with other guys. Makes good stew, even if she does use a lot more mutton than I'm used to eating. Doesn't waste money. That's why we eat so much mutton."
Pastor Kastenmayer stroked his goatee, thinking. The man's effort to catalog the merits of his concubine-she was clearly a wife under Grantville's civil law, so perhaps it would be more prudent to refer to her as his wife in this conversation-had clearly strained his analytical ability.
Jarvis went on. "Vesta, that's my boss."
"Yes?"
"She says that if you came over into town, we could have the kid baptized the way Hedy wants it at the laundry. There's always plenty of water in a laundry. Walpurga, the girl who's got her eye on Mitch Hobbs who's the manager now, says she would be a godmother. Hedy thinks the baby will need one."
"And what tasks do you perform at this laundry? For your boss, this Vesta. Her name is?"
"Vesta Rawls. She was Vesta Eberly before she married Chuck Rawls. Well, I'm the maintenance man. Not for the machines. I sweep up. If someone breaks out a pane of glass, I put in a new one. I carry things around, or if they're too heavy for that, I push them on the dolly. Stuff. It's a good job. Regular. Not like picking up odd jobs."
Not an uncommon type, Kastenmayer thought. Designed by God, in the hierarchy of being, to live and die as a day laborer. In a way, it was comforting to know that the up-timers had those also. That not everyone among them was brilliant and understood the miracles of "technology."
The man's job was regular. His employer's suggestion was irregular. Highly irregular. However, no baby should remain unbaptized longer than necessary.
"Let me know," Pastor Kastenmayer said, "as soon as the baby is born. As for the other…" He sighed. "Sorting out matrimonial problems always takes time. Usually a lot of time. Judge Tito was probably right. Tell your, uh, wife, to stay right in Grantville. I'll start arranging for collection of the affidavits and depositions. I served parishes in Saxony until I received my first appointment in Gleichen about twenty years ago. I know something of the ecclesiastical ordinances in force there, but I'll have to review them."
Jarvis nodded. He had no idea what affidavits and depositions might be, much less an ecclesiastical ordinance, but it did seem like this guy was willing to try to help Hedy. Which meant that he was probably okay. Which meant that Buster might have the right of it, some of the things he'd been trying to tell him lately.
"I'll tell Hedy to stay in Grantville." Then he said. "Um. If you come downtown and baptize the baby, could I invite a couple of people? My grandma died last fall and Gramps is taking it kind of hard. It might cheer him up a little."
Pastor Kastenmayer thought that caution was in order. "Which of the Grantville churches does your grandfather attend?"
"He ain't a church member. Never has been. None of us are."
"Very well." A third of them are heathen. "Let me get all the information I need to start. Could you spell your name, please?"
Jarvis spelled his name. He spelled Hedy's name. The recollection of a newspaper article about a brawl and an attempted beating rose vaguely to the top of Pastor Kastenmayer's mind.
"Ah. Beasley. Are you any, um, connection of Denise? Denise Beasley." He remembered Denise well. She had been to church at Christmas with Gerry Stone and Minnie Hugelmair. The girl was unusual, but not hostile. "Or of Kenneth Beasley? Of the 250 Club?"
"Denise's dad is my cousin."
That was all right.
"Ken's my dad."
Pastor Kastenmayer sighed deeply. What was the phrase that Jonas had picked up from that extraordinary woman who worked for Herr Piazza? Liz, her name was. Liz Carstairs. "We do not have problems. We have challenges and opportunities."
He would have to include thankfulness to God for so many challenges and opportunities in his morning prayers. In his evening prayers. If he repeated often enough that he was sincerely grateful, he might come to feel gratitude more sincerely, as a habitude. The catechism was correct, of course. "We should fear and love God, that. .." Sometimes the tasks to which God set his servants could be truly fearsome. While baptizing a grandchild of the owner of the 250 Club might not be equivalent to standing in defiance before the Holy Roman Emperor at the Diet of Worms, as Martin Luther had done, still… it might be an interesting event.
There was another of the up-time proverbs that Jonas had collected. "May you live in interesting times." They considered it to be a curse, Jonas said. They might have a point.
Chapter 36
Grantville
"What you are," Denise said, "is a dumb, filthy-minded old bitch, to say any such thing."
"And you are Buster Beasley's little bastard."
Cora Ennis was not happy. Gossip was one thing. A direct physical confrontation in her cafe was something else. Right now, it looked like Denise Beasley and Benny Pierce's Minnie were about to attack Veda Mae Haggerty with their fists and fingernails. Which, if it happened, would be about as one-sided a contest as she could imagine. Veda Mae's viciousness did not extend to fisticuffs-and both Denise and Minnie could physically handle most boys their own age.
"They have published the papers about their marriage, Frau Haggerty," Minnie Hugelmair said. "The affidavits. The expert opinions. It was legal."
"Forged documents!" Veda Mae sputtered. "Poppycock."
"Pastor Kastenmayer at St. Martin's has published a pamphlet explaining that even when the marriage and the church blessing happen at the same service, it is the couple themselves who exchange vows. It is consent that causes a marriage to take place, not something that someone else does. The part that goes, 'I, Somebody, take you, Somebody Else' in English. If they don't do that, having somebody official pronounce them man and wife has no effect at all. Mayor Dreeson can't walk up to any two unmarried people walking down the street together and pronounce them man and wife. Or, I suppose, he could, but it wouldn't mean anything. Gerry Stone sent Denise a copy that he bought at the bookstore in Rudolstadt. If you have not learned German, I will be happy to stand here and read it to you in English. Every word."
Minnie's voice was very calm, and her tone of voice remained even. "Then you will apologize to the Reverends Jones for what you said."
Joe Pallavicino had heard that tone in Minnie's voice many times in the past couple of years and recognized it as the start of trouble. He started to slide out of the booth where he was sitting.
"What is it to you, anyway?" Veda Mae went on the offensive.
"Benny Pierce goes to your church. He loves the Reverends Jones. And nobody is going to insult anybody that Benny cares about to my face. Not without having to deal with me. Not behind my back either, if I ever get to hear about it. And you are not supposed to be a nasty gossip. Your own church says that is wrong. I've had to s
it there with Benny enough Sundays in the winters, when I didn't want to walk all the way out to St. Martin's in the snow, that I've learned that much."
"Little Kraut vagabond."
"Listen to me, Mrs. Haggerty," Denise said, leaning forward. "You were thick as thieves with Velma Hardesty all last summer yourself. She married a down-timer too, so where do you come off being so picky nice-nice about Mrs. Jenkins?"
"Laurent Mauger isn't a Kraut. He's a Frenchman, from the Netherlands. The French and the Dutch were our allies in the war," Veda Mae proclaimed.
"The French aren't our allies," Denise retorted. "King Gustavus Adolphus is fighting Richelieu. That's France. They were part of the League of Ostend that killed Hans Richter."
"Not this war, you stupid little idiot. The real war. World War
II."
"What was that?" Minnie asked.
"The war my daddy fought in. The war against the Nazis. The war against the Germans. The war against you Krauts. And we were allied with the French. So people like Velma's husband, or Jacques-Pierre Dumais, are ancestors of those heroes of the resistance. The Free French. Just like the Huguenots, here and now, like Laurent Mauger and Jacques-Pierre are resisting that Cardinal Richelieu. Huguenots are Protestant."
"Mr. Jenkins is a Protestant too," Minnie said. "At least, I think that Methodists are Protestant. Anyway, he goes to the same church that you and Benny do, you old witch, so if he isn't Protestant, neither are you. And you are going to apologize to the Reverends Jones. Whatever you may say about me, Mr. Jenkins is not a German and neither are they."
"No way is that Dumais guy some kind of James Bond hero. He's a garbage collector!" Denise yelled. "And he hangs out at Uncle Ken's 250 Club. I tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to write to Don Francisco Nasi and ask him if that guy is some kind of resistance hero. And I'll publish his answer in the paper. If Roger Rude won't take it, I'll buy an ad. So there."