Grantville Gazette, Volume IX Read online

  Olaus paused, his fork in the air. "I still can't believe that they're willing to pay good money for this stuff." He shook his head. "The American women were right. There really isn't an American male born who won't eat this rubbish."

  Oskar scooped up another portion of lutfisk and lefse. "They don't even question what meat goes into those hot dogs. And after they insisted they didn't eat dog."

  The three cooks exchanged grins.

  Petter placed a piece of paper on the table. "We've got another request for rat on a stick, with chili sauce." He paused to look at his partners. "That's the third request for rat this week. Do you think they're serious?"

  Olaus hesitated, and then nodded his head. "They must be. There've been too many different requests for rat. We'll start small though, like we did with the snails. If it catches on, we can think about making proper arrangements with the rat catcher."

  Those Not So Daring

  by Rick Boatright

  BANG!!!

  Karen leaned her head towards the cellar. No more explosions were forthcoming.

  "The boards worked."

  "Yes. It appears that one doesn't shatter another now."

  "Four dozen bottles all at once. But now that we've got a better judge of the amount of sugar to use, and how to wire in the corks . . ."

  "And storing them each in their own little space with boards between to keep them from blowing each other up . . ."

  The two women embraced and smiled. The demand for "up-timer style" fizzy beer continued to expand, and the sisters had finally gotten the potter to cast the bottles thick enough, the corks to fit tight enough. They had scrounged and bartered enough cork for their next several months product, and they now knew they could re-cycle the corks if they were careful . . . and the whole concept of "deposit and return" was working out so well.

  Who better to brew the up-time style beers? Who else had unlimited access to the mill? Cheap access to grains? Who else had a father who imported rice? Visions of money and lines of suitors danced in the sisters' heads. It was inevitable. It was appropriate. It was "Miller Time."

  Anna the Baptist

  by Terry Howard

  December, 1634

  Julio stacked clean glasses under the bar. "Damn it Ken! I don't know what's got you riled but I'm sick of it! Back off or I'm goin' home. I don't have t' have this job. I only took it to help you out."

  Julio didn't mention his fear of losing his regular job to what he thought of as cheap foreign labor. The fear drove him to drink, something he'd done little of before the Ring of Fire. He did his drinking in the one place a man didn't have to put up with "krauts." This led to a part time job.

  * * *

  Julio had been sitting at the bar, contemplating the world at the bottom of his beer, when Ken yelled, "Julio!"

  He looked up and said, "Yes?"

  Ken Beasley calmed down immediately. "I'm sorry, Mister Mora. I'm almost out of glasses and I was yelling at my dish washer. I forgot he quit."

  "You need a dish washer?" Julio tipped his beer, set the empty down on the bar and headed for the swinging door to the kitchen.

  "Hey, the bathroom's that way." Ken pointed.

  "I know," Julio answered.

  "Where're you goin'?"

  "To wash dishes."

  Someone called out, "Hey, Ken, where's my beer?" First things first, Ken took care of the customer, then another one, then he cleaned up a spill. By this time there was a tray of glasses under the bar. Glasses and customers kept coming. The stack stayed topped off and all the glasses were clean. Ken quit checking.

  At closing, Ken remembered someone was working for him that he hadn't hired. He found Julio mopping the kitchen floor. To Ken's disappointment Julio would only take the job part time. Short of hiring a kraut, what was he going to do?

  * * *

  "Sorry, Julio," Ken said. "It's the damned krauts."

  Julio relaxed. Ken had his full sympathy. The Ring of Fire changed everything, mostly. He still spent third shift mopping, vacuuming, cleaning bathrooms, and washing windows at the bank and elsewhere. Food had changed. Bread didn't come pre-sliced in plastic bags. Canning jars came up out of the basement. Pepper had to be ground. Salt didn't come in round boxes anymore. Ken had him take an ice pick and make the holes in all of the salt shakers bigger, but getting it out was still a problem. The big difference, though, was "the krauts."

  "I'm sorry," Ken continued. "I'd hardly gotten to sleep last night when, at the crack of dawn, a bunch of damned krauts woke me up singing hymns off key, right out side my window!"

  "What're you talkin' about?"

  "My neighbor, damned hypocrite, is letting a bunch of damn bible-thumping krauts use his storage shed for a church," Ken said.

  "They can't do that! It's not been consecrated. You can't have a church without an altar, or an altar with out a relic. The saint has to be installed by a bishop. They sure wouldn't put one in a garage." Julio didn't get to Mass as often as he should, but knew his catechism from when he was an altar boy. "When the cops stop in, you tell 'em about it. If people can complain about us making noise late at night, then they ought'a do something about the krauts waking you up."

  "The cops?" Ken growled. "Just great! What in hell are they doin' here?"

  "They're here every Sunday," Julio said. The police investigated every complaint. As sure as God made little green hypocrites, one of the old ladies in town called the station after Sunday dinner and complained.

  * * *

  As Julio predicted the cops showed up on a noise complaint.

  The cops were Hans and Hans. One was Hans Shruer, the other was Hans Shultz. Ken Beasley couldn't remember which was which. It didn't matter. They came in a matched set, Catholic and Lutheran. It was too bad the sign on the door, "No Dogs And No germans Allowed," didn't apply to cops.

  As cops went, Hans and Hans were all business. If they talked to each other about anything else, it ended in an argument about religion. They sure couldn't talk of families. Hans Shruer had watched from the hill while a Catholic troop burned his home, raped his mother and sister and tortured his father. Hans hated Catholics, collectively and individually. The only redeeming fact in a Catholic's favor was he would be spending eternity in Hell. The sooner he got there, the better.

  Hans Shultz's family had been well off before the Lutherans came. They lost over half of the family and everything but the clothes on their backs. Compared to Hans Shultz's attitude towards Lutherans, Hans Shruer was a soft spoken, forgiving moderate.

  "You want to talk about noise?" Ken blew up. "What are you going to do about those damned Baptists waking me up at the crack of dawn with their singing?"

  "Mister Beasley, you live over a mile from the Baptist church, and they start at ten," Hans Shultz said.

  "Well, maybe it wasn't dawn but I'd just gotten to sleep. And I'm talkin' about the ones who've moved into the garage behind my house!"

  A blond haired, heavy set man in a plaid shirt sitting at the bar spoke up. "They ain't Baptist. That's why they got thrown out of the church. They're Anna Baptist. But I got no idea who Anna is."

  Jimmy Dick called out, "Read your bible, Bubba. Anna Baptist is John Baptist's sister."

  Julio spoke up to straighten Dick out. "Anna is the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of God." He had stacked a half full tray of glasses on the pile under the bar as an excuse to leave the sink when the cops showed up.

  "Well, if that don't beat all," Bubba said. "No wonder they got tossed. It's bad enough, the Catholics worshipin' Mary. Now you got people worshipin' her mother! Humf." He snorted. "Sssshit! Does that make her the grandmother of God?"

  * * *

  At the accusation that Catholics worshiped Mary, Hans Shultz started to object. Veneration is not worship. It might be a small hair to split, but the difference is very important to knowledgeable Catholics. At the words "Anna Baptist" Hans lost all interest in straightening out one ignorant, obnoxious up-timer.

&
nbsp; "Anabaptist?" Hans Shruer asked in a shocked voice.

  "Yeah." Bubba agreed. "That's what I said. Anna Baptist."

  Hans and Hans looked at each other in apprehension bordering on fear.

  Hans Shultz spoke slowly in a soft voice, as if it were bad luck to speak the name aloud. "Anabaptist."

  * * *

  Ken was very good at reading people, especially people who were scared or angry or just plain crazy enough to start a fight. Fights were bad for business. Hans and Hans suddenly needed watching. "What's wrong with Anna Baptist?"

  "Mister Beasley, they're trouble! Every one knows that! Even the English heretics have outlawed them! They are . . . what is the word . . . people without respect for authority, who do whatever they please, without concern for decency or order."

  "Red necks?" Bubba volunteered.

  Hans ignored him.

  "Antichrist?" Hans Shruer supplied cautiously.

  "That will do. I was looking for anarchist. Anabaptists are anarchist, rebels, nihilists, fanatics, troublemakers! Luther, Calvin, the king of England and the pope all outlawed them!"

  "Sounds like red necks to me," Bubba said.

  "Shut up, Bubba," Ken said. "So what's so wrong with Anna Baptist?"

  "They do not give proper respect to the civil authorities. Their practice of re-baptizing strikes at the very root of Christianity. They want to tear the church down and start over, their way. Have you heard of Munster?" Hans Shruer asked.

  Ken shook his head.

  "A thousand Anabaptists took six wives each, declared the city of Munster an independent republic. It took war to stop them!" You don't need all the facts completely right when you are spreading slander.

  Bubba was on a roll. "Sounds like my kind of red necks. Six wives? Where do I join up?"

  Ken tried to shut him down. "Shush up! You can't handle the wife you've got or you wouldn't be in here every other night, drinking."

  "Do you know of the peasant's revolt?" Hans Shultz asked.

  Ken shook his head.

  "They nailed priests to the doors and burned the churches. They raped the nuns. They burned manor houses, convents, castles, entire villages. They drank the cellars dry, looted . . ."

  "Sounds like red necks to me," Bubba said.

  "I said shut up, Bubba!"

  Hans ignored the interruption. ". . . every thing they could carry and burned everything they couldn't. Even Luther condemned them.

  "It took the armies from four countries to put the revolt down, and the nobles back in charge. Anabaptists are evil incarnate." The last four words were rote dogma.

  "We need to tell the chief! He needs to do something before it gets bad."

  "Like what?" Ken asked. "Run them out of town?" Hans and Hans didn't catch the note of sarcasm.

  "That would work," Hans Shultz said.

  "Like hell it will!" Bubba didn't catch the note of sarcasm either.

  "Shut up, Bubba," Ken said.

  "Hey, Ken. What cha' got against religious freedom?" Bubba asked.

  "I ain't got nothin' against it, Bubba. I just don't want it in my back yard."

  * * *

  Later in the night, Lyndon Johnson stopped in. Departmental policy required a follow up call to anyone making a complaint after an investigation.

  "Mister Beasley," Lyndon said with the serious demeanor he used for official police business, "Hans and Hans said you want some people run out of town and they agree with you.

  "The two of them were adamant. Hans said 'the disease-carrying vermin should be exterminated for the good health of the community and the general improvement of mankind.' They were distraught and sure there would be trouble. Chief Richards told me to check it out and file a report."

  Ken shook his head. "Officer, they said something had to be done, not me. Usually, when I hear talk like that, it's from some old lady talking about the bar. The next words would be 'run it out of town.'

  "So I asked, 'You mean something like, run out of town' and they agreed. I don't want them run out of town. I just don't want them over my back fence." Ken glanced both ways and leaned forward before asking, in a voice too soft to carry, "Lyndon, what's goin' on? Who are these people?"

  Officer Johnson leaned forward over the bar. "Ken, that's what is really strange about this whole thing!

  "Hans and Hans came in to the station all hot and bothered. I mean to tell you they were really wound tight. They're pretty good cops for a couple of krauts. So Chief Richards told me to look into it, quick! I went over and had a chat with Shultz's pastor, then with Shruer's pastor, then with Reverend Green down at the Southern Baptist church. Green said Joe Jenkins was the pastor of the Anabaptist church and I should go talk to him if there was a problem."

  "Old Joe?" Ken asked. "A pastor? Can he do that?"

  "I asked Green about it," Lyndon answered. "Green said he could. Seems he was ordained in some off-brand Baptist denomination years ago. Green says it's still valid.

  "As I was saying, Hans and Hans were making some mighty wild claims! Shultz's pastor said they were true. Shruer's pastor agreed."

  * * *

  The down-timer Shultz called Father and Lyndon addressed as Reverend assured Lyndon the Anabaptists were trouble just waiting to happen.

  The Lutheran pastor's first words were "Spawn of Satan! The Augsburg confession clearly condemned them." He was sure they were Arminians. It was the only one of Pastor Holt's six syllable words Lyndon remembered because he knew where Armenia was. Holt made it sound contagious, vile and shameful. Any Anabaptists discovered in a Lutheran country would be lucky to escape with their lives. He was sure they were nothing but lawless, reckless, rioters without morals, decency or self control.

  By the end of the second conversation, Officer Johnson was convinced Grantville had a real problem on its hands. He was wondering how they had managed to miss it so far.

  * * *

  "I caught Reverend Green right before his evening service," Lyn told Ken. "He didn't have time to talk right then but he had someone go to the office and get me a list of the Anabaptists who'd left and those who agreed with Southern Baptist doctrine and stayed, which was over half of them.

  "I asked about them being thrown out. He said they left by mutual agreement, which means 'left quietly.' I took the lists down to the office, to have names cross reference to complaints for the report.

  "Then I drove out to the Jenkin's place to let Joe know what he'd gotten into so he could get out before he got hurt. And let me tell you did I get an ear full!"

  * * *

  "Joe, what's this I hear about you starting a church for a mess of bad news Germans the Baptists threw out because they're Armenian Anabaptist?"

  "Lyndon, first off, all Baptists are Anabaptist. They only baptize adults. It is true most Baptists are Calvinist, but a few of us are Arminians."

  Lyndon was shocked and puzzled. Joe sounded proud of it. So he asked, "What is an Armenian?"

  "An Armenian is someone from Armenia. An Arminian holds a doctrine the Calvinists dislike."

  * * *

  Lyndon leaned a bit farther over the bar. "You know what 'once saved, always saved' means?"

  "I think it means if you're born Baptist you can do whatever you want and still think you're not goin' to hell," Ken answered. It was an impression he got from listening to drunks.

  "Well," Lyndon said, "according to Old Joe, an Arminian is the other side of it."

  * * *

  Officer Johnson looked at Old Joe Jenkins, who was on his back porch in an old rocking chair. The last light faded from the sky along the ridge line. Joe nursed a shot of corn squeezin's his father had put in the cellar. He smoked a hand rolled cigarette made from tobacco raised in a cobbled up green house behind the barn. There was a crate of papers, bought wholesale, in the house. He had offered Lyndon some of each but Lyndon didn't drink or smoke.

  "That's it?" Lyndon asked. "That is what all the fuss is about?"

  Joe looked at Lyndon and smi
led. "If it's already decided, why bother tryin' to change things? If it's a matter of choice, then if things are bad you're obliged to try an' change 'em."

  Lyndon didn't think through the implications of Joe's statement. "You know there are a lot of people mighty riled up over this. They're sayin' these people are trouble."

  Joe smiled again. "Check the records."

  "They're being checked now," Lyndon replied.

  "You won't find nothin'."

  "If that's the case, why is everybody so upset with them?"