Grantville Gazette, Volume IX Read online

"It's not their theology," Joe replied. "It's their politics."

  Lyndon thought what does theology have to do with politics? Then in short order his mind clicked through the Moral Majority, the Christian Coalition, and Right to Life. Maybe theology does affect politics.

  Joe explained. "They want the government to stay out of religion and religion to stay out of government."

  "Separation of church and state?"

  Joe snorted. "Where did you think the idea came from?"

  "The Constitution," Lyndon said. "People went to America for religious freedom."

  "Yeah," Joe said. "Freedom to have their own church. But when Roger Williams started preaching free will, he got chased out of Massachusetts for heresy and went down to nowhere and started the Rhode Island colony where you could believe anything you wanted and worship God any way you pleased. And from there it got into the Constitution."

  "You mean we got these Arminians to thank for freedom of religion?"

  "Pretty much," Joe said.

  Lyndon didn't know whether to believe him or not but decided he'd ask a history teacher first chance he got.

  * * *

  Ken Beasley looked at the young, clean cut police officer in puzzlement for a few seconds. Ken knew the kid and liked him. Lyndon had briefly dated his stepdaughter, Morgan. The boy had been polite. He got her home before the deadline with time to spare. He had treated Morgan well, and her mother with respect. Ken and Lyndon had formed an odd friendship in spite of the difference in age and attitude. Morgan broke the relationship off when Lyndon wanted her to start going to church with him. Finally, Ken asked, "That's all this is about?"

  "Looks like it, Ken." Lyndon stepped back from the bar and back into the voice and demeanor he used when he first entered. "Mister Beasley, they ain't doin' nothin' I can do anything about. Shoot, if everybody was as good at staying out of trouble as these folks, I'd be out of a job.

  "I mentioned the noise to Joe. He said he was sorry but didn't think it was overly loud. I'll stop by Sunday and see for myself, but I'm afraid I won't be able to do much about it."

  "Why am I not surprised?" Ken let sarcasm drip off the end of every word.

  * * *

  Lyndon started his written report with a one paragraph summation concluding with his recommendation.

  "This alleged noise violation is nearly the only complaint to be lodged against anyone on either list of Anabaptists Rev. Green gave me. All other accusations are lodged against the group in general and arise from blatant prejudice. I recommend no action be taken at this time."

  February, 1635

  "Hey ,Tom. Let me buy ya' a beer," Dick said when Tom stepped up to the bar.

  Tom was chronically short on money. His wife counted his pocket change to keep track of how much he was spending on beer and bad company. Dick was chronically short on someone to drink with. He rubbed everybody the wrong way.

  "Ain't seen much of ya' lately. What's the matter? Won't the little lady let ya' stop for a drink on your way home from work?"

  Tom didn't say anything.

  Dick saw a sore spot and pushed. "Hey buddy! What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?" The attitude, a malicious condescension, was raw. "The old hen pecked problem, huh?" Dick was not going to drop it.

  Tom needed a reason why he hadn't been in lately. "I don't like drinkin' in a place that lets in krauts."

  Dick smirked, and looked around. "No krauts here."

  "Yeah? What about Sunday morning?"

  "Shoot, they don't count. They're gone before the bar opens," Dick said. "Besides, there's krauts and there's krauts. These are our kind of krauts."

  * * *

  Ken heard it and shook his head. Just yesterday, Dick was complaining about the krauts using the place to hold church on Sunday morning. Jimmy Dick would argue either side of anything.

  * * *

  "Don't see it," Tom said.

  "Then ya' haven't looked. Open your eyes man! These krauts are red necks."

  "How do ya' figure?"

  "Well first, how many churches ya' know who'd ever hold services in a bar?" Dick asked.

  "None," Tom said.

  "Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Ya' know one. This one, so they ain't your average, run of the mill, goody two shoes. Second, Zane was a good old boy right?" Dick asked. Zane was a drunken reprobate who wasn't home for the Ring of Fire.

  "What's your point?" Tom answered.

  "Well, the Baptist church threw him out. They threw these krauts out too. Makes 'em our kind of people."

  Tom shook his head. "Don't see it."

  "Three," Dick said. "Half the people in here can't stand somebody else in here. Right?"

  "So?"

  "So these here krauts can't get along with each other either. Ken didn't offer to let them use the place until they started havin' two services back to back 'cause they couldn't get along. So ya' see, they're our kind of people."

  * * *

  This time Jimmy was half right. Some of the Anabaptists were non-violent, amongst other things. They wanted to hear their own speaker. The other group liked Brother Fiedler's preaching. The building was getting too small for all of them at once so they went to two services. If Ken had known they'd take him up on the offer, he wouldn't have made it. Still, the rent helped.

  * * *

  "Don't see it," Tom said.

  "Well, we don't like krauts and the krauts don't like us. Right?"

  "And?" Tom asked.

  "So the other krauts can't stand these people. I mean Catholics pick on Lutherans and Lutherans don't like Calvinists. But all three of them got it in for Anna Baptists."

  Tom became half interested in spite of himself. "Yeah? Why's that?"

  "'Cause they won't buckle down and go along. They insist on doin' things their own way. Like only baptizin' adults and to hell with the consequences. Sounds like red necks to me." Dick grinned.

  "Don't see it." Tom shook his head.

  "And I hear tell back in the world, it was these people who got freedom of religion put in the constitution."

  "They didn't do it from Germany," Tom answered.

  "Well, how about the place bein' cleaner since they started usin' it?" Dick asked.

  * * *

  They came in the first Sunday and moved the tables and set up the chairs. Before they put the place back together they mopped the floors and wiped down the chairs and the tables.

  * * *

  "So? Ken could hire an American to do it," Tom said.

  "Yeah? With what? So many of us are in the army or off somewhere else, business is way off. Shoot, with the rate we're droppin', all of his regulars will be dead shortly anyway. He can't afford to hire more help. Besides they were keeping Ken awake, singing and preaching just over his back fence."

  "He could sleep here Sunday nights," Tom suggested.

  Dick grunted. "And not go home to the missus? Not Ken. But then he's not henpecked."

  "I ain't henpecked," Tom muttered.

  Dick took out his wallet and put five twenty dollar bills on the bar. "Hundred dollars right here says ya' are."

  "Well, I ain't. Who we goin' get to settle it?" Tom asked.

  "Uh uh. If you ain't henpecked, then she'll do what you tell her." Jimmy Dick pointed at the door. "The day she walks through that door and stays for one hour you win the bet."

  "I ain't got a hundred dollars on me."

  Dick sneered. "And you won't have it come pay day. Shoot, you won't have it at twenty a week. Hell, you won't have it at five a week, 'cause you're a loser. I tell ya' what, I'll put up the hundred against you admitting you're henpecked. Hey, Ken."

  "Just a minute, Jimmy Dick," Ken called back. Ken finished the order he was working on. Since the bartender quit, he'd gone back to doing it all himself. "What do ya' need?"

  "Tommy and me got a bet goin'. Can you put this in the box until we settle it?"

  Ken went down to the cash register and grabbed a lockbox out of the cabinet. When he got back, he opened it a
nd took out a pad of paper. "Okay, what's the bet?"

  "I bet Tommy one hundred dollars he's henpecked."

  "How ya' gonna settle it?"

  "If his wife comes in and stays for an hour any time in the next month, the hundred is his. If she don't, then he answers to henpecked."

  "You agree, Tom?" Ken asked.

  * * *

  Tom was caught in a web. "Sure. Why not?" What in hell did I just get my self into, he thought. Maybe if I agree to go to church with her? Naw, won't work she won't agree to come in here anyway. Then it clicked.

  Tom smiled. "Sure! If she comes through that door and stays for an hour anytime in the next month the money is mine. Give me the pen."

  Tom snickered as he signed his initials to the bet slip. "You just lost your hundred dollars, Dickhead." Then he tipped back his beer and drained it.

  All the way home he tried to figure out the best way to get his wife to agree to the plan. He settled on goading her into bugging him to go to church. She did it often enough without his trying. Then he would agree to go if he got to pick the church. When she balked, he'd offer to go with her to her church after she went with him to the church of his choice.

  The bet was any time in the next month. Sunday morning would do just fine.

  April, 1635

  "What can I do for you fellows?" Ken asked as Hans and Hans approached the bar. He had talked to them on Sunday when they routinely "investigated" the noise complaints called in on Sunday afternoon. Now it was Monday and the cops were back.

  "Mister Beasley, do you know where your congregation was on Sunday?" Hans Shruer asked.

  Ken Beasley broke into a deep belly laugh. Somehow, they were his congregation and he was supposed to know what they were up to. The cops seemed to think he knew what his regular patrons were doing twenty-four, seven. Now he was supposed to keep track of the Anabaptists, too.

  The fact was he knew exactly where they were on Sunday morning. Tom Ruffner and his wife Jenny were part of the congregation now. Tom had stopped in for a beer last night. Oddly, his wife didn't mind his having a beer now and again anymore. She even came with him for an hour one evening. She found out about the bet with Jimmy Dick and said it wasn't right. He said he wasn't giving it back. So she traipsed in one evening, hopped up on a bar stool and ordered a cup of coffee. Then she announced it was six minutes after six. At seven minutes after seven, she walked out the door.

  When Tom stopped in for a beer, Ken complained about the mess.

  "Ain't our fault," Tom said. "Weren't none of us here. We all went over to Rudoltstadt for the first service of a church Joe is starting over there. They're gonna have some trouble on account of Rudolstadt being nothin' but Lutheran. We went over to show support. If there was a mess, it was your mess."

  Ken had to concede the point. Still, just because he knew where they were didn't mean he was going to tell the cops anything, especially not in front of Jimmy Dick. James Richard Schaver was the only patron in the place at the moment. The lunch drinkers were gone; the "beer or two on the way home" crowd wouldn't trickle in for awhile and it was way too early for the every-night late-night regulars. If he told the cops anything, sure as Saint Patrick wasn't Jewish, Jimmy Dick would see to it everybody knew it. His patrons expected privacy with their beer.

  When his laughter ran down Ken responded to the question without answering it. "Joe Jenkins hasn't been in yet to pay this week's rent. When he does, I'm going to complain about the mess they left me. It almost looked as if there hadn't been anyone here at all."

  Hans and Hans exchanged knowing glances.

  "What's up?" Ken asked.

  "We got a query from over in Rudoltstadt. It seems someone with a truck was at an unauthorized church service," Hans said.

  The description of the truck matched Joe's ancient (early fifties vintage) coal hauler to a "T." Joe ended up with the old thing when the company he was working for went bankrupt. It was so old the army didn't want it. Even the tires weren't worth taking. Now, it had a propane tank for natural gas over the cab. The bed was boxed in against the weather with benches down each side, with a door and steps to the rear for people. Joe was using it for a church bus.

  "Unauthorized?" Jimmy Dick piped in. "It was Sunday. How much more authorized do you need to be?"

  "Mister Schaver," Hans said. "The ruler in Rudoltstadt is Lutheran. So the church in Rudoltstadt is Lutheran."

  "And if you ain't Lutheran?"

  "Then you convert, or you move," Hans said.

  "That ain't right! What ever happened to freedom of religion?!"

  "Rudoltstadt is not America. Not being Lutheran in Rudoltstadt is a punishable offence!"

  The law in the USE called for religious tolerance, but the gap between custom and law is often quite large.

  "That just ain't right," Jimmy said.

  "Punishable, how?" Ken asked.

  "Fines, confiscation, exile, imprisonment, beheading." Hans knew full well capital punishment was rare even before the USE. Still, getting sick or starving to death in prison or on the road was not in the least uncommon.

  Jimmy practically squealed. "That's medieval!"

  "And just when do you think you are, Mister Schaver? This is the year of our Lord sixteen hundred and thirty-three. You are in Germany and this is the way things are done," Hans said.

  "Mister Beasley, when . . ." It was clearly when, not if. ". . . you see Joe Jenkins, please let him know we would like him to stop in at the station. We need to assure the people over in Rudoltstadt that it won't happen again."

  Having made that pronouncement Hans and Hans stalked out. Ken watched them leave with a feeling of anxiety.

  "That's bull shit!" Jimmy Dick said. "They can't tell our krauts what to do."

  Ken's head snapped around. "Our krauts? Since when did any of those shit-heads become our krauts?"

  "Ken, there ain't a conversation in this bar you don't know about." It was a slight exaggeration, but only a slight one. "You know we've been sayin' the krauts holdin' church here are red necks and our kind of krauts."

  When Jimmy said "we" he was talking about himself. But no one was shutting him down, which he took as agreement. "We ain't gonna let them push our krauts around. Not when it comes to religious freedom."

  "Jimmy Dick, you're full of shit!"

  "Well, sell me another beer."

  * * *

  Later, Jimmy Dick was riding a high horse hell bent for leather. What surprised Ken was that people were listening. Normally, Jimmy had to buy to get anyone to drink with him and listen to his ranting insults. But he started talking about religious freedom.

  "We shouldn't let them outside krauts over the border push our good old boy, red neck krauts around. Our krauts ain't too stuck up to hold church in a bar. Are we goin'a let some asshole over the border tell them what they can and can't do? We ought to take our shotguns and go over there to church next Sunday and how ever many Sundays it takes until they figure it out and leave our krauts alone." Jimmy actually had people buying him drinks.

  Ken heard it and the sinking feeling in his stomach started turning into a large knot.

  * * *

  Joe Jenkins turned up the next day after the lunch crowd was gone. Ken let him know right away the cops had been in looking for him.

  "I've already talked to them."

  "Then you're shutting down the church over there?" Jimmy Dick asked. He was there for lunch, as usual, and would likely stay to closing. Between his disability from the army and family money he hadn't held a job since coming back from Nam.

  "No," Joe answered.

  "Good. Me a few of the boys are talkin' about comin'."

  "Be glad to have you."

  "You got this week's rent?" Ken planned to tell Joe it would be going up.

  "We didn't use the place this week."

  "Why, you cheap S.O.B. Get your worthless, sorry ass out of my place and don't let me ever catch you in here again." In truth, Ken was relieved. He knew in his b
ones something bad was going to happen and he didn't need to be part of it.

  "Sorry ya' feel that way about it." Joe sighed.

  * * *

  Hans Shruer requested permission to handle the follow up on the complaint that Grantville was exporting heresy. Hans wanted it handled by someone sympathetic. He was not sure an up-timer would show proper respect for a pastor.

  Despite everything he loved in Grantville, there were things which troubled him. Their willingness to treat all men as equals was refreshing. It was amusing when the emperor became Captain General Gars upon entering Grantville. It would not be amusing if someone was less than deferential to a pastor.