Grantville Gazette.Volume VII Read online

  All of which probably answered the question of where Buster had gotten the money that he plunked down to buy the lot in the first place, when he and Christin came back. He'd had backers.

  But Buster wasn't a nasty guy, not the way his uncle Ken was. Standing there, leaning against the wall, his reddish hair balding and graying, his thumbs stuck into his belt below his beer belly, tattoos showing on his arms below the short sleeves of his tee shirt, he looked like he would be. Or worse. But Buster was good to his grandparents. And, boy, did he look out for Christin and Denise. Henry felt sorry for the boys who might try to date Denise. Buster really had been 'round the world, and he didn't intend for his Princess Baby to go there. He'd made sure that Denise could take care of herself, if he wasn't around to protect her.

  ***

  Buster had been watching across the room. Denise and Minnie, tossing their hair back and giggling. Minnie and Denise, doing a little tap dance step in front of Ceci Jones and Paige Clinter, with Tina Sebastian clapping a rhythm for them. He was glad that Princess Baby finally had a best friend. She hadn't had a best friend since she got so sick in fifth grade and had to repeat a year. When she went back the next fall, a new class had moved up to be the first-year middle school kids and she didn't know them that well. And she was a bit fierce for the taste of most of the families around Grantville. He'd brought her up by his rules. First, do what needs doing; second, don't agonize about it.

  The door opened. Chris had locked up the lot for lunch hour and come over. They'd take the girls and the Pierces out for lunch. Not at the 250 Club. She came over and leaned against him, saying, "I picked up Johnnie Ray and Julia and dropped them off at Cora's. She's put in some cushioned booths. They'll be nice and comfy, with people to talk to till we get there."

  ***

  Chris stood there, watching Minnie and Denise. She was real glad that Denise finally had a best friend. Her mind wandered.

  After a truly spectacular blow-up with her parents, she rode off with Buster on his motorcycle in September 1986. They covered most of the country the next year, Arizona, California, Montana, all sorts of places that she'd never expected to see, until her pregnancy advanced to the point that it got uncomfortable for her to ride and they stopped for the winter in Colorado Springs. They had a pretty nice motel room, on the outskirts. Somewhere, she'd heard that natural childbirth was good for the kid, so she did it. There had to be better ideas. Buster came to the hospital for the delivery; it was just a couple of weeks before Christmas. When the nurse put Denise into his arms, all wrapped in pink flannelette and trimmed with a sprig of holly, he got a strange, helpless, sort of look on his face and muttered, "Y'know, Chris, I kinda think we oughta get married."

  The nurse, who considered this to be a good idea under the circumstances, arranged everything with the hospital chaplain before Christin was discharged. The guy had a whole set of forms for pulling it off in two days-must not have been the first case of acute fatherhood that the hospital had treated.

  Buster also got a vasectomy while he was at it, saying that he didn't want to see Chris go through that again, ever, no way. It was close enough to the delivery that she hadn't argued a bit. They stayed in Colorado Springs for a year and a half, Buster handling the local end of a bunch of things for his pards, until Denise was old enough to ride comfortably in the sidecar and needed more space than a motel room to run around in. Then they came back to Grantville.

  Buster had accumulated enough money, what with one thing and another, to open the storage business. He said that old Coleman Walker's chin had dropped right below desktop level when he'd handed over the receipts from the Colorado Springs bank and asked to have the accounts transferred.

  She'd had another spectacular blow-up with her parents. They hadn't even asked if she was married to Buster, so she hadn't told them. She didn't intend to, either. Ever. Let them stew. She still went by Christin George, which really got their goat. The marriage certificate was in the safe deposit box, along with their wills and other business papers.

  Chuck Riddle's jaw would have dropped, too, when they went to get the wills drawn, if they'd gone into detail. Instead, they just asked for plain mirrors-everything to each other and then to Denise. KISS. They'd just needed a lawyer to make sure all the formalities were right. That was one thing that Buster had learned from his pards; keep your paperwork in order.

  ***

  Buster kissed Julia and shook hands with Johnnie Ray, then backed out of the booth. He loved his grandparents. He hadn't invited his Uncle Ken to lunch, but his cousin Everett was here. As many of them as could scrunched into the booth; the waitress pulled over a table and some chairs to extend it for eleven. Cora's was a nice place for a family-type party. While everybody else was sitting down, Buster went over and shook hands with Doc Adams. They'd been through a lot together. He'd never been so stinkin' sick in his life as he got that first winter after the Ring of Fire.

  ***

  Jeff Adams was having lunch with old Doc McDonnell. H.M. had retired from practicing medicine nearly ten years before the Ring of Fire hit, but he'd come back to do what he could-he took the rounds at the extended care center and the assisted living homes-even dropped in on some of the old people who found it hard to get around. Even old Doc Sims, the dentist's father, from whom Jeff had bought the practice, and his wife, who were older than McDonnell, did well baby clinics at the Red Cross twice a week. Every bit helped.

  McDonnell also doubled as coroner, at least for the obvious cases. Down-time, they hadn't had many exotic cases. It was mostly pretty obvious what people died from. The Beasleys, though-nobody knew yet what the Beasleys caught and died from, living out in that old farm house together. Johnnie Ray's brothers and sister, Ev, Hank, Dewey and his wife, Wilbur, and Dorothy-Sugar, everybody called her. Ev and Wilbur were widowers; Hank was an old bachelor; Sugar was a widow. Clinging together. Dewey's kids had all been left up-time; Wilbur and Sugar never had any.

  It had been February, in 1632. Johnnie Ray and Julia got worried when none of them came in for groceries that week. It was cold, but not bad under foot and the telephone lines weren't down. When they didn't get an answer after two days, they sent Buster out to check. He found them all frozen solid. It looked like Sugar went last and had laid the others out all neat, turned the heat off, then lay down next to them to wait-no sign of foul play or poison.

  The phone was working-Buster used it to call Dan Frost to send someone out-so it must have come on them fast. Or else, they caught on that it was something real bad, and contagious, and deliberately decided not to call. They'd found another body in the barn-a hobo, from the look of his clothes, with a plate of biscuits next to him. The house door was locked. Buster opened it with his key. He'd put the locks on himself, after the Ring of Fire; said that he and Everett, Ev's son, had split the cost. There wasn't anything missing or ransacked.

  Dan had sent Fred Jordan out, since it was in the country. Town and country didn't make any real difference after the Ring of Fire, since the county government was gone, but Fred still did a lot of the stuff outside the town limits. He knew the people better.

  Jordan had called his office; Leslie had taken the call and sent him out. The three of them had looked around. He'd suggested, pretty strongly, that it would be better just to bury them out there-not bring the bodies into town for an autopsy. Fred had agreed, and said that they should keep everybody else out of the house and barn, too.

  Then Buster asked for a bit of privacy. They gave it to him, so they didn't know just what he'd said to Everett when he called the video store. But he came back and said not to bother digging graves in the frozen ground; if they left the house and barn standing, his Uncle Ken would rent it out the minute that Fred took the guards off it, or some refugees would just move in. No telling how long the germs for whatever it was would hang around.

  He put the torch to it himself. Laughed and said, "This way, if Ken sues, at least it will be all in the family."

  Th
ey'd quarantined everybody who had been out there. He, Buster and Fred got pretty sick, but they got over it, with fluids and more of the town's precious antibiotics than they had probably deserved and stuff to bring the fever down. Hell, tell the truth. He'd never been so sick in his life. If that, whatever it was, had reached Grantville without any advance warning, half of the town would have been gone in a month.

  ***

  Over at the party table, Buster Beasley laughed uproariously at something Minnie had said. His gruff voice filled the whole cafe, "Oh, no, Minnie, girl, there damn well is something you don't know."

  Minnie looked defiant. "What? Nothing that I need to know."

  "Something I betcha' that you want to know. That would make the rest of it worth your while. You may not believe it right now, but it's important to know how to keep your paperwork in order. I had a time believing that, too, at first, but it's true."

  "What?" Minnie persisted.

  "You don't know how to ride a 'hog.' If you'll settle down and learn the grade school stuff as fast as you can, I'll teach you to ride, along with Princess Baby."

  Minnie and Denise squealed with delight.

  Benny Pierce beamed.

  "And if you go on and learn the middle school stuff, there's something interesting in one of those triple locked sheds on the lot."

  Three wide eyes and a piratical black patch stared at him-Doc Adams hadn't inserted Jim Dreeson's glass eye for Minnie yet.

  "Two brand new 'hogs.' Never uncrated. For the day the two of you get your diplomas."

  Jeff Adams and H.M. McDonnell flinched.

  Von Grantville

  By Russ Rittgers

  Chad sat on the front porch swing staring blankly ahead. He held a tumbler of Kentucky's smoothest bourbon and water. It was like a cruel joke. I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is, those thirty-five new cars you have on your lot? You won't have to pay for them. The bad news? They're going to sit there and rot until you take them apart and sell them piece by piece. Or, you can sell them to the government for pennies on the dollar because nobody's got gasoline or money for cars except the government. Funny, yeah, Mr. Big Time Auto Dealer.

  He'd never intended to live out his life in Grantville. When he studied marketing at West Virginia University, Chad wanted to go into international business. Then Dad had his stroke the day after Thanksgiving in Chad's senior year. He lived, but with the left side of his body partially paralyzed. Mom couldn't handle it mentally or physically at that time. Wes, his older brother, had a full-time job in Charleston working for the government. So rather than taking a few easy courses his final semester to pump up his GPA, Chad petitioned to graduate early because he had all his required courses completed. He received his diploma through the mail. Didn't even go to commencement. Three years later he bought the car dealership for a pittance. Lou Prickett had grown too fond of booze and was about to lose the franchise anyway.

  Now, here he was. A businessman without a business. In Germany. Strange world we live in.

  Debbie came over to the porch swing and sat next to him. "Penny for your thoughts, dear."

  Chad smiled wryly and put his arm around his wife's small shoulders. "Just thinking. Never thought, heck, never imagined I'd ever get to Europe after I came back to Grantville. Much less live in Germany with you and the kids."

  Debbie pulled his arm a bit tighter by tugging his hand. "Have you thought about what you're going to do? Some of the Methodist Women have set up an assistance committee for those German people who've been wandering into town."

  "Don't know." Chad took another sip of bourbon. "All the cars and trucks I don't sell to the government, I'm going to have to disassemble for parts. I'll get Bob Szymanski and my other mechanics to do it. Added to my current parts inventory, it'll be worth a fair amount eventually. Trouble is, in the short run, we're going to be hurting for money because I'll have all the costs of tearing those apart but damn little income. We'll probably have to sell some land just to buy groceries."

  Debbie pulled away from him. "Don't you dare!" she snapped. "Don't you even think about selling a single lot!"

  Chad stared wide-eyed at his wife. She never…

  "I had an interesting talk with that nice Scottish cavalry captain after he brought over one of his troopers to interpret for us today. He asked who was the laird who owned the land outside town. When I told him that most of it was owned by individuals and coal companies, he looked at me like I was crazy. Then I told him Dad owned 160 acres and you had, here and there, over seventeen hundred acres with houses on some of them. He said you must be a laird to own so much and live in a huge mansion in town. After that, he started treating me as if I was some kind of nobility. He must have said something to his trooper because the next thing I knew, the Germans we'd taken in started bowing their heads to me when I approached them."

  Chad grunted a laugh. "Oh, yeah, that's me, Charles Hudson Jenkins von Grantville. Senior."

  "I'm not kidding, Chad. In that captain's mind, we're nobility."

  Chad still laughed. "Oh, yeah. I suppose I'll have to fight duels to protect the honor of our noble family name, too. Uh-huh, right."

  This time Debbie joined him in laughter and leaned back against him again. "Okay, okay it's silly but… Do you know how many houses and trailers we have dotted around the countryside?"

  "What… forty? You're the one taking care of those books. Do we really have that much land?"

  Debbie's smile was smug. "Forty-one rentals according to our last tax return. Got back a nice depreciation-based refund a month ago. Deposited it in the bank here in Grantville. Seventeen hundred acres, sure. Some of it is just hillside, of course, since you and your dad bought anything that came on the market cheap enough. We've got the creeks flowing through some of them but it's ours. We may have lost three parcels outside the Ring of Fire but we didn't lose any rentals.

  "But what I'm thinking is that we don't have a mortgage on a single one of them any more. We always went through the Bank of Grantville but last year I refinanced them through a New York bank. Our trailer loans were all run through the Farmington bank. Do you realize we have absolutely no debt? None! Honey, we've got rent money coming in from thirty-one active rentals. Ten are empty right now, but that won't last long. Yeah, we've got taxes and maintenance expense. Some of those places are pretty old. But with Chip and Missy not going off to college, we could finance our own construction."

  Chad considered for a moment. "Well, that's almost right. Most of our tenants were working in Fairmont, Morgantown or somewhere other than Grantville. In other words, where are they going to get the money to pay their rent?" He sipped his whiskey.

  Debbie snorted. "That's a temporary situation and you know it, Chad. They'll have to buy their own food, too. They'll pay their rent or they can move."

  Chad knew his smile was a bit twisted. Debbie might have gotten her degree in Elementary Education and taught until Missy was born, but running their rentals for the past several years had given her the same set of hard-headed business rules he had.

  "Well, it's a cinch real estate's going to be just a bit more difficult to come by. Building materials are going to be just a bit more expensive as well. You planning on providing materials for the construction boom once it gets going?"

  "We've got plenty of trees-maple, oak, ash, pine and other timber. We've never had any of those hillsides cut. I never liked the looks of the timber-cutters who came around. After the first one visited us, I checked out recommended timber-cutting best practices on the Internet. Then I started asking questions. Not a single one ever heard of a contract. So I said no thanks. Now we're going to have a lot of scrub trees and tree limbs for fireplace wood as well as logs for construction."

  Chad took a sip from his glass. "Sounds good, I suppose. Doesn't get my blood pumping any more than selling auto parts does."

  "Oh, I didn't figure it would." Debbie stood and stretched. "We can hire someone to oversee the day to day opera
tion but you should be there to watch. To see everything is done to conserve the land. They won't pay attention to me. Anyway, there's no way I'm going to hike into the woods to supervise a timber crew. You, well, you ran the dealership garage as well as the sales room."

  Chad nodded. It was a plan, at least. "Okay. Damn! I just had a thought. Where are they going to get the gas for the chain saws? Come to that, how are they going to haul the wood out of the woods?"

  "The old fashioned way, I suppose. There's bound to be a few of those big two-man saws and buck saws rusting in barns and garages.. . not to mention axes. You can probably hire some of our unemployed tenants to do the work."

  "Horses." Chad frowned. "Might be able to get tractors but we'll probably have to buy or rent draft horses or oxen to haul out wagons filled with firewood and the logs. Think your dad has any old horse collars lying about the barn? He's bound to have some saws from your grandfather's day. We can find farm wagons easily enough. Heck, just a few built-up wheeled axles with a tongue welded on. Won't even need to have tires, just the rims. Next question is, does Denny's Lumber still have its own sawmill?"

  Debbie shook her head. "No. But I'm certain all the parts are there somewhere. Nathan never threw away anything. Thank God we got the electricity back. That'll power the sawmills."