Grantville Gazette Part 27

Ed thought that this was a distinctly peculiar opinion on the part of someone who claimed to be a successor of the man who started the Protestant Reformation by insisting that he had to rely on the conclusions of his own conscience and not on what someone else told him. Evidently, for Professor Osiander, the "priesthood of all believers" didn't have room for all of "all."

Gary Lambert, again, was nodding solemnly. His up-time opponent Carol Koch, Grantville's ELCA representative to the colloquy, on the other hand, was scribbling madly, trying to keep notes.

Ed thought for a moment. He didn't think that Grantville's ELCA Lutherans had deliberately chosen Carol as their delegate in order to "make a statement" about the role of women in the church. There just weren't many up-time Lutherans in Grantville. None of them were natives of the town. It hadn't been a Lutheran kind of place before the Ring of Fire. Gary was the only one who had belonged to the Missouri Synod except for his wife, who had been at work at the hospital in Morgantown when it happened. The ELCA-Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, to use the full t.i.tle-had had a grand total of ten members. Ten adults, anyway, and three teenagers who had to be pretty close to eighteen by now, if the Kochs' two weren't already older than that.

According to the story Ed had heard, the ELCA bunch, however many, had met at the Sutters' house. Billy Nelson and Melvin Sutter had declined the honor of presenting their case-before the Ring of Fire, Billy had been a truck driver and Melvin had run a filling station. Ron Koch, the only mining safety engineer in town, clearly couldn't be spared for a week or a month-he didn't have a deputy. Those three were the ELCA's sum total of adult men. There really was only one person who could take the time. Ron's wife.

"You'll just have to do it," Roberta Sutter had said. The victim-umm, nominee for the honor-had been looking appalled. Roberta had reached into the armory that was available to her in her secondary role as president of Grantville's genealogy club. "Your mother's father was a minister. Your mom was an organist. You're bound to have inherited some kind of a knack for it. You'll have to do it, Carol."

When the colloquy finally-finally!-broke for lunch, Ed saw that Benny Pierce was once more established on his herring keg in the market square. The girl who had been selling the sheet music yesterday was singing. She had a high soprano, a little reedy, but with good carrying quality-a mountain kind of voice. Ed waved Cavriani to go on to the beer stand and wandered over. She was singing "Lorena"-not the soupy Civil War ballad, but Mother Maybelle's "The Sun Shines No More on Lorena," in which a slave, taken to Kentucky when his master moved, hears many years later that his wife has died back in Virginia. She was singing it in German: "Und man sagt mir, Lorena, Du bist tot." The more sentimental members of the audience had tears dripping from their eyes. Ed never ceased to be astonished at how smoothly a lot of English verse, such as, "And they tell me, Lorena, you are dead," went into German, and vice versa.

Benny stopped playing, leaned back, and stretched his arms. "Hi'ya, Ed. Meet Minnie Hugelmair. Minnie, this guy here is Ed Piazza. If anything happens to me, head for Grantville and ask for him. Play something-keep 'em entertained." He handed his fiddle over to the girl.

As Minnie started a skipping rendition of "Wildwood Flower," Benny said, "Y'know, Ed, if you felt like it, you could radio down to Grantville and ask someone to bring me up my autoharp when they're coming. Dave and Doreen have got the key to my bedroom. It's in there. I rented out the rest of the place. We're doing pretty good here. I think we'll stay to the end of this foofara, so there'll be time for it to catch up with me."

"Sure, Benny, I can do that. People go back and forth every day, so it won't take long."

"Minnie should do real good on the autoharp." Benny studied his calluses. "It might be that you'll be hearing from her ex-boss. I helped her run away."

"Might be?"

Benny grinned. "I don't guarantee he'll figure out that I'm the one who helped her. He didn't seem to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. I expect he's more likely to think it was a young guy who wanted to put his hand up her skirts than an old guy who wanted to put her hand on a fiddle bow. But anyway, he was as mean as a generous skunk and she's better off working for me, even if she was indentured to him for another three years."

"Where were you when you, ah, provided this a.s.sistance to a damsel in distress?"

"Minnie wasn't distressed. Minnie was mad. He'd promised to pay out her wages yearly and went back on the bargain-said that according to the law, he didn't have to pay until her indenture was up. She only stole what he owed her-not a pfennig more. Well, I watched to make sure that's all she took. Left to herself, she can be a lying little sneak, but what can you expect? She's the first real, live, foundling I've ever come across. I thought that was real interesting. She's going to be the best fiddler I've ever taught. Oh, the other? Somewhere up around Halle, on the other side of the river. I'd hitched a ride on a barge."

Somewhere up around Halle, on the other side of the river equaled Saxony. Mentally, Ed moved the concept of possibly needing to bail Benny out to a slightly higher rung on his ladder of priority items for the Department of International Affairs.

Waving to them both, he picked up his beer and joined Cavriani, who had acquired two bratwurst as well as a beer, plus two of Ed's staffers for company. Ed joined them happily. Among the advantages of being a Roman Catholic "personal observer" at a Lutheran conference was that he never had to sit among the head table guys when the topic was theology. They only needed him when the subject veered into politics. Behind him, he could hear that Benny was handling the fiddle again. Minnie started to sing "Coal Miner's Blues." By the time the lunch break was over, they'd made it through "Bury Me Beneath the Willow" and a bilingual version of "When the Roses Bloom in Dixie Land."

They had also attracted a new audience that Ed recognized-the delegation of Tuebingen theology students. Minnie started to sell music again, while Benny treated them to "San Antonio Rose."

It was hard, hard, hard to go back to Professor Osiander, who, when they slid into their seats a few minutes late, was announcing that: "Christ, who is the purest bridegroom of His church, does not share His love, as expressed in the sacrament, with those who have vain and blasphemous opinions."

Osiander explained the rationale which had led the Tuebingen faculty to this conclusion in the most minute detail, with frequent references to the Concordia Triglotta, throughout the afternoon. He defined "church" and he defined "sacrament." He defined "vain" and he defined "blasphemous." He advanced comparative instances of usage of the words in the Bible, both in Hebrew and in Greek, along with variant translations into Latin and German.

Then he defined "opinions."

Ed had picked up a rumor that there had once been an attempt to a.s.sa.s.sinate Professor Osiander during one of his sermons. Now if I had been on the jury... he thought. On his right, Leopold Cavriani was sleeping quietly.

Cavriani, in fact, had not been sleeping. He had been pondering the question of who had been doing the German translations for Benny Pierce. He thought that Secretary of State Piazza must be so familiar with the words of Benny's songs in English that he really hadn't paid any attention to the German lyrics. Cavriani had paid attention and he knew enough of both languages to catch that,

"When the roses bloom in Dixieland, I'll be coming home to you" bore a reasonable relationship to "Als die Rosen naechst im Suden bluh'n, kehr ich ein, mein Schatz, bei dir."

But the next verse of the English, which talked about birds singing music to the sweetest girl that the boy ever knew, bore no relation at all to: "Wenn wir endlich von dem Kriege ruh'n, kehr ich ein, mein Schatz, bei dir!"

The English words said nothing at all about finally resting from this war. There was a reason why he had made that "ensure that an idea spreads" comment to the American. He'd been vaguely disappointed that Piazza hadn't picked up on it. This evening, he thought, he would see where the old man and the girl went after they packed up in the market square. It would be interesting to find out who their a.s.sociates were.

"My life hasn't been much, really," Benny said to Cavriani. "I graduated from eighth grade, but that's as far as it went. Fought in the Second World War. Down in Italy, it was-your name sort of rings a bell, but we've got a lot of Italians in Grantville, too. Got married. Mary Ann's family came from Lebanon. She was Catholic. I've got to say that bothered me a bit-we were Methodist teetotal at home and I was really brought up on the 'no popery' line. But she switched over, so it was fine. I used to play "The Romish Lady" in her honor. Hmm... haven't played that one in quite a while. Maybe I can polish it up tonight. If you come by the market tomorrow, I'll play it for you."

Benny stopped talking for a moment to eat before his grilled cheese sandwich got cold. "These aren't bad, are they, Mr. Cavriani? They aren't burgers, but they aren't bad. Do you really want to hear more? Well, I worked in the mines most of my life. After the mine exploded at Farmington in sixty-eight-that was bad, seventy-eight men killed; only four got out-Mary Ann carried on 'til I gave in and quit. I was forty-seven then and went to driving the trucks; did that for twenty-three years. I'd figured on keeping on 'til she could collect her social security, but she died in ninety-two, before she'd even applied. I'd fiddled all my life, but after I lost her, I started fiddling pretty much full time. Galax; other compet.i.tions. Even did a few gigs at the big Tamarack tourist center down by Beckley. Wish you could have seen that place-it had quilts, jams, hand-carved duck decoys. You'd have liked it, I think. A marketplace with a roof over the top."

Benny looked at his new friend, who nodded solemnly. Cavriani wasn't able to identify half the references, but they weren't going past him. He was storing them in his mind, to be written down later in the evening and checked out as soon as he had a chance.

Cavriani glanced at Minnie, who quite obviously didn't understand what Benny was talking about either. But, right now, she didn't care. Cavriani had ordered two whole sandwiches and a large gla.s.s of milk for her. Minnie was apparently a focused woman: she was definitely going to finish eating it all before the men stopped talking and left the Freedom Arches. For a minute, Cavriani was afraid that she'd try to cram that last half-sandwich into her mouth all at once and try to wash it down with the rest of the milk, but Benny started talking again.

"Well, anyway. Then we landed here. Sort of cramped my style, at first, but then I figured that I could hitch a ride on the carts going off to markets and I started b.u.mming. In the beginning, all I could do was instrumentals. A guy can't sing with a fiddle under his chin. Sometimes, I'd put the fiddle down for a couple of minutes and do a verse. That went over okay, I guess. But I knew it would be better if folks could understand the words."

The old man had ordered a kettle of boiling water for a beverage, and had dropped some odd dried roots into it. He poured some of it out into a mug and rinsed his mouth.

"Sa.s.safras tea, if you're wondering. I told you I was brought up teetotal. Still am. Want to try some?"

Cavriani had consumed stranger things when he was doing his training in the firm's various branch offices. His digestive system still remembered Aleppo well. "Aendere Laender, aendere Sitten," he murmured. "How did the Americans say it? 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do.'"

He nodded. Benny poured three mugs and gave the third to Minnie before continuing.

"At first, I just did the towns and villages around Grantville. After about a year, I guess, I worked myself all the way up to Magdeburg, mostly playing one night stands-stayed a little longer in Erfurt when I pa.s.sed through. Well, anyway. In Magdeburg, I met this kid who's a friend of Jeff Higgins' wife. He writes poetry in German, and said that if I sang my stuff for them, he had a friend who would copy it into sheet music. I could sell that, and make a bit more. And he'd translate the words of some of them into German for me, free. Real nice of him, I thought. He did three that first trip, but every time I run across him, he's done a couple more."

Cavriani nodded. His face showed genuine interest. Benny loved an audience.

"I didn't do so good at singing the German words, but most people didn't care. At least, they got the idea. Then I found Minnie. She can really sing them. He brought four new ones for me when he came down for this foofara. So he's the one you want to talk to, I guess. Name's Joachim. Let me write it down-they spell it like that, but they say it just like Yok.u.m in the L'il Abner cartoons."

Benny was starting to wind down. His hands met behind his neck and he pushed his elbows and shoulders back.

"Well, Mr. Cavriani, I must say that it's been a pleasure. I do thank you for the invitation. But I'm getting to be old bones. If I'm going to polish up "The Romish Lady" before tomorrow, we'd better be going."

"The pleasure was all mine," said Leopold Cavriani. He meant it. Sincerely.

It was Benny's favorite hymnbook. His grandma had a whole stack of them, bound in red oilcloth covers. Apostolic Hymns. A Collection of Hymns and Tunes for all Occasions of Religious Worship and Social Singing. Containing Selections of Upward of Fifty Ministers, Music Teachers, and Singers. And a Comprehensive Gamut by Prof. Blackburn, Pilot Oak, Ky., edited by Elds. J. V. And R. S. Kirkland, Fulton, Ky., a.s.sisted by Prof. A. M. Kirkland, Como, Tenn. J. V. & R. S. Kirkland, Fulton, Ky. Copyright 1898. It was thin enough to fit in the larger bib pocket of his overalls. Whenever he felt like Mother Maybelle's "Lonesome Homesick Blues" were going to take him over, he pulled it out to remember the sing-alongs they used to have.

Funny how things worked out. He had a brother and two sisters. He and Mary Ann never had any kids. Emmie and Lester never had any kids; Lester had been dead for years and he didn't think that Emmie would last much longer-she was the oldest. Homer and Hattie's kids had been left up-time; Hattie had died in ninety-eight and Homer sure wasn't well. Betty and Fletcher had a boy and a girl, but then of those two, Louise and Bill didn't have any kids and she wasn't likely to have any now, being forty-three. One little baby. Betty's great-grandson, Dave and Doreen's grandson, born in February. Benny had been back to see him once, already. Suddenly, he decided. He was going back to Grantville to see that little buster again before he started his summer tour.

Well. Back to the hymnal. He'd already taught the whole "Rudiments" to Minnie. What is a lyric? What is a tune? What is pitch? Treble clef. Base clef. Whole, half, quarter, eighth, and sixteenth notes, with how to draw them. The most frequently used times, such as 2/4, 3/4, and 4/4, with how to accent them. Rests, measures, bars; how to draw them. It was only six pages. The kid who had turned his vocal music into sheet music had acted like it was manna from heaven.

No. 35. "The Romish Lady." Benny loved "The Romish Lady." Political correctness had never advanced very far into the life he lived. He loved all eleven verses of it.

So, it turned out the next day, did the members of the Lutheran theological faculties of the universities of Jena, Wittenberg, and Tuebingen, with a.s.sorted a.s.sociates and accompanying students.

There was a Romish lady brought up in popery,

Her mother always taught her the priest she must obey.

O pardon me dear mother, I humbly pray thee now,

For unto these false idols I can no longer bow.

Professor Osiander cast a rather apprehensive glance in the direction of the U.S. Secretary of State. Herr Piazza was known to be a Roman Catholic.

a.s.sisted by her handmaid, a Bible she concealed,