The Grantville Gazette - Vol 3 Part 2

Every Lutheran wedding in Grantville.She promised it to herself. Well, maybe not every one. Probably not if the pastor's other daughter got married, and maybe not the up-time Lutherans.But most of them, definitely most of them. This up-timer would be able to play every dance tune she knew, dragging the rest of her little band along with him.

Early August, 1634

The dance band was getting bookings. Errol, on the theory that the lady was the boss, had firmly resisted all impulses to lay hand on Lisbet. Hitting on the boss would bring a guy nothing but trouble. His day jobs had never been anything to write home about-bagging groceries back home inFairmont before he got caught up in the Ring of Fire; then two years as a soldier; now back in Grantville, basically as a stock clerk at Garrett's Supermarket. At least it worked with the band. Play in the evening; go to work after the dance; stay as long as it took to get the stuff out on the shelves for the next day, sleep, rehea.r.s.e or play in the evening; repeat. So he wasn't setting the world on fire-it beat blowing himself up with explosives, which had been his other post-army job offer.

Late August, 1634

School was about to start. The group-it had become a regularStammtisch -kept meeting at theHobbs house; Lisbet's new band kept rehearsing there. The mothers and stepmothers who had survived the evacuation of Quittelsdorf didn't really like these gatherings, but then they wouldn't really have liked the barn dances andSpinnstuben the girls would have been attending with the Quittelsdorf boys back home, either. That's what mothers and stepmothers were for: to put on gloomy faces and look disapproving. Walpurga sighed.How did they expect the girls to get these men as husbands forPastor Kastenmayer's project if they didn't spend time with them?

At Tuesday's rehearsal, Lisbet looked at Errol and announced, "I need a new tune.A really gloomy tune."

"Gloomy?"

"Yes. Like this one, but new." Lisbet launched into a series of musical notes that Errol, if he had happened to be Presbyterian, would have recognized as "Old 124th" from the 1551 Genevan Psalter.

Since he was totally innocent of all connection with any established religious body, he just nodded his agreement that it was indeed a really gloomy tune. He picked up his clarinet and played along a bit.

"Mitch, this isn't a clarinet piece. Didn't I see a sax back there in the rec room one day?"

"Yeah, but I can't play it. That was my brother Arvie's.Ain't been played since he got out of band."

"Youdon't need to play it, man. I need to play something gloomy on it. I'm no sax player, but I can finger it."

Sax?Did that have anything to do with the Saxons?Meg Heunisch found that living with Ryan Baker perpetually confronted her with new and perplexing questions. The "sax" appeared in Walpurga's hands, bright and gleaming (she had polished it just the week before), and turned out to be another bra.s.s musical instrument.

Errol started fingering it, leaning against the right arm of the sofa and propping his boots up on the coffee table. Walpurga cleared her throat in a meaningful manner.

Errol didn't exactly ignore her-he didn't even notice her. He hitched the lanyard over his neck to help him hold the weight, placed the sax next to his knees (its bell extended to his right in front of the sofa, almost to the floor), put it to his lips and started to produce a really gloomy tune.

He pulled it out of his mouth and started to make a rude comment about, "how long has it been since anybody took care of this mouthpiece?" when he was severely jolted. The lanyard, thank heavens, kept him from dropping the sax. He found that he had a lap full of Lisbet, who was enthusiastically hugging and kissing him. It wasn't a particularly erotic hug and kiss, but provided him with full opportunity to determine that every one of her rounded curves was quite solid and not in the least flabby. She was deluging him with German, of which he got only, "wunderbar."

Then, without further verbal communication, he was being dragged by the hand out of the house and down the road towardSt. Martin 's in theFields.l.u.theranChurch .Which was okay, given how long it stayed light at night around here in summer, even without Daylight Savings Time. They went around the church, up to one of the teacher's cottages, and Lisbet banged on the door.

Jonas Justinus Muselius could hardly believe it. The tune was perfect for the new hymn he had written, which the children of the school would perform. It was not too complex for them. It was not pitched too high, which had a tendency to cause untrained voices to squeak. It was ideal. Herr Mercer should play it with them, of course. But a musician was expected to be a member of the church. Perhaps Pastor Kastenmayer would make an exception in this case, however.A potential catechumen.A potential fiance.

A potential convert. He laid out his argumentation in the cla.s.sic debate form as he hummed.

September, 1634

The treble voices of the first through fourth graders lifted at the early morning service.

"We're sorry; Sorryfor our sins; Sorry we have done so wrong."

Errol Mercer on the saxophone carried them along, as the strains of "MoonRiver" rose to the bare rafters ofSt. Martin 's in the Fields.

During the weeks after the children performed the hymn, Errol experienced a blinding revelation.

Down-time Lutherans hired church musicians. They actually paid them.

He also discovered that singing a hymn to "Begin the Beguine" was no challenge at all to a congregation that could produce "A Mighty Fortress Is Our G.o.d" in its original irregular meter,a capella , if need be.St. Martin 's didn't have an organ yet. It was delighted to have a clarinet and sax.

He stopped by the school every morning, after he got off at Garrett's. "Jesusliebtmich, da.s.s weiss ich ."

He was no church lady, but everybody knew how to play "Jesus loves me." It went over real good, too."

Du bist meinJesus,mein liebster Jesus." Muselius wrote that one new for the kids, after Errol played, "You are my sunshine" for him.

Lisbet said, though, thatfull-time church musicians must be qualified. First, that they must be Lutheran.

That, Errol figured, was doable. Muselius, the teacher, said that it was very doable. He furnished Errol with a copy of the Shorter Catechism in English (he had forethoughtfully had a hundred of them printed inJena , from a copy borrowed from Gary Lambert).

Church musicians must also, Lisbet said, be learned. He should return to school and get his GED. All boards of church elders were very impressed by pieces of paper showing academic qualifications.

He was less enthusiastic about that prospect.

But she kissed him.

Going back to school would be a lot more work than stocking shelves. She kissed him again. "Going back to school will just be one year. Stocking shelves can go on forever.

Do you want to do that?"

She kissed him a third time. "Or do you want to get paid for your music? More than our little band pays?"

By this time, Errol had a fiancee. He also had a sax, having traded his late grandmother's engagement ring with its tiny diamond to Mitch for it (at the time of the Ring of Fire, he had been wearing it in his left ear; the army made him take it out and the hole had closed up). Lisbet agreed fully that it was more important to have a sax than to have an engagement ring. Errol was therefore quite certain that Lisbet would be a perfect wife.

Lisbet would have been less sanguine about the trade if the result hadn't been that the ring went to Mitch.

However, she a.s.sumed that if all went as one could reasonably expect, pretty soon Walpurga would get the ring, and Walpurga was, after all, her sister. But she didn't see any need to mention that.

March, 1635

Errol set Jonas' new Good Friday hymn to "Mood Indigo." It caused a sensation. Well, at least it caused a sensation in the Lutheran churches of Grantville, Badenburg, Rudolstadt, and Saalfeld, plus a.s.sorted villages in between. It wasn't performed inJena ,Weimar , Stadtilm, Ilmenau, Arnstadt,Eisenach ,Erfurt andSuhl until the following penitential season. By 1636, it had reached Stra.s.sburg, Nurnberg,Leipzig , Koenigsberg,Copenhagen andStockholm . (See Muselius, Jonas Justinus,New Directions inLutheran ChurchMusic,Jena : 1637.)

April, 1635

Errol obediently recited memorized pa.s.sages from the Shorter Catechism in reply to Pastor Kastenmayer's questioning. In between, looking at the line-up while the other guys said their parts, he started to wish that he had never played in that "golden oldies" band inFairmont before the Ring of Fire, because he was having trouble keeping his face straight. He just couldn't help suspecting that any minute now, Howard Keel's voice would start rolling in with the music fromSeven Brides for Seven Brothers.

He wondered how a performance of that would go over with the down-timers. He thought he remembered all the tunes. And they had seven brides.

What Next?

Mitch Hobbs and Walpurga Hercher

June-October, 1633

Walpurga Hercher worked at the MaidenFresh Laundries. That was her regular job and she liked it, even if the boss did yell at her for wanting to stop and remove every little spot and tiny stain. "Not commercially feasible," Frau Rawls said. "Look, girl. Get it in, get it washed, get it out. If they wanted that kind of finicky care, they would hire their personal laundress."

Walpurga found it distressing. She would like for every piece of clothing to come out of the tubs just the way it should be. But Frau Rawls was the boss. Some day, she would have her own house.With her own washing machine. And her laundry would be perfect.

Once upon a time, she had not been a "refugee." She had not been a plain village girl, either. When she was fourteen years old, she had gone into service in the town ofRudolstadt , as a maid in the household of the secondBuergermeister , no less. She had learned about tile floors and chairs with legs that had been turned on lathes. She had stayed until just before Lent in 1631, when her father brought her home and betrothed her to Wilhelm Conrath. His father had died the year before the Ring of Fire; Wilhelm was the only child and needed a wife for the farm. It would have been a good match; they would have married in the summer. Now Wilhelm was dead and she was a "refugee" in Grantville, along with her sister, her aunt, and various cousins.

They always needed money, of course. There was rent. With so many of them, they needed a lot of food. Living in a city, if you needed more food, you could not go out to the garden and pull some more.

You had to pay for it right away. Walpurga had decided that Garrett's Supermarket was best, so she shopped there.

She always took extra jobs, when she found them. TheHobbs job was on the "bulletin board." A woman was sick. Her husband wanted a cleaning lady, once a week. Walpurga gathered all of her recommendations and applied. They were all glowing. She had learned a lot during her years in Rudolstadt. When Walpurga Hercher set out to clean something, shecleaned it. Herr Hobbs, "Call me Joe," hired her.

Frau Hobbs, "Call me Gloria," looked really sick. But she was not too sick to stop worrying about a dirty house. Not in the summer.

It was an old house, the way the up-timers saw things. Not big, really. Not too big for a single servant to clean. Downstairs, a "living room," a "dining room," the kitchen, the bath, a funny room on the side, an "old porch" Frau Hobbs called it, that they had surrounded with walls and windows, that they called the "rec room."Two bedrooms. Upstairs, on a steep little staircase that started in the pantry, just two more rooms under the roof.But the carved woodwork. The hardwood parquet floors.The beautiful ceilings with designs on the squares.

Frau Hobbs just wanted her to run the vacuum over the surface and clean up the kitchen and bathroom.But the treasure trove in the kitchen cabinet and the pantry.The waxes, the polishes, the "spray bottles"

with their magical contents. While Frau Hobbs was resting, Walpurga had managed to get some of the house really clean.The two rooms upstairs; the staircase; the extra bedroom downstairs.The ones that the gentleman and lady didn't look into any more. They were almost perfect by the time she was done.

In September, Frau Hobbs was too sick to care. In October she died. Joe Hobbs didn't care about the house, any more. He thought that he was just letting the cleaning lady go.

He did not know that he was breaking a heart and ending a pa.s.sionate affair. Walpurga mourned her lost love deeply.

April, 1634

Pastor Kastenmayer was thinking about payback.

Walpurga was reading the obituaries in theGrantville Times . Herr Hobbs, "call me Joe," was dead.The house? Walpurga's heart leaped. Would someone live in the house now who wanted a cleaner?"Survived by his parents, Ken and Ada Hobbs.Survived by one son, Mitch, serving in the army of the New United States, and two sons, Arvie and Burt, who were left up-time."

She read carefully. She compared it to other obituaries. She had Else and Ursel and Barbel, who read English much better than she did, compare it to other obituaries. There was no mention that this Mitch had a wife. There was no mention that Herr and Frau Hobbs had grandchildren.

If G.o.d were gracious, this Mitch would want his house cleaned.

However, it seemed that this Mitch was still somewhere else with the army. He had just told his grandparents to lock the place up until he got out in a couple of months. Walpurga found that out. She knew who Ada Hobbs was. She talked to Ada Hobbs sometimes when she bought food at Garrett's Supermarket. She mentioned to Ada Hobbs that she had cleaned the house, last summer, for "Call me Gloria."

Ada, who had not been looking forward to dealing with the mess that Joe had left behind during his last six morose months, hired her to clean it again.

It was a wonderful reunion. She had the house all to herself for three whole days. But the kitchen was a mess and the bathroom was worse. She had to sc.r.a.pe gooey stuff off the beautiful "linoleum" with a "putty knife," before she could even mop it. She hadn't had time to even start making the living room and dining room and the bedroom that Herr and Frau Hobbs had used perfect. She had hardly touched the "rec room."

May, 1634.

The name was ondie Krausin 's list. Walpurga saw it. Neatly printed, right there on the Vandivers'

kitchen table. Mitch Hobbs.

Walpurga promised herself that she would never be impatient during a church service again. She would never complain that Pastor Kastenmayer prayed too long, or preached too long, or reviewed the catechism too long. She would never complain that they sang too many verses of too many hymns. She would never try to skip church on Sunday. Maybe, she would even go on Wednesday. Perhaps, she would even attend Teacher Muselius's catechism review cla.s.ses for adults on Sat.u.r.days.

Maybe all of them should go to church more diligently and take communion more frequently.

It was clear to Walpurga that Pastor Kastenmayer had, as the up-timers said, a "direct line" to G.o.d.

Walpurga was not at all sure that having Magdalena Heunischlive with this Ryan Baker in the upper two rooms of theHobbs house counted as Divine Providence. After all, they were not married.