1635:The Dreeson Incident

II."

"What was that?" Minnie asked.

"The war my daddy fought in. The war against the Nazis. The war against the Germans. The war against you Krauts. And we were allied with the French. So people like Velma's husband, or Jacques-Pierre Dumais, are ancestors of those heroes of the resistance. The Free French. Just like the Huguenots, here and now, like Laurent Mauger and Jacques-Pierre are resisting that Cardinal Richelieu. Huguenots are Protestant."

"Mr. Jenkins is a Protestant too," Minnie said. "At least, I think that Methodists are Protestant. Anyway, he goes to the same church that you and Benny do, you old witch, so if he isn't Protestant, neither are you. And you are going to apologize to the Reverends Jones. Whatever you may say about me, Mr. Jenkins is not a German and neither are they."

"No way is that Dumais guy some kind of James Bond hero. He's a garbage collector!" Denise yelled. "And he hangs out at Uncle Ken's 250 Club. I tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to write to Don Francisco Nasi and ask him if that guy is some kind of resistance hero. And I'll publish his answer in the paper. If Roger Rude won't take it, I'll buy an ad. So there."

Behind the counter, Joe Pallavicino was poking phone numbers as fast as he could. Benny. Buster. The police. Henry Dreeson. Anybody. Cora was holding the phone book open in front of him. Then he slipped out into the aisle between the tables and the booths, hoping that he could defuse the situation before the girls got themselves into more trouble than they could get out of. Girl fights were one thing, but. .. Veda Mae wasn't well liked, but people wouldn't react well to having them go after an old woman.

Damned if I'll call her an old lady, even to myself, he thought. Veda Mae Haggerty is no lady of any kind.

Those two girls would beat the crap out of her, too. A raw and primitive side of Joe was urging him to let them do it. It'd sure be fun to watch.

"I told her I was going to," Denise said at breakfast the next morning. "And I did. Even though Benny showed up and coaxed Minnie into backing off."

"Did what, Princess Baby?" Buster asked.

"I wrote a letter to Don Francisco Nasi in Magdeburg. The Spook of Spooks for Mike Stearns. And I told him every single word that Horrid Hag Haggerty said about those two guys, Mauger and Dumais. And every other little scrap of information I could find about the people they've been hanging out with, asking around a bit yesterday."

"You think he's going to read a letter from a kid?" Christin asked.

"He'd better," Denise muttered. "If he knows what's good for him."

Saturday was almost always the busiest morning. It started a little later than most days, but then it never let up until after lunch. Cora looked out over the room. Kaffeeklatsch time. Every booth was full. So were most of the tables. And, just what she didn't need, Veda Mae Haggerty coming in the door. Coming back again. Life at the City Hall Cafe had been more tranquil while Veda Mae was patronizing the Willard.

A half hour later, all she could think was that Veda Mae sure was in rare form. She had started with comments on Wes Jenkins' marriage to Clara again, repeating her insults in regard to the roles played by the Reverends Jones and Jenny Maddox.

Cora glanced at the back booth. Jenny was in there. She'd been there before Veda Mae arrived, tucked in the far corner, having coffee with Marietta Fielding. Also with her sister, Maxine Pilcher. And Anita Barnes. Of the four, even if she looked that way, the only one Veda Mae would be able to see was Anita.

Veda Mae declaimed on. A follow-up about Tom Stone and Magda and something rude about the Stones in general. Then down to specifics: Frank getting married to an Eye-talian and everyone knew they had been allies of the Krauts; Gerry being in a down-time school over at Rudolstadt and planning to become a Lutheran Kraut minister; Ron dating Missy Jenkins. That brought her back to the Jenkins family again-something about Chip Jenkins going to the Kraut university in Jena and being for all practical purposes engaged to Katerina von Ruppersdorf who was one of those awful Kraut nobles which was undoubtedly why he had written that trashy pamphlet. His half-sister Anne Jefferson being married to some Kraut guy who had gone off to Russia and everyone knew that the Russians were Commies, a passing comment on the "little Kraut slut" who had been living with Chad and Debbie while she went to school, and ending up with a concluding proclamation that the Jenkins family in general, for all its money and prestige in Grantville, was "going native."

Someone stood up. Oh, lordy! Cora thought. Vera Hudson. Willie Ray's wife. Debbie's mother. Vera wouldn't give Chad the time of day, but she would never let anyone get by with put-downs on her grandchildren. Not that Vera was likely to say anything in defense of one of the Stones, since Missy and Ron weren't official yet, exactly, not but what it appeared to be high time that they should be, but she was bound to attack full steam in defense of Chip's young lady and Anne's husband.

Anne's husband, in particular.

Vera had kept Anne for a long time after Don Jefferson's death. First while Debbie finished high school, then during the four years Debbie was getting her degree at WVU, and when Debbie came back to Grantville to teach in 1978 on the grounds that the first couple of years were always so time-consuming for a beginning teacher and what they were paying Debbie really wouldn't cover decent day care. Back when Chad and Debbie married during Christmas vacation in 1980, Vera insisted on keeping Anne. At the time, Cora had thought it was a little odd. But Vera claimed that it would upset Anne to move in with them in the middle of the school year and the newlyweds needed some time to adjust to one another. At least, that was the story she told everyone. Debbie finally put her foot down that summer and insisted Anne live with her and Chad. Vera had not been a bit happy and the ten-year-old Anne even less. Afterwards she spent as much of her weekends, school breaks and summers with Vera and Willie Ray as her mom would allow.

As far as Vera was concerned, Anne could do no wrong.

Cora had a feeling that this was going to be one of those days that caused her to start her evening diary entry with, "A lively time was had by all." That was before the door opened again, admitting Inez Wiley and Veronica Dreeson, who- oh, no, no- had Denise and Minnie in tow. And Idelette, the Genevan girl, of course, but she was very well behaved.

After the last confrontation, Joe Pallavicino had talked to the two old biddies. Since then, they had been, as Joe put it, mentoring Denise and Minnie more intensively.

They came in just as Maxine scooted over and let Jenny out of the back booth.

" So sehr wie eine Walkure," an appreciative male voice murmured as Jenny stalked down the aisle toward the front of the cafe, lining herself up next to Vera.

Couldn't Inez and Ronnie have decided to mentor somewhere else?

Who needed an irritated Valkyrie in the City Hall Cafe?

Why was Veda Mae here instead of over at the Willard, anyway? Why had she been here the other day, for that matter? Was she on the outs with Lois again? About what, this time? Cora's natural curiosity perked up a bit.

The wad of little bells fastened to the front door jingled again.

The first person Clara saw when she came through the door was Jenny Maddox, whom she liked and admired. "Good morning, Jenny," she said. Then she saw Vera Hudson, to whom, as a connection of her husband's family, she should be courteous. She gave a little wave. "Isn't it gorgeous out, Mrs. Hudson. I have been walking around, up and down the hills, admiring the sun on the icicles. Up on the greenhouse, where the roof is warm and the snow water trickles down, they reach all the way from the eaves to the ground, like the stone formations in the Feengrotten. There are many snow men, someone has made a snow sphinx in his front yard. Isn't that interesting?"

Jenny stared at her. Then said, "Good morning."

No one else in the room was saying anything at all.

Clara had never heard such quiet in Cora's. She looked around for the cause just as Denise and Minnie tore themselves loose from their mentors and dashed to stand one on each side of her.

"May I have tea, please, Cora. The sassafras kind."

She reached out, putting one hand on the nearest shoulder of each of the girls. "Has she been making a fool of herself again, this malignant… pain in the donkey?"

Denise broke into giggles. "It's 'ass,' Clara, not 'donkey.' "

"Wesley told me that 'ass' is not a nice word."

"It's not, but 'donkey' sort of loses the meaning of the insult. Because one kind of an ass is a donkey but the other kind of ass is the one that has a pain in it."

"I don't know if she has been making a fool of herself right now, exactly" Minnie said quietly. "We just got here. But she has said such awful things, over and over again, about so many good people, that she should be ashamed of herself. Not just about you and Mr. Jenkins. About Chip, Gerry, Gerry's dad. Everyone."

"Why would it matter to Chip or Gerry what she says? Neither one of them cares what Grantville thinks, any more."

"Clara!" Jenny Maddox said.

"Well, it's true. Neither of them lives here; both have left this town behind. They are not likely to come back. They are both being educated, being qualificated-qualified-for responsible professional careers that will take them to far more important places than this. For them, now, this is only a small city in which they were born, far off the main trade routes. They have relatives here, but it will not be their home. Why should they care what a bitter woman says about them?"

" Klug, diejenige," the voice that had admired Jenny said into the silence.

"As for her…" Clara gestured at Veda Mae. "Do what the Mennonites do. Shun her. Do not acknowledge that she is present. Soon enough, if you do that, she will go away."

"Clara," Vera Hudson asked. "Clara, don't you mind?"

"Thirteen years," Clara said, looking around the cafe. "Thirteen years in my first marriage I was barren. I stormed heaven, I beat upon its gates with my fists. I prayed for a child as hard as Hannah prayed for Samuel. We consulted physicians, but still my husband died leaving no son to follow him. How can this old fool make me mind that in my marriage to Wesley I am blessed to be fertile right away. She cannot make me other than the luckiest and happiest woman in this town. She cannot make me other than the luckiest and happiest woman in the whole, entire, world. I will not let her make me other than that. I say only that she is being-has been-very, very, rude, from start to finish."

"That's one way to put it, I guess," Maxine Pilcher, who was still standing by the back booth waiting for Jenny to slide back in, said to Anita.

Clara grinned at her. "Don't you think that I do not know that your husband Keith has been betting when I have this baby. Like a lot of other husbands of you women here. It would be easier to make a list of who of them have not been betting when I have this baby. I will have it when God wills, like every baby is born. I am bound to have it some time, so I wish every bettor at the Thuringen Gardens a winning wager, but I dare you all. Make your husbands, whoever gets the winnings, donate them to the Red Cross once I have delivered and they know the date. That is only fair. The men have given Wesley much 'razzing' because he made me pregnant so fast and since his mother is the president of the Red Cross now, it is right that it should benefit from his suffering. So. And now I want my sassafras tea, please, Cora."

She plopped herself down into a chair between Inez and Ronnie, telling Denise and Minnie that they were both so skinny that they could share the fourth one.

"Well," Marietta Fielder said, raising an eyebrow. "What do you make of that?"

Jenny Maddox grinned at her best friend. "Clara thinks she is the direct beneficiary of a divine miracle and Wes Jenkins is God?"

Marietta managed to catch her cup before it broke, but not before she had splashed a considerable portion of the coffee onto the front of her sensible gray jacket. She was, after all, Wes' first cousin on the Newton side of the family. Before the Ring of Fire, Grantville had been a rather small town.

"What's interesting," Anita Barnes said, "is what she didn't say."

"Didn't?" Jenny asked.

"She didn't even pay any attention to the controversy over the-is 'legality' what they call it?-of whatever they did in Fulda. She blew it off. A marriage; then a baby right away. Whee."

" 'Validity,' " Marietta said. That's the word they're using. 'Validity.' "

"Clara obviously doesn't have any questions," Anita said. "As far as she's concerned, it was legal. Valid. Whatever. At most, she's annoyed because Her Nastiness Veda Mae has been harassing Wes."

"Well, about the marriage," Jenny said, "keeping the wedding here secret was really Mary Ellen's idea. She persuaded Simon and Wes. Clara was standing there in the parsonage parlor that afternoon saying, 'I still think we should have had a party.' Looking back, maybe they should have. It would have cut the gossip off right then. And she absolutely did insist on inviting Wes' mother and Chad and Debbie. Put her foot down. Sort of hard. Practically a stomp."

"Wes sure hasn't reacted so calmly," Maxine said.

Marietta shook her head. "Wes has a temper-always has had, as long as I can remember. According to Debbie, he got mad because he thought the 250 Club types were trying to insult Clara's virtue. Which they were, of course. Debbie says that he's awfully protective about Clara."

"Personally," Anita said, "I think she can take care of herself."

"Agreed," Maxine interrupted, "I hope that Wes and Clara don't ever both get mad at the same time. Whether at each other or at somebody else."

Jenny giggled. "As for the 'razzing,' though, I sort of doubt that even Wes really minds. Do you all know any man who would really get upset about being teased about being so virile that he got his wife pregnant the first time he gave her a poke? If he's going to get razzed at all, that has to be a pretty tolerable reason, the way guys think."

Anita frowned. "Arnold Bellamy would get upset."

"Arnold," Maxine said, "is an exceptional case. A person has to wonder how he and Natalie ever produced three kids."

"But if Clara thinks the thing they did in Fulda was enough, however they did it, I wonder what she thinks the marriage license and the ceremony that Simon did were all about?" Anita picked up her purse and started to dig through it for change for a tip.

"What I wonder is who managed to get into my files and dig out that license. One of these days, I'll find out and then…" Jenny's tone was threatening.

Maxine lined up her knife and fork on her plate. When Keith got back from that trip to the Upper Palatinate, he had called Doc Adams, who ordered her to come in, gave her a checkup, and told her that she had to eat more. Then Keith told Cora, who wouldn't let her get away with ordering "just coffee" any more. "Decorations on the Christmas tree? Icing on the cake?"

"Huh?" Anita blinked.

"That's what she probably thinks that the wedding Simon did for them was. That would go with wanting to have a party."

"Let's ask Ronnie. She's more likely than anyone here to know how the down-timers look at these things." Anita didn't seem inclined to give up.

"No," Maxine said. "I will not ask Veronica Dreeson. No matter how curious I am."

"Bite off your nose, will you?" Marietta finished her coffee. "I've got to get back to work."