1635:The Dreeson Incident

Chapter 43

Grantville

Lenore unlocked the door and pushed the stroller through, locking it again behind her.

There was a sound coming from the rec room. Surely she hadn't left the radio on that morning? Leaving Weshelle in the hallway, she slipped out of her boots and walked to the back of the house.

"Bryant?"

He was sitting on the sofa.

"It's me, all right."

"I hadn't expected you."

"Surprise, surprise."

"I'll go get Weshelle out of her stroller. I left her by the door when I heard noise back here."

He followed her. She ignored him as she pulled off the covers and unbuckled the complex of straps.

"Let me put her in the playpen. Then I'll start some supper." Lenore started for the kitchen.

"Since when is the playpen in the kitchen?"

"We keep each other company. I'm in the kitchen quite a bit."

Lenore suddenly remembered that she had left a large batch of papers from work spread out on the table. She'd been working on them evenings, since the report wasn't due until next week. If Bryant saw them…

"You can go back and finish catching the news."

"If you don't want me in the kitchen, then maybe that's where I'd better be. Trying to hide something. Maybe a boyfriend after the husband, like you had one before the husband?"

She looked back. "Not likely."

"If you're trying to hide the fact that you went back to work as soon as I left time, give it up. Veda Mae told me. Enjoyed herself, in fact. Like she's been saying, you couldn't wait to show off all that fancy education instead of staying home like a decent mother."

"Weshelle is perfectly fine with Chandra."

She started clearing the papers off the table in the breakfast nook, Weshelle still on one arm. Bryant picked up the transcriptions she had already completed and started tearing them to pieces.

"Stop that!" She grabbed for them.

He pushed her away.

She caught herself on the refrigerator, then backed out of the kitchen. He was still tearing up the papers. Once in the hall, she reached for the phone.

"Wesley is not here," Clara said. "He had to work late. There is a problem?"

"Clara," Lenore said. "I need Dad. I need help now. Bryant is here and he found out I went back to work. Clara, I'm afraid."

"I will come," she said. "I can get there more quickly than I can find him."

"Damn you for a Kraut bitch." Bryant's tone was threatening.

"I have told you nothing but the truth," Clara said stubbornly. "For what you have done, for what you have threatened, she should pick up Weshelle and come away with me now. Right now. This moment."

"She's my wife and it is no business of yours to interfere."

"Why is it not my business? She is the daughter of my husband."

Lenore stood a little helplessly. Clara had read Bryant the riot act. Now, he was starting to focus his generalized anger against Grantville's immigrants against her.

"She is my husband's daughter. She is family. I will call the police if you harm her."

Bryant clenched a fist.

Lenore shrank back. If Bryant hurt Clara, Dad would… Dad would be perfectly capable of killing anyone who hurt Clara. Dad had a temper and when it came to Clara he was… well, more that way than ever. Protective.

The doorbell rang. She ran so fast that her stocking feet slipped a little on the waxed linoleum in the hall. She saw her boots sitting there and slipped them back on.

Brother Al Green from the Baptist church. Caroline Jones' husband, Trent Dorrman. Standing there, clutching a supply of helpful pamphlets, back once more in another effort to do counseling with Bryant. They had been here before, around New Year's. She didn't have any hopes that their attempts would do any good, but she had never been so happy to see anyone in her life.

"Come in," she said. "Please, please, please, please, please."

The situation had been defused, if that was the word for it. Brother Green was walking Clara back home. Trent had stayed to supper. Nothing but scrambled eggs. Fried apples. She hadn't had time to do anything more.

She left them at the table while she took Weshelle into the nursery to get her ready for bed. When she came back, Trent was just going.

She looked at him, thanked him, and asked how Caroline was. Caroline was fine, he said.

Once the door closed, she looked back at Bryant.

It had been the wrong thing to say. Something else to set him off.

"Caroline," he said. "Prim, prissy Caroline. Meddling Caroline. Caroline who sicced Dorrman onto me in the first place."

"I'm sure that she didn't have anything to do with it. She's a Methodist like me, not a Baptist."

"Who else would have? Miss Methodist who refused to obey my wishes and join the Baptist church? Tell me that."

"Maybe Brother Green thought of it by himself. I'll clear off and do the dishes."

He sat there at the table, watching her.

"I guess I'll go on, now. I'll sleep on the cot in Weshelle's room."

"No." He grasped her arm. "Damned if you will."

"Bryant, I don't want this."

"I don't give a fuck what you want."

"I guess I knew that already."

"If you think I'm going to let you near that phone again and sit through a rerun, think again."

"I do not want this."

"You gave up the right to 'don't want' the day you said 'I do.' "

She got up the next morning and got Weshelle ready to take to Chandra's. Got herself ready to go to work.

Chandra came to the door and looked at her. "I still have some cover stick," she said, brushing the small birth mark on her cheek. "If you want to use it. Silly to try to save it for special occasions. I don't go to that many parties. It's probably a little dried up already."

Lenore looked at herself in the hall mirror. "Maybe I'd better."

"You'd better," Chandra said. "You don't want to accidentally run into Dad looking like that. Or have someone tell him."

Bryant stayed in town a couple of weeks this time. He wasn't home much, though. He spent a lot of his time at the fire department, of course. That was why he had come back. For lunches, he was at the Willard, talking to Veda Mae Haggerty and that Dumais man.

As far as Lenore was concerned, that was fine. He was welcome to be anywhere as long as he wasn't home.

She really wished that he would never come home again. She wasn't even unhappy that he spent his evenings at the 250 Club.

He came home at night, though. But she had the cover stick.

He was not going to make her quit work.

She was glad when he went back to Naumburg, even though it would only be for ten days. He would be back early in March.

And she managed to avoid her father.

She managed to avoid Lola, too. Lola did not have the kind of temperament to go along with pretending that nothing was wrong. She'd have rung the curtain down, Bryant's sister or not.

"We ought to have done something right away," Donella Hardy said. She looked around at the small group of women who worked with Lenore. "We all suspected that something was wrong. Knew it, really. We ought to have told someone the first time. It's not as if we couldn't tell. Even with the makeup."

"Especially with the makeup," Catrina said. "Lenore doesn't usually bother to wear any at all. Maybe if we had done something then, it wouldn't have come to this."

"So are we all agreed to be ashamed of ourselves?" Andrea Constantinault had a tendency to take charge of things.

"Yeah," Faye said. "But I think we ought to do something more than that. Let's talk to Judge Riddle and Preston Richards. Maurice Tito. There ought to be something we can do. We've got a couple of weeks to get something in place before Bryant comes back again."

"Preferably something that keeps Wes Jenkins out of it," Linda Beth Rush added. "Wes has a temper. He always has had. Personally, I think we ought to call Lola."

"Lola?" Andrea had been one of the guests at Tom and Rita Simpson's wedding, not someone native to Grantville. Even nearly four years after the Ring of Fire, she didn't always come up with the connections right away.

"Bryant's sister. She works for Jim McNally, the optician."

"Won't she be more likely to try to shield him?"

Linda Beth shook her head. "There were problems with Bryant, even when he was a kid. Torturing kittens kinds of problems. He seemed to be normal enough when he grew up, as far as I know. But he had problems with a couple of his girlfriends over in Fairmont. Lola's a realist. She'll want Weshelle out of there."

Pastor Kastenmayer looked out over the gathering. It had ended up being a couple of dozen people, even though nearly half of them were his up-time catechumens and their girlfriends. A full half of them, counting sisters of the girlfriends. Walpurga Hercherin had arranged it.

Walpurga was perfectly capable of arranging such a thing. She would be capable of managing a household. A large household, with servants. That, of course, was what she had been expected to do, as the daughter of a village councilman, a Vollbauer. What she had been prepared to do, before the destruction of Quittelsdorf. She was standing behind Hedwig Altschulerin, a determined expression on her face.

The opinion she had expressed to the pastor had been utterly pragmatic. "What would you have had her do? An abandoned fiancee, working as a servant in Meiningen, considered fair game by half the men in the town, probably. Jarvis offered her a safe place. He was prepared to bring her here and marry her where it's legal. He's willing to work a job and support her and the baby as best he can. He is prepared to fight to protect her. He has shown that. He's willing to do things for her harder than that, such as going to talk to you. She figures she's well off. She is well off. Even with his father and brother making trouble for them, she's a lot better off than if she had stayed south of the Thueringerwald. Even if some day the law declares her a concubine rather than a wife, she is still better off."

He had told her that he would contact the chief of police and request riot protection for the occasion of the baptism.

She had looked at him then.

"Mitch and his friends have all been in the army, too. If there's more trouble, they can handle it."

He had repeated that he would call upon the police force.

"If the police handle it, that's well and good. If they don't.. ."

Pastor Kastenmayer had no doubt whatsoever that many of the witnesses to this baptism had come armed.

He had no doubt because Derek Blount had told Ursel Krausin who had told him.

Ursel said that the people at the 250 Club also had no doubt that many of the witnesses to this baptism had come armed. She said that, "the guys define this as a 'deterrent.' "

Thus far, the deterrent seemed to have worked. There were a few men gathered outside the laundry, shouting and making catcalls, but no sign of an attack. Possibly because several policemen were there also, watching them. The chief of police had proved to be most cooperative.

Otherwise, a contingent of Beasleys. The grandfather. Two cousins of the child's father. Everett and, um, Buster. Both with their wives. Everett's wife looked somewhat apprehensive. Buster's wife was very small for an up-timer, but did not look apprehensive at all. Denise, the daughter of this Buster. He had seen her before, at the Christmas Eve play. Accompanied by Gerry Stone, the young candidate for the ministry? She had been with him on Christmas Eve, also. What could the connection between them be? He would have to ask Jonas.

Another girl, the foundling child, Wilhelmina Hugelmair. Minnie, as they called her. Her adoptive father, Benny Pierce. The adoptive father's niece, who cared for the old man.

He would have to remember-he had a request on his desk to write to Dieskau and obtain all the information available concerning the circumstances under which she had been found abandoned. She told him that the "birthday" she had given the school, the only one she had, was neither her date of birth nor her date of baptism. It was the date on which she had been found.

She could not provide even the date of her baptism. The pastor at Dieskau, realizing that she was already several months old, had not been willing to risk the possibility of rebaptism, even conditional, since she would almost certainly have been baptized somewhere else, shortly after birth. Anabaptism was a grave sin, Pastor Kastenmayer acknowledged.

There would certainly be an entry about it all in the church books there, and there should be one in the city council records as well when she was bound out the first time.

Gerry Stone's brother Ron, with a young woman whom the pastor did not recognize. Otherwise, Jonas Justinus Muselius, Jonas' fiancee Ronella Koch, his own wife Salome and his daughter Maria Blandina.

He would not be surprised if the Beasley contingent was also armed. He had not been informed in regard to this, but he would not be surprised.

He began the liturgy. The father wished to name the child Viana, in honor of his mother. Lutheranism had no requirement for biblical names or saints' names, although they were customary. The infant would be Viana.

After the baptism, the party went to a tavern called the City Hall Cafe for food. Some of the police followed them. Two remained behind, out of sight. To "keep an eye out," the chief had said, in case anyone attempted to vandalize the laundry. This resulted in three arrests.

According to Jonas, the connection between Gerry Stone and Denise Beasley was "friend."

"Friend?" Pastor Kastenmayer cocked his head, thinking that many young men were diverted away from their academic aspirations by inappropriate… friendships.

Jonas nodded. "Gerry says that the last thing in the world that Denise needs is one more guy hitting on her. That she gets too much of that already."

Jonas paused. "Ronella confirms this. She has heard it from the other teachers, now that she is at the middle school. Denise has very few friends. Only Minnie Hugelmair, really, and she has been in Grantville for less than two years. Gerry and Denise have known one another since they were small children."

"Very well," Kastenmayer said. "He is her friend."

"He is also," Jonas said, "or had the reputation of being, before his experiences in Italy, a very pugnacious young man. The up-timers believe that this is a quality often associated with red hair."

"I have not received any complaints about his behavior from the rector of the Latin School in Rudolstadt."

Nobody ever accepted public responsibility for the series of stink bombs that forced the 250 Club to close for business the evening after the Beasley baptism. The police located no clues whatsoever. Pastor Kastenmayer heard subsequently that most Grantvillers assumed that they were retribution for the effort to vandalize the laundry.

Opinion was divided on the merits of this action. But it did not seem to be divided very much concerning the most likely culprit.

Pastor Kastenmayer tried to reconcile in his mind the juxtaposition of "Gerry Stone, devout student," and "Gerry Stone, chemical saboteur." It was not easy.