Eric Flint: Grantville Gazette.Volume XIII

Several mine officials were waiting for them as the bus emptied, so Yossie had no chance to probe Thomas's feelings about Jews. Yossie had begun to recognize some of the officials. Quentin Underwood was there, along with Ken Hobbs, representing the Miner's Guild. Ron Koch's German was by far the best, so as usual, he was their spokesman.

"Men," he said, as the empty bus pulled away. "You know we defeated an army a week ago, and we took hundreds of prisoners. We released most of them. I talked to some of them, to see if they could work at the mine. As soon as the bus gets back, we will welcome them.

"You remember your first days here. Now, you are the ones with experience. To these new workers, you are going to be seen as Americans. Be warned, though. All of them were soldiers, and all of them suffered a terrible defeat a week ago. They are tough, but some of them are still stunned by what happened.

"Many of our new workers are Catholics, and most of you are Protestants. We want you to remember one thing. Our law, our official policy and the rules of the United Mine Workers of America all agree. We do not draw lines between men based on the color of a man's skin, based on his religion, or based on the land of his origin. In our eyes, all men are equal, Catholics, Protestants or Jews. I want you to remember this."

Yossie's first job every morning was to fire up the forge. The coal they were burning was difficult to light, so Yossie began by lighting a wood fire on the hearth and then he gradually built it up with coal.

Thomas had mixed feelings about the forge the Americans had built. He loved the electric blower that did away with the need for a bellows, but he disliked the coal fire and the sulfur smell it gave off. But even Thomas had to admit that once it was burning properly, the coal fire was good enough to use.

Yossie had built a perfect pile of burning coal perched over the air jet from the blower when two strangers arrived at the forge.

"Thomas Schmidt? Joseph Hanauer?" the older of the two asked, speaking with a backwoods Bavarian accent. "They said we was to work with you."

"And you are?"

"Karl, and this is Fritz."

"Are you smiths?" Thomas asked.

"Till a week ago, we were soldiers," Karl said. "I'd a pike, Fritz a musket."

Thomas glared at them. "What help can you offer here?"

"I was a farrier's apprentice before the army, I've shod plenty of horses since."

"That's something," Thomas said, grudgingly. "And what about you?" he asked turning to the other man.

"Fritz can fix anything," Karl said. "I seen him take apart a wheel lock pistol and put it right."

"Can he speak for himself?"

Fritz nodded. "I speak," he said, slowly and precisely. "And I can't fix everything. These Grantvillers have stuff I can't figure out."

"What's wrong with him?" Thomas asked.

"Bit his tongue in battle," Karl said, with a bit of a grin. "Day ago, 'twas big as a sausage."

"Let's get to work," Thomas said. "Fritz, you tend the fire, try to keep a good mound of coal burning. Add new coal as soon as we take the work off the fire to start hammering, and keep the coal mounded over the air flow so that it is burning hot and clean by the time we finish hammering. Karl, can you follow hammer signals?"

Karl looked baffled, so Thomas had to explain how he would use his small hammer to direct the forging, and then he and Yossie demonstrated. Thomas, as the master smith, held the piece they were forging on the anvil while Yossie swung the long-handled sledge hammer. Thomas used a small hammer to direct each blow of the sledge, tapping the work to show where and how to strike it.

"What are we making?" Karl asked, after he'd taken a turn at the sledge.

"Tongs," Thomas said. "They want twenty pairs for lifting iron rails." He finished mounding the coals around the iron on the hearth and then picked up a finished pair of tongs. "Joseph, help me."

Yossie took one handle while Thomas took the other and then used them to lift a yard-long chunk of rail. "The Americans say this weighs a hundred pounds. The rails they want to move are more than ten times as long."

"So much iron?" Karl asked.

"Yes, and it's not just iron, it's fine steel," Thomas said, going back to the fire and poking at the coals. "There is an iron road to the electricity mill, and they want to connect it with this mine.

"Yossie, Karl," he said, pulling the glowing iron bar from the fire. "Now we will try something. Both of you take hammers, and each of you strike in turn. The work will go much faster."

Yossie had only learned to follow Thomas's hammer signals the week before and Karl was a complete newcomer. They made many mistakes, but by noon, they'd forged another pair of tongs. When the three of them did manage to work together smoothly, it seemed that the rain of hammer blows on hot iron was almost musical.

Yossie had experienced something similar during long press runs in the print shop in Hanau. When the printer, the pressman and the ink boy got into perfect rhythm, the work became like a dance. When that happened, they seemed to get far more done without working any harder than usual.

As they ate their noon meal, Yossie noticed that Fritz was eating very slowly and with extreme care. "You must have really hurt yourself," Yossie said.

Fritz nodded. "I was in the front ranks," he said, carefully.

"Everyone round him was shot down," Karl added.

"Man beside me exploded," Fritz went on. "Bit my tongue to stop scream." He shook his head ruefully. "American guns are horrible. Don't know why I'm alive."

Thomas had been silent, but now he spoke, in a low angry voice. "Were you at Magdeburg?"

"Yes," Fritz said, looking glum.

"The American guns were worse than what you did in Magdeburg? At least the Americans had the mercy to stop shooting when you were defeated."

"I wasn't there when the city fell," Karl said. "I was out foraging."

"And did you show any mercy to the villagers whose food you took?"

A tense silence fell over the group while they finished their meals. The two Bavarians sat apart from Yossie and Thomas, and several times. it seemed that Thomas was about to say something more to them.

When Yossie finished saying the grace after meals, he wanted to take a few minutes at the forge to work on a project of his own. He had a broken knife blade in his pocket, good steel, and he wanted to re-forge it into a punch. He'd helped cut type in Hanau, and in his spare time, he was slowly working on cutting his own Hebrew alphabet, a project that had begun when he'd complained about the letter shin in the Hanau type face.

When he got to the forge, he found Thomas stirring the coals with his back to the two Bavarians, pointedly ignoring them.

"So," Thomas said, turning abruptly. The look on his face was grim. "After Magdeburg, where did you go?"

"South to Halberstadt," Karl said, "We stuck it to the Jews there, then followed Father Tilly to Eisleben."

Yossie froze.

"Thale?" Thomas said. "Did you go through Thale?"

"I don't remember the names of the places we visited. Why do you care?"

"Because I come from Thale," Thomas barked. "I lived my whole life there, my smithy was there, until your accursed army drove me out."

Yossie hardly heard a word after the words "we stuck it to the Jews." Karl had said it in passing, as if it had hardly been important. Yossie knew Jews from Halberstadt. Two families had arrived in Hanau's Jewish quarter a decade earlier, bringing stories of mob violence to rival the horrors Yossie had survived as a small child in Frankfurt.

Yossie wanted to confront the Bavarian, but for a Jew to confront a Christian was to invite disaster. Just the day before, Yossie and Rabbi Yakov had spoken at length about whether it was time to tell people that they were Jews. The Americans of Grantville were proud that they didn't ask about a man's religion. Yossie and his companions hadn't set out to live like Spanish Marranos, hiding their Jewishness in fear of the Christian world. That is what they were becoming, and they didn't like it.