Eric Flint: Grantville Gazette Volume XI

"It's not her family that's the problem," Fleming said. "Except, I guess, that their attitude isn't helping."

"Super-patriots, according to Cora," Ned Paxton said. "The rest of the Dunns. Jimmy's in the army and Jerry Hilton feels guilty that because he's an operator at the waste water plant, he's 'essential' and wasn't included when Mike Stearns made his call for 'every able-bodied man who can be spared.'"

Saluzzo looked across the table. "What was Cora talking about, Henry? In regard to Memorial Day?"

P.H. Johnson banged his cane on the floor. "You know what happened in Suhl back in January. Horton was there as the NUS military liaison to the Swedish garrison that wasn't quite supposed to be in the city. The Swedes had put it there before Suhl joined the NUS, with 'protracted' negotiations for its removal. What that meant was that it was still there, months after it should have been gone. What Pat, my son, said to Anse about him was that Horton was dumber than Bruno Felder, the Germany captain of the mercenaries who made up the Swedish garrison, and a hothead. But not lazy, which was actually too bad, considering the way things were there. He was constantly quarreling with the locals, especially with the Suhl militia captain, and usually over things that didn't really matter.

"Ivarsson, the Swedish lieutenant who went along, told Anse that the Swedes hadn't authorized Felder's actions. In confidence, Anse told me that Ivarsson promised that the Swedes would stand aside, whatever he and Noelle Murphy did under the extraordinary powers that Stearns had sent with her, and wouldn't think of criticizing after the fact. And they haven't.

"Horton got involved, along with that Pomeranian captain von Dantz who had been attached to Anse's group by the Swedish commander in Grantville. They wanted to make a fancy statement by attacking the gun makers who were trading with the enemy. Noelle said they had to defend the gun manufacturers because there aren't actually laws against it in this day and age. And, hell, my son Pat is a partner with one of the gun makers who were doing it. So Horton and von Dantz and Felder's mercenaries attacked. Anse and his posse and the gun makers and their Jaeger fought back. Horton got himself killed in the street fight. Yelling that he was the 'ranking American' in Suhl and saying that maybe Noelle's papers were forged."

He decided not to include something else that Anse had told him. That Anse had specifically told one of Blumroder's Jaeger that if shooting started, he wanted Horton dead. Right here and now, that would be a complicating factor. He thought the only people who knew that were Anse and the Jaeger, Noelle Murphy, Frank Jackson, Mike Stearns, and himself. And he wasn't supposed to know.

"Well, the army decided to present the incident in Suhl as a mutiny against duly constituted authority, so that's how it went into the papers here. Nobody's ever told Kamala anything different, as far as I know, and all she's done is sort of try to hunker down and keep on doing her job. That Memorial Day thing. Friday afternoon, I had my JROTC out drilling on the field by the community center when we saw some activity over by the pool. They'd filled it, but it wasn't going to open until Sunday. I thought it was just a bunch of kids and figured I'd let it go when we heard somebody yelling for help. When we got over there, seven or eight boys from the middle school had Shaun Horton – the kid's only six years old, for God's sake – stripped down to his underwear and were trying to make him 'walk the plank' off the high diving board into the pool. Jeering about mutineers and how to treat them. Too many pirate movies."

He nodded at Ned Paxton. "We handled it though the school, and have all the boys in summer school on disciplinary probation, with supervised community service. Ned, Archie Clinter, me, and the families. The boys involved are going to know better than to try any stunt like it again. I told my JROTC group to keep their mouths shut, but I guess someone has said something, since Cora knows. And once Cora knows something, the whole town does."

"The kids know," Kyle Fleming said. "The kids at the middle school, at least. Karyn Sue's boy told me about it a couple of weeks ago. He's in the same class as a couple of the offenders. Eleven- and twelve-year-olds."

Paxton sipped his coffee. "I wasn't happy with that, but as far as I know, it was the worst. There's nothing else going on that the police could do anything about. Little jabs about Johnny Lee. Mouth darts tossed toward Kamala at work at the extended care center. Toward the kids in school and out of school."

"Especially out of school, now," Leota Grover said. "And a lot of it's still in that middle school age group. Cora's all riled up because Shae's quit Girl Scouts. She's thirteen and has been in since she was a Brownie. She was going to be the Brownie leader's assistant next fall, but a couple of the mothers objected. Bad influence on the kiddies to have a traitor's daughter in a position of responsibility. You know the drill."

Victor nodded. "Evangeline Walker said something to Viola. Lolly Aossey is really upset about Shae. She's been preaching that 'Be a sister to every Girl Scout' is part of the Girl Scout Law, just as a starting point. But since both Lolly and Christie Penzey are leading the geology field camp again, there's precious little they can do over the rest of summer."

Leota grinned. "Plus, Jim and Lolly just found out that Lolly's in for a lovely few months of non-stop morning-noon-and-night sickness. Susannah Shipley dropped the diagnosis on them last week."

"She's not?" Cora was wandering by with refills. "At her age!"

"So much for keeping it under wraps for a couple more months." Victor Saluzzo's tone was very dry. "But as for Shae, I hadn't realized that there was anything more to it than a little tempest in a teapot with the Scouts. Maybe someone ought to talk to Archie Clinter again."

Fleming snorted. "The real problem is that it's not dying down. If anything, it's escalating, and has been for six months. It's gotten bad enough that Alice Clements talked to Price Ellis. Families are worrying whether Johnny Lee's wife should be kept on as head nurse at Prichard's. God, what the hell do they expect her to do? Poison the old ladies? Kamala's worked there at the extended care center since before the Ring of Fire. She started the same year Johnny Lee took the job at the high school. She didn't want to be driving to Fairmont, much less Morgantown, and working shifts, with kids at home. Ellis gives her a pretty regular, reliable, schedule. And just where do they think that he can pluck another registered nurse from? Out of thin air?"

Leota Grover laid her cards down on the table. "Isn't there anything you can do, Frank, to make people be kinder to Kamala and the kids? Just a little more… gracious… I guess?"

He shook his head. "Hell, it's not that I don't give a shit. But there's other stuff involved."

"Which you're not going to tell me about, because I'm not in the army. Got it. Don't think you're getting off scot-free, though. I'm going to send Henry to talk to you."

Frank Jackson leaned back in his chair. "The shittiest part of it is that if I'd been there, I'd have probably had more sympathy with what Horton and von Dantz were doing than with what Anse and Noelle did. The guns that Blumroder and his cohorts – our noble fellow-citizens of the New United States in its constituent city of Suhl – have sold to high bidders who aren't us will most likely be used to shoot holes in our soldiers one of these days."

Frank stood up, his hands crossed behind his back. "But in spite of that. I'm the general of this piss-poor army, and the worst thing that I can do is not back up civilian control. Not back up the rule of law. The fact is that according to the laws, Blumroder could do what he did."