Grantville Gazette, Volume 40 (10 page)

"Not to mention, dear," Frau Miller said, "as soon as you learn how to make up-time clothing, you'll have three thousand potential customers."

"Damned straight!" Herr Miller said. "No way will I ever wear a doublet and lace collar."

"No lace collar?" Tilda said. "Then how can people tell you're prosperous?"

"My sister, you're missing the point," Louisa said.

"Why come here?" Louisa's husband Christian asked rhetorically. "Why work here? Because in Grantville, any of us down-timers can hope to be the next Hermann Glauber."

"Who's Hermann Glauber?" Tilda asked.

Christian and Herr Miller took turns telling the story. Herr Miller finished with ". . . I'll bet Vellie Rae didn't think twice before she said yes. Far as she was concerned, she was getting her shed cleaned out for free. But now, Vellie Rae and Jim are still struggling, while Hermann Glauber is rich. Because he saw the value in the 'rusty junk' in that kudzu-covered shed, when nobody else did."

The "half-bed" was narrow and uncomfortable, but that wasn't why Tilda had trouble falling asleep that night. She'd been given so much to think about.

Across the street from "Ich
♥
Meine Higgins"

Deborah, SoTF

Saturday morning, May 10, 1636

Tilda knew the store was built post-ROF, because it had a bunch of little windows facing the street, instead of one big window. Painted in letters big enough to need several windows was "WE HAVE ZIPPERS!"

Herr Miller had worn a "jacket" with a zipper in it when he'd gone out to fetch the newspaper that morning, so Tilda knew what a zipper was. It was indeed a good thing that the metal miracles were being sold in her century, Tilda decided.

Tilda crossed the street and opened the store's front door. A fist-sized bell that was mounted at the inside top of the door, rang then.

The next thing to hit Tilda's senses was the colors! She saw bolts of wool and linen cloth, in an eyeball-shock of colors. Not only was there cloth in solid colors that Tilda had never seen before, but she also saw gingham and plaid cloth made by weaving dyed threads. By a sign, "For Sonny," she saw a bolt of white linen that had blue airplanes printed on it. By another sign, "Girl Camouflage," was a bolt of linen that was tie-dyed in a bright pink that Tilda had never expected to see in cloth.

"Good morning, I'm Katharina Heller, the owner. May I help you?" a woman asked Tilda. Her calf-length skirt and her unaccented German told Tilda that Katharina was another down-timer, but her down-time-patterned blouse was made of green gingham. Oddly, the blouse's sleeves were sewn to the doublet, instead of being detachable.

Tilda replied, "Yes, I hope you can help me. I just arrived in town yesterday, along with my own sewing machine. I'm told you match people who need sewing, up with freelance seamstresses and tailors? I'm a tailor's widow."

"You got here yesterday? That's a problem. Do you know how to sew buttons and buttonholes?"

"Um . . . no. I'm not even sure what a 'buttonhole' is. The Higgins manual talks about them, but we didn't understand that part."

Katharina went behind the counter, and then brought forth the Higgins manual, an up-time woman's blouse, a scrap of cloth, and three wood disks, each with two holes drilled in them. She then walked Tilda over to the chained-down Higgins machine in the store, and explained for fifteen minutes how to sew on buttons, which was easy, and make buttonholes, which was much more tricky.

". . . never done it before, I suggest you buy a yard of cloth and some buttons, and practice making buttonholes. We have wood buttons and new-time plastic buttons, but since this is practice, buy the wood buttons. Made from wood growing inside the Ring of Fire, they're much cheaper. Up-timers prefer the 'disk' shape—what I'm using now—but mushroom-shape buttons are cheapest of all."

Tilda went to the bin marked "Scrap cloth—prices as marked," chose a half-yard of orange linen, and was in the process of paying for it (plus four wood buttons) when the store's front-door bell rang.

"Good morning," a woman's voice said in American-accented German.

"I'll be with you in a minute, Frau Up-timer," Katharina said.

"Wow, I haven't been to a place like this in centuries," the up-timer woman murmured behind Tilda's back. Then she laughed. "Literally."

Seconds later, Tilda had finished her purchase, and had turned around to leave. She gasped when she saw the newcomer for the first time. "You're Stephanie Turski!"

"Who?" Katharina asked.

"She found sixteen yards of blue-jeans cloth in her house," Tilda explained. "She was on television news last night."

"Funny you should mention that,
liebchen
," Stephanie said, walking up to the counter. She opened her purse, stuck her hand in, and came out holding a lot of dark-blue five-inch cloth squares.

"These are for decoration," Stephanie said, sliding them across the counter to flabbergasted Katharina. "Give them away or sell them, I don't care. I ask only, limit three to a customer."

"You're giving these to me?" Katharina said. "But they're denim. They're priceless!"

Stephanie shook her head. "This is scrap. I can't sell it, and I can't use it to dress my boys or myself. Why not let others enjoy it?"

"Why are you doing this?" Tilda asked. "Selling most of the denim, giving the rest away? You bought the cloth to make clothing, so why not make it?"

The up-timer woman sighed. "I bought the cloth to please my husband. Then when he was gone, looking at this brought back too many bad memories. Now, enough time has passed, but I still don't want it around."

Tilda laid her hand atop Stephanie's hand. "I understand. My own husband passed on, less than a week ago. I miss him so much."

"No, it's not like—you don't understand."

"You're right. Your husband's grave is left up-time; I can't imagine what that's like. I'm so sorry for you."

Stephanie now was staring at Tilda. "Your own husband died less than a week ago, and you're trying to comfort me? Wow."

Then Stephanie blinked, and asked, "How did you get here? To the store? I didn't notice a horse or a bicycle out front."

Tilda said, "I don't have a horse. What's a bicycle?"

Katharina said, "She got here yesterday. She is
ein Nubie
."

"So you're here only one day and you're out by yourself, running errands?" Stephanie said to Tilda. "
Liebchen
, that is no fun, and having to walk only makes it worse. Come with me, and I'll drive you wherever you need to go."

Tilda politely declined the offer, but Stephanie was insistent. So Tilda got into Stephanie's car, after Stephanie showed her how to open the door.

After Stephanie made the car roar and vibrate, but before she made it roll, she sighed and looked sideways at Tilda. "I need to be honest with you. Yes, my husband Larry was gone by the Ring of Fire. But he didn't die. He had sex with a prostitute, the town gossip tipped me off, I caught him, I kicked him out of the house, and I divorced him. This was, hm . . . two and a half years before the Ring of Fire."

"I'm so sorry," Tilda said.

"Don't be. These last few days, I've been feeling sorry for myself, for what I lost before the Ring fell. Yet you've lost far more than me, and are you moping? No."

With those words, Stephanie worked her hands and feet, and the car began to move.

"Where do you need to go now?" Stephanie asked.

"I really need to go to the Valu—um, Valu . . ."

"To Valuemart?" Stephanie said. "Gotcha."

A minute later, Tilda looked over at Stephanie and said, "You're frowning. Is something wrong?"

Stephanie said, "No, I'm just reliving an unhappy memory, sorry."

Grantville, West Virginia

November, 1997

When Larry walked into the living room, he saw the boys watching TV, and Stephanie at her easel. She was painting a cute-looking kitten with a ball of yarn, hopefully to sell at a flea market that weekend.

"How was the Dollar Store today, darlin'?" Stephanie asked.

Larry shrugged. "Like any other day: morons, assholes, and fat cows. Anything interesting in the mail?" By which he meant job offers.

Stephanie shook her head. "Nothing you'll want to read."

Larry punched the headrest of the recliner, before collapsing into it like a felled tree.

Only a few seconds later, Larry yelled, "SETH! TURN THAT GODDAMN TV DOWN! I CAN'T HEAR MYSELF THINK!"

Seth quickly remoted the volume down. "Sorry, Daddy."

Larry sat there, glaring at the TV. Five minutes later, he suddenly jumped to his feet. He dug his truck-keys out of his pocket and announced, "I'm going for a drive."

As soon as Stephanie couldn't hear Larry's truck anymore, she put down her paintbrush and went to the kitchen phone. "Hey, Elaine, can you watch my kids for a little bit? There's something I need to do . . . I ran into Cora Ennis at Grantville Cable today, and she told me something alarming. That is, if I can believe her."

****

Three days later, Stephanie gathered up her good-little-wifey sewing project and dumped everything into a newly bought footlocker. When she dragged the footlocker up the attic stairs, it made lots of noise. She was okay with that.

Valuemart used-goods store

Grantville, SoTF

Saturday morning, May 10, 1636

Tilda and Stephanie walked into the store, and Stephanie asked, "Do you want to register your name first, or shop first?"

"Um, I think I should work before I play."

"Follow me, then."

Stephanie used her long legs to stride over to a woman who was standing behind a glass counter. Tilda had to hurry in order to keep up with long-legged Stephanie.

They stood behind a down-time woman who had a pile of up-time garments on the scratched-glass counter. The up-timer woman in her forties who stood behind the counter, was checking each garment for a color-marked paper square that had a number on it, and then tapping on a little box that showed lots of numbers on its face. The up-timer woman finished her tapping and announced, "That will be three gulden, five pfennig."

"But this clothing is worn!" the German woman said. "Look here, this seam is pulling apart—"

The up-timer gave the down-timer the same "smile" that Tilda gave drunks. Then the up-timer pointed to the sign behind her that said (in four languages), "OUR PRICES ARE AS LOW AS WE CAN MAKE THEM. PLEASE DO NOT BEG OR TRY TO BARGAIN."

The up-timer woman said, "Three gulden, five pfennig, please."

The down-timer woman muttered, but paid in full.

After the would-be bargainer left, the up-timer woman and Stephanie talked in relaxed English. Since Tilda couldn't listen in, she was free to notice—

Gretchen Richter.

Or rather, a photograph of Gretchen Richter, clipped from a newspaper, and fastened somehow to the underside of the glass counter.

In the photograph, a big-breasted blonde who was wearing white-cloth shoes, jeans, and an up-time printed shirt, was speaking to an attentive crowd of poor people. Someone at Valuemart had captioned the clipping in German, using huge letters, as "ALL HER CLOTHES WERE BOUGHT HERE."

Then Stephanie switched to German: "Becky, this is Tilda Gundlach, married name Töpffer. She has her own Higgins, and she wants to be on the on-call list when you need repair work done. Tilda, this is Miss Becky Fisher, who manages Valuemart."

"Do you know how to sew buttons?" Miss Fisher asked Tilda.

"Not yet, but I'm going to learn," Tilda said. "I bought some buttons and cloth today, to practice on."

"I see." Miss Fisher clearly didn't believe Tilda.

"It's God's truth," Stephanie said. "She had everything on the counter and was paying for it when I met her."

"Other than buttons, what experience do you have at sewing up-time clothing?" Miss Fisher asked Tilda.

Tilda sighed. "None at all. I—"

"I'm sorry. I can't help you."

Stephanie said something wheedling in English. Miss Fisher replied, annoyed, and tapped the BITTE NICHT BETTELN ODER SCHACHERN part of the sign. Stephanie said something lengthy in reply; Miss Fisher blinked.

Miss Fisher said to Tilda, "You're a tailor's widow? And you've been here only since yesterday?"

"I'm a tailor's daughter too, if it matters."

"You befriended an up-timer in only one day?"

"It seems so, yes."

Miss Fisher pulled out a piece of thick, stiff paper and registered Tilda as an official Valuemart repair seamstress. Tilda needed Stephanie's help to fill out the card; Tilda didn't know her address yet, and she had no idea what Herr Miller's telephone number was.

****

With business done, and Miss Fisher looking relaxed, Stephanie tapped the glass above Gretchen Richter's photo. "Who would think that a used-clothing store in Grantville could claim a famous customer?"

Tilda said, "But she wasn't famous then. In fact, I heard she came into the store wearing rags."

Miss Fisher gave Tilda a puzzled look. "No, Gretchen came into the store wearing a white terry-cloth bathrobe. Not something a woman would want to be seen in, but the bathrobe looked brand new."

Tilda said, "'Terry cloth'? I don't know—"

Stephanie said to Tilda, "Terry cloth is what bath towels are made from." Then Stephanie said to Miss Fisher, "You were here that day? You saw Gretchen Richter in this store?"

Miss Fisher nodded. "The door opened, and Ms. Mailey walked in, acting as confident and important that day as if she was carrying a message from President Clinton. But walking shoulder-to-shoulder next to her, just as confident, just as important, was this barefoot honey-blonde in a white terry-cloth bathrobe."

"'Confident.' That sounds like Gretchen Richter," Tilda said.

Stephanie nodded. "One of the reasons she's a hero to lots of high-school kids. She'll tell a king to go to hell."

Miss Fisher continued, "So they both walked in. Ms. Mailey kept going, but the blonde in the bathrobe stopped dead. She turned around, looked toward the door, and said, 'Ihr alle, kommt.' Only then did another blond girl, a bunch of children, and an old woman walk in. They also were barefoot and wearing bathrobes. They were nervous, though the old woman hid it by acting grumpy. But the first barefoot blond woman in a bathrobe, she strode around Valuemart like she owned it."