The worst thing about working for Mechanical Support was that the facilities were scattered out all over Grantville, even now, two and a half years after the Ring of Fire. They'd never been able to take the time to centralize them; they didn't really have any central place to put them if they had the time, and definitely not the extra resources to re-pour the pits and such. So there were men here and men there—never enough in one place for the really heavy jobs, so you had to stop and call one of the other sections in to help. Three service stations. The shops at the car dealerships. The repair and body shop that had belonged to Bernie and Cy Fodor.
Billy Nelson whistled. "Here a lift, there a lift, everywhere a lift, lift."
No, not everywhere. If there had been lifts everywhere, the crew's life would have been a lot simpler.
Billy looked up at the circular metal saw with exasperation. These days, when a heavy truck had body damage beyond what you could fix, there wasn't much to cannibalize. They took thin sheets of steel rolled down by Saalfeld, cut pieces, bolted them together, dropped the result down over the motor and frame, and bolted it on. The results weren't sleek. They looked like rolling boxes. But they still rolled and they still transported material that the military needed. At least, it was easier to fix windows and windshields onto the straight steel pieces—just fit in a straight piece of glass cut to fit. Forget about wipers; forget about windows that went up and down. Forget about safety glass, for that matter. Just keep the truck rolling and box in the cab so the driver won't freeze in winter. Even if you were only moving at twenty-five miles per hour, the wind chill generated by a truck was a lot worse than what the driver of a horse and wagon was exposed to. So build a new body for that truck parked next to the shop.
If the metal saw didn't quit on you, that is. The metal saw had just quit. He could hear a hum in the engine, over all the rest of the noise in the shop, but the blade wasn't turning.
"Cut the power to the saw, but leave it on to the winch, so we can bring it down and take a look to see what is wrong." His regular partner, Foster Caldwell, flipped the switches, brought the saw down, then came over to help, flipping the power to the saw back on before he came.
"The motor, actually, sounds okay." Foster and Billy looked at it. The power just wasn't turning the saw. "Problem has to be in the connection."
They knew the routine. This wasn't the first time it had happened. Turn off the power to the saw. Unscrew the bolts, take off the blade, lay it aside. Turn the power to the saw on again. Work back, step by step, through the wiring, power on, power off, until they found out where the problem was. A lot of this wiring was nearly burned out, they way they'd been overloading it. They found bad spots in the insulation all the time.
"Unscrew the bolts" was easier said than done. Somebody had screwed them on with a power driver the last time. And somebody, not necessarily the same somebody, taken the head that fit these nuts to use at one of the other shops, probably, because it sure wasn't in the tray here. Muscle power time. Billy stuck his head out of the bay and yelled, "Merton." Merton Smith was their muscle. He'd worked for the mobile home moving company before the Ring of Fire. He'd been wrestling double-wides ever since he dropped out of high school.
It took all three of them, and a jerry-rigged extension to the wrench, to get the fourth bolt loose. Still, that took less time than sending someone to visit every other Mech Support shop location looking for the right head. Which somebody might have put in his pocket and taken along on a run to Jena, for all they knew.
"What are the odds that Bobby took the head?" Foster asked.
"No bets," Merton answered.
The others saw to it that Bobby Jones made most of the delivery runs. He'd complained about it, once, that the others were shirking the unloading and reloading at the other end. Foster had said, "Well, it's this way. If I go out, then Billy and Merton have to put up with you. If Merton goes out, then Billy and me have to put up with you. If Billy goes out, then Merton and me have to put up with you. If you go out, then none of us have to put up with you."
It took Bobby three days to work though the logic of that one, figure out that he'd been insulted, and decide to be offended. But Bobby was that kind of guy. If one of the other shops called and asked for that size head, he'd just put it in his pocket, intending to drop it off, not bothering to check it out, and forgetting to take it to the guy who wanted it. It would stay in his pocket until someone asked for it, or until he found it when he washed his overalls and brought it back.
It got dark early in January in Thuringia. The only bulb that they had in the overhead fixture wasn't giving them enough light to see by. Merton turned it off and strung a light from an extension cord, throwing the cord over a line just above the saw, so they could see what they were doing better. Nearly four hours they had lost over the damned wiring for the saw. None of them were electricians, but it would have taken even longer to get an electrician to come look at it than to do it themselves. At least they had the manual for the thing. Finally, the rotor was turning as it should. Just get the blade back on and they could start fresh in the morning.
All three of them were focused on it. Merton and Foster were holding the blade in place. Well, Foster was bracing it and Merton was holding it in place, one foot on the ground, the other leg bent with his foot on a rail, leaning forward to give himself a bit more leverage. Billy was standing next to Merton, starting to set the bolts. One on; five to go. Out of one ear, Billy heard the delivery truck. Good thing Bobby was back; the headlights were on the fritz and had been for two weeks. One more thing to fix. It seemed like they never had time to fix their own stuff; there were always more urgent projects.
Bobby came in, said, "Hey, what are you doing with the lights off?" Foster started to turn. Bobby hadn't pulled off his leather, fur-lined driving gloves with the outside seams yet. As he reached to flip the light switch, the tip of his next finger flipped another switch. The wrong switch. The single bolt sheared. The huge saw blade jerked and flew off the rotor, spinning to an angle.
"Billy died instantly." Jeff Adams was glad to be able to tell Iona that. He didn't think that he needed to tell her that Billy had been cut in half. He'd have a word with the mortuary, too. If they arranged the suit right and only opened the top half of the casket, Iona could have a viewing for Billy, the way she wanted it.
It had been harder to tell Mary Ruth Caldwell. They had saved Foster. He had been hit at the first thoracic vertebra. He would have diaphramatic control of his breathing but little or no rib breathing; shoulder movement and some arm and hand movement. Foster would be an incomplete quadraplegic. She would have to be prepared to keep him in assisted living for the rest of his life. The only ameliorating circumstance was that, at least, Mary Ruth could afford it. She'd been office manager for her father Thurman Jennings at Town and Country Properties before the Ring of Fire—had turned herself into an agent, since it. The way the real estate market was in Grantville, these days, Mary Ruth would be doing fine. For a woman with a quadraplegic husband, that is. Financially, she would be doing fine, even paying the cost of care for Foster.
Billy's body had slowed the blade, some, deflecting the angle. They had to amputate both of Merton's legs above the knees. The blade had sliced the bent one right through the kneecap, all the way off; the other three inches above the knee, through the bone. James Nichols and his team had to complete the amputation and take a few more inches of bone so they could fashion a muscle and skin stump. Merton had been too unstable for anything else. Reattaching legs was beyond their capabilities, these days. Controlling infection was pretty much within them. The EMTs had gotten Farrell and Merton to the hospital in ten minutes after Bobby Jones had come running out of the shop into the middle of the highway, yelling.
Jeff Adams sighed. Farrell and Mary Alta, Merton's parents, were sitting with him, now. If Farrell could just manage to control his impatience, Merton could be salvaged. Not just for being alive, but for having a life worth living, double amputee or not. Farrell had a M.Ed. and a B.S. in industrial arts; he'd been terribly embarrassed when Merton dropped out of school, since he was always lecturing kids on the importance of finishing and getting a start on a decent career. If Farrell would just control himself, after a few months they could get Merton out of rehab and into a GED and tech school program. If Farrell didn't yell at him too often in the meantime.
That would be another day's trouble. Jeff looked back at Iona.
The pipes wailed through Grantville's streets. "Abide With Me." Iona had chosen it. It was Billy's favorite hymn. The up-timers, almost all of them, had associated bagpipes with Scotland. While there were Scots in Grantville, now, the Germans also had a remarkable variety of bagpipes or instruments that it was hard to tell from bagpipes. Both the way they looked and the way they sounded.
This procession had a fairly long way to go, all the way from the funeral home downtown to the new cemetery behind St. Martin's in the Fields, the Lutheran church just outside the Ring of Fire, off the main road leading to Rudolstadt.
Pipes followed by a wagon and a procession of mourners had become part of Grantville's regular sounds and sights.
Archie Clinter hadn't been willing to accept Iona's resignation. First he appealed to her sense of responsibility. "Where are we going to find a replacement?" When that didn't work, he went into paternalistic/counseling mode. "You know, Iona, everyone recommends that recent widows shouldn't make impulsive decisions. You should continue where you are for at least a year after Billy's death, before making any decision so drastic as resigning your job and moving to a town where you will be the only American. I just don't feel right about letting you do this."
Iona looked at him, cocked her head a little to the side, and remarked, "You know, slavery really has gone out of fashion, these days. You can't refuse to accept it."
Archie looked shocked. He meant it all for her own good, of course. She was right, though. Legally, he couldn't refuse to accept her resignation. So he bucked it up the chain to the superintendent of schools.
Which meant that Iona was sitting in Ned Paxton's office, going over it all again. Men! She didn't dislike men, as a group. She did dislike their general tendency to think that they knew what was best for you.
"Ned, Quedlinburg asked me to do this before Billy— well, before he died. I didn't turn them down because I didn't want the challenge. I turned them down because I didn't want to leave Billy, and there wasn't any job for him up there. Now— I'm not going to be any farther away from Billy in Quedlinburg than I am in Grantville. Graves don't count."
Ned looked at her. "The one thing that Germany doesn't have a shortage of is musicians. Surely they can find a down-timer to teach music at the new women's college they're starting up north."
Iona looked at him with exasperation. Men! she thought again.
"Well, of course they could. Mary Simpson and the abbess aren't looking for just a music teacher to be a music teacher. They're looking for an American woman to be a music teacher. Because it's a college for young women. Because it's a college for the young, mostly down-timer, women who are going to marry some of the most influential men of the next generation of the USE."
She reached across the desk, picked up his substantial bronze letter-opener, and pointed it at him. He automatically scooted his swivel chair back a few inches, but she brought the point down onto his blotter rather than toward his face.
"A lot more influential than those men that the girls we're turning out from the high school here in Grantville will be marrying, Ned. Than most of them, anyway. The positions in that abbey, the way it was set up before the Ring of Fire, the slots for the canonesses—that's what they're called, not nuns—was for daughters of the high nobility. The most upper of the upper crust. That part isn't going to change right away. It's bound to, eventually, but not right away. From the start, though, they're throwing open the college section that's starting up next fall to the daughters of anyone who can pay the tuition. And stretching that down into the school they already run, which is a sort of quasi-secondary school for daughters of the high nobility, the little sisters and nieces and cousins of the canonesses. The next generation of canonesses, some of them. Do you really think that half the rich merchants and upper bureaucrats in the USE aren't going to want to send their little girls to a school where they can be taught by ladies from the high nobility and mix with their daughters? That the lower nobility, if they can afford it, won't want their daughters in a place where they can associate with girls from the high nobility, even if they have to swallow associating with commoners and scholarship students as part of the deal?"
The point of the letter opener came down on the blotter again. "So do you want those girls educated without any up-timer input? Or do you see what Mary Simpson is getting at? Put in some American women as teachers. Let those girls—they'll be what we think of as high school as well as college age, figure from about fourteen to twenty or twenty-one—see what we're really all about. Every girl in Grantville has contact with dozens of up-timer women. Just because they live here. For the time being, in Quedlinburg, it's going to be me or nobody."
The point of the letter opener came down again.
"I don't have all that many ties in Grantville, Ned. No parents, no children or grandchildren. I'm from Pennsylvania, you know that. Billy was from Fairmont. We just lived here because I had the job and didn't like to drive that far every day on those curving roads in winter. It didn't matter to Billy where we lived. We bought the house; it was just a place for him to park his rig when he was off the road. No sentimental ties. No old family traditions. Just a house that we bought through a real estate agent. The kids didn't even grow up in it, really; I took the job at Fluharty after Kyra started high school. I'm free to go."
Ned cleared his throat. "Do me a favor, Iona. Don't sell your house. Rent it out. Let Mary Ruth Caldwell handle it. She'll be needing the money. Don't burn your boats. Take a leave of absence. One year, two years, I'll leave that up to you."
Men!
Iona had quite a bit of luggage. Four suitcases and a trunk. No matter that she had gone along with Ned Paxton about renting out her house, she knew in her heart that she wasn't coming back to Grantville except maybe for an occasional visit. The college would provide her with a room, and she was taking what she would want to have in that room. Music. Photos. Clothes. Her favorite foam rubber pillow that supported her neck just right when she slept. Two old-fashioned rubber hot water bottles. She didn't mind saying goodbye to the rest. Archie Clinter thought that she should have rented a storage place, but she didn't want to bother. She was renting the house out furnished.
She'd hired a wagon to take her down to the train. As far as Halle by train; by boat on the Elbe to Magdeburg. Then over to Quedlinburg. Thank goodness she wouldn't be slogging overland in a wagon, the way it had been raining the last week.
The driver was headed the wrong way. She had said her goodbyes at the school the day the spring semester ended. She leaned forward, "We're supposed to be going to the depot."
He turned his head. "I haff my orders."
She looked up at the steps of the turreted old red brick building. A couple of hundred people, at least. She blinked. Every one of them under twenty-five; every one had been in middle school music classes at some time in the past ten years. Down at the bottom of the steps, Vicki Saluzzo.
Now, that had been a lively fight, as the school system had bearded the NUS army, demanding that it not tie up in that original, romantic, "for the duration" enlistment statement people who were needed a lot worse to do other things in Grantville's civilian world. They'd pried out the Saluzzo twins, Jim and Vicki, to teach physics and music; that had been followed by a "reevaluation" and a fairly large release of up-timers who had already been soldiers for two or three years into the reserves. Which was turning out to be very beneficial to Grantville's economy.
Vicki raised her baton.
Smile, the while I bid you sad adieu.
When the clouds roll back, I'll come to you.
The young voices went on. "'Til we meet again."
Iona blinked once more, smiled, and waved at them. The driver turned the wagon and took her down to the depot, with no more fuss.
As soon as she found her seat, she opened her notebook. There was a whole curriculum to plan between now and September. She thought she had better have several different options to present to her new colleagues. It was never a good idea to start a new job by giving the impression that you were overbearing.
As the modified pickup truck cab section that was pulling the little train moved out of the built-up part of the Ring of Fire, paralleling the highway to Rudolstadt, it started to gain speed. Iona looked out the window as it passed St. Martin's in the fields.
Goodbye, Billy. 'Til We Meet Again.