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Billy Nelson and Melvin Sutter had declined the honor of presenting their case before the Ring of Fire,
Billy had been a truck driver and Melvin had run a filling station. Ron Koch, the only mining safety
engineer in town, clearly couldn't be spared for a week or a month he didn't have a deputy. Those
three were the ELCA's sum total of adult men. There really was only one person who could take the
time. Ron's wife.
"You'll just have to do it," Roberta Sutter had said. The victim umm, nominee for the honor had been
looking appalled. Roberta had reached into the armory that was available to her in her secondary role as
president of Grantville's genealogy club. "Your mother's father was a minister. Your mom was an
organist. You're bound to have inherited some kind of a knack for it. You'll have to do it, Carol."
* * *
When the colloquy finally finally! broke for lunch, Ed saw that Benny Pierce was once more
established on his herring keg in the market square. The girl who had been selling the sheet music
yesterday was singing. She had a high soprano, a little reedy, but with good carrying quality a mountain
kind of voice. Ed waved Cavriani to go on to the beer stand and wandered over. She was singing
"Lorena" not the soupy Civil War ballad, but Mother Maybelle's "The Sun Shines No More on
Lorena," in which a slave, taken to Kentucky when his master moved, hears many years later that his
wife has died back in Virginia. She was singing it in German:"Und man sagt mir, Lorena, Du bist tot."
The more sentimental members of the audience had tears dripping from their eyes. Ed never ceased to be
astonished at how smoothly a lot of English verse, such as, "And they tell me, Lorena, you are dead,"
went into German, and vice versa.
Benny stopped playing, leaned back, and stretched his arms. "Hi'ya, Ed. Meet Minnie Hugelmair.
Minnie, this guy here is Ed Piazza. If anything happens to me, head for Grantville and ask for him. Play
something keep 'em entertained." He handed his fiddle over to the girl.
As Minnie started a skipping rendition of "Wildwood Flower," Benny said, "Y'know, Ed, if you felt like
it, you could radio down to Grantville and ask someone to bring me up my autoharp when they're
coming. Dave and Doreen have got the key to my bedroom. It's in there. I rented out the rest of the
place. We're doing pretty good here. I think we'll stay to the end of this foofara, so there'll be time for it
to catch up with me."
"Sure, Benny, I can do that. People go back and forth every day, so it won't take long."
"Minnie should do real good on the autoharp." Benny studied his calluses. "It might be that you'll be
hearing from her ex-boss. I helped her run away."
"Might be?"
Benny grinned. "I don't guarantee he'll figure out that I'm the one who helped her. He didn't seem to be
the sharpest knife in the drawer. I expect he's more likely to think it was a young guy who wanted to put
his hand up her skirts than an old guy who wanted to put her hand on a fiddle bow. But anyway, he was
as mean as a generous skunk and she's better off working for me, even if she was indentured to him for
another three years."
"Where were you when you, ah, provided this assistance to a damsel in distress?"
"Minnie wasn't distressed. Minnie was mad. He'd promised to pay out her wages yearly and went back
on the bargain said that according to the law, he didn't have to pay until her indenture was up. She only
stole what he owed her not apfennig more. Well, I watched to make sure that's all she took. Left to
herself, she can be a lying little sneak, but what can you expect? She's the first real, live, foundling I've
ever come across. I thought that was real interesting. She's going to be the best fiddler I've ever taught.
Oh, the other? Somewhere up around Halle, on the other side of the river. I'd hitched a ride on a barge."
Somewhere up around Halle, on the other side of the riverequaled Saxony. Mentally, Ed moved the
concept ofpossibly needing to bail Benny out to a slightly higher rung on his ladder of priority items for
the Department of International Affairs.
Waving to them both, he picked up his beer and joined Cavriani, who had acquired two bratwurst as
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