Ring of Fire III(15)

But there was no help for it. They’d just have to hope they could fill the envelope with hot air and lift off the ground before anyone came out from Ingolstadt to investigate.

* * *

Slowly and carefully, as a man will when he’s worn out, Johann Heinrich Böcler lowered the handles of the wheelbarrow until the weight had settled firmly on the braces. Then, finally letting go, he staggered backward a couple of steps. He might have fallen, except that Bonnie Weaver came up quickly and steadied him.

“Easy, fella,” she said. “It’s done. Don’t hurt yourself now.”

He grimaced, thinking of the damage he’d already inflicted upon himself. By tomorrow, his muscles would be aching all over. Böcler was stronger than he looked, but his life was mostly a sedentary one.

The worst would be his hands, though. He dreaded to look at them. He hadn’t stopped once during the journey and he was quite sure he had a number of blisters.

Weaver had figured out as much herself. “Let me see your hands,” she said. He held them up, unresisting. May as well learn the worst now, he supposed. She took them in her own and gently turned them over so she could see the palms.

He heard a little indrawn hiss and saw her wince. “Let’s go over to the light,” she said. “I can’t see well enough just by the moon.”

Franchetti had the burners going by now, and the flames were very bright. Once they got near, Weaver resumed her inspection of his hands.

“Well, I won’t lie to you, Herr Böcler. I’ll see if I can find some salve and bandages. But even if I can, your hands are going to hurt like the dickens before too long.”

The term “dickens” was unknown to him, one of the many English words that slid in and out of Amideutsch according to the whim of the speaker. No German dialect was standard in this day; Amideutsch less than any. But the meaning was clear enough.

He shrugged. The gesture was minimal, since she was still holding his hands. “The problem should only be temporary.” He smiled, a bit ruefully. “I was not planning to do any more writing for a while, anyway.”

She chuckled. “Writing? I know you have a reputation for being meticulous, Herr Böcler, but I can’t imagine there’s any point in keeping records for a while. The Bavarians will already be turning everything upside down and inside out.”

He shook his head. “I was thinking of my book, not the province’s records.”

She cocked her head and raised an eyebrow quizzically. “Book?”

Böcler realized he was speaking too freely. He was usually quite reserved, especially in the presence of women, but Bonnie Weaver had a relaxed and friendly manner that invited casual intimacy. Between that and his own exhaustion, he was being less guarded that he should be.

“What book?” she repeated.

He cleared his throat. “I am...ah. Well, it is an ambition mostly. So far I have a great deal of notes, but nothing I suppose you could properly call a book.”

“That’s how most books get written, I figure. What’s it about?”

“It’s a book on history.” He’d hoped he could leave it at that, but the expression on Weaver’s face made it clear she expected a fuller explication. “A record of our own times,” he added.

“Good luck with that! I remember Ms. Mailey saying in class once that it was impossible to analyze human events dispassionately until at least two centuries have gone by—and not always, even then. Anything more recent than that, according to her, was just current events. She said that with a sniff, as if the term was synonymous with gossip. She didn’t teach current events, of course. That was taught by Dwight Thomas, who doubled as our driver’s education teacher.” She smiled. “They didn’t get along real well. Being fair to Mr. Thomas, he was a pretty good driver’s ed teacher.”

Böcler had no intention whatsoever of asking the formidable Mailey woman her opinion on his book project. Or anything else. She was the sort of person his father and grandfather would both urge him to avoid at all costs. His father was a Lutheran pastor; his grandfather, a school director. Neither was a profession noted for taking risks.

Thankfully, Weaver seemed willing to let the matter drop. Böcler really didn’t like to discuss his book with anyone. Some of that was his natural reticence. Most of it was the reluctance of an unpublished author to discuss his ambitions openly. The printing press was less than two centuries old, but it had already been well established that the phrase “unpublished author” was a ridiculous oxymoron.

Johann Heinrich Böcler had a horror of looking ridiculous. In that, as in many things, he was a faithful son and grandson.