The Dreeson Incident(34)
"You're right about that. It's nothing but spoiling. If the child goes to the bad, it will be Lenore's fault. Just like Alden Junior's wife Kim. I could tell you . . ." Veda Mae stopped, annoyed, because Bryant was interrupting her again.
"She probably said 'yes' because she was far too proper to have a baby in anything but marriage. If not too proper to have sex outside it beforehand. Boy, but that grated on me. I'd been around a bit, myself, had a few girlfriends, but it's different for a man."
"Ummn." Veda Mae frowned. "I've sort of always thought that what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander."
Bryant ignored her. "And after we got married, I thought, she would obey me, at least. We left that in the ceremony. I thought that after she agreed to be married by Brother Green, she'd change over to Baptist, but she won't. Just because, she says, I hardly ever go myself, so why should she change?"
"Well," Veda Mae said, "I'm Methodist myself, so I don't think that you should really complain about that. After all, Methodist is really the right church. The others just sort of try. And it's teetotal too, like the Baptists, or it should be. Though I have my doubts about the Reverends Jones. Maybe you could change."
Bryant glared at her.
"Get that expression off your face, Bryant Holloway," Veda Mae said. "I'm your cousin and old enough to be your grandmother, so I can say what I please. Especially when it's the truth. There's no reason for her to change churches."
"Plus, now she wants to go back to work. She has more education than I do and wants to show it off, I suppose."
"Maybe that's why she doesn't want to sleep with you," Veda Mae suggested. "Having another baby would interfere. But I already told you what I think of women who have more schooling than their husbands. I know what it leads to. I went through it myself."
"So I'm stuck, I guess. She'll never do anything to give me a reason to divorce her, now that we're married. Well, probably not. She acts as prim and prissy as old Wes Jenkins himself, but . . . You know. She wouldn't ever have been to my taste, up-time. I would never even have asked her out. The only reason I did was that she was the only American woman that I could date in Rudolstadt that fall."
Veda Mae nodded. "There's this guy here in Grantville," she said. "He's a foreigner, but not a Kraut. He's working for Gary. His name is Jacques-Pierre Dumais, and he's pretty nice. A good listener, as Oprah would have said. Maybe it would help if you could talk some of these things out with him."
She felt pretty pleased with herself, for a change. Jacques-Pierre was always so grateful for introductions. He was anxious to get to know more Americans, he said, to improve himself and get to understand how they did things. That was a really proper attitude for an immigrant to take.
Humble.
PART THREE
October 1634
Innumerable force of spirits armed
Chapter 13
Fulda
"There's not a place to stay anywhere in Fulda." Simon Jones' voice was very glum. "One of those 'no room at the inn' situations. We should have thought ahead. It's been in all the papers, after all. Henry Dreeson's little motorcade arrived early this afternoon. All the bright lights and would-be bright lights of Buchenland County have crammed themselves into town."
"Aw, shit." Okay, that might not be elegant. But it was exactly how Ron Stone felt. They'd been riding up and down hills all day. "I'm pooped. What next? Any place to camp?"
"There's not any place to hang by your fingernails, the way it looks. We'd better plan on going to the next village and hope someone has a spot. I sort of feel like we should try to say hello to Henry, but I don't think we could get anywhere near him."
"That probably means that his tour is a big success. I hope it is. You can say hello to him when he gets back to Grantville. To Ronnie and him both. Has anybody heard anything about the abbot yet?"
"Not a clue. Not one single everlovin' clue."
"Oh, well. Too bad we don't have an ATV. We'd be getting home a lot sooner than we will riding these poor beaten-down rental horses."
Gerry Stone just kept plodding along, not paying any real attention to the conversation. Artemisia Gentileschi and her daughter followed him, their heads drooping.
Suddenly, Ron pulled on the reins. His horse stopped, so everyone behind him stopped, too. They didn't have much choice. "Just a minute."
The Reverend Jones frowned slightly. He knew what happened when that gleam appeared in Ron's eye. It wasn't a new phenomenon. When Ron was in the lower grades, Jones had heard all about it from his brother David, who was principal of the elementary school. When Ron was in middle school . . . When Ron was in high school . . . And then, these last months in Venice and Rome, he'd seen the results for himself. He opened his mouth. "Whatever you're thinking . . ."