From Bad to Wurst Read online

  Nana still looked the same, but given Bernice’s transformation, maybe we’d be looking at a dermatological miracle as early as tomorrow!

  We continued circulating between tables, posing for photos, until a conga line of barmaids laden with heavy trays paraded toward us. Platters of meat landed on our tables: roast chicken, roast pork, a chunk of bone-in fat as big as my head, grilled fish on a stick, six different kinds of sausages. A smorgasbord of side dishes followed: jumbo pretzels with pots of mustard, cheese noodles, potato pancakes, potato salad, sauerkraut, red cabbage, and a mysterious veggie that looked like a foam rubber golf ball. “Did we budget for all this?” I asked Etienne against the competing background racket of “zicke, zacke, zicke, zacke, oi, oi, oi.”

  “Compliments of the house,” he assured me. “With unlimited beer. Bon appétit.”

  We’d no sooner returned to our original tables to start dishing out the food than the man at the microphone announced the three words that our musicians had been waiting to hear since we entered the tent. “Little Bitte Band!”

  Not wasting a moment, Maisie, Stretch, and their trombonist, Arlin Foote, clambered off their benches and ran toward the bandstand.

  Applause. Whistles. Foot-stomping.

  I handed out empty plates to the ladies and watched as they perused the overwhelming selection of entrees.

  “I’ve never seen a sausage this white before,” Lucille commented with distaste. “It looks like a…well, I’m not going to say what it looks like because I have more dignity than that.” She gave it a poke with her finger. “What would I have to do to get an all-beef hot dog with ketchup and onions?”

  “What can I get you, Mom?” I figured she might need a little assistance as she looked a bit dazed with all the overstimulation.

  She glanced at the carousel horses suspended from the ceiling and asked rather dreamily, “Are we at the circus?”

  “It’s not a traditional circus, but it has a circus atmosphere.”

  “Oh, good.” She clasped her hands with excitement before freezing up with alarm. “But there’s no room in here. Where are the elephants going to perform?”

  “What is this thing?” asked Grace, grimacing at the chunk of fat that sat directly in front of her.

  “I suspect it’s the joint between the tibia and metatarsal of an artiodactyl’s foot,” said Tilly, her professorial explanation effecting a few seconds of stunned silence from all of us.

  “A what?” asked Alice.

  “She just said it’s some kind of dinosaur, you morons,” snapped Bernice.

  “I’m not eating any dinosaur,” vowed Helen. “Even if it was canned, it’s way past its expiration date.”

  “In layman’s terms,” continued Tilly, “it’s a pig’s knuckle, also known as a ham hock. Happily, Iowa swine are raised for their thick-cut chops rather than their tarsal joints.”

  Grace set her plate down. “I think I’ll just wait for dessert.”

  A cheer went up as Maisie, Stretch, and Arlin walked out on the bandstand, brandishing their instruments above their heads. After basking in the limelight for a full minute of bowing, smiling, and waving, they formed a semicircle around the standing microphone. Maisie poised her bow on her fiddle, Stretch raised his trumpet to his lips, and on Arlin’s downbeat, they began playing a rousing rendition of an obscure beer song that caused the entire tent to go wild.

  Swaying. Clapping. Hooting. Singing.

  I was so impressed with their talent that I simply sat like a dunce, gawking at them with my mouth hanging open. Wow. The only German word I could think to describe their performance was wunderbar. Maisie never missed a beat. She made that fiddle of hers sing as if she were dueling with the devil for possession of her soul. Stretch pumped out notes with the lung power of Louie Armstrong. And Arlin worked his trombone slide with such vigor, I half expected it to shoot off into the audience. They were so exhilarating to listen to, we really got into the spirit of things by swaying, clapping, and bouncing up and down to the rhythm of the music and shouting out an occasional “zicke, zacke, zicke, zacke, oi, oi, oi.”

  At the end of fifteen minutes, the Little Bittes departed the stage to the roar of applause, and the master of ceremonies called for the Brassed Off Band, which sent Wally’s table scrambling. The Little Bittes returned to the reserved seating area like conquering heroes, red-faced and breathless, as if they’d just crossed the finish line of the Boston Marathon. They gave each other a group hug and high-fived everyone before returning to their table, clinking their mugs together, and tossing back several gulps of ale. As the Brassed Offs took their place on stage, Maisie hurried over to me with Zola in tow, acting as if they were new best friends.

  “Do you have any idea where the restroom facilities are?”

  “Look for a sign that says Toilette,” I suggested as I craned my neck left and right, finding a telltale clue at the rear of the building: a line of women that snaked halfway around the tent. “Over there.” I pointed her in the right direction. “But it looks like you’re in for a long wait.”

  “It’s only going to get worse as the night progresses,” predicted Zola, “so now’s as good a time as any.”

  “Are they goin’ to the potty?” Nana asked as she watched them leave.

  “Yup. But the line’s a monster. Are you in desperate need to use the facilities?”

  “Nope.” She slid off the bench. “But folks what’s my age have gotta do some strategic plannin’. So if I get in line now, by the time I reach the stall, I’ll have to go for sure. You need to use the potty, Til?”

  When the rest of the girls learned where Nana and Tilly were headed, they began peeling off in twos in a reenactment of the buddy system first employed by animals boarding the ark. Why women needed a companion to visit a place that guys always visited solo remained a mystery to me, but by the time the Brassed Off Band started to play, my table was empty except for me and Mom, whose internal plumbing had sometimes been compared to that of a desert camel.

  If the Little Bitte Band had been spectacular, the Brassed Offs were even more spectacular, if that was possible. Playing a French horn, banjo, and clarinet, they produced a full-bodied sound that filled every corner of the tent. Their opening piece was so frolicsome, their notes so crisp and spirited, that even Mom and I leaped off our bench to execute some fancy footwork. At the end of the song, a round of feverish applause nearly blew the roof off the tent, and shouts of “oi, oi, oi!” sent the trio cueing up their second offering at warp speed.

  The gleeful strains of “Beer Barrel Polka” started almost immediately. As patrons clogged the aisles with their dancing, I noticed Maisie and Zola plowing their way through the masses in an attempt to return to their seats. Back already? But the line to the restroom was even longer than it had been five minutes ago. How had they pulled that off?

  Maisie caught my eye as she pressed against the partition to let the barmaids pass.

  “That didn’t take long!” I shouted at her.

  “We used the men’s room! No line at all there.”

  Nana and the girls had obviously nixed that option because even after the Brassed Offs and Das Bier Band finished their sets a half-hour later, they still weren’t back.

  “Are we at the circus?” asked Mom as the Guten Tags made their way to the stage. My heart was in my mouth as I watched Dad lumber forward behind the other band members.

  Why fight it? “Yup. We’re at the circus.”

  “Where are the elephants?”

  “No elephants.”

  “Clowns?”

  “No clowns.”

  She crooked her mouth to the side. “Not much of a circus.” She looked up as Dad walked stiffly onto the stage, Astrid’s ruby-red piano accordion strapped to his chest. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” She seized my forearm. “Is that Bob?”

  “Sure is.”

/>   “What’s he doing up there?”

  “He’s about to play the accordion.”

  “He doesn’t play the accordion.”

  “He used to play when he was a kid.”

  “He did not.”

  “Yes, he did. He just forgot to mention it. How ’bout a sausage?”

  She perused the meat selections before us. “They’re all shriveled up. They remind me of that little midget woman who keeps following me around. I don’t even know who she is.”

  “She’s your mother, Mom.”

  “My mother’s still alive?”

  Wendell stepped up to the microphone, trumpet in hand. “Evening, folks. I don’t know how many of you can understand me, but for those of you who speak English, I just want you to know that we’re dedicating our performance to our former accordion player, Astrid Peterson, who was killed in that bomb blast yesterday. She was the heart and soul of our group, but this fella, Bob Andrew”—he gestured to Dad—“has generously offered to step into her shoes. He might be suffering a few opening night jitters, so I’d ask you to give him a big round of applause to ease his nerves.”

  I heard only scattered applause until the master of ceremonies translated what Wendell had said, then the applause became deafening—which I suspected didn’t help Dad’s nerves at all.

  “The first song on our playlist was Astrid’s favorite,” Wendell announced to the crowd. “So we play it in her honor. We give you the penultimate beer song, ‘The Maine Stein Song’!” And on the downbeat, Otis’s tuba, Gilbert’s trombone, Hetty’s clarinet, and Wendell’s trumpet struck a lively chord.

  Dad’s accordion squealed out a discordant noise.

  Oh, God.

  Luckily, many of the beer drinkers in the tent knew the lyrics, so they began to sing along, enhancing the song’s famous refrain with their German accents and slurred words. Otis pumped out deep, resonating bass notes on his tuba. Trombone, trumpet, and clarinet rendered the melody.

  Dad stared at his sheet music and played a screechy chord that mashed way too many notes together.

  “Does that sound right to you, Emily?” asked Mom.

  “It’ll get better. I think Dad’s just warming up.”

  The Germans sang louder and louder. They cheered. They laughed. They clapped their hands to the beat of the music. Either they were really into the song or they were trying to protect their eardrums by drowning out the accordion.

  Dad’s fingers slipped on the button board, sending a sliding scale of chords and bass notes into hair-raising tones that caused me to cringe.

  Mom leaned toward me. “I know the reason your father never mentioned his musical talent, Em. He doesn’t have any.”

  Nana returned from the restroom and sat down beside me on the bench. “I was hopin’ the song what them folks is playin’ wouldn’t sound as bad out here as it does in the potty.”

  “And?” I asked.

  “It’s worse.”

  “We need to get Dad off the stage.”

  “How?” Nana winced as he hit another dissonant chord. “Dang, this is brutal.”

  “We’ve gotta do something before he embarrasses himself any more.”

  “You s’pose they got a fire alarm around here someplace?” asked Nana.

  Mom grabbed my forearm again. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, is that your father up on stage, Emily? Why is he playing the accordion? He can’t play the accordion.”

  Tell me about it.

  A half-second later, the music faded mid-note as a terrified scream pierced the rising din.

  “help! Somebody help! She’s not breathing!”

  eleven

  Etienne and Wally performed CPR until the ambulance arrived and the paramedics could take over, which was a matter of mere minutes since the ambulance was already on the festival grounds. Etienne volunteered to accompany the ambulance to the hospital and promised to call us the minute he had a status report. The commotion brought the Guten Tags’ performance to an abrupt end, but as soon as the medics left and the dust cleared, another oompah band took the stage and the festivities in the Hippodrom resumed in earnest—minus the participation of our tour group. We were all pretty shaken up, and the musicians were spent both physically and emotionally, so we opted to cut the evening short and return to the hotel.

  Etienne called me on the walk back.

  Zola Czarnecki hadn’t made it.

  She was dead.

  I passed the information on to Wally, who made an immediate decision to conduct a group meeting as soon as we reached the hotel. We gathered in the Prince Ludwig room once again, but this time, instead of sitting in the audience, I stood in the front of the room with Wally. As soon as he completed a cell phone call to Etienne, he opened the meeting with our grim tidings.

  “I’m afraid the news isn’t good, folks. Zola Czarnecki has died.”

  Gasps. Murmurs. A cry of “Oh, God,” from Maisie Barnes, whose piercing scream had sounded the initial alarm about Zola. And while the majority of faces in the audience registered shock, Wendell remained stone-faced, as if forcing himself to register no emotion at all.

  “She’s dead?” sobbed Maisie. “But…but…she was fine until she collapsed.”

  “She showed no signs of physical distress before then?” asked Wally.

  Maisie lifted one shoulder. “She said she had a little buzz on, so she was feeling a little dizzy. But she’d just polished off a liter of beer, so why wouldn’t she feel dizzy? I felt dizzy, too. But then she started blinking really fast and twitching and gasping for air. And before I could even ask her what was wrong, she crumpled like a rag doll. I’ve never seen anyone go down that fast in my life.” She paused to suck in a calming breath. “Do the docs have any idea what happened to her?”

  “Etienne tells me that an autopsy is being scheduled, so we won’t know anything definitive until the results are back. But, since this will eventually become public information, I can tell you that Ms. Czarnecki was taking medication to treat a chronic heart condition. I know from your medical histories that some others of you are suffering from mild heart conditions, so given what’s happened to Zola, I’d caution you to watch your alcohol intake. I’m not suggesting that her beer consumption caused her death, but until we hear otherwise, I’m asking you to play it safe.”

  “Is this going to force you to cancel the rest of the tour?” asked Wendell.

  The gang already knew the answer to that, so they began shaking their heads in unison like a display of metronomes. “We’ve set a precedent of never canceling the tour no matter how many guests die,” said Tilly, prompting the rest of the gang to nod in agreement.

  Silence settled over the room as the musicians exchanged uncomfortable glances. “How many guests normally die?” asked Otis.

  Dick Teig scratched his jaw. “Do you want exact numbers or would an average be okay?”

  “what?” barked Wendell.

  “What Dick means to say,” I interrupted, “is that since our tours are geared toward older adults, the law of averages sometimes catches up with us, so we’ve had to deal with a few instances where guests were…unable to complete the trip.”

  “How many is a few?” questioned Gilbert.

  “I think the body count is up to eight,” said Margi.

  “Eight?” Dick Stolee guffawed. “Hell, it’s twice that number.” He leveled a look at Margi. “Guests were dropping like flies long before you came aboard.”

  Nervous grumbles. Shifting eyes.

  “What kind of trips are you people offering?” demanded Wendell. “Shouldn’t a Sounds of Music tour include some selections other than funeral marches and requiems?”

  “You should have been on the last tour,” droned Bernice. “Black plague. Mass graves. Wall-to-wall undertakers. It was a real knee-slapper.”

  “Your brochure neve
r mentioned anything about guests dropping like flies,” Stretch accused.

  “Please allow me to reiterate,” Wally said in a loud voice. “It’s the policy of our travel agency to complete our tour no matter what happens. Our responsibility is to our remaining guests—the ones who put down no small amount of money to experience what our brochure promised.”

  Arlin Foote, the Little Bitte’s trombonist, stood up. “I’m only speaking for myself here, but I think the tour is great. I’m sorry we lost Astrid in that freak accident and I wish Zola was still with us because it would have been fun to have our fortunes told, but Emily’s not responsible for any of the bad stuff that’s happened. We had stage time at one of the Oktoberfest tents, people. How amazing is that? And the audience loved us. When have we ever heard applause that loud? It was the opportunity of a lifetime. And if we weren’t on this tour, it never would have happened. So I think we should be grateful that folks are clamoring to listen to us and stop complaining about things none of us have any control over.” He gave an emphatic nod of his head and sat down. “That’s all I have to say.”

  Bernice let out a derisive snort as she caught my eye. “How much did you have to pay him to say that?”

  Arlin stood back up. “My previous statement was unsolicited and expressed no one’s view except my own.”

  Silence. Soul-searching. Head-bobbing.

  “Despite everything that’s happened, I’m having a great time too,” admitted Maisie.

  “Ditto for me,” echoed Stretch.

  Nods. Smiles. Hapless shrugging.

  Osmond sprang to his feet. “Show of hands. How many guests are having—”

  “No voting!” I fired a look at him that sent him sinking back down onto his seat.

  “Well, I’m glad our oompah band members are having a good experience,” Wally continued, “because unbeknownst to you, you’re suddenly in great demand.”

  “We’re getting requests for appearances?” asked Wendell, with more than a little surprise in his voice.