From Bad to Wurst (11 page)

We were shoehorned together five on a bench, with no space left for arm movements that might include eating or drinking, so I now understood the
other
reason why so many people were standing in the aisles and on top of their benches: the illusion of breathing space.

I sat at the first table with all the ladies, Etienne sat at table two with the Guten Tags and the guys, and Wally sat at table three with the rest of the musicians and Zola, although he couldn't really sit because there was no room left on the benches so he kind of floated between all three. When the polka ended, the sounds of pandemonium still rumbled through the tent, but at least I could hear myself think a little better.

“Why are we at the circus?” Mom shouted into my ear as she eyed the green, gold, and red streamers that ribboned the ceiling.

“Forget that!” yelled Bernice from the opposite side of the table. “Why do we have our butts parked here when we should be posing on the red—”

The band struck up another tune, drowning her out completely. I poked a finger at my ear, shook my head, and flashed one of those “I can't hear a word you're saying” looks. She made a megaphone of her hands and continued yelling, but I really
couldn't
hear a thing, so I had no choice but to offer her a sympathetic smile and a shrug. It was freaking awesome.

A troop of official-looking men in white shirts and red vests entered the partitioned area, and after speaking to Wally, they collected all the instrument cases that were scattered on the floor and carried them to what looked like a holding area near the bandstand. Next to arrive were barmaids in official costume, flaunting smiles, cleavage, and comically oversized beer mugs brimming with ale that was dark as axle grease. They slammed a mug down in front of each of us.

“What am I s'posed to do with this?” Nana shouted into my other ear.

“Drink it,” I shouted back at her.

She made a face as she sniffed the contents. “This one's spoiled. It smells like dirt.”

“Probably from the kind of yeast they use in the brewing process.”

She drew her brows together in a frown as she pondered the liter mug. “Would you flag down one of them waitresses when she heads back our way? If I gotta drink this thing, it's gonna need cherries.”

When the music ended again, a man in lederhosen and a feathered hat took up a center stage position on the bandstand and commandeered a microphone. I might have been able to understand him if he'd been speaking English, but his announcement was in German so I didn't have a clue. Except I did hear him utter the word “Iowa,” after which he swept his hand in a grand gesture to indicate our tables in the reserved section.

I was suddenly forced to squint as the spotlight caught us in its glare.

The tent erupted with thunderous applause, followed by whistles, hoots, and table-pounding. The area around our partition filled with Germans clamoring to photograph us. They even directed the poses they wanted us to strike: standing, sitting, smiling, waving. Wally took pictures. Etienne took pictures. Dad fired up his camcorder and filmed the Germans shooting pictures of us with their camera phones. Bernice managed to end up front and center for nearly every shot, showing off her sequined jacket. She especially liked close-ups and delivered a wide spectrum of emotions ranging from pouty to surprised, like a Gloria Swanson wannabe stepping onto the set of
Sunset Boulevard
.

I had to admit she looked sensational. The silver sequins softened the bulge of her dowager's hump. Whatever product she'd used on her hair made it appear less like a wire whisk. And her nicotine- and smoke-damaged complexion was suddenly glowing with health and vitality. Was that even possible with a single application of Tilly's cream?

I peeked at Nana, whose face was still cross-hatched with fine wrinkles that were offset by liver spots and senile plaque.

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 app
é
tit.”

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.