The Trial of Strassle-Schneider

Chapter 1 - The Trial

Long ago, through mist and memory and bedlam, tucked within the fields and forests of Wisconsin, the bosom of God’s own country might I say, stood a little farm town named after a saint-I forget which one exactly. It was possessed of one Catholic church, one seminary school (for Catholics), five baseball fields, and seven bars. Every sage in town pronounced the proportions appropriate, on reflection, though they wouldn’t have turned down a new tavern if it were offered. In truth, the town felt even smaller than the description of it conveys. If you drove from one end to the other, a bad sneeze might rob you of the whole tour, and you would be none the wiser, so seamlessly did the countryside enclose it.

Resided in this peculiar capital city was a venerated society that had survived from the old country and continued to practice its solemn rites in the new one. They were called the Guild of Schneiders. They had, as they believed, a duty primordial to uphold, a dignity of ancient providence, handed from Templar to Junker to them in unbroken agreement. So the studied members believed. If we are truthful, there were a great many more members, the vast majority we might hazard, who, being proper Americans, could give no particular account of what had happened three months ago, much less one hundred years, much less anything at all of the old country. All that remained of that place were withering vestiges of old attitudes and beliefs that had grown moldy with their sameness and the disinterest paid them. To these fellows this club was just what was to be done on a Thursday night, and they took their cues as they went, and thought nothing at all about Frederick the Great or how to properly pronounce Holstein, which they did not pronounce correctly.

To find these fair fellows on this particular damp, misty night of late autumn, one had to pass through a dingy bar room in a dingy old building. Not a leaf of tobacco had been smoked inside it nigh on 20 years, but it stubbornly persisted in smelling strongly of cigarette smoke. Through this dim environment, through a worn door at the back, which swung wildly if given so much as a particularly stiff glance, lay a cramped and incommodious basketball court that smelled as smoky as the barroom. As you were sitting in the front bar room of this rural tavern like any other, you would have had no reason to guess there was a basketball court just behind the back door, but there it was just the same. It wondered not that it was there. It was up to you to make peace with that fact. Then again, if you have ever seen rural folks play basketball, you would understand alcohol as an intrinsic element in the whole affair, the linchpin on which the entire enterprise swings; therefore, it was only natural that they would add a basketball court to the tavern. The laws of nature demanded it. The basketball court had, this night, been carefully converted into a sort of ad hoc court room with a dais. On the dais sat three chairs in a tribunal arrangement, the center chair ornately adorned and carved in a manner quite out of keeping with its surrounds.

The courtroom was teeming with a scruffy collection of rough and dirty canvas jackets in varying earth tones. The wearers were red-faced, and mostly jolly. Many had pushed even upon the bounds of jolly and now embarked into territories belonging to the riotous and absurd. These were the club members, and the club was filled exclusively with men named Schneider, for membership depended entirely on whether one boasted the surname Schneider, spelled exactly that way, and no Dutch permutations permitted. A motley gaggle of them cackled and jostled about in the gallery of wooden folding chairs on the court below the dais. They hooted and hollered and ribbed one another, red-faced, crazed, yet with unremitting humor. They banged dice on the table and worked out intricate calculations of who owed who rounds based on the results, a sort of augury not yet fully explained in any scientific literature. They shuffled greasy, beer-stained cards on the table, and invariably played just one game, sheepshead, a game so thoroughly ingrained in their very souls that they could never explain to anyone else how to actually play it, even when they wanted to. The curious beginner was unfailingly baffled by their explanations, and always suspected the entire affair had been concocted to mock them for reasons they didn’t fully understand. They invariably engaged in “table talk” during sheepshead, which is really just a kind name for the relentless mockery of every move every player makes until someone gets fed up and yells, “No table talk!”, at which point the declaimer is taunted within an inch of his life. Nature demands such a winnowing of weakness. That is not to say they were mean fellows. Far from it! They rolled along in their own way and didn’t think a wink of it. If you were to join a bull run, you could hardly blame the cattle if you felt yourself ill-used. They were a hearty stock, with firm employments, and they knew how to have a little fun when they had a chance.

With a sudden rush a door near the back of the court swung open and a most august and majestic personage entered with two dogsbodies scurrying after him. The principal walked briskly to the center chair and looked out on the gaggle of Schneiders, who fell silent after a series of loud knocks on the table by one of the judge’s valets.

This paragon of judicial gravity was Blücher, the iron Guild Master of Schneiders. He was tall and barrel chested, with a virile mustache, and a swoop of golden brown hair, very carefully arranged to appear careless. He wore not only wool pleated pants, but even a blazer with the figure of double headed eagle upon the left breast. He stared upon his shaggy court room with the sanguine air of a bird of prey.

“Well, bring out the so-called Strassel-Schneider.” he boomed forth peremptorily, as his cheeks constricted ever so slightly and he sat down with studied displeasure.

All necks craned back in unison towards the barroom door, which bore the figure of an open shears pointing up, and a white and navy ribbon swirling about the handle. It bore a scroll at the bottom, which puzzled nearly all of the Schneiders, though they were troubled little. It read, “Suum Cuique”. It was assumed Blücher knew what it meant, but none dared ask him.

There emerged from this door, a tall corn-fed man in his early twenties. He was attired much as the mob, and but for his nearness in stature to a silo, he would have been absorbed unnoticed into their midst. His face was, we will say bearding, for it didn’t exactly hold a beard, but it had received no grooming for some time. Despite his physical size, the young man seemed tiny, nigh on vanishing entirely. He slumped his shoulders and meekly looked from one side to the other of the heaving rabble.

He was brought to one of two tables set before the dais. The other table was soon equipped with several red-faced gentlemen, the loudest and largest of which was apparently the chief prosecutor of the case. He wore a self-satisfied smile, and was possessed of a threatening paunch which abutted upon furniture and fellows alike. He had before him a can of beer, a bottle of whiskey, and an ash tray holding a smoldering cigar. There was conspicuously no paper to be found in this court, so we might reason that the Schneiders had made some significant improvements to the practice of law that have gone, as yet, unrecognized.

As this apparent Strassle-Schneider fidgeted nervously at his table, as alone as any poor creature in the county, there emerged from the crowd an individual we can scarcely believe escaped our notice before. He was attired in a sweeping sheepskin jacket with large fur lapels and gaudy silver fasteners, on his head there perched a bright red Phrygian cap, and on his feet Hessian boots. Though it was night and the lights dim, he still wore dark aviators, and even then seemed to struggle with the light, wincing as he looked up. As he came boldly forward a great billow of smoke seemed to fall from him, even appeared to follow him in a swirling wake.

He hastily threw a briefcase on the table. The courtroom gasped at the shock that paper might make an appearance at their dignified proceedings. Blücher himself seemed to take notice and nod ever so slightly. Then to the relief of all the briefcase was opened and a hookah produced, which was placed upon the table. It was already lit thoroughly and for the moment the strange man left it simmering as he unpacked an array of beverages and set them before him meticulously.

“I’m your attorney my lad.” he said quickly beneath his breath to this so-called Strassle-Schneider, “And I’m going to drag these bastards through the mud! You can rely on it!”

This Strassle-Schneider looked at him expectantly, his big watery eyes searching the inscrutable face before him.

“I only ask you to do one thing my boy.” the attorney said, furrowing his brow and looking this Strassle-Schneider in the eye-though this Strassle-Schneider could only see himself reflected upon the dark sunglasses, “Go along and stay out of the way!”

Seeing the counsels more or less arranged, Blücher opened the proceedings,

“The Stillgericht of Ancient Schneiders is now in session,” he said with a bang of a meat hammer upon the tribunal table. “We are met tonight in the matter of,” here he sighed with foreboding contempt, “the so-called Strassle-Schneider.” he said extending his arm and lofting his palm to heaven in the direction of the defendant. “We meet to determine if this…proposal of his, is firstly, to be born by our fair society, and secondly, does it constitute grounds for expulsion from our illustrious company? You know what he intends to do; I will leave it to the advocates to present the issue as they see fit. The matter that stands before us all tonight is one of no small gravity gentle guild members. Matters that move far beyond our untrammeled country, God’s own country if I may say it, always find our shores eventually, and we must face them as brave men. We may have strong feelings on the matter, we may even feel compulsions to vehement expression, but I urge you to always let the light of reason guide you forward through the darkness. It is not even the reverence for our ancestors that can cause us to flee that pilot. With that I invite the counselors to make their opening statements.” Such are the fertile droppings of great minds in even these humble abodes!

The large red faced man smiled at his compatriots and rose slowly and almost thoughtfully.

“Good Schneiders,” he said loudly, dwelling particularly on his o’s and carrying his beer with him as went. For he was a fastidious man; whenever he was obliged to rise and address the room he carried only his beer with him, and left the cigar and whiskey on the table, these he would only condescend to consult when he was seated. “You know me well fellows. My name is Ronald Schneider and I’ve been charged with prosecuting this matter before you. I think we all know what’s going on here.” he said pacing and sipping his beer with resounding ‘ahs’,“Everyday the women of this country claw something away from us poor slobs! Every day they find a new fault with us they hadn’t considered before. Every day they crush us down just a little bit further. Now we must let them beat us freely and thank them for their trouble when they have tired venting their unsleeping malice upon us! Know fellows, the mind of woman is cunning, and pebble by pebble they build great enclosures. Oh sure, you may think this a small worthless matter, but I assure you, this the Great War come here! To our very homes. To our quiet fields and forests. We stand now on the field of battle, and it will be up to your clamor whether the foe is sent tumbling back to his old imperious haunts, or if he now takes root here!”

“You know what this man proposes in it enormous dubiousness! He, simpleton he is, has been taken in by the wiles of a scrupulous witch! Through the mysteries of Providence’s great ends, this oaf became engaged to a woman, engaged for marriage! She, temptress she is, and to prove her absolute power over this wretch, has persuaded this dolt, this rube, this fool, this mark, this buffoon, to sully what reputation he can claim to have, to send his mother to her early grave at the disgrace of her only child, the last to bear the illustrious name of Schneider in her line, she wishes to turn this proud Schneider into a,” and here he sighed with a deep histrionic gasp and looked intently upon the mob, “…Strassle-Schneider. Strassle-Schneider! She wishes to not only insult each and every member of this club personally, but to topple our very society for her own meager ends! Indeed what shall this Strassle-Schneider’s children do when they marry into some similarly wayward family? I suppose then we shall have Strassle-Schneider-Schmitz-Schroeder! And then Strassle-Schneider-Schmitz-Schroeder-Schultz-Schmidt-Schwartz-Schmitz perhaps? No I say!”

He continued on in this venomous way, pouring his rancor into the ears of all. The speech was not particularly interesting or original. Its brothers can be found on nearly any reactionary program, at any time of the day, at any latitude, especially around Christmas time. The prosecutor conjured before them a demonic chimera, who grasped at all they had ever known with unthinking malice. The enemy had arrived at the gates of their fair city, and the jezebel escorting the hounds of hell, their fell cords lashed to her bodice, was this Strassle temptress.

“Stop her today if this man will not!” Ronald Schneider concluded, “I ask that our fair tribunal return two decisions to us, its humble servants. One, that this man be barred from hyphenating his fair surname. Two, that he be immediately expelled from the Guild of Schneiders and never spoken of again!”

The wild crowd rose to its feet and hailed their defender of virtue with a shabby chorus of hootings and rootings. This man was a veritable dragon slayer! A Knight of Jerusalem in their midst! They rapped their dirty knuckles on the tables heartily and jostled their beers in a tempest of excitement. They shook each other with joyous acclaim. The prosecutor sauntered back to his seat with the easy gait of a man who had ridden clean round the enemy in an ostrich plumed hat. His red face beamed and he sat back to the groan of his feeble chair.

The raucous jubilee could be felt to palpably soften and heads turned as the smoking man with the sunglasses and Phrygian cap rose. He had been studiously pulling at his hookah as the prosecutor spoke, while regarding the dark back corner of the room with a fixed and inscrutable gaze. He had also consulted his various beverages frequently, and in very particular order. As he rolled himself to his feet, for he could not have been said to properly have stood up, he placed the hookah mouthpiece on the table and came to the center of the room. Though the hookah remained smoking at the table in front of the bewildered Strassle-Schneider, a gale of smoke still seemed to pour from the very person of this strange advocate.

“Your Honor, esteemed members of the Guild!” he began in an arrhythmic intonation, “This peculiar, I say even most peculiar case has fallen to me in the way you already know! And so you are also aware that I come to this case with the coolest and most disinterested mind that could be conceived of! I am not subject to any emotion at all in this affair, and our emotions in these affairs amount to little more than intellectual laziness. Why, we’d be the very wenches this fair, corpulent fellow has alluded to if we let that happen. I have never spoken to this particular Schneider, quiet creature he appears, and have no reason to suspect whether, in other details of his life, he may or may not deserve the gallows. Those matters must be left to the side, whatever they be!”

This Strassle-Schnedier shifted stiffly at the mention of the gallows.

“And we are certainly not here to legislate the evils of society we see on television by tarring and feathering this man before us, who some may imagine embodies those very evils close at hand. I understand you my brothers. For you feel the great teeming chaos pulsing at the center of creation. I feel it too, an unearthly malice whose visage is pushed forth in the moldings of all visible objects, who encloses us all closely in our worldly prisons; what can we do, but strike through the mask, but thrust our hand through the one wall within our reach? We are all Ahabs raging at our whales, but this man is not your white whale!”

The crowd, which was uneasy at first, was positively dumbfounded. Blücher nodded slightly with his face in his hand.

“Our very motto denies our ability to legislate these matters. ‘To each his own’, emblazoned on the very entry to our fair club. ‘To each his own,’ I say. May each order his life as he pleases. The defendant...”

But between the literary references and the Latin translations the crowd had utterly lost their patience with the man. They had no idea what Ahab was or where this motto was supposedly posted, but they understood that they were about to be fed some soft-minded gibberish involving kindness and consideration, and they were in no mood to bear such outrage. They hooted. A few threw empty tins of tobacco at this Strassle-Schendier’s attorney, though none were so magnificent as to throw a full one. He deftly dodged them and quickly regained his composure.

“Very well. I thought you might like that kind of…well no matter…it’s a book about killing whales…but nothing is what it seems onboard. We’ll leave that by the by…I tell you this is a simple man,” he continued as if nothing at all had occurred, “some might say a cock-eyed optimist, who has been seduced by this creature of undetermined origin. We see this man sitting at the table; he is little more than an un-molded slab of clay, and to our great misfortune this Jezebel has set to forming him before our noble society was able…”

Here the defendant rose precipitously and said feebly, “She didn’t seduce nobody! And she ain’t no damned Jezebel!”

His attorney rushed to him and, pulling a wad of papers from his sheepskin coat, began beating him about the head.

“I told you to keep quiet you brute!” he shouted. The defendant covered his head with his hands and meekly took the ineffectual blows.

“Now keep quiet, or we’re all in the jackpot here!” he said storming up to the dais.

“I apologize your honor, but my client is considerably unruly at the moment. May I request a brief recess?”

“Denied counselor” said Blücher majestically.

“Very well.” he replied and scurried back to his accustomed position after taking a few quick pulls on his hookah, to reform his constitution. “Despite my client’s intransigence, his defense is not only credible, but utterly exonerating!” he turned significantly to the crowd and swayed from side-to-side ever so slightly.

“It is our fair, though not guiltless society that bears the blame for this man’s current course to perdition. Not a man in this court could but attest this Schneider to be a quiet, out-of-the-way sort. Who here has taken the time to rear him up? Who has spent the effort necessary to foster manly virtues in him?” he asked pounding the podium. “Not a soul here can say he has. Is it any wonder this trollop has insinuated herself…”

Again Strassle-Schneider said meekly, “She’s not…”

Again his counselor rushed over and beat him about the head with his papers.

“Your honor, I request that my client be held in contempt.” said the counselor in a great perspiring huff, “And also held as an incompetent!”

The crowd murmured within itself. They were not sure what “held” amounted to in either instance, but it sounded official and punitive. It was clear they wanted a spectacle, and were getting it by the heap, but that the only conclusion that could be come to was punishment. Not a soul among them could imagine a trial complete without punishment. They knew something of the noble and fertile mind of Blücher, who sat in majesty before them, and they knew these fine phrases, and these fancy references, and most of all this personal guilt was already working upon him. They suspected that anyone who seemed to consult a mirror must be a bit soft after all. They felt it all intrinsically.

Suddenly a loud bang was heard, accompanied by two grappling farmers rolling into the court room. They each had handfuls of the other’s jacket and their red faces puffed with exertion. A crowd formed around them as they jostled. Blücher came bounding peremptorily from his throne into the throng. He attempted to separate the two, but soon he was as intrinsic to the melee as they. They rolled as one galgalim, from one table into the next, upsetting chairs, and Schneiders, and worst of all--beers.

“Stop these damn brutes, you Schneiders!” yelled this Strassle-Schneider’s attorney.

The men of the club came to grips with the three and pulled them apart with some trouble, their limbs still flailing and a withering stream of excoriations issuing forth from all involved.

“Now, who are you brutes, and what do you mean by this?” Blücher demanded.

After a brief and sullen silence one of the discomposed farmers said, “I’m a Schmitt and he’s a Schmidt, and that’s where it started, and that’s what it’s all about!” And he would say no more.

Blücher was heaving with dignified fury. “Take these brutes and throw them back amongst the common herd! Court is in recess!” and he stormed to the back of the room and through the door he had entered.

Now if truth be told, Blücher was not in his right mind immediately after this melee, but he would not admit that to anyone, most especially himself, so he bore his misery in solitude. All men of greatness are prone to such fits of peculiar derangement. Some see their lode star in some strange part of the sky and feel compelled to follow it no matter the consequences. They can do nothing else. He knew a decision must be given and soon. He knew the crowd desired punishment, he himself desired it. But the style of the advocate had impressed him, his learning and arguments moved him, and he even felt the pang of guilt as he thought of this pathetic Strassle-Schneider, whom he had never noticed before this night. He reflected most especially on this, that poor rube with not an idea in his head, sitting cluelessly before his doom. Yea, even the heart strings of the mighty may be plucked by an able lutist.

But what could be done if he could not bear to punish this feeble man? Was the hive-mind to enslave him too? Was he to be borne along like a leaf in a brook; a prisoner of events and circumstance with no agency whatsoever? Was he, Blücher, no match for the unthinking malice of the mob? As any able leader of men, he thought how to soften the people, and bend them to his way willingly. He composed himself, looked carefully in the mirror and returned to the court.

“My good Schneiders!” he declaimed. “Weighty matters have been thrown before us tonight. Our feelings have been excited, our passions inflamed. It does not become our society to punish frivolously or to decide anything with a capricious mind. I believe our esteemed counselor here said something about “wenches” doing that. Nor does it become us to let the guilty do as they please, or the weak to suffer as they must. With these considerations in mind, I declare this trial to enter what I may call a ‘discovery’ phase.”

The men looked at each other and repeated the new foreign word, ‘discovery’ that had just now been revealed to them, and marveled at what such a prodigy may prove to be.

“It is my intention to examine this Strassle-Schneider myself over a period of time such as I find sufficient, so that I may observe his situation with unobstructed diligence. I bid you to return to your merry-making. We shall resume this matter at our next Stillgericht.” and Blücher banged the meat hammer upon the table.

Chapter 2-Discovery: A Game of Sheepshead

Through the contrivances of his attorney, this Strassle-Schneider was invited to Blücher’s monthly sheepshead game, which was conducted in his club room. The attorney himself was not a regular of this circle, but he knew how to insinuate himself. Situated behind the basketball court lay a small, but comfortable room that had once served as a public restroom, but which had been carefully converted into a gentleman’s study quite out of keeping with its kindred rooms. While the bar room and basketball court were all tarnished, dented steel, and worn old pine, this special room was of rich mahogany and smelt of leather books. It was lit with sconces.

This was Blücher’s retirement, and it was here we found him, cradling a snifter of warm brandy in his stately hands and pondering to himself beyond the prying eyes of his constituency. Blücher loved a ponder. It gave him pleasure to no end to sit with an invariably expensive brown liquor swirling in his glass, staring out the window, with his feet up upon his desk in what he supposed was a very casual posture. He could often give no particular account of what it was that he pondered so deeply, and he was not entirely sure where his thoughts strayed, but he did feel them move, and was sure they must be gliding through the deepest waters, wherever they be.

On this wet and foggy night, he did not find the usual easy and uncertain wandering he was prone to, as the glasses clinked and the hoi polloi laughed and chatted just beyond his wall. No, this specimen of the oligoi found himself facing a conundrum near at hand, and while his thoughts were thus the more focused, his ease of conclusion and certainty were now elusive, as they never were when the wanderings vague and the path unknown. He knew the men of the guild desired punishment eventually. At best they could be delayed, but he knew this case signified something strange and important to them. Yet even then, their boorishness repulsed him, and their advocate was of no style whatsoever.

Most of all he felt a nagging guilt, ever growing in his chest. He had often imagined himself the paternal figure of this lot, a patriarch who would guide their untutored souls to a greater refinement. Sometimes he even convinced himself that he had done and was doing this very thing by various pronouncements he had made, but many times more he felt a great chasm between him and his wards, and the persistent feeling that he had nothing to do with them whatsoever. If that were true, were it any wonder when the weak among them strayed? He had left that large simple man to brutes, and now wondered that he did not hold himself up as a strong and independent man?

The guests were all seated at the card table. There was Blücher, this Strassle-Schneider, his attorney, a Schneider named Sam, and two brothers, the Schmitz Boys (no relation to either the Schmitts or the Schmidts). All in all, three Schneiders, this Strassle-Schneider, and two Schmitzes.

Well, we know two of the Schneiders already. The third Schneider, Sam, was a surly, scraggly-faced man, whose voice was so so scratchy, and brow so furrowed, that he looked to have survived a thunderbolt of recent vintage. All who met him assumed he smoked cigars, and he did smoke a prodigious amount of them. When the state outlawed smoking in public bars and restaurants, ever and anon a tavern goer, Sam became something of an outdoorsman. He found this new reality presented him with several difficulties. The first of these was that he now spent most of his time standing outside of the tavern rather than in it. His fellows could see him leaned against the building through the window, and as the seasons turned, and he was pelted with the various ephemera of nature’s timely moods in their turns, they all began to miss each other, though that was the last thing they would ever admit to anyone. In winter, the cold would nip his hands, for he never wore gloves, no matter how cold, and his voice would grow even scratchier. As the years and smoke piled upon one another, his voice had become something a guttural growl that only folks of long acquaintance could decipher.

The Schmitz Boys were brothers called Ron and Don, and I cannot recall which name belonged to which Schmitz. They were usually just called the Schmitz Boys, or, in the unlikely event you found one of them alone, Schmitz Boy would do well enough. It was rumored their own mother called them the Schmitz Boys. There was never a party held in the parish that the Schmitz Boys would not discover and attend in the grandest rural style. For, they did not travel in civilian vehicles. They drove their ATVs to social appointments. It should be noted, operating an ATV does not require a driver’s license, which the government can revoke if you drive drunk too many times. Although, it must be admitted that in this great state, the number that constitutes too many drunk driving violations is not currently known to mortal man. Not yet, as the Christians are fond of saying. The Schmitz Boys drove their ATVs as the crow flies, across forest, fen, and field. They ignored roads as ignoble. They almost always arrived as the party was beginning to peter out, and then the guests would hear the roar of the engines, and the beams of the headlights peering through the deep dark night from some unexpected quarter of field and forest, and the Schmitz Boys would tear up in a cloud of snow and mud, alight from their mechanical steeds and declare, “Get up your asses, the Schmitz Boys are here to party!”

One of these self same Schmitzes began shuffling the cards for the first hand.

“There is something significant that I must expose concerning this case.” said the attorney. “My client does not know how to play sheepshead!”

Sam and the two Schmitzes started up in disbelief.

“Where has he been living his entire life?” One Schmitz wondered.

Blücher assumed an air of disapproval, but also secretly desired an explanation. He had some vague conception of the game and its rules, but he had only vaguely absorbed them over the years. His ability never improved, because no one ever criticized his play, no matter how badly he lost, or how many tricks he flummoxed.

The two Schmitzes looked at each other with some apprehension. They could play sheepshead since before their feeble memories could reach, but the idea of actually explaining it to someone was new and frightening. They had never met a person who did not already know the game. Perhaps they even half suspected the game was not learned at all, but simply known, like knowledge of God.

The elder Schmitz eventually began his best attempt with some trepidation, “Now sheepshead uses 32 cards, sevens through aces. And you want trump cards.”

“Trump?”

“Yes, trump.”

“I’m going outside.” Sam growled.

“Now in sheepshead, the ladies call the shots. Your highest card is the Queen of Clubs and a cruel mistress she is. She maintains a brutal hierarchy…” and here the students’ minds began to wander and they stared deeply into the void, and the void in turn stared deeply back into them. “Queen of Clubs, Queen of spades, Queens of Hearts…then you got the Jacks of…ope, don’t forget the 10 of diamonds that’s a trump card.”

“That’s a trump card?”

“Yes. Then you got your King of Diamonds.”

“All the way down there?”

“Yes. Now don’t forget your fail cards, which is where you get your points…the Ace…the tens…the kings, except the King of Diamonds, he’s trump. Now to start, call an ace for a partner or go it alone. You’ll go it alone if you got trump, that goes for everything in life. Not just this table. Now you gotta get to 31 points or you’re Schneider. You got to get to 31 to get out of Schneider.”

“Schneider? Is that bad?”

“Schneider is very bad. You do not want to be Schneider.” the Schmitz said gravely.

“It’s just a game after all.” observed Blücher with a sanguine air, now worried that the impressionable Strassle-Schneider should take the game to heart.

The explanations left this Strassle-Schneider utterly bewildered, and had Blücher doubting what he thought he knew himself. The explanations were then redoubled, but they only added to the confusion. Between the trump cards, the fail cards, the Byzantine nature of points and plays, and the dubious card hierarchy, only bedlam was accomplished. Nearly everyone felt they understood the game less than before, even the elder Schmitz. The task was not helped along by the fact that they had all immediately began consuming truly heroic amounts of lager upon sitting down. The attorney emerged from the kitchen with six liter mugs of foaming effervescent beer, sat at the table, handed the mugs around and intoned, “Now, three to three, ye stand. Commend the murderous chalices! Yon ratifying sun now waits to sit upon it.” No one knew what he meant by it. Eventually the sheepshead explanation degenerated, as it always does, and it was decided that the best way to learn would be to just start playing, and that cruel experience would teach the lessons better than any man could. It also meant the teachers would profit, even as the students floundered.

“Say,” said the younger Schmitz. “Are you Ronnie?”

This Strassle-Schneider reddened and admitted that to be his civilian name.

“We were on the football team together, remember me, the Schmitz Boy?”

“Oh, yes, you played fullback.”

“What position did this fellow play?” asked the attorney, indicating his client.

“Well look at him, he’s a left tackle if I ever saw one.”

“It was not a successful career.” admitted this Strassle-Schendier. “Coach declared me a pacifist, unfit for the field, incorrigible in my insistence on being a pussy.”

To the amazement of all, this Strassle-Schneider took not only the first three tricks without an error, but managed to take the first game. Blücher began to wonder to himself about the nature of even a poor education on an un-molded man. The Schmitzes began to wonder if a card game ruled by women really was a wise idea. After Blücher bungled through a few hands, and found he was no wiser for the explanations, he began to wonder further about the nature of education on molded men, and whether this game had been properly devised.

Amidst the mirth and confusion, a knock at the door was heard, and a strange creature was shown in. He was hailed as “Bill”, and one might have naturally assumed he was either a Schneider, a Schmitz, a Schmidt, or a Schmitt, but he was, in fact, a Strasse (not Strassle). He had to sidle past Sam who was smoking a cigar on the stoop outside the back door and would not budge for him. Bill was short and wiry, he looked all knees and elbows. There was not a hair on his body. Not a whisker, not an eye lash, nothing. I’m not being poetical with you, he had not a strand! He wore brown work boots, blue jeans, and a thick short sleeved blue button-up in coarse cotton. He spoke in a sort of nasally pitch and with a glint in his eye.

The Schmitz Boys introduced him to the group. He merely nodded to the attorney, whom he seemed to have some prior, if not wholly pleasant experience.

“Well,” he said with what he believed was a smile, but which invariably looked like a sneer to everyone else, “Sorry to interrupt, I was just looking for you Schmitz Boys and the bartender said I’d find you here. Say, none of you fellows are looking for work are you? No? Shame! I’m always needing help. And I need someone to keep an eye on Ron.” Bill was always looking for help.

“What is it you do, sir?” asked Blücher in all his regal gentlemanliness.

“Everything,” Bill smiled. “I’m building special computer mice for the criminally insane, I’m designing circuitry for a police cruiser company, and I’m doing the electrical for half a dozen rural churches around here.”

“Well what’s going on with Ron then, and all the eyes needed to mind him? Is he another reclamation project?” the attorney asked, ignoring entirely the varied and unwieldy projects this strange man pursued. “I’ll warn you, this man is not only a Christian, but he’s actually trying the doctrine out on the native population of Sheboygan!”

Bill took the gibe with an annoyed smile and continued, “Ron helps me out at the shop. He’s had some challenges in life.”

“Challenges!” the attorney said. “I talk to Jack Seagull you know. I’ve heard all about him. Ron DeBaun. Don’t withhold from these gentlemen. They are no savages. At least one of them goes to church on the reg, but he is a fearful Catholic, with no missionary zeal whatsoever.”

“The man refers to me and I make no amendments. Further, I am enemy of Vatican II.” Blücher declared.

“Well Ron, he didn’t come from much at all, and in this world it’s easy to go astray, and I don’t think he’s had much in the way of proper role modeling, and I’m trying to get him a hold of life, if I can.” Bill said simply.

“To paint you a picture of the man,” the attorney interrupted, reciting from memory Jack Seagull’s description of Ron Debaun, “He has long greasy brown hair, a scraggly and random assortment of facial hair, his face is pockmarked like he survived the plague, and he has a huge dent in the middle of his forehead from when he was hit in the head with a shovel. Do I go far wrong?”

“No, not far.” Bill said solemnly. “One night he was drunk as the devil himself,” he said with a sigh, already certain he would have to recite the curious tale now mentioned by the attorney, as he had so many times before in various company. “Well, he wandered home, a mark in his favor I should say, not getting behind the wheel like so many of us…”

“Does he own a vehicle?” the attorney asked knowingly.

“Well no, but his girlfriend does! Anyways,” Bill was betraying increasing annoyance at the attorney hijacking his narrative. “He ended up going to the wrong apartment door. I don’t know if he was up a floor or down a floor. Well his key won’t go in. ‘They’ve changed the locks already; I’ve got till the 15th!’ he thought. So he began kicking away at the door, cursing and raising holy hell in the wee hours of the morning, waking up the whole building. Well the guy whose actual apartment it was, starts screaming at him. ‘Zounds, they’ve already found a squatter to hold the property against me; I tell you I have till the 15th!” Ron thinks, ‘Come out of there peaceably you fiend! I’ve a right to house and home! I’ll read the Constitution to you when I get in there!’ Ron yells at the fellow. He finally kicks through the door, it comes off the bolt and his foot goes through it so he falls into the room with the door on his leg as it gives and the guy he’s been yelling with has been just waiting on him. He applies a shovel to Ron’s head real sharp, and that was that. Spent the night in jail, and was released on his own recognizance, such as it was, in the morning. He came to me after that. I’m not sure what he was like before the shovel.” He finished sadly.

“And since then he’s only nearly missed killing Jack three or four times.”

“Oh what was there beyond the granite slab that almost crushed him?”

“On your homemade industrial elevator, I might give you two equal share for that one. Didn’t he leave an engine running in the warehouse, took a long nap in the rafters of the pallet racks, and almost poisoned everyone in the building?”

“And what of you? Who are you actually helping in this cold world you Marxist!”

“My good sir, I’m far too lazy to be a Marxist.” the attorney said coolly.

Blücher could detect politics were not far away, and he did not suffer them to be discussed in his presence. It was a mean, proletarian sort of topic, and not fitted to polite company.

“And you have taken this unfortunate under your wing, sir?” he asked, giving a withering look to the attorney that suggested he hold his personal feelings to himself.

“I’m doing my best to show him an honest days work firsthand. Give him some spiritual guidance as well as I’m able. We are all born sin, and I’m trying to get him on the path. Jack’s friend here scoffs at my so-called reclamation projects, but...”

Just then one of the Schmitzes let out an audible groan. He had been partnered with Blücher for the hand. He had led with a fail card, and it was clear to the entire team that they were punting the hand. Blücher had played an ace of spades. This Strassle-Schneider played his Jack of Spades, and took the hand for his side. The Schmitz leaned over to examine Blücher’s hand, an exercise not normally permitted.

“You could have played this card, this card, or this card, and we wouldn’t be in this mess!”

Blücher stared sheepishly at his cards. Yes, it was all clear now. This card should have lead to that card, and everyone knew it but him. His partners remained sullen. They had not educated him when they had the chance, now it would have been too embarrassing for all involved. He was no longer able to endure his vices, nor fit to face their cures. He heard nothing of the conversation the rest of the table had with Bill before seeing him off, for Bill did not play cards, and did not even pretend to want to. Blücher had sat at this table so many times, and somehow had avoided any actual knowledge of what he was doing, but by his sheer force of position and personality, he was left unbothered. Here this Strassle-Schneider, who had sat at the table in utter ignorance minutes ago, and given a short and confused education, was making something of it.

After a few more hands they took a short break from cards. Sam stepped outside for a cigar--I forgot to mention that he had come back in at some point. More beer was brought in from the bar, and those who had ‘em, smoked ‘em. After the attorney returned from the great outdoors with Sam, smelling now of tobacco, Blücher pulled him aside.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you, am I bad at sheepshead?”

The attorney eyed him through his sunglasses and thought carefully for a moment.

“Well, yes. You are very bad.”

“Were you ever going to tell me?”

“Tell you?”

“Yes, how else would I know?”

“I supposed you already knew, but it would have been indelicate to your great augustness to point such a thing out.”

“Why didn’t the Schmitz Boys say anything. All this time I thought I knew what I was doing.”

“You’d have to ask them. I’ve never been here before. And, I suppose if you knew you were ignorant you wouldn’t exactly be ignorant anymore. How mysterious knowledge is! But no, you are bad, very bad.”

“And all this time they let me stumble along?” Blücher said miserably.

“Well, to be frank, it’s more profitable for a card group to have an ignorant player or two.”

“But not when everyone has to partner with the said ignoramus! That’s a stone around everyone’s neck.”

“Ah, well, I suppose that’s a point that’s escaped consideration. You know, the Schmitz Boys and I, we don’t keep the West from falling, just our own houses.”

“Well you should consider the West my friend. It’s the roof over all our houses.”

“Perhaps, but us poor jobbers, what can we make of these great things that you men of substance cannot? It is enough for us to survive to the next card game.”

A night of cards passes through some crossroads that will test the nerves of the guests and determine the success of the evening. At each intersection, the party must make answer to a vital question, to take another drink or not. Now the crowd will always demand another drink, no crowd has ever voted for sobriety, but one must consult one’s own interests. The heart may be willing, but the flesh is weak, and the mind uncertain. Once you have quit drinking, you are a dead man walking, you must find your bed quickly, for the animating breath has left you. If you decide to keep going, when cards become involved, and money flows from one side of the table to the other, there are new vectors to consider. Men will destroy their minds and bodies to chase the pot, but even this fervor cannot last forever.

This night had matriculated through many such choke-points, but eventually even greed and the pain of loss could no longer motivate. Our gentlemen had at last reached this juncture when dawn was threatening. Their minds had been stretched through the wee hours, and those who were still awake were almost giddy, though they all felt some vague threat at the spreading of the light. The Schmitz Boys were dozing fitfully, with great sonorous snores emitting from their noses, the kind of deep somber snore that only one who labors beneath the rural sun can achieve.

The gentlemen stumbled around in the dim light collecting their things, such as they were able to find, and performing such cleaning as they were able to recognize in their state. There were a number of bargains struck, whereby if a missing item was found, it would be promptly returned to the owner, though no one had plans on looking, and at that hour, the owners had stopped caring greatly. It was reasoned among them, on this morning, as on many others, that since they were drinking last night, they were, today, a new day, sober, and perfectly capable of handling their vehicles. At any rate, the Schmitz Boys had driven their ATVs to the card game, and were beyond the reach of the law entirely. The birds were singing, which seemed somehow a ridiculous thing for them to do. In the distance church bells could be heard, which seemed even more ridiculous and in-congruent.

The attorney was whistling to himself while he climbed into his great big car as Blücher and this Strassle-Schneider departed into the growing light. Sam was already on the stoop, smoking a cigar, and stewing over the profusion of nickels he had lost to this Strassle-Schneider. They were all disheveled, what clothes they were able to find and don were crumpled and smelly. They looked as if they did not know how to wear the clothes they had on. Blücher looked upon his ward with some severity.

“Well you took to that quickly.” Blücher said dryly, and not without envy.

“I just tried to pay attention and keep up.” smiled the meek man.

“Yes, well you did well. I must advise you to be ready for Thursday. It will decide many things.” Blücher said with an impressive flourish.

“How should I prepare?” asked this Strassle-Schneider.

“I have no idea.”

Chapter 3 – The Punishment

Thursday came and again the club heaved with riotous conduct. If the Schneiders had achieved sublimity last Thursday, on this they encroached upon the absurd. That is but one step, as some have said, though this may have entailed many. The basketball court, which was again made up into a court room, rang with their cackles and harrassments. The same mugs, filled with new beer, and the same folded greasy cards, festooned the tables; yet, the players seemed to treat the game with a new language that was unnatural to them, though they pretended to be quite at home with it.

Blücher stood just outside his club room, peering at the crowd through a crack in the door. He was attempting to take the temperature of the room, and was unhappy with the malignant posture the Schneiders seemed to have adopted. The usual easy-going mirth had changed into something sinister and cruel. He frowned and noticed the chief prosecutor approaching the door in his rotund profundity. Blücher scurried back from the door to his office and assume a disinterested posture, holding a book of Voltaire's in a learned style.

“I just want to say good evening to your lordship, and that I’m looking forward to your judgment.” the red faced man smiled upon being invited in. “I’m sure you’ll be doing the right thing by these boys.”

“Indubitably.” frowned Blücher. “It sounds like they are perhaps a little moodier than usual.”

“Well, I think they just have certain expectations is all. Expectations of justice. Of truth. You know, everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

“Truth? What is truth?” said Blücher, setting his book face down, and looking intently at the prosecutor.

The chief prosecutor only smiled.

“Say, I see the boys are playing sheepshead as usual,” said Blücher, “But why, I saw one of their hands I passed, I saw a Schneider take a trick with a King of Clubs…”

“Oh I see you’ve noticed we’ve made a few amendments to the rules, in view of events beyond our shores. We thought the game had some deficiencies. It’s called Kingshead now, and in it, Kings take every hand, and they are worth the most points.”

“Deficiencies, why, you talk blasphemy my good Schneider.” Blücher exclaimed piously.

“Talk not to me of blasphemy, man. I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.”

“But how would this game even work?”

“We don’t worry how it will work, and we advise you don’t neither. You scarcely understood sheepshead to begin with.” the prosecutor said with some heat.

“Who’s we?” Blücher wondered in innocent worry.

“Me and the boys.”

“I didn’t think there were such groups with pontifical rite.”

“You may find there a great many things passing through your club that you haven’t clocked.” and with that the man wheeled on his heels and walked off.

Blücher stewed over this meeting and the many things he felt and heard in the room beyond. There was a sharp knock at the door and the attorney was soon showing himself in.

“Well, I just spoke with the prosecution, so I may as well you.” Blücher sighed.

“And how was that bloated cow carcass on this fine evening?”

“Ebullient.”

The attorney laughed and said, ““Perhaps it is better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian. After I met him, I agreed.”

“He certainly finds strength in his position regarding these affairs.”

“And why shouldn’t he? The unwashed masses have taken certain things to their head, and he’s playing their dumb feelings like a demented organ. But say, have you come to a determination here? I’d like to know what kind of a shit pit I will be swimming in tonight.”

“I have, but you shall hear it in time. All by the book you understand.”

“Certainly, but if I may observe, the natives are restless tonight. Careful with your heat my friend.”

“I will, as always, look to justice and the welfare of the club, and nothing more. Did you notice the card game they were all playing?”

“Yes, and that is what inspired my remarks. They have raised their hands against the sacred. What will they do with us?”

“Don’t despair of the club my friend. Its hallowed traditions have endured since the Fatherland, they have survived world wars, depressions, and over half a century of Vatican II, we shall not perish from the face of the earth.”

“You are an institutionalist through and through my friend. But that’s the thing, tradition holds until the moment it doesn’t, and then everybody’s in the jackpot together, and the guy with the Queen of Spades takes all. If you don’t have that card in your sleeve, well, it ain’t about winning the hand anymore. If you take my meaning.”

“I certainly do counselor, but as I said, it would not befit a Schneider in general, nor Blücher in particular to do something cowardly, and if I bend to the whims of the mob, I am indeed a coward.”

“You put a very fine point on it, but it doesn’t pay to throw ourselves away in some hopeless fight. You have your principles, yes. And certainly the prosecutor has his, stupid as they may be. Even I, somewhere deep down, presumably have them. But they are not suicide pacts. You know, I was talking with one of his boys, and I don’t know the details, but they were poring through the charter.”

“They cannot read German, not a one of them.”

“No, but one of them figured out how to translate it with their phone.”

At this news Blücher did wince. “Well, what of it?”

“If they don’t get what they want, they’ll come for you and your chair.”

“Nonsense, there hasn’t been a mutiny since the Rhine Confederation! Have you prepared your speech?”

“No. I’ll wing it as usual. The words will be provided by Providence’s own whisper in my ear.”

The proceedings were set to begin. Outside, a cold rain had turned to a sleetish snow. The street was wet and becoming slippery. The Schneiders were rolling on in their malevolent mood. The room had all the mirth and viciousness of a hanging, though it was, in fact, a trial. Blücher swung his door open and entered accompanied by his two dogsbodies and with his usual perfunctory air. This time the room did not fall to silence. The atmosphere tightened, and many of the Schneiders began to murmur to each other. There were even hisses heard to a discerning ear. Blücher’s face constricted even more, and he set his brow as he called the room to order, which they eventually complied with, though the silence accomplished was uneasy and the air thick.

“We are convened again on this night to conclude the matter of this Strassle-Schneider. I have examined the lad closely myself this week. However, I will give leave to the parties to make such statements to the Guild as they see fit. I invite the attorney for the defense to give his speech if he has it.”

The attorney emerged from the crowd, attired still in his sheepskin jacket, hessian boots, and Phrygian cap. Not only was he dressed the same as on the previous occasion, he had not actually changed his clothes once since that time, nor even condescended to wash them. His coat was unfastened and his chest displayed a chain of doubloons. The smell of smoke and alcohol acted as a perfume on his person. He was a movable fete unto himself. This time he did not bring a hookah to his table, but instead he had a large, ornate smoking pipe that hung around his neck from a chain, and smoked away even when it remained unconsulted for some minutes.

The attorney swayed gently as he stood before the courtroom, with his pipe furiously smoking as it lay against his doubloons.

“Gentlemen, we again find ourselves on the precipice of injustice! Long have our toes dipped and tempted the vile waters beneath! Well, we know all about that! When we dip our toes into injustice, injustice dips its toes into us as well. This fair guild, with its motto emblazoned upon our very door, “Suum cuique”, has long promoted the interests of its members. We have never lashed out in confusion and anger at each other. No, that we save for the Schmidts and Schmitzes and Schmitts of this fallen, forsaken world.”

“Yet here we sit, prepared to visit doom upon this poor brute, whom no one has befriended, no one has guided, no one has reared up. And now that his infirmity was exposed to us, we did not seek to do anything, but punish him. Is this our current state? A pathetic and moldy old conformity, which cannot be explained to anyone, and which demands drone like obedience, and should you fail to conform in ways that have never been explained to you, you shall be cast out of the one society that could conceivably endeavor to help you?”

“You may not agree with the invalid’s choice, but it remains his choice, and has no effect on your well-being whatsoever. Are your wives so bold as to make similar demands on you, do you fear? Do you suspect yourself as weak as this Strassle-Schneider here before us, that you fear you too shall be brought under a woman’s heel? Make a brave choice for his sake and yours. I don’t wish to keep company with cowardly neurotics.”

Having made his speech the attorney sat down, leaned back in his chair, and placed his muddy Hessian boots on the table. He seemed to have pleased himself with his provocative comments, and a few of the Schneiders did murmur to each other quietly when he had finished.

Now rose the chief prosecutor of the case, Ronald Schneider. He was the same fat, red-faced slob we encountered before. His belly hung over his belt in such a paunch that it looked painful. If ever a man could be forgiven for elasticated waistbands in public, it would have been him, but he was as insensible of his own condition as he was of all the lives that surrounded him. He had found his rut, and neither his deteriorating condition, nor the changing world around him could convince him to leave it.

After draining his glass of whiskey, the prosecutor began his harangue, “A fine speech. Insulting, haughty, filled with Marxist equivocations…”

Here the attorney stood up slightly and pantomimed bows to the crowd.

“What does this man know of our lives here, working the soil, and all the trades tied therein? He does not toil the way we do. He is a university man, his speech betrays it, even if he now dons the clothes of a wild whelp, and seeks to muddy our understanding with his inscrutable ways. Mistake it not, he wishes to cloud your simple rural minds with all this flotsam and jetsam of the Marxist world that has been crumbling to his very feet.”

“He will tell you that your slavery to women is not slavery at all, but you all feel it, and I need not convince you of anything you already know yourselves. He would have you ponder this through a thousand sickening turns of logic, he would have try to stand on your own feeble legs in the face of this deluge of aimless revolution. But we know what we are about, and we are not interested in the musings of others. No, we have our own little ways, quaint as an outsider might find them. They have stood the test of time. We are as our fathers were, as their grandfathers were, as the long line of Schneiders have been since this guild was formed in the bosom of the Fatherland.”

“It is clear that this attorney and his wretched pupil have been indoctrinated, and that they are unthinking beasts. They do what they have been taught, and they have been taught naught but ill. Why, they probably believe, as all university men do, that having read certain books, under certain conditions, they have attained real knowledge. Imagine! A few leaves of paper, filled with vowels, and consonants, and punctuation, and they consult these for wisdom! They turn the page this way and see one meaning, they turn the page the other way, and come to entirely different conclusions, and no two of them can find a way to agree on anything. Well, we do agree on everything here, and that’s the way we like it!”

Somehow it was clear to the speaker himself, and his audience, that this served as a closing remark. This was the central nut of the whole affair in the minds of the prosecutor and his mob. Blücher blushed at its absurdity. The attorney was dismayed with its lack of style, but the dirty men in their rough hewn clothing felt it all intrinsically and they roared in approval. They banged their mugs on the tables filled with the old filthy cards. They made unseemly remarks concerning nearly every member of society that was not there. In short, they abandoned themselves to utterly unfettered hurly-burly.

After some moments of riot were allowed to pass, Blücher banged his meat hammer on the table with sonorous bangs that eventually quelled the room into an uneasy silence.

“Yes, certainly, a very impressive speech.” he said with scarcely concealed disdain. “Something for us all to think about I’m sure. And our attorney for the defense as well.”

He looked around the room with a defiant eye. The hour had arrived. “I have weighed these matters with great impartiality. I have heard the speeches on both occasions. I have spoken with many of you privately. I have placed the arguments in the balance of my soul. After all this, and having examined this Strassle-Schneider myself, I will now pronounce the judgment of this tribunal.” The dogbodies were not consulted, and it seemed usage demanded that they were not.

“I ask that the prosecution and the defense rise and receive judgment.”

The prosecutor and his minions stood to the great creaking relief of their chairs. The attorney stood and swayed ever so perceptibly. His client stood next to him with slumped shoulders and a weary face.

Blücher stared down upon the principals and the mob in attendance. He was thrilled to pronounce his judgment, which they surely had no choice but to accept. He felt himself born to this thing, to steering this ship, which he imagined was his, to the waters he thought most suitable to his comfort. It was no comfort to him to punish this poor soul.

“It is the holy judgment of this Guild that this Strassle-Schneider, this poor waif, will not suffer disenfranchisement. In fact, he needs to be franchised especially. Further, we shall not interfere with his martial arrangements, such as they be, noxious though we may find it. Suum cuiqe and all the rest of it.”

The attorney raised his eyebrows so high that they perched above his aviator sunglasses and he looked significantly at his client, and took his hand heartily. The Strassle-Schneider shook it absent-mindedly, and without a change to his vacant expression.

Outside of this little table though, the horde broke out into Hunish booing and hooting and cursing. They leapt from their seats and shook their fists and words at Blücher. They tossed their chairs to the floor. They remonstrated with one another. They huddled around the tribunal table with menacing fervor, as if it were the ninth of Thermidor, and they themselves, along with their whole lives, were on trial.

The chief prosecutor wore a malevolent smile that was even more grotesque than his usual attempt at such a facial expression. Indeed, he only truly smiled when his malice had reached a froth, and he was ready to loose some cruelty upon the world. Whether he was actually convinced that his cruelty actually amounted to justice, remains a subject of conjecture.

“It was always my fear that we would come to such a pass as this.” he said. “Unable to bear our vices any longer, yet too weak to face their cures. As such, I raise a vote of no confidence in our current leadership, and move to elect a new magistrate!”

The room roared with approval. The sans-culottes cheered this rising despot as the cure to their current despot. They cheered and drank, shook each others’ hands and slapped the chief prosecutor on the back. Plumes of smoke rose sharply from the crowd from an assortment of cigars, cigarettes, and vape pens. They sneered at Blücher and shook their fists.

His face was unmoved. He bellowed out, “And by what provisions of our ancient charter do you anchor your mutinous motion Rollie? I can tell you now. There is no such provision in the charter handed down by our fathers, nor is there any record of any such action’s performance in our long history, whose beginnings are as hazy and filled with legend as any tale about Furius Camillus. Have you read the charter? It remains in German.” He finished with a haughty raise of his eye.

“No, I have not, nor has anyone else here. Its language is strange to us, and we can make no sense of its foreign patois, even in translation. Besides we have no use of it. What wisdom can be found in the past? We are the legislators of our own lives.”

“Your entire case rests upon the past my rotund friend.” said Blücher angrily. “Yet, here you not only mock it when it does not suit your present ends, but you consign the labors of our father’s to the dust bin for your own pathetic ends.”

“We are not talking about the past, we are talking about our place and its usurpation, which you have overseen. We will take a vote. Whether you or the charter permits it. And we will move forward on the basis of that vote.”

“It is a cruel mutiny and I do not recognize any of these proceedings. The Stillgericht has rendered its ruling according to all accepted usage. No more of the matter may be heard.”

“Here is usage for you!” shouted the prosecutor. “If you agree to my proposal, let me hear your clamor now!” with this the room shook with shouts. Even the two dogsbodies on the tribunal lent their voice.

“Now let me hear those opposed!” he said with satisfaction, for there was only Blücher, the Strassle-Schneider, and his attorney who had not cast their Spartan votes for the former motion, and even now remained in uneasy silence.

Blücher, paragon of Germanic virtue, possessed of blood unsullied from the Templars to the Junkers to the manure piles of Wisconsin, was then and there deposed by a near unanimous vote. He was immediately replaced by the most likely creature, Rollie Schneider, all of him. The first order of business was, of course, the expulsion of Citizen Schneider (so they called him) from the Guild of Schneiders. This was immediately accomplished to raucous applause and jeering. Blücher was picked up by the mob, carried through the dingy bar, and dumped unceremoniously on the wet pavement in front of the tavern.

The Huns roved back inside with much clamor and immediately took up the next piece of business, the Trial of the So-Called Strassle-Schneider. He was, firstly, prohibited from hyphenating his last name, and secondly, he was expelled from the Guild of Schneiders. The beasts picked him up and dumped him on top of Blücher, who was still in the same spot they had dropped him, so expeditious was their justice.

After untangling themselves, Blücher and the Strassle-Scheider remained seated on the cold, wet pavement, staring into far away things.

“You know,” said the Strassle-Schneider, “I think I’m going to hyphenate my name anyway.”

“Indeed.” replied Blücher.

Some time after this Blücher’s dignity was affronted anew, for, when he traced Rollie’s line to the old country, he discovered to his horror and satisfaction, that Rollie was indeed part Dutch, and his great grandfather had spelled his surname, “Sneijder”. He was unable to procure a hearing on the scandal.

It must be said of the attorney, despite scurrying around during the entire fracas, and yelling, “You brutes! You’re damned Schmitzes, you are!” and generally raising all manner of ruckus peculiar to him, that he was ultimately untouched by the whole affair, both in terms of membership of the club and his general reputation therein; for, he was an attorney after all, and none would dare tempt the depths of his malice.