Serendipity Green (29 page)

Howie Dornick and Katherine Hardihood reach the Grabbenstelter's flat-roofed Italianate. Ken and Kelley Grabbenstelter have just painted it a ripe persimmon red, not as an act of rebellion against the copy-cat Serendipity Green® houses, but as a beacon to draw attention to their Serendipity Green® window frames and shutters, their Serendipity Green® porch posts and Adirondack chairs, and the impressive wrought iron fence stretching from property line to property line, now transformed into a living hedge by a coat of Bison-Prickert's rust-resistant Serendipity Green® enamel.

They are standing on Bill Aitchbone's porch much too quickly. Katherine smashes the door bell button with her librarian's thumb.
Bing-bingly-bingly-bing!
“You don't have to say anything,” she says to Howie. “I know exactly what to say.”

He is relieved. “Whatever you say.”

D. William Aitchbone does not come to the door. Not after the first
Bing-bingly-bingly-bing!
or the sixth. Their courage flags. “Maybe he's dead in there,” Howie Dornick says. “Nobody's really seen him since he drove into the gazebo.”

Katherine Hardihood presses her nose into the door crack and sniffs. There is no evidence of a rotting corpse. She bangs on the door with the callused meat of her librarian's fist. “Bill Aitchbone! Answer the door!”

Suddenly Howie Dornick is overcome with the need to find Bill Aitchbone dead. He hardens his shoulder and pulls in his neck, ready to ram. But first he tries the doorknob. The door is unlocked. They shuffle in.

It is a beautiful house. There are beautiful wallpapers. Beautiful chandeliers with dangling crystals, beautiful white carpets and blue carpets and all of the furniture in the living room is oak. “Bill? Bill?” Katherine Hardihood shouts sweetly between investigative sniffs. “Bill? Bill?”

They drift into the kitchen and admire the stainless steel cooktop and gray granite countertops. They frown at the pile of dirty plates in the twin sinks. Most of the plates are smeared with spaghetti sauce. There also are several cereal bowls encrusted with Cheerios. “Jiminy Cricket, Bill? Are you alive?”

An answer explodes up the basement stairs. “Down here, for christsakes.”

And so Howie Dornick and Katherine Hardihood find D. William Aitchbone in his basement, playing with his electric trains.

It is a remarkable sight: D. William Aitchbone is sitting atop the vibrating clothes dryer. He is wearing nothing but boxer shorts. He badly needs a shave and a shampoo. Surprisingly, this manliest of men has very few hairs on his chest, but there is enough hair erupting from his armpits to weave a pair of good sized bird nests. His nipples are no bigger than Lincoln pennies. His hands are locked around a bottle of Miller Lite. His trains are racing around the rim of a long plywood table. Inside the maze of tracks is a miniature replica of the Tuttwyler village square.

Howie and Katherine inch forward. They study the miniature village square. Every buildings is exact. But this is not the Tuttwyler square of today. There is no Daydream Beanery. No Just Giraffes or Pizza Teepee. No art galleries or antique shops. Nosireebob. D. William Aitchbone's tiny Tuttwyler has H.W. Colby's Hardware and Borden Brother's Shoes and Porter's Western Auto and Morton's IGA and Klinger's Paint and Sylvia's Family Restaurant and Grinspoon's Department Stores. There is no tiny wooden Indian holding a pizza and none of the Matchbox cars parked around the square are newer than a '57 Chevrolet.

D. William Aitchbone's tiny Tuttwyler, however, does have one appendage that pre-Interstate 491 Tuttwyler did not. It has a gazebo; and just like the real gazebo, this tiny gazebo has been updated with a coat of Serendipity Green® paint, at least a quart of it, poured like syrup over a stack of pancakes; the gazebo also has been flattened like a pancake, as if God Almighty had angrily thrust one of his sledge-hammer-like hands down through the firmament.

“Happy now, Howie?” asks D. William Aitchbone as his uninvited guests explore the little town and watch the trains go around.

Howie Dornick can't be sure, but he thinks he knows what D. William Aitchbone means. And yes, he is happy now. Seeing Bill Aitchbone in his underwear with nothing but a vibrating dryer and bottle of beer to keep him company makes him very happy, indeed. But he says nothing. His woman wants to do all the talking. He will let her.

“We didn't come here to talk about Howie's happiness, or yours,” she says. “We came to talk about Squaw Days.”

D. William Aitchbone takes a mouthful of beer and grimaces it down his throat. “My favorite subject.”

“Not after today,” says Howie Dornick.

“Bill's being sarcastic,” explains Katherine.

D. William Aitchbone grimaces another swig. “You guys want to hear my big surprise for this year's parade? I'm going to march buck naked with a big Serendipity Green®
A
painted on my white ass. Like that idea, Howie?”

Howie Dornick answers, “Really?”

“He's still being sarcastic,” his woman explains. “He's referring to Nathaniel Hawthorne's 17th century novel about a woman who's convicted of adultery and forced wear a scarlet letter
A
on her dress.”

“What's that got to do with his ass?” Howie Dornick wants to know.

Again his woman explains: “By painting a Serendipity Green®
A
on his ass and parading naked, Bill would be blaming his adultery on you.”

“My alleged adultery,” says D. William Aitchbone.

“And why is his alleged adultery my fault?” Howie Dornick asks Katherine.

“Because he's got to blame somebody besides himself.”

D. William Aitchbone starts laughing. Beer dribbles down his chest and makes his Lincoln-penny nipples glisten.

Katherine Hardihood explains further: “You see, Howard, having a wife with an illegitimate half brother—correct me if I'm wrong, Bill—has been the one thing that's kept his life from being perfect. Being related to dumb old Howie Dornick.”

Dumb old Howie Dornick nods his head wisely. “Ahhhh.”

“And now that he's been caught putting his manhood where it doesn't belong …”

“Allegedly putting,” says D. William Aitchbone.

“… he has subconsciously and symbolically tied all of his misfortunes to Artie Brown's original sin of impregnating your mother. Karen leaving with the kids. Woody being mayor. Paying all those inheritance taxes on his uncle's farm. You ruining his first year as Squaw Days chairman by painting your house that god-awful color. And most importantly, I suppose, his not being man enough to control everything and everybody, the way the great Donald Grinspoon would have controlled everything and everybody.”

“Wow,” says Howie Dornick.

D. William Aitchbone has stopped laughing. “So what's so damn important about Squaw Days that it can't wait until I'm sober?”

Katherine walks to the wall and pulls the plug on D. William's Aitchbone's trains. She pulls the plug on his vibrating clothes dryer, too. Now that she has the silence a librarian deserves, she begins: “First let me say, Bill, that I take no pleasure in telling you any of this …”

To which D. William Aitchbone says, “I bet.”

“… but I have to tell you, because it is the truth and everyone has the right to know the truth …”

To which D. William Aitchbone says, “Nobody cares about the truth.”

“… Well, I care about the truth And you're going to care about it. You know I've never been happy about Squaw Days. The disgraceful carnival it's become …”

To which D. William Aitchbone says, “Never would have guessed.”

“… But I kept my mouth shut and went along. For the good of the village. Knowing the whole Pogawedka thing was a lie …”

To which D. William Aitchbone says, “You're the one who did the research, if you remember.”

“… And now I'm going to undo it …”

To which D. William Aitchbone asks, “And how do you undo research?”

“… With more research. Bill, the irony of this is going to slay you …”

To which D. William Aitchbone says, “Lay it on me, Katherine. I haven't been slain with irony since Karen left with the kids.”

“… Let's start with the Tuttwyler brothers clubbing the two human beings we now call Pogawedka and Kapusta—which, by the way, are Polish words for nonsense and cabbage. Now the myth, of course, is that Pogawedka's spirit rose from the stumps to forgive her murderers and give her blessing for the rape of her ancestral lands, and presumably giving us permission to desecrate her memory with pie-eating contests, tobacco-spitting and the biggest Ferris wheel we can get.…”

To which D. William Aitchbone says, “It's a good myth, isn't it?”

“… And now it seems that the real bones of our mythical Pogawedka and Kapusta have been discovered. And guess where, Bill? In the grave of Seth Aitchbone …”

To which D. William Aitchbone says, “Sweet Jesus.”

“… The bones and smashed skulls of a young woman and a baby, resting atop your great-great-great-great-great uncle. Right there on that beautiful hill overlooking Three Fish Creek. And why would those bones be on top of Seth Aitchbone's if they weren't his illegitimate family?”

To which D. William Aitchbone, glowering at Howie Dornick for playing with his ancestors' bones, says, “So he had a squaw on the side. Big whoop.”

“Ah! But she wasn't a squaw. Wasn't an Indian. She was white. And her baby was white. And that means those wonderful brothers who founded our little village murdered a white woman and a white baby. Not that murdering an Indian woman and an Indian baby would have been any less despicable, of course, but at least that's something you can build a nice festival around. And by the way, Bill. Guess how ol' Seth died? He shot himself in the mouth!”

To which D. William Aitchbone says, “So the irony, you think, is that because of my greed—paying lover boy here to uproot my ancestors so I could sell the farm and get rich—a dark secret has been uncovered. One that would ruin me politically if it ever got out? And so you've come to blackmail me. Make Squaw Days respectable or you'll tell the world. Is that it, Katherine?”

“This is not about blackmail, Bill. This is about telling you the truth first, out of decency.”

To which D. William Aitchbone reaches into his tiny Tuttwyler and uncouples the locomotive from one of his trains. He presses it to his beer-sticky chest and pets it like a puppy. “This is a 1930 Blue Comet, considered one of Lionel's greatest achievements. If I wanted to sell it, and all the cars, I bet I could get seven, eight thousand bucks. My father gave it to me on my twelfth birthday. He would have been eighty-two this year. June fifth. My son, Cannon, was born on the sixth. I was praying he'd be born on the fifth, like my father. But he was born on the sixth.” He puts the Blue Comet back, carefully coupling it to the coal car. “So, you're going to set the world straight, are you, Katherine?”

Katherine Hardihood nods.

To which D. William Aitchbone asks, “When?”

“Not until this year's festival is over. Everybody's already done at lot of work. But when it's over. Maybe in the fall. I'm not a beast, Bill. I just believe in the truth.”

To which D. William Aitchbone begins laughing like a flock of southbound Canada geese. “You're not going to tell the world the truth, Katherine. You don't have the balls. You love Tuttwyler more than anybody. More than Donald Grinspoon. You went along with Squaw Days in the first place because you love it, and you'll keep on going along because you love it. I appreciate all your research. But who on God's green earth are you kidding? No balls, Katherine. No balls at all. You just make sure this year's Re-Enactment is the best ever. And you, Howie, you make sure the portable toilets are clean.”

“I don't blame you for being bitter,” Katherine Hardihood says, “but I am going to go public with this.”

To which D. William Aitchbone throws his Miller Lite bottle against the wall. “I've got a great idea, Howie. Why don't you paint those portable toilets that shitty green of yours? And the streets and the sidewalks and all the goddamn tree trunks. Paint goddamn everything. I'll even let you paint that green
A
on my goddamn ass!” Now he bends over and comes up with a gallon can of Bison-Prickert Serendipity Green® Latex. He pries off the loose lid with his fingernails. “Come on, Howie, you can't paint my ass right now!” He starts pouring the paint over his tiny Tuttwyler, even over his precious Blue Comet. “Much much much better,” he says between goose laughs.

Katherine Hardihood takes Howie Dornick by the arm and starts up the stairs. “We just wanted to tell you first,” she says. At the top of the stairs she breaks away from him and goes back down. D. William Aitchbone is still pouring paint. She takes her wallet from her purse and takes out a business card, and not knowing quite where to put it, she slips it inside the elastic of his boxer shorts. She trots up the stairs.

D. William Aitchbone has emptied the can of Serendipity Green® paint.

He swings the can like a hammer now, smashing the scale model balsawood buildings he's spent his entire married life making. He smashes his trains. He pulls the card from his boxers. He reads it:

DR. PIROOZ ARAM

Psychiatrist

The house at the end of Petunia Court was still heated with coal when Darren Frost bought it in 1968. Every September, Sparky Shingleholtz would back his dump truck up to the small iron chute on the driveway side of the house and let five tons of filthy Ohio bituminous rumble into the basement coal bin, a windowless chamber maybe ten by ten.

In 1978, Darren Frost put in natural gas and turned the coal bin into his den. And tonight he is sitting in that little windowless cell, surrounded by hundreds of pornographic pictures taped to the walls, the stench of coal still lingering after all these years. He is sitting in front of the new computer he bought with his son's college savings bonds, right after that unfortunate incident at the library. He is downloading information on how to make pipe bombs. His cupcake costume is hanging from a big brass hook screwed into the ceiling. His can of orange soda is resting atop his Bible. His once-prized photograph of the Reverend Raymond R. Biscobee is in the wastebasket, ripped into pieces the size of postage stamps. His wife is working her evening shift at the new Red Lobster on West Wooseman. His kids are upstairs watching God-knows-what on the TV.