Serendipity Green (8 page)

“But you know I count on you. You're one smart lady.”

When Katherine gets home from the library board meeting she takes another package of rhubarb from the freezer.

Howie Dornick goes to the door. “Katherine? Not another rhubarb pie?”

“You enjoyed the last one so much, I figured, ‘Jiminy Cricket, what the heck!'”

He leads her into the kitchen, feeling like a turd because he threw half of the last rhubarb pie away. “I've still got coffee in my Thermos, if you'd like some?”

“Coffee'd be nice.”

He pours two cups. She finds the silverware drawer on the second try and slices the pie. He takes two of his mother's best plates from the cupboard. Each taking their own plate and cup, they shuffle to the living room. They eat as many forkfuls of pie as they can without talking. The silence gets to Howie Dornick first. “I suppose you want to talk about me painting my house again?”

“He's really turning the screws, Howard.”

“Well, I ain't gonna paint it.”

“He's holding me personally responsible,” she says. She tells him of D. William Aitchbone's threat to put the Reverend Raymond R. Biscobee on the library board.

Howie Dornick feels a double turd now. “I didn't even know Bill Aitchbone was president of the library board.”

“He's president of everything.”

“Including my ass.”

“He's president of everybody's ass.”

Both having used the word
ass
, they go back to eating pie until their embarrassment passes.

“He's intent on being the next mayor,” Katherine says when she has no more pie to eat. “That means Squaw Days has to be perfect.”

“You wouldn't quit your job just because Ray Biscobee got on the board, would you?”

“Jiminy Cricket! No! And Bill Aitchbone knows I wouldn't. He knows I'd stay at the library even if Ray Biscobee got every book taken off the shelves but the Bible. Just like he knows I'll stay on the Squaw Days Committee no matter how much of a mockery they make of it.”

“I've always thought Squaw Days was kind of fun,” Howie Dornick admits. “I know what you mean, though. Celebrating an Indian woman and her papoose getting clubbed to death by two white men is kind of weird. And there is lots of clean-up afterwards.”

Neither have anymore pie to eat. But they do have stale instant coffee to sip. And so they sip. As unappetizing as they are too each other, they are nevertheless a lonely man and a lonely woman, of approximately the same age, sitting alone together, in March, the month when more than the ground thaws. “I didn't come here to make you feel guilty, Howard. I just want you to understand how adamant Bill Aitchbone is about this. That's all.”

Howie Dornick, of course, is feeling guilty, though not about Katherine Hardihood's predicament. He is feeling guilty about his half birth and about his attachment to his mother after all these years. He rubs his eyes until a universe of miniature stars explode on his eyelids. “I can't afford to buy any paint. Not on what the village pays me. It's all I can do to eat and pay my utilities.”

Katherine has spent her life learning facts and gathering them into truths. So she knows that Howie Dornick's refusal to paint his house has nothing to do with how little money the village pays him, just as she knows that D. William Aitchbone's obsession with Howie's unpainted house has nothing to do with Squaw Days being perfect, or even with his need to be mayor. This is all about Artie Brown's wayward sperm. Just as Howie Dornick is the illegitimate son of Artie Brown and Patsy Dornick, D. William Aitchbone's wife, Karen, is the legitimate daughter of Artie Brown and Melody Ring. Even though his wife's birth has been sanctified by both God and the Wyssock County Recorder's Office, the existence of Howie Dornick taints her. Taints their marriage. Taints him. The raw gray clapboards on this little two-story frame are not Howie Dornick's shame. They are D. William Aitchbone's shame and D. William Aitchbone's illegitimacy. “If it's just the money—”

Howie begins waving his arms, as if a swarm of wasps just flew out of the cracks in the ceiling plaster. “I'm not taking any of your money, Katherine. You don't make much more than I do.”

Actually, Katherine Hardihood knows for a fact that she makes quite a bit more than he does. “I hate Bill Aitchbone as much as you, Howard. And I'd say stand up to him regardless of how much funny business he pulls, except—” She searches the bottom of her cup for a time-delaying swallow. There is only a single thick drop. She lifts the cup to her lips and waits for the drop to trickle onto her tongue. “—except that your house is an eyesore, Howard, and everyone in Tuttwyler, including me, wishes for godsakes you'd paint it.”

Howie Dornick's arms are now wrapped tightly around his waist, as if those invisible wasps have found their way down his throat and are now building a hive inside his belly. “I ain't gonna paint it.”

Katherine Hardihood finds herself on his side of the sofa, her arms around his shoulders, her pencil-point librarian's chin dug into his maintenance engineer's clavicle. “Oh, Howie. Let's have some more pie.”

7

Red.

Yellow.

Green.

The cars on Tocqueville stop. The cars on South Mill go.

D. William Aitchbone drives through the intersection. He's spent the day expediting divorces in New Waterbury again. March is getting on. Days are stretching out. Temperatures are rising. It hasn't snowed in three days. That morning he saw the heads of his wife's daffodils poking through the mulch. That morning he received the news from the Sparrow Hill Nursing Home that his uncle Andy has suffered another stroke. It was his third in two years and likely to be his last.

Andy was the last Aitchbone to make a living farming. Because he never married—strange since he was as manly as any Aitchbone male—his four-hundred acre farm on Three Fish Creek will go entirely to his nephew, one D. William Aitchbone, who is now driving past his wife and children and his impressive soapy white, green-shuttered Queen Anne, for a strategy session with himself at the Daydream Beanery. Then he will go to the March meeting of the Squaw Days Committee.

D. William Aitchbone hands his Coffee Club card to the counter girl with the blackcherry lips. All of the little boxes are punched. She makes him the free cappuccino he has coming. He pays for a raisin scone. “They say it's going to hit fifty tomorrow,” the counter girl says.

Despite the dulcimer music and the anticipation of his uncle Andy's death, Aitchbone's strategy session goes well. At 7:25 he heads for the library, his Burberry open and flapping.

Everyone is there, even Kevin Hassock, who has just been served with divorce papers.

Aitchbone acknowledges him with a commiserating, “Kevin.”

Kevin Hassock, eyes fixed on his shoes, nods back. “Bill.”

“Oh, Bill,” Delores Poltruski says, “thank you so much for getting that box elder limb cut down. The Knights of Columbus are simply walking on water.”

“The real thanks goes to Mayor Sadlebyrne,” D. William Aitchbone says, making sure there is a smidgen of humility in his voice. “I'm not sure how you did it, Woody, but thanks for getting Howie Dornick off his duff.”

After the mayor nods, D. William Aitchbone initiates a round of applause. Only Katherine Hardihood doesn't join in.

“Now if we can just get Howie to paint his house,” Delores Poltruski says.

“Amen,” Dick Mueller says.

“If I were a betting man, I'd bet this will be the year Howie paints it,” D. William Aitchbone says. His courtroom smile flies around the table and lands on Katherine Hardihood's sour face like a bat on a barn beam. And so the meeting begins:

Dick Mueller reports that the Chirping Chipmunks unicycle troupe from Akron will indeed participate in the parade. “They'll be happy to come back as long as we don't put them behind the mounted color guard from the sheriff's department again.”

Dick Mueller's discussion of the parade is a terrible temptation for D. William Aitchbone. Sweet Jesus, how he wants to tell them about his coup. But even though Victoria Bonobo has talked to her brother, and her brother has talked directly to the Vice President, and even though the VP says he'll be happy to ride in the Squaw Days parade if he can squeeze it in his schedule, he knows it would be imprudent to spill the beans just yet. “Sounds like the parade is shaping up, Dick. My only recommendation is that you stay fluid. You never know who might come in at the last minute, or who might have to cancel.”

“No problem,” Dick Mueller says, knowing only too well that the chairman is right. Two years earlier the parade order had to be changed at the last minute when two members of the Tuttwyler Senior Squares square-dancing troupe were sidelined, Calvin Dubin with a bad case of the shingles and Margaret Snyder with pinkeye.

Delores Poltruski reports that there will be at least three more crafts exhibitors than last year, proof, she says, that Squaw Days is growing by leaps and bounds.

If only she knew how big those leaps and bounds were, Aitchbone thinks, picturing himself seated next to the VP in one of Bud Love's classic Chevrolet convertibles, waving and waving and waving.

Paula Varney reports that financial contributions from the merchants are coming in slow but sure, and that the sidewalk sale will be bigger than ever. “Wal-mart is not only going to put out their leftover summer things, but some of their back-to-school clothes,” she says. “I bet before it's all over, Kmart does the same.”

“I bet they do, too,” Delores Poltruski says.

Donald Grinspoon reports that the tobacco-spitting competition will be moved from Sunday to Saturday, even though the pie-eating contest also is held that day. “Reverend Biscobee has some real concerns about the use of tobacco being glorified on the Sabbath,” he says. “I figured, why ruffle anybody's feathers?”

“I think you're right on target,” D. William Aitchbone says, wondering if the VP could be talked into judging one, or both, of those events. Footage like that would surely give Squaw Days some national coverage.

“The fireworks will still be on Friday night, won't they?” Dick Mueller asks the former mayor.

“Oh, sure,” Donald Grinspoon assures him. “Fireworks and Friday night go together like Limburger cheese and onions.”

When Woodrow Wilson Sadlebyrne reports he'll be sending village employees a memo by the end of April regarding their assignments for the festival, the former mayor can't hold his tongue. “I'd get it out by the middle of April, if I were you. People plan their vacations early. I remember one year half the fire department was off walleye fishing during Squaw Days. If there'd been a fire, God only knows what would've happened.”

The new mayor's Democratic pride gets the better of his manners. “I think the end of April is soon enough.”

“I don't know,” the old Republican answers. “You're cutting it close.”

Aitchbone enjoys their joust. It is, after all, so meaningless. When the VP's visit is confirmed—probably in another month or two—there'll be Secret Service, White House advisers, and field people from the Republican National Committee running over Tuttwyler like ants at a picnic. He offers a compromise: “Maybe you could send out a memo in the middle of April telling everyone not to make any vacation plans until they get your end-of-April memo.” The resulting laugh breaches the partisan divide. D. William Aitchbone now turns to Kevin Hassock. “How are the rides shaping up?”

Kevin Hassock tries, but is unable to make eye contact with the man overseeing the destruction of his eleven-year marriage. “Everything's hunky-dory.”

Now it is Katherine Hardihood's turn to report. “The gazebo band started rehearsals last Tuesday and the Re-Enactment people start rehearsing Monday,” she says. “Al Warner found six new arrowheads in his soybean field for the historic display. So everything's hunky-dory with me, too.”

D. William Aitchbone crawls into bed and kisses his wife's ear. Spring is coming. Her ear isn't as cold as usual. “That woman has more brass than a marching band,” he whispers between his kiss and a yawn.

“The nursing home called about an hour ago,” Karen Aitchbone says. “Your Uncle Andy's died while they were spoon-feeding him rice pudding.”

Aitchbone goes to sleep wondering how much developers will offer him for the farm. It will be a bundle. But how big a bundle? And how soon can he get his arms around that bundle?

Just as Katherine Hardihood reaches the parking lot of the In & Out, the muddy clouds that have been hanging low over Tuttwyler all day erupt. Key in hand, she runs up Oak Street, raindrops as fat and repulsive as the tobacco spit at Squaw Days soaking her white sweater. Jiminy Cricket, how she hates D. William Aitchbone!

Katherine was already a freshman in high school working weekend afternoons at the library when eight-year-old D. William Aitchbone—then called Dusty by his family and friends, his first name being Dustin—first came to the library by himself. “Hi, Dusty,” she said. “Come all alone today?”

“Certainly,” he answered, the word shooting out of his little-boy lips both brisk and brusque, as if spoken by a forty-five-year-old lawyer.

Even then, Katherine Hardihood was not surprised by D. William Aitchbone's intimidating maturity. He had been born a forty-five-year-old lawyer. In elementary school, when other boys were watching
Davy Crockett
and
Captain Kangaroo
, on their families' new black & whites, he was watching
Meet the Press
and
Lawrence Welk
. In junior high, when boys were buying Beach Boy records, and combing their bangs straight down like the Beatles, he was buying Sinatra, and wearing his hair like Sinatra. In high-school, when other boys were slopping around in bell-bottom pants, their hair down to there, he was seriously comfortable in cuffed stovepipe slacks and Hush Puppies, getting straight A's in civics and geometry, writing fan letters to Ohio's Republican Governor, the no-nonsense James A. Rhodes.