Serendipity Green Page 5

  D. William Aitchbone now passes out copies of a frightening flow chart he’s drawn which shows the budget literally breaking through the village hall’s historically accurate slate roof.

  “What’s the answer?” asks Councilman Phil Tripp, genuinely concerned, not part of the conspiracy.

  “Privatization,” D. William Aitchbone answers.

  Sam Guss writes down the big impressive word and underlines it twice.

  “Privatization, Mr. President?” Victoria Bonobo asks, another pre-arranged response.

  D. William Aitchbone lifts his firm chin and runs all ten of his fingers through the head of thick hair Victoria Bonobo’s husband hadn’t been blessed with. “That’s correct, madam councilwoman. Bid out some of the village’s services to private vendors.”

  “You mean things like police and fire?” Tom Van Syckle wonders, all on his own.

  D. William Aitchbone’s smile is reassuring. “Well not right away, Tom. We could start with some of the costly little stuff, like cleaning storm sewers, grave digging, repairing sidewalks and trimming limbs, simple maintenance stuff. Then after we’ve seen if the savings are real, we can look at things like garbage and snow removal. Police and fire would be way down the road. Way way down the road.” He passes out identical gray folders containing not only the details of his proposal, but Xerox copies of newspaper articles from other Ohio communities where privatization has been a big success. “Maybe this is the way we ought to go, and maybe it isn’t,” he humbly tells his fellow council members. “But I think it’s something we ought to consider. Again, I’m suggesting we start small.”

  Mayor Woodrow Wilson Sadlebyrne sits back and folds his arms, both amused and terrified by Aitchbone’s performance; knowing that while the village budget will indeed scrape against the ceiling tiles in two or three years, there is not a chance in hell it will ever break through the slate shingles; knowing that D. William Aitchbone’s proposal to privatize is nothing more than his private war against Howie Dornick’s unpainted house.

  Katherine Hardihood leaves the council meeting bewildered. She, too, understands the wickedness of Aitchbone’s privatization plan. Worse still—what is making her wrists and ankles quiver—is her realization that D. William Aitchbone knows she understands it, and that he’s counting on her to explain his threat to Howie Dornick.

  Walking down the dark sidewalks of Tuttwyler, icy snow bouncing off her noisy polyester coat, house key ready to pluck a rapist’s eye, she more than once whispers, “That Machiavellian fart.”

  She reaches her house. Delores Poltruski’s car is not in Dick Mueller’s driveway. Rhubarb has not pissed the curio cabinet. She loves him up anyway. She puts on her nightgown and two pairs of socks and gets in bed. On the news, the Cleveland Indians’ equipment truck is arriving at Winter Haven, Florida. The driver, still wearing his Chief Wahoo cap and jacket, waves at the camera. As he does every year, Ernest Not Irish has followed the truck south, and is now standing outside the Indian’s spring camp, in summer shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, shaking a big homemade sign that shows Chief Wahoo holding not a baseball bat, but a plate of pancakes. AUNT JEMIMA IN REDFACE the sign reads.

  In the morning Hardihood walks to the library. She turns on the lights and turns up the heat. Weekday mornings are not very busy. A few retired people. A few young moms with their preschoolers. A few people who work odd shifts. At eleven she takes ten minutes to eat her lunch, and then, invigorated by the small bites of egg salad and Wonder Bread floating in her stomach, in a subterranean lake of grape juice, she returns to her desk for the lunch-hour rush. By 1 p.m. she has checked out eleven movie videos, five computer games, four CDs of children’s music, and three books, one of them a novel.

  The library is dead until three. Then school is out. Dozens of kids tumble in. There is the din of magazine pages turning, the din of homework going undone, the din of computer keys as seventh-grade boys tap onto the Internet to research their favorite rock stars and—if the Reverend Raymond R. Biscobee is to be believed—to download dirty pictures and chat with European pedophiles. By five the library is empty again.

  Katherine Hardihood has succeeded in keeping the Machiavellian Fart out of her mind all day. Then at five-ten, just as she is about to walk home for supper, leaving Megan Burroughs in charge for an hour or so, the wife of the Machiavellian Fart appears at the desk, her daughter Amy and son Cannon in tow. She is there to pick up her reserved copy of Lake Toads and Land Frogs, R.C. Corwin’s young adult fantasy about mutlicultural tolerance.

  “Aren’t you so proud of Bill?” Karen Aitchbone says to Katherine Hardihood.

  “Hmmm?”

  Karen Aitchbone blushes loving-wife pink. “Stepping into Don Grinspoon’s shoes, I mean. This is going to be the best Squaw Days yet, isn’t it? Not that Donald didn’t always do a great job. But he’s had so much on his mind the past few years. I don’t know how some people cope, do you?”

  “No, I don’t,” Katherine Hardihood says. She hands Lake Toads and Land Frogs to Amy. “Be sure to return it by the 28th. There are lots of other children waiting.”

  “I will,” says Amy Aitchbone.

  Now the Machiavellian Fart that is the husband and father of these perfectly harmless people is stinking up the inside Katherine Hardihood’s head. She worries and fumes all the way home. She worries and fumes all the time she is wiping down the curio cabinet with Pine Sol and all the time she is simmering a can of Campbell’s Manhattan Style Clam Chowder and spreading margarine on eight saltine crackers. She worries and fumes while she is eating that soup and those eight crackers and sipping a half-glass of skimmed milk, scratching Rhubarb’s ears while he sleeps next to the plastic roses on the table.

  Knowing as many facts as she does, Katherine Hardihood can commiserate with any number of historic figures who faced similar damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t predicaments. But with the demon responsible for her predicament being D. William Aitchbone, her heart instantly reaches out to the biggest schnook in all Christendom, Judas Iscariot. How Judas must have felt that night, she thinks as she plays with Rhubarb’s head: If he betrays Jesus, as Jesus almost certainly wants, he’ll be the most reviled man in all Judea, Jesus being the messiah and all; yet if he refuses to betray his lord, he might be mucking up God’s grand plan for human salvation. Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t.

  She walks back to the library and checks out videos and computer games and CDs and even a few books. At eight-thirty she turns off the lights and locks the door. She goes home and takes a zip-lock bag of rhubarb stalks from the freezer and puts it in the sink to thaw, just in case she proves as weak-willed as Judas Iscariot.

  The next morning she bakes a rhubarb pie.

  Victoria Bonobo waits for D. William Aitchbone in the parking lot of the Wagon Wheel. At exactly noon he pulls in. Inside, they take the booth nobody wants by the restrooms. One restroom door says BUCKAROOS. The other says SCHOOL MARMS. Victoria Bonobo orders a light meal for her nervous stomach, tossed salad and hot tea. D. William Aitchbone orders a mushroom burger, fries and coffee.

  “Thanks for last night,” Aitchbone says when the waitress heads to the kitchen with their orders.

  Victoria can feel her red blood cells spinning. “I think privatization is the way to go, too. It will take some doing to convince the others, but—”

  The coffee and hot tea come. He waits for the waitress to pour and leave. “We’ll get it done, I think.” Then he smiles. “But that’s not what I wanted to see you about.”

  Her red blood cells are somersaulting now. “Oh?”

  D. William Aitchbone leans over his coffee steam. “When you were going through your divorce, I remember you telling me …”

  Victoria leans into her tea steam.

  “… that your brother roomed with the Vice President when they were at Ohio State. And that they still keep in touch.”

  Victoria feels her red blood cells sink to the bottom of her veins like flakes of rust. “Oh.”
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br />   While Katherine Hardihood worries and fumes at the library, the rhubarb pie cools on top of her stove, protected from her tomcat by the heavy lid of a turkey roaster. She does not go back to work after supper. For the first time since becoming branch librarian, she’ll let Megan Burroughs lock up. She changes into a comfortable pair of slacks and puts on a huge, poppy-red turtleneck that hides her unappetizing trunk under thick folds and blazing color. She applies a thin coat of gloss to her lips then, thinking better, wipes it off, leaving her librarian’s lips a bit pinker nonetheless. She brushes her teeth with baking soda, puts the rhubarb pie in a Rubbermaid pie carrier, and walks through the snowless night to the unpainted two-story frame on South Mill.

  Howie Dornick, breath smelling of peanut butter, cracker crumbs on his flannel shirt, opens the front door without turning on the porch light. “Katherine?”

  Katherine Hardihood stiffly offers him the rhubarb pie, the way Indians in old movies offer peace pipes. “I remembered how much you liked it,” she says. “I found some this morning in the freezer—not pie but rhubarb—and said ‘Jiminy Cricket, what the heck, I’ll bake Howard Dornick a pie.’”

  He takes the Rubbermaid container. “Isn’t that thoughtful.”

  The heat escaping from the open door mixes with the outside cold, forming a noticeable vortex of spinning air that, if this uncomfortable moment lasts any longer, Katherine Hardihood fears, might erupt into a full-blown tornado, ripping the porch right off its foundation stones. “We need to talk, Howard.”

  He backs inside. She follows and closes the door. “Why don’t you cut us some pie,” she says, peeling off her noisy coat and white knit hat. The power of her poppy-red sweater sends him fleeing to the kitchen. “I’ve still got a little coffee in my Thermos, if you want some.”

  “Why not,” she says.

  And so they sit on the sofa eating rhubarb pie, drinking stale instant coffee. “I thought you might be at the Eagles club tonight,” she says.

  “Not on Fridays. Too many people go there on Fridays.”

  “Howard, did you read today’s Gazette?”

  “I don’t subscribe.”

  “Did you hear about last night’s council meeting then?”

  “Nope.”

  “Howard, have you ever heard of privatization?”

  “Nope.”

  She explains: “It’s when the government turns public jobs like yours over to private businesses.”

  “Oh, I guess I’ve heard about that.”

  “Bill Aitchbone wants to privatize your job, Howard.”

  “Why would he want to do that?”

  “He says to save the village money.”

  “Would it?”

  “Howard, you’d be out of work.”

  “I’ve been out of work before. After the snack cake line was closed, remember?”

  “And do you remember how long it was before the village finally hired you? You were on your final week of unemployment.”

  “I think I still had two weeks to go.”

  “Bill Aitchbone doesn’t really want to privatize your job, Howard. His privatization plan is just a ploy to force you to paint your house.”

  “Why is everybody so concerned about my house?”

  “Because it’s an eyesore, Howard.”

  “Well, I ain’t gonna paint it.”

  “Then Bill Aitchbone will push his privatization plan through the council. He owns them.”

  “He don’t own the mayor. Mayor’s got a veto, right?”

  “He owns us all.”

  “He don’t own me.”

  “The Bill Aitchbone’s of the world own anybody they want to own.”

  “Well, he don’t own me. You want more pie?”

  “It’s good, isn’t it? Even with last summer’s rhubarb.”

  Howie Dornick takes their empty plates to the kitchen, returning with fresh slices. “The coffee’s all gone. I could make some more.”

  “None for me.”

  “So, if I paint my house, I keep my job with the village?”

  “Yes.”

  “They can stick their job where the sun don’t shine, for all I care.”

  “I’m not telling you what to do. I came as a friend. To tell you what’s cooking, that’s all. Bill Aitchbone’s chairman of the Squaw Days Committee now, and—”

  “I thought Donald Grinspoon was chairman.”

  “Not any more.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m on the committee, Howard. Bill Aitchbone is the chairman. And he wants to put his stamp on it. God only knows what else he’s got planned, but he’s got a real bug up his behind about your house.”

  “Well, I ain’t gonna paint it.”

  “I’m not telling you what to do.”

  “I ain’t.”

  “Then you’ll lose your job.”

  “I’m Civil Service.”

  “Civil Service only protects people in jobs that exist.”

  “I ain’t gonna paint it.”

  “I don’t blame you for being stubborn, Howard. Not the way this town has treated you.”

  “I got this house free and clear when my mother died. Mortgage paid in full.”

  “You’re lucky. I’ve still got nine years on mine.”

  “I ain’t gonna paint it.”

  “I’m not telling you what to do.”

  “Not for Bill Aitchbone. Not for anybody.”

  “What about for yourself, Howard?”

  “So, you think I should paint it?”

  “It needs painting, yes. You know it does. But whether you do or not—”

  “Well, I ain’t.”

  “I’m all for being a thorn in Bill Aitchbone’s side, Howard, but—”

  “If you were me, you’d paint it?”

  “I just wanted you to know what was going on.”

  “You use brown sugar in your pies? Mother always did.”

  6

  There is a saying about the month of March in the Midwest: March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.

  But in fact, March in the Midwest has no discernible coming in or going out. March in the Midwest is wretched from start to finish. March in the Midwest is deep wet snow one day, razor-blade rain the next; crocuses and daffodils pushing through the thawing ground only to be withered by night frost; frogs burrowing from pond bottoms only to knock themselves unconscious on the ice; March in the Midwest is taking sweaters off and putting sweaters on; men itching to mate with any woman and to mow anybody’s grass; women itching to rearrange anybody’s kitchen cupboards; March in the Midwest is cloudy; 39 degrees; 31 long days.

  No, there are no lions or lambs in a Midwestern March. Only dead skunks on the road.

  On the first Tuesday of this March, Katherine Hardihood backs her boxy Plymouth Shadow from the garage and navigates over and around flattened skunks to New Waterbury for the county library meeting.

  During her twenty-seven years with the library no one ever attended these meetings other than librarians and library board members. But since January these meetings are suddenly very popular. That’s when the Reverend Raymond R. Biscobee first showed up to demand that the new computers be taken out. “The filthy books you folks put on the shelves for our children to read are bad enough,” he told the board in January, “but now that you’ve hooked up to this Internet thing, our children can call up filthy pictures and chitchat with pedophiles from every country in Europe.” The board promised to look into his concerns and went on to discuss the need for a new roof at the Pennville branch. “The Pennville branch hasn’t had a new roof since 1971,” board member Margaret Bale said.

  In February, the Reverend Raymond R. Biscobee was back with a contingent of “good Christian mothers and fathers,” as he loudly declared them, who had met at Darren Frost’s house and formed a group of concerned parents called EDIT, Erase Destructive Internet Trash. Extra folding chairs were brought over from Barrow Brothers Funeral Home. The board promised to look into their con
cerns and went on to discuss the sewage problem at the Hillsboro branch. “You’ve got a sewage problem at all the branches,” someone in the audience called out.

  Now it is March and EDIT has grown from a contingent into a juggernaut, with a slate of officers and an agenda that includes not only the filth available on the new computers, but also the filth to be found in the library’s magazines and videos and albums and books. Given this wider purview, EDIT now stands for Eliminate Destructive Influences Today. Katherine Hardihood has trouble finding a seat even though extra chairs have been brought over from not only Barrow Brothers Funeral Home, but the Moose Club as well. Sam Guss of the Gazette finds himself sitting between big city reporters from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Akron Beacon Journal, and the Wooster Daily Record.

  The library board sits like a row of empty glass bottles on a fence as members of EDIT rise one by one to shatter their humanity.

  One EDIT member, Eileen Shagreen, who lives three houses down from Katherine Hardihood on Oak Street, and has three children at G.A. Hemphill Elementary School, and a fenced-in backyard with two free-running rottweilers, tells the board she is particularly upset that the Tuttwyler branch put up a huge Halloween display with children’s books about witches and goblins—the servants of Satan—while the Christmas display had only one little book about baby Jesus hidden among the Santa Claus and snowmen books. Eileen Shagreen sits down to a Gatling gun of applause, clap-a-clap-clap.

  “I’m sure we try to treat all holidays equally,” board member Paul Withrow answers.

  “That’s exactly the problem,” someone in the crowd calls out. Clap-a-clap-clap.

  The Reverend Biscobee rises and demands that Lake Toads and Land Frogs be taken off the shelves. Clap-a-clap-clap.

  “I can’t for the life of me see what’s wrong with a book that teaches children to respect people different from themselves,” board member Charles English says. “We live in a very diverse country.”