Serendipity Green Read online

  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.

  Even when D. William Aitchbone moved up to Cleveland to attend John Carroll University and then the Cleveland Marshall College of Law, Katherine Hardihood saw him almost every weekend in the Tuttwyler library, determined eyebrows pointed into a textbook, determined right thumb clicking the button on his ballpoint. He was Dusty no longer. He was Bill. Forty-five-year-old Bill—even though the Selective Service mistakenly took him for nineteen-year-old draft bait.

  But Vietnam never got D. William Aitchbone. Nosireebob. His 2-S deferment kept him out of the war’s four worst years, and then, just when he figured his goose was gooked, as draft-aged Tuttwyler boys used to say back then, Richard M. Nixon, another no-nonsense Republican, decided that a lottery was the best way to determine who’d stay and who’d go. Katherine Hardihood remembers him coming into the library one Saturday as happy as a 4-F clam. “So, Katherine,” he said. “guess what my lottery number is.”

  “High, I gather.”

  “Three-sixty-four,” he said.

  A week later D. William Aitchbone was even happier. “So Katherine, guess what my LSAT score was.”

  “High, I gather.”

  “One-fifty-eight,” he said.

  Spared from the war, spared from a life as an insurance agent or high school principal, D. William Aitchbone went off to law school. Four years later he came out, the same age as when he went in. Forty-five.

  And now all these years later, when he really is forty-five, he still acts forty-five, and Katherine Hardihood, soaked to the bone with tobacco-juice rain, knows that no matter how old D. William Aitchbone gets to be—eighty-five or ninety-five or two-hundred and five—he’ll still be forty-five. He’ll spend his eternity in hell forty-five, too. Not that Katherine believes in a literal hell—eccept, that is, for her far-too-frequent encounters with D. William Aitchbone at this meeting or that meeting.

  Donald Grinspoon had taken Bill Aitchbone under his political wing when he was still in high school. “That boy is just dripping with potency,” Katherine overheard then-mayor Grinspoon tell then-sheriff Norman F. Cole as they sat reading hunting magazines in the periodical section. “And Tuttwyler needs some potency.” That was, of course, long before the I-491 leg was built, when the village was just a hollow circle on the state map, a hollow circle with an empty snack cake factory.

  And so when Donald Grinspoon got the brainstorm for a festival, he made sure the potent and perpetually forty-five-year-old D. William Aitchbone was on the committee. He’d made sure that Katherine Hardihood, with her love of facts, was on it, too.

  Once Grinspoon decided that Tuttwyler’s contribution to Ohio’s summer festival season would be a festival commemorating the clubbing death of an Indian woman and her baby, the real work of his hand-picked committee began:

  It became immediately clear that a catchy name for the festival had to be chosen; already committee members were clumsily referring to it was “our little festival” and “our festival thing” and even “our Indian-woman-getting-clubbed event.”

  The committee sat in the mayors office one December evening, squinting and digging their foreheads and playing with their chins, looking for the world, Katherine Hardihood thought, like sixth graders trying to convince the teacher that they were actually thinking. “How about Tuttwyler Days?” Phyllis Bastinado suggested, wedging her arms into the glacial grove that separated her basketball breasts from her sprawling belly.

  “Pioneer Days,” Dick Mueller suggested.

  “Settlers Days,” Sheriff Norman F. Cole suggested.

  “History Days,” Delores Poltruski suggested.

  “Those names don’t tell you anything,” Donald Grinspoon said, “except that it’s going to last more than one day. We need something specific. Something that tells you right off the bat what we’re celebrating. Look at Hinckley, up in Medina County, they’ve got their Buzzard Day. Tells you right off the bat it’s about buzzards. Or the Circleville Pumpkin Festival. Tells you right off the bat it’s about pumpkins.”

  “How about Brothers Days, then?” Sheriff Norman F. Cole offered, drawing quizzical stares. “You know, after John and Amos Tuttwyler, the brothers who clubbed the Indian woman to death.”

  “Oh,” said Donald Grinspoon on behalf of the others.

  Katherine Hardihood, already regretting she ever went to Helen Smith’s house in Berea and found Henry Howe’s old history book, could not resist saying, “How about Brotherly Love Days?”

  Everyone giggled nervously. Everyone but D. William Aitchbone, who was too focused on the problem at hand to appreciate her sarcasm. “Still doesn’t tell us what the festival’s about.”

  Again Katherine couldn’t resist. “How about Dead Indian Days?”

  No nervous giggle this time. Just the silence of guilt.

  “Now, now Katherine,” Donald Grinspoon said after pumping air back into his lungs. “But you’re right. The focus needs to be on the Indian woman and her baby, not on the white men who killed them.”

  “Squaw Days,” Delores Poltruski said.

  Donald Grinspoon clapped his hands just once, making the same sharp crack a well-swung club might make coming down on a skull. “There you go! Squaw Days!”

  With the name out of the way, the real planning could begin. First, when to hold Squaw Days? There was nothing in Henry Howe’s book about when the Indian woman and her baby were clubbed by the Tuttwyler brothers, or when her ghost appeared to the stump burners. But the second weekend of August seemed perfect, falling, as it did, two weeks after the Wyssock County Fair and two weeks before the start of school. Next, how many days should the festival last? Certainly one day wasn’t long enough. Nor was two. A week was certainly too long. So was four days. Was three days too long? No, three days was just right. Next, how those threes days should be filled, what kind of events and attractions? “There’s clearly got to be some serious historical stuff,” Donald Grinspoon said. “After all, a woman and baby getting clubbed requires a bit of sensitivity.”

  Eve
ryone agreed with that. And since sensitivity was, as the mayor put it, “the bailiwick of women,” Phyllis Bastinado, Katherine Hardihood and Delores Poltruski were appointed to a subcommittee to, as he put it, “sort out the handkerchief stuff.”

  That left Dick Mueller, Sheriff Norman F. Cole, D. William Aitchbone, and Mayor Donald Grinspoon to sort out the nuts and bolts of running the festival, nuts and bolts being the “bailiwick of men.”

  Everyone left that December meeting feeling their Wheaties, dreaming of the grand festival certain to put Tuttwyler back on the map, just nine months hence. But by the January meeting, with everyone fat and tired from Christmas, and northern Ohio looking and feeling much-too-much like the inside of an un-defrosted refrigerator, it was unanimously decided that eight months simply wasn’t enough time to, as the mayor put it, “birth this baby.”

  Everyone was relieved. Waiting until the next year would give them time to plan, as the mayor put it, “a real humdinger.”

  At the February meeting, the all-male nuts-and-bolts subcommittee announced they were going to spend the summer visiting various festivals around the state to, as the mayor put it, “learn from their mistakes so we don’t make too many of our own.” The handkerchief subcommittee protested, especially Delores Poltruski. “So, you boys get to gallivant around the state while we’ve got our noses stuck in the history books? No way, José.”

  So, beginning that March with a trip to Hinckley’s Buzzard Day—which celebrated the annual return of the township’s famous flock of turkey vultures with a pancake and sausage breakfast and crafts fair—the Tuttwylerites spent their weekends criss-crossing Ohio, learning from others’ mistakes and adding inches to their waistlines.

  They went to the Festival of Flight in Wapakoneta, which annually honored hometown hero Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon; the 56-foot white dove in front of the Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum gave Delores Poltruski goosebumps.

  They went to the Pro Football Hall of Fame Festival in Canton; the museum had a 52-foot dome in the shape of a football and Sheriff Norman F. Cole wondered if the seven-foot bronze statue of Jim Thorpe was full-size.

  They went to the Great Mohican Indian Pow Wow and Rendezvous in Loudonville and got the business card of a Navajo chief who could supply his troupe of authentically dressed Native American dancers anywhere, anytime, fee negotiable.

  They went to the Melon Festival in Milan, where they not only ate their fill of melons, but visited Thomas Edison’s birthplace. “Maybe we could make a museum out of Artie Brown’s birthplace,” Dick Mueller suggested through a mouthful of cantaloupe.

  They went to the Ohio Swiss Festival in Sugar Creek, filling their bowels with too much cheese, and their bladders with too much apple cider.

  They went to the Covered Bridge Festival in Jefferson and watched the plowing contest and ate Covered Bridge Pizza at a restaurant housed in a converted covered bridge.

  They went to the Twins Day Festival in Twinsburg and ate vinegar-soaked French fries while watching hundreds and hundreds of identical twins march in the “Double-Take Parade.”

  They went to the Great Outdoor Underwear Festival in Piqua, a grand get-together celebrating the town’s proud past as a major manufacturer of undergarments.

  They went to Coshocton for the Canal Festival, which commemorated the first canal boat visit in 1830.

  They went to the All-American Soap Box Derby races in Akron and they went to Riverfest in Cincinnati for the Rubber Duck Regatta; a plate of Cincinnati-style chili gave Dick Mueller the squirts.

  They went to the Valley City Frog Jumping contest.

  They went to Rio Grand, to the farm of famous sausage-maker Bob Evans, for the Chicken Flying Meet, witnessing the longest flight by a chicken ever, 302 feet, six inches.

  They went to the Woolly Bear Festival in Vermilion and ate elephant ears and taffy while people dressed as fuzzy brown and orange caterpillars paraded by.

  They went to the Ohio Sauerkraut Festival in Waynesville. Sheriff Norman F. Cole bought a bag of sauerkraut fudge and ate it all the way home, a three-hour drive, getting such horrible indigestion that despite the emergency medical training he required of all his deputies, he didn’t recognize the heart attack he was having the next morning while showering for work.

  The Squaw Days Committee skipped the weekend after the sheriff’s funeral, but the next Saturday resumed their research, driving down to Circleville for the Pumpkin Festival; Donald Grinspoon, signaling the end of their official mourning period, ate a piece of pumpkin fudge. Phyllis Bastinado and Delores Poltruski split a pumpkin burger.

  They went and went and went that spring, summer and fall.

  At their November meeting—held one year to the day of that first meeting in Donald Grinspoons office—they sat down to, as the mayor put it, “glean what we’ve learned.”

  Dick Mueller gleaned this: “You’ve got to have a parade. People love parades. And carnival rides. People love carnival rides.”

  Delores Poltruski gleaned this: “You’ve got to have plenty of food. Food you can’t normally get.”

  “As long as it isn’t sauerkraut fudge,” Katherine Hardihood could not resist saying.

  Phyllis Bastinado gleaned this: “You’ve got to have a busy schedule of events. One thing after the other. Something for everyone. Young, old and in-between.”

  D. William Aitchbone gleaned this: “A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.”

  “Jiminy Cricket, Bill. What’s that supposed to mean?” Katherine Hardihood asked on behalf of the other equally puzzled committee members.

  “It means you can only push the history stuff so far. People come to festivals to have fun. To throw caution to the wind and let it all hang out. Fun, fun, fun ’til daddy takes the T-bird away, you know?” Realizing he was sounding much too young, D. William Aitchbone let the forty-five-year-old in him take control. “I guess what I’m saying is balance. We’ve got to find a way to let people enjoy themselves while they’re remembering what a terrible thing happened to that Indian woman and her papoose. Balance. Balance. Balance.”

  Katherine Hardihood gleaned this: She wanted nothing to do with Squaw Days. “So, what did you glean, mayor?”

  “That we’ve got our work cut out for us,” Donald Grinspoon said. “And that we’re going to have one helluva festival.”

  While Katherine Hardihood wanted nothing more to do with Squaw Days, she also knew she could not walk away. She was the one who found that Indian woman hiding in Henry Howe’s old history book. She was responsible for her now. She’d have to stick it out, salvaging as much dignity as she could, not only for that poor Indian woman, but for poor Tuttwyler.

  She knew it wouldn’t be easy. And it wasn’t.

  “You know, Katherine,” said Donald Grinspoon at the next month’s meeting. “We’ve got to have a name for our squaw. A catchy name. A name folks can relate to. Pocahontas, Sacajawea, Little White Dove.”

  “Henry Howe doesn’t say what her name was,” Katherine Hardihood said.

  “Donald’s right,” D. William Aitchbone said. “She’s gotta have a name.”

  “We can’t just make one up,” Katherine Hardihood said. “We’ve got to be historically accurate.”

  “Accurate, schmaccurate,” D. William Aitchbone said.

  “How about Laughing Feather?” Dick Mueller offered.

  “Jiminy Cricket, Dick.”

  “Katherine’s right,” Donald Grinspoon said. “It’s got to be a real Indian name. Something she might actually have been called. Something people can relate to.”

  “Relate to a lie?” Katherine Hardihood asked.

  “Not a lie, Katherine,” Donald Grinspoon said. “We’re just filling in the blanks.”

  “Donald’s right,” D. William Aitchbone said. “Just filling in the blanks. So, what’s a good-sounding Indian name?”

  “None of us speak Indian,” Phyllis Bastinado pointed out. “We’ll have to find a book on Indian languages. Find o
ut what tribes were living around here in those years.”

  “Eries and Wyandots and Senecas and maybe Shawnees,” Katherine Hardihood said. “Although by the time Wyssock County was settled by whites, most of the Indians had been pushed farther west already.”

  “That’s all interesting, Katherine,” Donald Grinspoon said, “but we don’t have time for a big investigation into Indian languages here. I’m going public at the next council meeting with our Squaw Days plans. I’ve got to have a name. It’s the first damn thing Sam Guss at the Gazette will want to know. Can’t exactly tell him we’re still making one up, can I?”

  “No you can’t,” D. William Aitchbone said.

  “I don’t see what’s so bad about Laughing Feather,” Dick Mueller said.

  Delores Poltruski could see that Katherine Hardihood was about to yell Jiminy Cricket or worse. “I’ve got a great name for the squaw—Pogawedka!”

  “I like it!” Donald Grinspoon said immediately. He imitated a B-movie Indian chief. “Pog-uh-wed-kuh! Pog-uh-wed-kuh!”

  Everyone but Katherine Hardihood started imitating B-movie Indians: “Pog-uh-wed-kuh! Pog-uh-wed-kuh! Pog-uh-wed-kuh!”

  “Princess Pogawedka,” Donald Grinspoon shouted.

  “Prin-cess Pog-uh-wed-kuh! Prin-cess Pog-uh-wed-kuh!”

  “What about her baby’s name?” Phyllis Bastinado then wondered.

  “I guess Little Laughing Feather is out of the question,” Dick Mueller said.

  “Was Princess Pogawedka’s papoose a boy or a girl?” Donald Grinspoon asked.

  “A boy,” D. William Aitchbone decided.

  “Then how about Kapusta?” Delores Poltruski offered.

  “Kuh-poosh-tuh! Kuh-poosh-tuh!”

  When Katherine Hardihood arrived at the library the next morning, she went straight for the language books and pulled down a Polish to English dictionary: Pogawedka meant nonsense. Kapusta meant cabbage. “Jiminy Cricket,” she said. “Princess Nonsense and her Little Cabbage!”

  Katherine Hardihood would wonder for the next thirteen years whether she had a playful ally on the committee. Or whether Delores Poltruski was just another fool.