Serendipity Green (15 page)

The band switches suddenly to “Turkey in the Straw” and the Senior Squares trot onto the stage and begin to dance. Now the Singing Doves offer a medley of “My Country 'Tis of Thee,” “She'll Be Coming Around the Mountain,” the famous Shaker hymn “Tis A Gift to Be Simple,” and finally a rousing rendition of the Woodstock generation anthem, Canned Heat's “Going Up the Country.”

Suddenly there is an explosion of smoke, as if the Wicked Witch of the West is about to appear on that rooftop and send a ball of fire into the Scarecrow's straw-stuffed chest. Instead Princess Pogawedka rises above the stumps in her white buckskin dress, tiny Cabbage Patch Kapusta strapped to her back. The pioneers on the stage cower dramatically. The crowd applauds and cheers.

Princess Pogawedka does not need to come to the microphone this year. This year she is wearing a wireless mike, courtesy of The Gizzard Girls. In a voice that blends the chopped cadence of Tonto with the regal tones of a fairytale queen, the princess speaks: “Do not be afraid. Come near! Come near!”

The pioneers crawl reverently through the dry ice to the stumps.

“I am Pogawedka, mother of Kapusta, daughter of the trees and rivers, sister to the soaring hawks and sprinting dear. Long ago, when the sun and moon and stars were young, when the first wood duck quacked, when the first turtle thrust his curious neck, when the first black bear growled himself awake, the Great Spirit, the one you call God, gave this land to my people. And we cared for it as if we had created it. Now the Great Spirit in his wisdom has given this land to you. Pioneers! I beseech you! Care for this land as if you created it! Mold it into the vision that the Great Spirit has given you! Love it and cherish it and prosper upon it! And be happy, pioneers. As once we were happy!”

The pioneers sing out: “We will! We will!”

Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher now bravely rise. “But how can we be happy,” almost-shouts the boy, “when our hearts are filled with so much guilt?”

Princess Pogawedka turns to Tom and Becky and lovingly opens her arms as the Virgin Mary might. “Guilt? What guilt have you, little ones?”

“For the way we treated you and your child,” the girl almost-shouts.

Princess Pogawedka presses her hands over her heart. She smiles as wide as she can, so even those at the back can see her forgiving white teeth. “Do not feel guilt, little ones. And do not feel sorrow, for tiny Kapusta and I are in a better place. You also must not feel hatred for those who did this deed. Forgive them as I have forgiven them, and as the Great Spirit has forgiven them. For they knew not what they did.”

“Thank you, Princess Pogawedka,” Tom and Becky almost-shout in unison.

Princess Pogawedka raises her arms as Moses surely did when he parted the Red Sea. In the tongue of her people she says: “Teh-nay-goo Winne-bago, Cuy-a-hoga-Chau-tau-qua, Mosh-kosh-kee-pop.” Then for those in the crowd speaking only English, she translates: “May the Great Spirit be with you! Live long and prosper!”

There is another explosion of smoke and when it clears Princess Pogawedka and Kapusta are gone. The Marching Wildcat Band launches into Deep Purple's '70s heavy metal classic “Smoke on the Water.”
Doot doot DOOT Doot-doot DOOT-DOOT
.

The crowd cheers and applauds and starts to disperse. One of the pioneer men steps to the microphone and reminds them that the midway, as well as the food tents and craft booths, will be open until eleven.

One of those dispersing is Hugh Harbinger. As Salvador Dali as the Re-Enactment was, he paid very little attention to it. The whole time his head and heart were filled with the green paint on that two-story frame on South Mill. They are filled with it still as he trails behind the Hbraceks. Bob is anxious to get on the road before the traffic backs up.

Another of those dispersing is D. William Aitchbone. He, too, paid very little attention to the Re-Enactment. His head and heart were filled with anger that the Vice President of the United States reneged on his promise to attend; anger that Victoria Bonobo didn't vote for his privatization plan; anger that CNN featured Mayor Woodrow Wilson Sadlebyrne in their report on small town strategies for economic survival; that Cabrini Brothers Development Corp. was making him bear the cost of moving the bones of his ancestors; that Kevin Hassock let the Happy Landing Ride Company bring their small Ferris wheel, and not the big one they always brought when Donald Grinspoon was Squaw Days chairman; and that Howie Dornick's two-story frame was still that God-awful green. Yes, D. William Aitchbone is still filled with all these angers as he heads for the Daydream Beanery.

Another of those dispersing is Darren Frost, still wearing his cupcake costume. His head and heart were too full of his angry love for God to pay much attention to the Re-Enactment. His head and heart are still filled with this love as he trots to his car and his appointment with the Reverend Raymond R. Biscobee. Tomorrow EDIT will interrupt the tobacco spitting contest with a protest against the library's Satanic policies, and there are still many placards to make.

Also dispersing is Katherine Hardihood. She has already stuffed her pioneer bonnet into her pioneer apron. Her head and heart are filled with shame for participating once again in this miscarriage of history. She heads straight for Howie Dornick's green house where, Howie willing, she will copulate her shame away.

Howie Dornick also is among those dispersing. He paid great attention to the Re-Enactment, especially Katherine Hardihood's reading. Head filled with lust, heart filled with love, he is rushing home to copulate away his dear Katherine's shame.

Dispersing, too, is Ernest Not Irish. The hatred in his head and heart did not keep him from devouring every horrible second of the Re-Enactment. He flees to his car knowing that Chief Wahoo is small potatoes now. He knows that next year the whites responsible for Squaw Days will pay for Wounded Knee, the Trail of Tears, and a million other indignities to indigenous peoples.

“Smoke on the Water” finished, the Marching Wildcat Band reprises “Louie, Louie.” The Singing Doves clap in time and sing the only words anybody knows: “
Lou-eeeea, Loooo-i, ohhhh no! I godda go.
”

13

Howie Dornick is curled up in his bed listening to Katherine Hardihood's whispery librarian's snore when the
pling-plingy-plong
of the door bell echoes up through the heating ducts. He looks first at Katherine's face—her lips pushed out like the petals of a wilting tulip—and then at the clock radio he won at the Eagles Club raffle. It's only 8:37.
Pling-plingy-plong
.

He puts on his pants and goes down to the door. On the porch he finds a man with a brown and white dog under his arm. The man is tall and vegetarian thin. His hair is concentration camp short. He is maybe thirty-five. The dog is maybe the size of a Hungarian rye. “My name is Hugh Harbinger,” this man says. “I'd like to talk to you about your house.”

Suddenly Howie Dornick can feel last night's coffee in his liver and in his Sunday morning delirium he supposes that this man has been sent by D. William Aitchbone. “I ain't gonna repaint it.”

“Good God, I hope not,” says Hugh Harbinger. “I think it's fabulous.”

Howie Dornick studies him more closely now. This man has beseeching eyes. This man has a hopeful smile. While he is a nervous man, there is also a listlessness about him. If D. William Aitchbone has sent this man to harass him, then clearly he has not chosen wisely. This man is no more threatening than the little rye-bread dog under his arm.

Within three minutes Howie Dornick is in the kitchen grinding expensive African coffee beans in the expensive German-made grinder Katherine Hardihood gave him for his birthday. Katherine and this man named Hugh Harbinger are sitting at the table. The rye-bread dog is running free in the living room, barking at the prosthetic foot on the mantle. “Who wants peanut butter toast?” Howie asks.

And so they eat peanut butter toast and drink freshly ground African coffee and talk first about the little dog named Matisse, then about Squaw Days, and finally the color of the house they're sitting in.

“You see,” Hugh Harbinger explains, “I design colors.”

“I thought that was God's job,” Katherine Hardihood cannot resist saying.

Hugh grins. He explains that he consults with companies about what colors they should make their products. Color can make or break a product, he tells them.

“And you really like the color I painted my house?” Howie Dornick asks.

“I think it's fabulous.”

People in Tuttwyler do not say
fabulous
very often, not the way this Hugh Harbinger is saying it. “Where you from?” Howie asks.

The simple question opens Hugh's soul like the key on a tin of Norwegian sardines. He confesses that he is from Parma. He confesses about his years in New York ping-ponging between advertising agencies and corporate marketing departments as a graphic artist. “I got this gig with this Mexican-owned bathroom fixture company, designing their brochures,” he says, “and this guy in R&D liked my color sense and before I knew it I was the crown prince of toilets and bidets. My reputation snow-balled overnight—in New York reputations can do that—and before I knew it I was no longer Hugh Hbracek, lowly graphic artist, but Hugh Harbinger, coveted color designer. I've done just about everything. Cars. Clothes. Appliances. Furniture. Paper products. Everything. Most of it high end. I'm also one of those rare birds who's demographically versatile. Boomers. Gen-X. Ethnic. Gay. Hetero. East Coast, West Coast. Urban, Leafy. I've got good Euro instincts, too. I can out-Italian the Italians. The last few years before I had my breakdown—don't worry, I'm not going to freak on you—I got into cosmetics big time. I'm responsible for that whole black thing.”

“The girl at the Daydream Beanery wears black lipstick,” Howie Dornick observes.

“No doubt one of mine. I've done over three hundred shades of black. A lot of the epic shades. Bullet Hole. Virtual Death. Decompose. Black Maggot Woman. They're all mine.” Suddenly Hugh Harbinger's mood goes black as well. He drinks half a cup of coffee before speaking again. “Then my life took the L train to Loserville. Clinical depression. Slam dunk, I'm in a funk. Now I'm just a thirty-something zeke living with his parents.”

“And you really like the color I painted my house?” Howie Dornick asks.

“I think it's fabulous,” Hugh Harbinger assures him. “Absolutely fabulous.”

And so they finish their coffee and toast and go outside. The sun is over the treetops now and the house is shimmering. Already the traffic on South Mill is heavy. Locals are heading for church. Daytrippers are already filtering in for the third and final day of Squaw Days. “Where did you get this paint?” asks Hugh Harbinger. “I've never seen a green like this.”

While Howie Dornick has understood very little of his guest's breathless confession, he feels the need to confess himself. He confesses how his house went unpainted for decades and how the president of the village council, the same evil man who's in charge of Squaw Days now, threatened to eliminate his job as maintenance engineer if he didn't paint it, how he drove all the way to Wooster and bought the cheapest paint he could from a kid wearing a BONE HEAD tee-shirt—the car wash-yellow and the video-store blue and the beauty shop-blue and the fraternity-house gold and the darkroom black—and mixed it together in a rusty old drum, with all kinds of other stuff—his mother's satin-finish peach kitchen paint, the two-quart can of shellac, the jug of bleach, the floor wax and furniture polish, the rubbing alcohol, the Listerine and hydrogen peroxide from the bathroom, the six cans of 10 W-30 motor oil, the jug of windshield wiper fluid, the charcoal lighter, and the three, two-gallon containers of antifreeze. He confesses that he didn't scrape or prime, that he painted over mold and moss, over bird shit and bugs.

“So this green color was just a serendipitous thing,” Hugh Harbinger says.

Katherine Hardihood can see that her man doesn't know this word, serendipitous. “Out of the blue,” she says in a sort of whisper.

Howie Dornick now understands. “That's right,” he says. “Out of the blue. And the yellow and the gold and the black and all that other stuff I dumped in. Serendipitous for sure.”

Hugh Harbinger thanks Howie Dornick for the coffee and peanut butter toast, helps Matisse wave good-bye to Katherine Hardihood, and drives off in Bob Hbracek's cinnamon-gold Crown Vic.

The traffic on I-71 is light. Hugh Harbinger speeds northward, in the left-hand lane, as restless as the green on Howie Dornick's clapboards, his mood dancing back and forth on the spectrum of possible human emotions. When he reaches the Hbracek's bungalow on Delano Drive, Eleanor is grating mozzarella for a Sunday lasagna. Bob is on the sofa, watching
This Old House
and eating a huge bowl of Neapolitan ice cream.

Hugh goes straight to the phone in his parent's bedroom. He starts to dial Buzzy in New York. His fingers get no farther than the area code. He flops back on the bed. He sits up and dials his psychiatrist, Dr. Pirooz Aram. He waits for the beep and leaves a message.

In the morning Dr. Pirooz Aram's secretary calls back and an emergency appointment is made. Late the next afternoon Hugh Harbinger slumps into a comfortable leather chair. He hears the faraway flush of a toilet and a half-minute later Dr. Aram enters the office, huge hands wrapped around a fragile demitasse. “How are you, Hugh Harbinger?” He has been in the United States half his life, some thirty years, yet his accent is as obstinate as the weave in the expensive Persian rug on the floor. “Can I get you an espresso?”

Hugh hears himself answer “no.”

Dr. Aram finishes his espresso and deposits his tiny cup on the silver tray resting on the corner of his mammoth desk. He scratches his white beard and sits in his throne-like leather chair. “Caffeine is no good for a man with your problems, anyway,” he says. “Tell me, Hugh Harbinger, what is so important that I must work until 5:30 on a Monday?”