by Barry Rachin
*****
To insure a smooth transition, the Brandenburg Department of Health brought Donna Hadley on board a full month before Hal left his position. The only child of a neurosurgeon who owned a three-story brownstone in the posh Chestnut Hill section of Newton, Massachusetts, Donna’s family maintained a vacation home on Block Island.
“We had a thirty-foot sloop...stabled horses. It was a bucolic existence, like something out of a Victorian novel,” Hal’s replacement gushed. The twosome had just returned from inspecting a Chinese restaurant. A dead roof rat lay near the dumpster; a strong oily smell – usually a sign of cockroaches – laced the air in the dry storage area, but otherwise the business was in compliance. Pest control had visited the facility a month earlier.
“Pride and Prejudice,” Hal offered.
“Yes, exactly that sort of rustic bliss.” Donna Hadley was a tall woman with a wide, mannish jaw. Boasting a masters degree in public health from Stanford, she struck Hal as rather unimaginative, the sort of brittle-minded hack who, despite a 3.5 grade average, seldom puts her cleverness to proper use. They had arrived back at the department of health where Hal was writing up his report. “All summer long, I rode bareback through meadows of tiger lilies, salt spray roses and wildflowers. From June when school got out straight through to Labor Day, I never wore shoes.”
Hal thought the last remark a bit of a stretch, but obviously the youthful Donna Hadley lived a blessed existence far removed from the humdrum monotony that most middle-class working stiffs endured. “Our summer home was a mile and a half from the Southeast Lighthouse. A favorite tourist spot, it draws thousands of visitors to Block Island each year.”
Hal had toured the structure during a trip to the island a few years back when his wife was alive. The lighthouse featured a six-sided, red brick base leading up to a formidable steel enclosure which housed the light element. An attached, three-story building with scalloped windows was only slightly shorter than the massive light itself. “There is so much history in the region. The area around Block Island has been the site of numerous shipwrecks, including the Steamer Larchmont in 1907.” “And, of course,” Donna Hadley was tripping over her words, “the wreck of the Princess Augusta, also known as the Palatine ship, which was later immortalized by John Greenleaf Whittier in his poem, The Wreck of the Palatine”. Raising an arm in a theatrical gesture, she recited from memory in a stilted, breathy monotone.
“Circled by waters that never freeze,
Beaten by billow and swept by breeze,
Lieth the island of Manisees,…”
“Very pithy!” Hal responded when the woman finished the poem. He felt like throwing up. This narcissistic clod who spent her childhood summers galloping frenetically around an historic island off the Atlantic coast, clearly considered herself royalty, an aristocratic breed apart.
“What about the Norwegian rat?”
“Roof rat,” Hal corrected. Roof rats were physically smaller and darker. “The dumpster was properly covered with no refuse lying about.”
“And the cockroaches?” Donna pressed.
“We didn’t actually see any bugs, and according to the pest control log, the place was fumigated recently.”
“I see.”
Hall didn’t think the woman saw much of anything. On the contrary, she was spoiling for a fight – wanted to make her mark as a no-nonsense, upwardly mobile professional. But the owner of the restaurant, Mr. Lee, who enjoyed a respectable track record, had always been cooperative and forthcoming. More to the point, no history of food poisoning or complaints associated with the facility existed.
“A while back,” Hal noted in a flat monotone, “slaughterhouses in Kentucky were forced to make expensive renovations or go out of business.”
“Where did you learn this?”
“An essay… Wendell Berry.” He rose and went to the window. The last of the winter snows had melted away, crocuses tentatively thrusting delicate purple shoots up through the frozen earth. “These slaughterhouses were small, mom-and-pop operations. They didn’t process meat for the wholesale, commercial market but did custom work for local farmers… exclusively for their own, private use.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Donna Hadley asked in a decidedly pinched tone.
“Local authorities,” he ignored the question, “passed even stricter legislation regulating creameries and poultry. Grocers couldn’t accept farmers’ eggs or chickens. Small-scale dairy operations closed down over night.”
“The public has to be protected.” The woman, who made no effort to mask her disdain, glowered.
“Protected from what? No one ever got sick. The meat they brought home from the local slaughterhouses fed immediate families. It wasn’t a money-making proposition.” “Maybe a farmer kept a cow or two… partitioned off a milking stall in the barn with wooden partitions. So bacteria didn’t grow, milk was cooled in containers suspended in tubs of frigid well water. No one got sick. The locals knew what the hell they were doing. It’s what their parents did and their parent’s parents going back generations.”
“The greater good,” Ms. Hadley insisted by way of rebuttal, “trumps personal consideration.”
Hal’s mind wandered back to the Hong Kong Restaurant and its owner, Mr., Lee. Donna Hadley was untroubled by life’s ambiguities, nuanced shades of gray. A brittle-minded bureaucrat with a chip on her shoulder, the damage perpetrated over the course of a professional lifetime would be exponential.
“Circled by waters that never freeze,
Beaten by billow and swept by breeze,
Lieth the island of Manisees,…”
The woman, with the gilded spoon between her middle-aged lips was a government-sanctioned ignoramus.
*****
Tuesday Hal clipped Teddy’s nails and trimmed the thicket of bristly hairs around his bulbous eyes. The previous spring the crazed dog ran headlong into a thicket of bramble and came away with a thorn on his eye. The vet cleansed the wound and applied a topical antibiotic. Now a faint scar was visible on the cornea.
Tuesday evening Maria Santos was waiting outside when he arrived for agility training. “The aluminum foil… I didn’t realize it was the wrong thing to do.” The Scottish terrier by her side lifted his leg and a stream of steamy, fluid gushed from his hind quarters. Without waiting for the dog to finish relieving himself, Teddy promptly sniffed the dog’s privates.
“An innocent mistake,” Hal observed. “Not the end of the world.”
“The Servsafe book… we open in a week and a half. I can’t possibly read through four hundred pages and makes sense of it in such a short period of time.” She looked utterly miserable.
The manicky terrier inspected Teddy’s anus and the Lhasa returned the favor. “Forget about the book. I’ll mentor you… make sure that the Breakfast Nook is up to code.” Hal rubbed his chin with a liver-spotted hand then scratched a hairy ear. “I’ll teach you to clean, rinse, sanitize and air dry all the prep surfaces, hot-hold foods at the proper temperature, inspect deliveries for damaged foods.”
Maria looked the balding man full in the face. “I’m strapped for cash… can’t afford to -”
“If you offered me a penny,” Hal brought her up short, “I’d be insulted.”
“I don’t understand.”
The grizzled man grinned opaquely. “Circled by waters that never freeze, beaten by billow and swept by breeze, lieth the island of Manisees,…” In response to her baffled expression, Hal added, “It’s a private joke.”
They entered the building where the charcoal-gray, toy poodle was sprinting about the course. Several obstacles had been reconfigured. The teeter totter, which originally stood in the center of the room, was near the far wall. Without warning, the poodle suddenly veered wildly off course heading in the direction of the tunnel. Emerging from the tunnel he skittered through a crack in the fence. The owner finally retrieved his pet, who pulled up short alongside a friz
zy Pekinese, but the frazzled pooch was unable to pick up where he left off.