Another Bad-Dog Book

by Joni Cole

  Halle Berry . . . Halle Berry . . . Halle Berry . . . I fixed her image in my mind and eventually managed to doze.

  As the train approached Hartford, Connecticut, the conductor requested that all passengers sitting alone remove their belongings from the seat beside them. We needed to make room for the new arrivals. Groggy, but feeling more myself, I grabbed my purse and laptop bag from the overhead rack and deposited them on the empty seat next to me.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the travelers file past, a parade of inner thighs rubbing beneath too short shorts, pot bellies hanging over belts, a grungy teenager in a tank top and sweatpants. Just the word—sweatpants! I tried not to be judgmental, after all, my own thighs rub, but the word was still too much with me.

  A Muslim woman wearing a heavy black veil and robes paused beside my seat. I stared down at my sneakers, hoping she wouldn’t sit next to me. It’s not that I have a problem with Muslims or their faith, which likely holds more logic than my own belief in some omniscient power that remains benevolent, as long as I knock on wood or don’t get too full of myself.

  What I can’t fathom, however, is the way certain religious types dress. I grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Amish country, where it was hard enough during the hot, humid summers to look at the women in their black, aproned dresses and stockings and not feel vicarious heat prostration. But Muslim women! Covered from head to toe in so much cloth, Muslim women make the Amish look like streetwalkers.

  Thanks to my new guardian angel, Halle Berry, or maybe the fact that I was still experiencing tremors in my hands, this particular Muslim woman thought better than to ask me to move my belongings, and took a seat a few rows ahead of me in the train car.

  By the time we reached New Haven, I couldn’t wait any longer. I needed to go pee. My lingering dizziness and the sway of the car forced me to grip the seatbacks on my way to the bathroom. En route, it occurred to me that, for all my lack of knowledge of the human anatomy, the one thing I wished I did not remember was that skin is the biggest organ. I could just feel the germs—viruses, flesh-eating bacteria, e-coli—permeating my palms. Worse yet, in the bathroom I was forced to grip the handrail as I squatted above the toilet, either that or risk direct contact with the backs of my thighs.

  Call it exhaustion or post-traumatic stress disorder, but when I returned to my seat I managed to pass out for a time, until the screech of brakes woke me when the train pulled into New York City’s Penn Station.

  “Is this seat taken?” A forty-something man wearing a summer business suit and trendy eyeglasses directed the question either to me or the person on his Bluetooth. New Yorkers, of course, can see through clever ploys like faking a seatmate, so I had no choice but to move my belongings and allow him to sit beside me. Thank goodness he was a metrosexual, one of those impeccably groomed males who are not afraid of nose hair clippers or pore-reducing skin toner.

  At first, the man ignored me, the way only New Yorkers can ignore people who don’t matter. But then he stood up to retrieve something from the overhead rack and there, eye level, not two feet from my face, was the front panel of his tan, linen trousers—his zipper at half-mast.

  Sexual pheromones aside, when it comes right down to it, certain male body parts are not attractive, at least not when you are recovering from a hangover-slash-food-poisoning. With my new super-sensory powers, I could see right through the lightweight fabric of his dress pants and designer briefs. The man sat down just a few seconds later, obscuring his lap with his New York Times, but the image of his private parts nestled in a pallet of pubic hair had already imprinted itself in my mind.

  Halle Berry! Halle Berry! Halle Berry!

  This time, the image failed to comfort. My stomach gurgled, bringing back all-too-vivid memories of yesterday, and how much of it had been spent dry heaving over our ill-conceived low-flush toilet. Today, however, I had managed to drink plenty of juice and eat a personal pan pizza from the café car, all without incident. But had I been too optimistic? Just the idea of being sick and stuck in a window seat convinced me that I needed to throw up. Under normal circumstances, I would have bolted for the bathroom, but this meant squeezing past my seatmate and his metrosexual package.

  By now, my super powers had kicked into overdrive. Every sensation, every image, every aspect of the human condition felt magnified. I needed to empty my mind, to create a mental space devoid of sensory stimulation and the vagaries of my own imagination. A few rows in front of me, the Muslim woman stood out among all the other bare-headed passengers. I rested my gaze on the back of her black veil and, for once, saw her head covering not as sign of suppression, but as a relief from having to look at everybody else’s exposed hair.

  By the time the train reached Philadelphia, my metrosexual seatmate was nowhere to be seen. Apparently, he had slipped away quietly after I had drifted back to sleep. Now it was time for me to leave the train, too, to complete the last leg of my trip to Lancaster. I stood up, feeling considerably steadier on my feet. My right eye no longer throbbed and my stomach felt settled. What’s more, everybody, everything, had returned to normal proportions. My super powers from Hell were gone.

  I retrieved my belongings from the overhead rack and started walking down the aisle toward the exit. Next to the Muslim woman’s seat, I hesitated. Normally, I would have passed right by her, this stranger on a train whose life seemed so remote from my own. Instead, I felt a sudden urge to connect, to thank her for being there in my time of need, or at least ask her how she was holding up in the heat. But of course that would have been too weird.

  I was a Western woman with modern proclivities. I drank alcohol and cavorted under the stars. A sheik could offer me ten million dollars and I still would not cover my head and body in the name of religion. Still, before I left the train, I tried to catch the woman’s lowered eyes, hoping to exchange a smile.

  Criminal Minds

  In the center of my Vermont village—on the same stretch of Main Street where you’ll find the library built in 1893, the congregational church, the historical society, the locally owned mini mart, the Elks Lodge, and the Praise Chapel with a sign offering inspirational outreach every time you drive by (Feeling down? Look up!)—once stood a popular diner that made someone in our town mad enough to commit arson!

  The story begins circa World War II, when the diner was built on the corner of the village’s only busy intersection. Perched on a narrow patch of land set close to the road, the glass-and-panel doors of the diner faced Main Street, while its backside bordered a steep slope overlooking the White River.

  Thanks to its rib-sticking fare, bottomless cups of coffee, and friendly atmosphere, the diner proved a popular establishment for locals and flatlanders alike. Then decades passed, the vinyl booths cracked, the mugs chipped, and the big, black clock with a face yellowed from decades of cigarette smoke, saw fewer and fewer customers.

  After the diner closed, the building fell into disrepair, until several years later when a fellow from the neighboring town bought the defunct diner on the overgrown lot. The newspaper reported that he had plans to renovate and reopen it as soon as possible. This was good news indeed for a Main Street feeling its age. Once a center of business and industry in the nineteenth century, the village had lost much of its bustle after several nearby mills and industries shut down. While fixing up the small establishment might not revitalize the village to its glory days, it offered at least the equivalent of a hip replacement.

  Almost from the get-go the diner’s new owner and town officials didn’t see eye to eye. They wrangled over zoning permits and safety codes. The reconstruction—part of which involved stabilizing the slope behind the diner so that it wouldn’t collapse into the river—ground to an angry halt.

  While previously the abandoned diner had simply looked forlorn and unkempt, this gutted iteration projected an angry, defiant edge. The owner left the site a wasteland of haphazardly piled concrete slabs and abandoned earth movers, and covered the expose
d plywood with green plastic garbage bags.

  By now, the stand-off between the town and the diner’s owner had been going on for over four years, with both parties resorting to lots of legal motions and strong language. Town members gathered signatures on a petition at the library, demanding something be done about this festering problem. Finally, after so much time and so little progress, someone took matters into his or her own hands.

  But who? Who set fire to the old diner? Suspects were plentiful, though the authorities never made an arrest. Maybe it was the librarian who solicited all those signatures on the petition, or the mini-mart manager, confronted with a view of the ruined structure every time he looked out his window. Maybe it was the minister of the congregational church believing he was doing God’s work, or the husband and wife pastors at the Praise Chapel, extending their outreach in new directions. It could have been one of the old timers at the Elks Lodge; no one could accuse them of being pushovers. Even as their lodge faced extinction because of diminished membership, they refused to yield when some wives made a bid to join the fraternity. This couldn’t have made things pleasant at home.

  Maybe the fire was set by a member of the town select board, emboldened by the power of the office. Or maybe the curator at the historical society saw fit to make history rather than simply archive it. It might even have been set by a firefighter. It was reported that the structure burned front to back and left to right, producing a big, black cloud of smoke that rose high in the October air, a strong indication that the blaze was petroleum-fueled. According to the fire marshal, it was just lucky such fast-moving flames, punctuated by two booming explosions, failed to leap across the street to the self-serve gas pumps at the mini mart. But was it luck . . . or the design of an arsonist who knew how to set a contained fire?

  Every one of the several hundred citizens, neighbors, and friends who signed the petition had a motive. I signed the petition myself. It could have been me who struck the match. One thing was certain: it had to be somebody.

  By the time I drove my daughters, ages eight and six at the time, home from school the afternoon of the fire, the structure was nothing but a pile of rubble and smoldering ash. The girls rubbernecked as I slowed the car to a crawl, though there wasn’t much left to see.

  “Mommy,” the six-year-old asked, “Did you burn The Monstrosity down?” This was the name I had dubbed the building, not because it was physically imposing, but because its ugliness loomed large in my mind.

  I admitted I had no alibi. I also made no secret about how much I hated The Monstrosity. A month or so before the diner burned, my daughter asked me to stop ranting about it every time we passed the structure on our way to school.

  “But it’s just awful having that thing in the center of the village,” I had responded. “It’s a travesty. Someone should do something about this!”

  “You’ve already said that a million times,” my daughter said.

  “I ought to burn The Monstrosity down!” I announced. “I’d be doing everybody a favor.”

  “Just stop, Mommy. Please, stop.”

  That’s when I realized I wasn’t just annoying my children, I was frightening them. I might even be causing them psychological harm. Was Mommy going to do something bad? From that point forward, I decided to keep my thoughts about The Monstrosity to myself.

  Whenever a crime is committed in small-town America, people always seem to react with surprise, as if criminal minds can’t foment in places with well water. This mentality is no different in my neck of the woods. I was reminded of this when I read a quote in the newspaper from a farmer who lives in Tunbridge, a town about twenty or so miles up the White River from mine, population 3,900. “When you’re living in the middle of Tunbridge,” the farmer remarked, “you shouldn’t have to worry about someone driving by and shooting your cow with a 9mm gun.”

  No, you shouldn’t, I agreed, but then again, where should you have to worry about such a thing?

  I remember the first time I committed a crime, ironically in a small Vermont village not unlike the one where I live today. I was a high school senior in Pennsylvania on a school trip to learn how to ski. In the resort’s gift shop, I stole two expensive winter hats, one for me and one for my boyfriend back home. My shoplifting days are long gone, but I still harbor my share of criminal impulses. Who doesn’t find themselves entertaining dark, lawless thoughts, regardless of where they call home?

  After the diner was destroyed, The Monstrosity’s owner accused the fire chief of letting the building burn, rather than trying to save it. “You don’t let the fire burn the building down, and then spray water on it,” the owner was quoted in the newspaper. In the same article, he said that he was going to try to get town officials to pay for a new building, but if they weren’t willing to “sit down and rationalize this with them,” he was going to sue.

  In fact, he did more than that. Served with papers demanding he clean up the site and start working on his proposed diner by a certain deadline, the owner began construction anew. Within days, he had hammered together a lopsided box of a building, adding a jutting front that served no purpose but one. Now, thanks to this new feature, The Monstrosity severely obstructed the view of drivers wanting to turn left onto Main Street. This time, the owner weatherized the building’s exterior by tacking on some cheap plastic sheeting. On windy days, the plastic billowed out like sails, reducing visibility from poor to next to impossible.

  Six years have passed since someone burned down the original diner, laying the foundation for the owner to build the existing Monstrosity. Every so often he adds new touches to the structure and site, usually after town officials chide him for his lack of progress. For a while he stockpiled more concrete slabs taken from disassembled bridges. Later, he sheathed some poles near the roof with empty beer cans. At one point, passersby were treated to the sight of a toilet plunked in the middle of the muddy lot. I can just imagine how that toilet goaded the arsonist.

  My children still suspect I had a hand in the fire. What can I say, other than the fact that they needn’t check my purse for accelerant. As Einstein once said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. I can assure them my sanity is intact. Why burn the place to the ground again, when the owner would only replace it with something worse?

  Still, something has to be done.

  Yesterday, the same as every day, I needed to turn left at the intersection onto Main Street. As I inched my way forward into oncoming traffic, straining to see around the wall of The Monstrosity, a car whizzed by nearly striking my bumper. This, of course, was nothing new. Everyone in town knows this corner is an accident waiting to happen.

  In fact, it occurred to me, an accident at this intersection wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. Unlike the fire, with its unforeseen consequences, a tragic accident would leave the Monstrosity’s owner no room for recourse. The public outcry would be so great the structure would have to be destroyed. And in its place, I envisioned, the town could establish a small park, one with a lovely stone bench in memoriam to the accident victim. Where the toilet once stood, the ladies of the town garden club could plant pretty flowers.

  But who should be the victim of this tragic accident? It wouldn’t do to sacrifice my own life, given that I was the mother of two children who needed me. Nor did I want to cut short anyone else’s bright future. But what if the accident involved just the right person?

  Like so many small towns, ours is populated with a disproportionate number of elderly folk. The young people tend to escape to the glamour of the big cities, leaving civic-minded seniors to continue running the church suppers and clothing drives. All it would take is one committed volunteer, say a centenarian diagnosed with just weeks, maybe days, to live. The end would be quick, the service to our community great. Neighbors helping neighbors, everybody doing their part for the greater good, isn’t that what small-town America is all about?

  Of course, if such
a volunteer wasn’t forthcoming, someone—maybe the town librarian, or the mini mart manager, or a member of the Elks—could take matters into his or her own hands.

  “You’re invited to a special event in the village!” this someone could call up the oldest person he or she knew, preferably one who should have given up his license years ago. “Your friends and neighbors would like you to talk about the good old days.” Hearing this, the old person’s spirits would lift, at this reminder that he had not outlived his usefulness.

  “The location of this special event is easy to find,” the caller, who really could be anyone—the minister at the congregational church, a select board member, me—would continue. “Just head to the old diner at the center of town. You remember the old diner with its big, black clock with the yellowed face, and its bottomless cup of coffee?”

  At this point in the conversation the caller might pause, taking a moment to imagine the scene—the jutting wall of the Monstrosity, the billowing plastic, the almost blind driver approaching the blind intersection . . . And, after that, a park bench and flowers.

  “Just turn left onto Main Street,” the caller would encourage, “and once you do that, we’re almost home free.”

  A Few Minutes of My Time

  I am not the self-service type, having spent years perfecting the art of learned helplessness. At the airport, for example, I shun the self check-in option and prefer to wait in line for a human baggage checker, keeping company with all the other technosaurs and curmudgeons muttering things like, “Walter, go see what the hold up is, we’ve only got four hours until our flight.”

  Given that I can’t or won’t handle even the most basic technical tasks, the first thing I did when my laptop died was to phone my computer guy.