Only now does Howie decide to paint. He dips one of the empty paint cans into the barrel, and with the cheap brush in his back pocket, climbs, all the way to the top of the gable. His first brushful of paint sinks into the raw gray clapboards like oleo margarine into a slice of hot wheat toast.
When Howie Dornick paints things for the village—the dark green park benches on the square, the egg-yolk yellow crossing lines in front of G.A. Hemphill Elementary School, the smoke-gray walls of the mayor’s office—he paints carefully, and slowly, hardly ever dribbling or splattering or smearing, his left hand guiding the brush in smooth even strokes from right to left, his puckered lips blowing away spiders and ants and ladybugs, the nail of his little finger flicking away scabs of bird shit. And he always prepares the surface first, carefully sanding or scraping, puttying or caulking. Now he paints like van Gogh at his maddest.
By nine the back is finished. By two the west side is finished. By seven-thirty the east side is finished. At ten he is finishing the front, standing on the porch roof, flashlight sticking out of his mouth like a thick silver cigar. When the last little corner is covered, he throws what is left of the cheap plastic-bristled brush into his untrimmed shrubs. He carries the ladder back into the garage and slides it up into the rafters. He walks the 55-gallon drum back into the garage, too. It is as empty as when he started, every drop of the brew now slathered on the clapboards of his two-story frame. He washes his face and hands in gasoline and dries off with a greasy rag.
He crawls into his bed feeling proud, feeling potent, feeling fully free of his mother, wishing Katherine Hardihood was under him right now, wishing that D. William Aitchbone’s severed head and limbs and trunk were stuffed in that 55-gallon drum. But once his sheet is tucked around his neck, once the cool has faded from his pillow, these fresh and wonderful feelings are gone and his brain is crawling with the same old maggots of doubt: Why in thee hell did he paint his house that god-awful color? What in thee hell is wrong with him? Why in thee hell didn’t he paint it white? He could have bought that white paint on sale at Bittinger’s. He could have bought the most expensive paint they had. He has $18,500 in the bank—not in a CD he can’t touch without paying a penalty—but in a regular old fashioned savings account he can tap any time he wants. He could buy vinyl siding for godsakes. No doubt about it, Bill Aitchbone will have a fit when he comes back from wherever he is with Victoria Bonobo, and sees that god-awful color. What in thee hell is wrong with him? Why in thee hell did he do it? To please Katherine Hardihood? To show her what a man he was? So she’ll continue copulating with him? One thing for sure, there’ll be no more copulating with Katherine once she sees that god-awful color! What in thee hell was he thinking? Bill Aitchbone will privatize his job and Katherine will put his private parts back in cold storage. What in thee hell was he thinking?
Howie Dornick turns his pillow over, to bury his head in the side still cool. He laughs into the dark. What would Artie Brown say about all this? Would he appreciate his son’s courage, for standing up to Bill Aitchbone the way he stood up to those Japs on Guadalcanal? Who knows what Artie Brown would say? Probably nothing. Artie Brown never said a word about his son—or to his son—from the day Patsy Dornick returned from Cleveland with her newborn baby until the day he died of a heart attack hobbling across a cornfield with a five-gallon can of gas for his tractor. Artie Brown was a hero in war. But not in life. If his last will and testament was a true measure of his desires, he would rather have spent his life copulating with Patsy Dornick, not Melody Ring. The will was nicely typed by a lawyer’s secretary, but at the bottom of the last page in Artie’s faltering hand were the most embarrassing words ever put to paper by a Tuttwylerite, and therefore known to just about everyone: To Patsy Dornick I leave my crank, who loved it so much more than Melody Ring ever did. But before anybody goes running to my casket with a butcher’s knife let me state clearly that I leave the above mentioned appendage to Patsy Dornick only symbolically. I have already lost one appendage and neither dead nor alive do I wish to be separated from another.
Again Howie Dornick laughs into the dark. What anger Artie Brown must have carried around inside him to scribble those words so late in his life, words that spread through Tuttwyler like a wildfire and prevented Melody Brown from ever going to church again. He wonders if it was anything like his own anger. Good God! What in thee hell was he thinking, painting his clapboards that god-awful color?
10
D. William Aitchbone watches the suitcases chug along the carousel. He spots the two-suit leather-trimmed Hartmann he bought for his very important trip at the new mall at the I-491 interchange. “There’s my Hartmann,” he loudly announces.
Victoria Bonobo spots her Samsonite. “There’s mine,” she says.
They ride the people-mover to the parking garage. It takes seven or eight long minutes. They stand apart from each other. Neither says a word. Neither knows what to say. They get in his luxury sedan and fasten their seat belts. They leave Cleveland Hopkins Airport and take the southbound ramp to I-71.
They pass the Strongsville exit.
They pass the Brunswick exit.
They pass the Medina and Lodi exits.
They pass the New Waterbury exit.
They swing onto I-491 and drive to the Tuttwyler exit.
It’s been a long and silent drive. But now they are sitting in Victoria Bonobo’s driveway, in Woodchuck Ridge, and D. William Aitchbone has already popped the trunk and somebody has to say something.
“Well, we did it, Bill,” Victoria Bonobo says.
“The Democrats are going to shit a brick when they find out the VP is coming to Squaw Days. Sweet Jesus, I wish we could announce it right way.”
Victoria opens her door but does not get out. “You know I’m sorry about the other thing.”
“It’s OK, Vicki. I’m just as attracted to you as you are to me.”
“But walking out of the bathroom naked—what was I thinking?”
“Don’t beat up on yourself. We’d just come from the White House. Had a great dinner and too much merlot.”
“Not that much merlot. I guess when you’ve had a bad marriage, you think everybody has a bad marriage.”
“Sometimes I wish I had a bad marriage.”
“No you don’t. Karen is terrific.” She reaches over and squeezes his knee. “And so are you. You want to come in for coffee or something?”
“I do need to use your bathroom. I can never pee on airplanes.”
“Me neither.”
So D. William Aitchbone follows Victoria Bonobo inside and uses the bathroom and comes out fully clothed. When they stand at the front door and discuss the village council’s upcoming privatization vote, he wants to latch onto her shoulders and never let go, just as he wanted to latch onto them at the Washington Hyatt. They are wonderful shoulders, sloping wonderfully from her wonderful neck, just fleshy enough, just bony enough, just round enough and just square enough, and just strong enough to support a pair of breasts far larger than his wife’s. As soon as there is nothing more to say about the upcoming privatization vote he retreats to his car.
Driving toward Tuttwyler he calls home on his cell-phone. “I just dropped Vicki off,” he tells his wife. “I thought I’d stop at the farm for a while.”
“Don’t be too long,” Karen Aitchbone says. “I want us to have a nice lunch with the kids. Tacos, OK?”
“Better than OK. All I had for breakfast was airplane peanuts and a Sprite.”
Then Karen Aitchbone remembers. “You haven’t heard, have you? Howie Dornick painted his house yesterday.”
D. William Aitchbone says “Love you, babe” and clicks off. What a couple of days! He’s finagled the VP for Squaw Days! He’s resisted Victoria Bonobo’s wonderful shoulders! He’s forced Howie Dornick to paint his house! “Am I on a roll or what?” he says to himself. As much as he wants to drive straight into town and see for himself that white paint on Howie Dornick’s clapboards, he knows he nee
ds to stop by the farm. Uncle Andy’s will is moving quickly through probate. The court-appointed appraiser is coming to look it over on Friday. A developer is coming to look it over on Saturday. Other developers will be coming after that. So everything out there’s got to be ship-shape. He turns onto Three Fish Creek Road.
Three Fish Road is about sixty percent developed now: three-acre estates crowed with big new houses; pole barns for pet ponies and cute little pigmy goats; front yard ponds as round as pancakes; newly planted trees that won’t provide a lick of shade for another thirty years. The forty percent that isn’t developed lays fallow: cowless cow pastures; pigless pig yards; fields that once grew corn and soybeans now thick with wild carrot and thistle. Some of the old farm houses are still standing, some still lived in. Some of the old barns are still standing, too, though there is no hay or straw in their mows; no fodder in their silos; no corn in their cribs; no tractors with attached plows, waiting greased and gassed for the rain to stop; no cows to be milked; no pigs to be slopped, no eggs to gather, no sheep to shear; just mice and bats and mold and rot.
D. William Aitchbone turns into his Uncle Andy’s driveway. In a few months it will be his driveway. It will be his house. It will be his barn. It will be his four hundred acres. But not for long. Nosireebob. With a little luck his name will be on the deed for only a few days, maybe only for a few hours. As soon as humanly possible this driveway, this house, this barn, these four hundred acres, will belong to a developer. He has been in contact with several already. By Thanksgiving the old Aitchbone homestead will be cash in the bank. Even after the state and the federal governments take their unfair shares, he still will be a millionaire, two maybe three times over.
D. William Aitchbone trots to the house. He checks the doors to make sure they’re locked. He checks the windows to make sure none are broken. He does not go inside. The last time he was inside is the day he took Uncle Andy to the Sparrow Hill Nursing Home.
The house, built in the 1830s, is one of the older houses in Wyssock County. It was built by the original Aitchbone from Connecticut, Jobiah Aitchbone, but not before the barn was built or the fields and pastures cleared. For nearly twenty years those original Aitchbones—six sons, three daughters and wife Almira—lived in a log house, which, according to the family’s oral history, had been located somewhere along the creek; not far, D. William Aitchbone surmises, from where the Tuttwyler brothers clubbed to death Princess Pogawedka and her poor little Kapusta.
Although the old house always smelled like someone hadn’t flushed the toilet, it was a grand place for a boy to visit. So many little rooms, with their lopsided walls and slanting ceilings and creaking floors; so many old drawers to snoop in; attics full of old trunks and boxes; attics and drawers and cupboards filled with antiques that he sold to one of the state’s top dealers the same week he moved Andy to Sparrow Hill. He made enough money from those antiques to cover six months of Andy’s care. The only thing he kept was the little dresser that had first belonged to Andy’s grandmother. It had glass handles and a cracked oval mirror. It would have brought three hundred bucks but Karen wanted it for Amy’s bedroom.
So, D. William Aitchbone does not go inside. He walks to the barn. The padlock is still on the big sliding doors. The side door that Andy’s cows once used is padlocked, too. No need to go into the barn, either. Unfortunately, the door on the granary has been jimmied open. He goes inside. He finds a few pages ripped out of a Hustler, and an empty beer can. He looks at the dirty pictures and goes back outside.
He walks to the fence behind the barn and slides between the loose strands of barbed wire. He heads across the pasture. Andy sold off the last of his herd three years ago, so the pasture is waist-high with weeds and the cowflops are as gray and hard as granite. He walks to the end of the pasture and again slides through the barbed wire, this time snagging the knee of his Dockers. He is not particularly concerned. Dockers are always on sale at the new mall at the I-491 interchange. He walks across the rolling fields where Andy—and God knows how many Aitchbones before him—once grew corn. He keeps is eyes peeled for arrowheads, even though most of the ground is covered with weeds and rotting stalks. After he moved Andy to Sparrow Hill, he sold a whole shoe box full of Indian artifacts to that same top dealer. He was amazed at how much those worthless things went for.
He walks all the way to Three Fish Creek. Most of the creek here is on Aitchbone land, though some of it wiggles onto the old Tuttwyler homestead. He stands on the shale bank and looks into the shallow water, hoping to spot a crayfish or a school of minnows. All he sees is a crushed Dr Pepper can. On the ridge above him are the backyards of new houses. A year from now the spot where he is standing will be in someone’s backyard, too. He heads upstream through the burdock, well aware that he is the luckiest sonofabitch alive.
He is a lucky sonofabitch because he was born with good Connecticut Yankee genes. He is a lucky sonofabitch because his parents made sure he got the best education the Wyssock County public schools could offer, so he was ready for the best education a private college could offer. Never once at John Carroll or at the Cleveland Marshall College of Law did he get drunk on beer or high on marijuana. He kept his hair short, his mind sharp, his nose in his books, and his name on the dean’s list.
He is a lucky sonofabitch because he married a good, level-headed woman. A woman who, despite the weakness of her father, the war-hero Artie Brown, had the good sense to keep her knees together until she had an engagement ring on her finger. A good, level-headed woman who gave him two good level-headed children, cute-as-a-button Amy, handsome-as-his-dad Cannon.
He is a lucky sonofabitch because he turned down those offers from those big Cleveland law firms and returned to practice in Tuttwyler. He is lucky because while other students followed George McGovern over a cliff, he stayed connected with the local Republican Party. That got him Donald Grinspoon as a client. And having Donald Grinspoon as a client got him all the clients he’d ever need. He built his political career slowly, patiently carrying Donald Grinspoon’s waterbucket. That patience paid off in spades. Today he is president of the village council, vice-chairman of the Wyssock County Republican Party, president of the county library board, and—Yeeeessss!—chairman of the Squaw Days Committee, just back from the White House where he charmed the Vice President of the United States into attending that summer’s festival. The luckiest sonofabitch alive, that’s what he is. Sure, he isn’t mayor yet. But that’s Donald Grinspoon’s fault, for not knowing when to hang it up, for falling off the stage during the Meet the Candidates Night at G.A. Hemphill Elementary School. But there is always another election. And when that next election is over, Woodrow Wilson Sadlebyrne will be back connecting TV cable. And a patient and disciplined lucky sonofabitch named D. William Aitchbone will be running the village. He’ll be the best mayor Tuttwyler, Ohio ever had. Better than Donald Grinspoon ever was. He’ll be a mayor who personally knows the VP. The same VP who in just three short years will be elected President of the United States of America, having carried Ohio’s fast-growing 26th congressional district in a landslide, a landslide orchestrated by a lucky sonofabitch who by then will be a congressman-elect. And thanks to Andy Aitchbone’s decision never to marry, he’ll be a millionaire two or three times over. The luckiest sonofabitch alive, that’s what he is.
He wades out of the tall grass and burdock and climbs the highest hill on the farm. There is a fantastic elm up there. Next spring some two-income couple will eagerly pay a premium to have that fantastic elm in their front yard. Come Saturday, he will have to point out this hill and that elm to the developer.
As he reaches the top of the hill, and the shade of that fantastic elm falls over him, he lifts his clenched jaws and with angry disappointment growls “Shit!” Just beyond the elm is something he’d forgotten all about: the old Aitchbone family cemetery.
Breathing hard with worry, he trots toward the cemetery. The gravestones and the wrought-iron fence surrounding them are barel
y visible above the weeds. He orbits the fence until be finds the gate. Weed-bound, it won’t swing open. So he hops it, snagging the ass of his Dockers on one of the iron points. He kneels by the nearest gravestone. It is the grave of Henry Aitchbone, one of Jobiah’s six sons. Born July 1802. Died February 1878. His wife, Blanche, August 1805 to March 1881, is buried next to him. He kneels by other gravestones. Some are broken, some flat on their backs, some leaning, some as straight as the day they were planted. There are maybe fifteen gravestones in all. He looks until he finds the stone where the original Ohio Aitchbones are buried. Isn’t that something, Jobiah and Almira were both been born in May 1782; both died in May 1861.
D. William Aitchbone cannot help but think about Jobiah and Almira walking their brood all the way from Connecticut, through forests and across rivers, worried about wolves and bears and how much flour was left in the wagon; maybe even worrying about Indians, though if Katherine Hardihood is right, the Indians were long gone from the Ohio frontier by the time Wyssock County was settled. Indians or no Indians, the genetically blessed Aitchbones made it. They chose this land above all the rest, paying $1.50 an acre. They felled trees and burned stumps and maybe it was right around here somewhere, where that Indian squaw appeared in the smoke, forgiving the Tuttwyler brothers for clubbing her and her baby to death, wishing the white settlers nothing but the best—not that such a silly thing really happened, of course.
Surrounded by the graves of his ancestors, how can D. William Aitchbone not think about these things? How can he not think about them plowing their fields with teams of oxen? Or shooting squirrels and raccoons to save their precious corn crops? Or crowding into their first little long house? Or building with their bare hands that big house and big barn down there? How can he not think about them sitting around the table eating pork roasts and potatoes? Pies stuffed with the apples they grew themselves? Washing it down with the milk they squeezed from their own cows? How can he not think about them chopping wood and spinning flax and dipping candles and having no such thing as toilet paper when they headed for the outhouse? How can he not think about those nine Aitchbone children growing into adults and marrying somebody from an adjoining farm and copulating and copulating and copulating, creating new generations of Aitchbones and Browns and Warners and Grinspoons and Randalls and Goodes and Sprungs, spreading across Wyssock County like windblown milkweed seeds? How can he not think of them dying of the ailments people now take over-the-counter pills for, of them being buried on this hill on terrible February mornings, horizontal snow pelting their disciplined Connecticut Yankee faces?
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