Serendipity Green

by Rob Levandoski

  But now Hugh Harbinger is no longer among his fellow un-nice in New York City. He is in Tuttwyler, Ohio, following a junior high school band and a whipped cream-bleeding cupcake, and his parents, to the cemetery, to memorialize everyone who’s died since 1803.

  The slate sidewalk takes Hugh Harbinger and the Hbraceks up a slight knoll. At the top of the knoll Hugh lets out a bedazzled “Oh Momma!”

  Ernest Not Irish dos not follow the parade to the cemetery for the memorial services. He stays on the square, walking slowly along the row of food tents. He buys a Coke and a big cookie from the Knights of Columbus. “Enjoy,” the woman working the counter says to him. She is wearing a gold badge with red ribbons. DELORES POLTRUSKI SQUAW DAYS COMMITTEE, it reads. She also is wearing a construction paper headband and feather, just like the kids in the junior high band.

  Ernest Not Irish, with his Coke in one hand and his I’M A REAL INDIAN placard in the other, has to let Delores Poltruski stick the big cookie between his teeth. “Are you really a real Indian?” she asks.

  He nods that he is.

  “Well, thank you so much for coming,” she says.

  Earnest Not Irish walks to the gazebo and sits on the steps. The Coke is good and cold. The cookie tasty. He takes a letter from the back pocket of his Levis and reads it for the umpteenth time:

  Dear Mr. Not Irish,

  If you think Chief Wahoo is a disgrace to your people, you should come to Squaw Days.

  The letter is not signed. But there is a PS:

  Be sure to stick around for the Re-Enactment!

  Ernest Not Irish finishes his cookie and walks back to the Knights of Columbus tent. “What time is this Re-Enactment?” he asks the woman named Delores Poltruski.

  “Nine sharp at G.A. Hemphill Elementary School,” she tells him.

  “What exactly do they re-enact? Not the clubbing I hope?”

  “Goodness no,” Doris Poltruski laughs. “Princess Pogawedka’s rising out of the smoke. You’ll love it.”

  Ernest Not Irish buys another big cookie.

  The same bedazzling sight that forces an “Oh Momma!” from Hugh Harbinger’s lips also stops his feet. He notices that it has not only stopped his feet, but also his parents feet, and, momentarily at least, the feet of almost everyone else flooding towards the cemetery. “Tell me, mother,” he says. “Do you think that house looks nice?”

  “Nice?” she says. “It’s the ugliest house I’ve ever seen.” She and Bob hurry down the sidewalk.

  Hugh Harbinger does not hurry on. He wobbles off the sidewalk. He sits on the unmowed grass. His eyes fix on the great shimmering truth before him. Inside him the sharks are still feasting on the grunion. “Now that is green,” he says.

  He has never seen such a green. It is not, thank God, hunter green, the green that for a decade now has permeated every product line from polo shirts to potato peeler handles; permeated every economic class, so that even the poorest of the poor are these days wearing hunter green jogging shorts and drinking coffee brewed in hunter green coffeemakers. Yes, thank God, it is not hunter green. Nor is it the festive green of cups and saucers made during the fifties. Nor the green of sixties’ miniskirts or seventies’ polyester leisure suits. Nor is it the green of eighties’ punk-rock hair. Nor the green of all those shutters on the impressive houses up and down this street, the green of grass dripping spring dew, the green of grass coated with autumn frost.

  It also is not the green of April leaves or May leaves or June leaves or July leaves or August leaves or September leaves, not the green of pine needles or fern fonds or cactus or palm, nor the green of plastic Easter eggs. It is not the green of the pants middle-aged men wear to play golf, not the green Girl Scouts wear, not the fertile green the Irish love so much. It is not the rainforest green Amazonian Indians hunt monkey in, nor the green of tundra moss Eskimos track caribou across, or the green of deep water. It is not the sugary green of Kool-Aid, the anemic green of hospital walls, the green of iceberg lettuce, the green of canned peas. It is not the green of guacamole, of cabbage rolls, of olives. Or the green of traffic lights, ambulances, or Army tanks. It not the green of Eleanor Hbracek’s puffy Christmas slippers, the green of the clip-on necktie Bob Hbracek wears to Christmas mass, or the green of the highway signs that point you east toward New York. It is not any of the greens you’d find in even the biggest box of Crayolas, any of the greens you’d find on an artists’ pallet. It is not the green of American money.

  It is a green such as Hugh Harbinger, renowned genius of color, has never seen before. To the trained technician in him, it is a mysterious green that refuses to stay at a fixed position on the color spectrum—from 490 to 570 nanometers its fickle wavelengths are flying, at once yellowy and blue, at once warm and cool, at once transparent and opaque, at once glossy and flat. To the artist in him, it is a green at once soothing and irritating, at once feminine and masculine, yin and yang, kind and cruel, obstinate and submissive, envious and generous, at once filled with and devoid of hope, of love and hatred, love and loneliness, love and the absence of love. It is a green not only racing back and forth along the color spectrum, but also a green balanced precariously on the spectrum of precious Time, between the verdancy of life and the fly-infested rot of death. It is the green of God’s fluttering cape and Satan’s stomping boots. It is the green of Hugh Harbinger’s depression and the green of his resurrection. It is a green he understands better than anyone alive, save maybe the owner of this little two-story frame house.

  It is a green that keeps Hugh Harbinger seated on this unmowed lawn while Bob and Eleanor Hbracek drift with the crowd toward the cemetery for the Squaw Days memorial service, where all those buried beneath the green grass will be remembered.

  12

  The Ferris wheel is still turning, but the midway is all but empty. The food tents on the square are still open, but the sloppy joes and French fries go unsold. Talented village women still man their craft booths, but their quilts and Christmas decorations go unmolested. It is 8:45, the sun is falling, and the crowd is gathering at G.A. Hemphill Elementary School for the Re-Enactment.

  It is an old brick school, built in the thirties when, despite the raging depression, schools were still considered monuments to the future; and therefore its temple-like entrance and the sandstone reliefs cornicing the entire three-story building like a halo were not seen, as they would be seen today, as a waste of taxpayers money, but as the very best possible use of it.

  Erected right in front of the school’s temple-like entrance is a stage. There is a backdrop of painted trees and hills and log cabins with chimneys trickling frozen smoke. In the center of the stage is a pile of real tree stumps. On the corners of the stage sit magnificent stacks of speakers, borrowed from The Gizzard Girls—a local rock band comprised of four despondent high school boys from the expensive new developments. To the left of the stage sits the high school band, the legs of their folding chairs slowing sinking into the ground. To the right of the stage sits the Singing Doves, an ad hoc chorus comprised of the choirs from every church in Tuttwyler, save the Reverend Raymond R. Biscobee’s non-affiliated Assemblage of the Lord, which believes Christian voices never should be lifted for secular purposes—not even for a worthy event like Squaw Days.

  It is three minutes after nine now and the Davy Crockett band director raps on his music stand. The band erupts into the very recognizable Star Wars theme: Bum-BUMMM, bum-bum-bum-bum BUMMM-bum.

  This first piece is just to get the crowd’s attention. And it does. And now as the sun is all but spent, and blue floodlights turn the stage ghostly, the band takes the crowd back to the early nineteenth century with a dirge-like rendition of the Beatles’ “Yesterday.” The boy playing the bass drum, who after school is the drummer for the Gizzard Girls, is thumping out an Indian pow-wow beat: DOOM-doom-doom-doom, DOOM-doom-doom-doom.

  The Singing Doves beings to howl eerily. Canisters of dry ice are opened, drowning the stage in unruly smoke. People dressed as pio
neers drift into the smoke, completing the tableau. Most of the pioneer men have axes over their shoulders. Most of the pioneer women are carrying baskets. “Yesterday” drags to an end. One of the ax-carrying men walks to the microphone. “Well,” he almost shouts, “we’ve worked all day a-cuttin’ these trees and a-pullin’ out these stumps with our horses and oxen, the same beasts of burden that brought us west from our homes in Connecticut. Now let’s set these stumps a-blazin’, so all the world knows where Tuttwyler is, and will always be!”

  A basket-carrying woman joins him at the microphone. She holds up a plaster of Paris roasted chicken. “And let us feast,” she almost shouts, “as our forefathers and fore-mothers feasted at the first Thanksgiving in faraway Plymouth, Massachusetts, thankful for this bountiful land, which God hath bequeathed.”

  Now an old man steps to the microphone. He is wearing a tattered Revolutionary War uniform. Many in the crowd applaud. They know who this old man really is. He is Donald Grinspoon, the former mayor, former owner of Grinspoon’s Department Store, until this year, chairman of the Squaw Days Committee. He waits for the applause to die, then almost shouts: “And let us not forget the men who gave their lives so that this nation could be born. Nor should we forget the men who will die in wars to come—the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War One and World War Two, the Korean Police Action and the Vietnam War, and Desert Storm and all the little wars in between.”

  Two children step to the microphone. They carry old-fashioned school slates and they are dressed like Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher. Donald Grinspoon adjusts the microphone stand for them, sending a screech of feedback across the crowd. The boy almost shouts first: “What about the Indians? We must never forget that this was their land first.”

  “That is right,” almost-shouts the girl. “Nor should we forget Princess Pogawedka or tiny Kapusta.”

  Another pioneer man, ax over his shoulder, strides to the microphone. “Princess Pogawedka and tiny Kapusta?” he actually shouts. “I am new to this land. Who were they?”

  Now another pioneer woman steps to the microphone. She is not carrying a basket, but a huge book. Many in the crowd applaud. They know who this woman really is. She is Katherine Hardihood, head librarian at the Tuttwyler branch, and founding member of the Squaw Days Committee. For ten minutes she reads aloud about the Western Reserve and the coming of the first white settlers. She reads about how John and Amos Tuttwyler who, while hunting for a spot on Three Fish Creek to build their grist mill, happened across the Indian squaw Pogawedka, and perhaps thinking they were in danger of being attacked by other noble savages hiding in the great trees, clubbed her and her baby to death, only to have great remorse afterwards, and to suffer for their mistake the rest of their lives, though they did help build a prosperous village, a village that prospers still, and remembers still poor Princess Pogawedka and tiny Kapusta. As the crowd applauds, many of them snorting away tears, Katherine Hardihood retreats into the billowing dry ice, visibly relieved her part in the Re-Enactment is finished.

  The Marching Wildcat Band begins to play a peppy martial version of Pachebel’s “Canon in D major.” From the back of the crowd comes a pioneer man with a real torch. He is preceded by a sheriff’s deputy who parts the crowd so no one accidentally gets burned. Once on the stage, the man holds the torch high, first to his left, then to his right, then full center, and then, as if this were the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympics, lowers the torch into the stumps. There is the sudden buzz of electric fans as strips of shimmering yellow, red and gold plastic are blown skyward.

  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-s
tory 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.