The Bittinger boy starts putting the bones back in the box. “Now you told me, Mr. Dornick, that you found these skeletons buried on top of another grave.”
Katherine Hardihood answers for her man. “On top of Seth Aitchbone’s grave. Seth was the son of Jobiah and Almira Aitchbone. He died in 1807 at age 22. Apparently unmarried.”
“And how far down did you find them?” asks the Bittinger boy.
“About four feet,” Howie Dornick answers for himself.
“And was there any sign of a coffin? Old nails? Fragments of rotted wood? Discolored soil?”
“Don’t know about discolored soil,” Howie Dornick answers, “but there weren’t any nails or old wood or anything.”
The Bittinger boy plays with his inherited hardware man’s chin. “Just the fact that these skeletons were buried two feet above ol’ Seth implies they were buried after he was. Still, there’s also evidence they died first.”
Katherine Hardihood is flabbergasted by this fact. “First?”
“Maybe a year or more,” says the Bittinger boy. “Before these two were buried they laid out in the open for quite a while. He pokes at the dirt clinging to the inside of the woman’s skull. “See that? Petrified beetle pupa. Insects don’t burrow more than an inch or two below ground. These bodies decomposed above ground. There are signs of insect infestation everywhere. And tooth marks where rodents gnawed. And look here, half of the infant’s left foot is missing. More than likely carried away by a fox or something.” He holds up the woman’s femur to the light. “Most interesting of all is this. See that? On the dirt there? That’s the impression of cloth. Rough Cloth. Burlap I’d say. These bones not only laid out in the open for a long time. They also laid in a sack for a long time. Meaning—”
Katherine Hardihood understands the meaning: “Meaning that Seth Aitchbone found and kept the bones of the woman and child he loved, and when he died, some member of his family, somebody who knew how much he loved them, buried them with him.”
This unprofessional conclusion makes the Bittinger boy squirm. “Well, I can’t say it means all that, of course. But it does mean they were gathered up sometime after their deaths and kept in a sack and then buried on top of ol’ Seth.”
Katherine Hardihood is not finished drawing conclusions: “So the Tuttwyler brothers clubbed Pogawedka and Kapusta, or whatever their real names were, and Seth Aitchbone after a long agonizing search finds their bones and keeps them hidden away in a sack, under his bed maybe, or up in the rafters. And when he dies of a broken heart, his mother, or maybe one of his five brothers—though it’s hard to imagine any Aitchbone man having that kind of compassion—secretly buries the bones in his grave, in the middle of the night, so no one else knows. And there Seth and Pogawedka and little Kapusta lie together in eternal peace, until Bill Aitchbone sells the family farm to developers.”
“And sends me like some lackey ghoul to re-plant them,” says Howie Dornick.
“I wish you hadn’t re-planted ol’ Seth,” says the Bittinger boy. After the surprise on Katherine Hardihood’s face fades he explains. “If this scenario of yours is true, then it might also be important how he died—other than from a broken heart.”
Katherine Hardihood splays her librarian’s fingers across her bony librarian’s chest. “You mean the Tuttwyler brothers might have murdered Seth, too?”
“Didn’t say that,” says the Bittinger boy. “Maybe he murdered himself.”
“Of course! Suicide!” says Katherine Hardihood. “That would prove everything, wouldn’t it.”
“Like what?” asks Howie Dornick.
“That he loved this woman and her child,” his woman says. “That he couldn’t bear living next to the evil brothers who killed them, who weren’t brought to justice just because their victims were Indians. Jiminy Cricket, Howard, we’ve got to dig Seth back up and prove he killed himself.”
“Oh no!” says Howie Dornick.
“Oh yes!” says Katherine Hardihood.
“Sorry, Mr. Dornick, but I think we should, too,” says the Bittinger boy. “We’re already breaking a zillion state laws. We might as well go whole hog for the truth.”
“Of course whole hog,” repeats Katherine Hardihood.
The Bittinger boy holds up Pogawedka’s skull. “If it’s the truth you’re after—the real truth and not just all those conclusions you’re jumping to—then hold onto your underwear. See these recessive cheekbones? And the length of this face? And the nasal passage? And this overbite here? This is not the skull of an Indian woman. This is the skull of a white woman. With 93% certainty at least.”
Katherine reaches out for something to hang onto other than her underwear, finding only a revolving rack of flower seeds, which spins to the floor, packets of zinnias and marigolds flying. “White woman? The Tuttwyler brothers killed a white woman?”
The Bittinger boy is nodding proudly. “With 93% certainty they did. So, when do we exhume ol’ Seth, folks?”
Howie Dornick drops Katherine Hardihood off at her two-bedroom ranch on Oak Street, then drives home to his two-story frame on South Mill. There is no moon. No stars. No passing cars. No lights in his neighbors’ windows. Only February clouds and the dirty glow of the streetlight.
As he grinds up the driveway he sees someone on the porch. He hopes it is Hugh Harbinger. He fears it is Bill Aitchbone. It turns out to be Charles Pasquinade, American correspondent for the French arts magazine, Fiel. “It gets cold in Ohio, does it not?” says Charles Pasquinade.
Pasquinade, of course, wants an interview. All of Paris has lost its senses over Serendipity Green®. Even the nuns are wearing it, he says. Howie Dornick leads him to the kitchen table and pours him a glass of grapefruit juice.
“So tell me,” Pasquinade begins, tiny tape recorder pointed at Howie’s tired face, “did you paint your house this color out of your love for mankind or your hate for it? Or merely out of your ambivalence?”
After Pasquinade leaves Howie takes his checkbook out of the refrigerator freezer, where it is hidden behind a huge bag of frozen waffles, and writes the Bittinger boy a check for $100,000. He puts it in an envelope with a note:
Dear Bone Head,
You’re as much to blame for Serendipity Green® as me. Good luck with the gourmet grocery.
Howie
“You know I believe in the truth more than anything,” Katherine Hardihood says. She has just settled into the huge chair and the leather is still cold.
Dr. Pirooz Aram is chasing the last drop of espresso in his demitasse with his little finger. “That is what I like about you more than anything else, Katherine.”
“I’m a fraud,” she confesses.
There is a sweetness in the doctor’s eyes as he walks toward her on his knees. “Boool-shit! I suppose you also want me to believe that the world is not round? By the way, did you know that the great Persian physicist Abu ar-Rayham al-Biruni calculated the diameter of the earth a thousand years before John Glenn learned to ride his bicycle?”
She lets him take her hands. She tells him about her skullduggery with Howie Dornick and the Bittinger boy; how they found not the bones of an Indian woman and an Indian baby, but the bones of a white woman and a white baby; how this unexpected discovery has upset her applecart but good.
“A little applecart upsetting is good for the soul,” says Dr. Aram.
“But the truth I was sure I’d find was not the truth I found,” she says. “And now if I tell that truth, Squaw Days will be kaput. Everybody in Tuttwyler will hate me.”
“What is so wrong about being hated for telling the truth? It will put you in some very exclusive company.”
As Katherine laughs, Dr. Aram pulls her from the chair, and humming “Yankee Doodle,” he dances her around the office. “Dammit, Katherine! Listen to me! If you found a truth other than the one you were looking for, then the one you were looking for was not the truth at all. Was it? And if you had told anyone that un-true truth, it would have been a lie! Are you
following this? I find that sometimes American minds cannot keep up with a first-class Persian mind.”
“I’m keeping up.”
“Good! Now keep up some more! If you had told this lie that you thought was the truth, people might have been happy for a while. But sooner or later they would realize your lie was a lie. And they would be very angry. And they would hate you anyway! So, Katherine! Tell them the true truth you have found, and then to hell with them.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“All these years I have been taking your money and you guess I’m right? Katherine! Know it! Know it! Now tell me, are you and this Howie Dornick still having fun in bed? Yes?”
20
D. William Aitchbone drives north as fast as he can, to catch the last flight of the night to Washington. Victoria Bonobo is next to him, her seductive face sideways on the headrest, her fingers playing with the epaulet of his Burberry. He does not know whether he will copulate with her tonight or not. If he does, the VP will come to Squaw Days and make it a big success, and ensure his election as mayor, an office from which he can launch a successful campaign for Congress. If he doesn’t, Squaw Days will be stuck with the secretary of some worthless department. And that won’t be the end of it. Vicki will vote against every bill he wants the village council to pass, making him look weak and out of touch with voters. Copulating with the wife of Bud Weideman didn’t ruin Donald Grinspoon’s marriage. He sold enough Weideman boots to buy a condo in Florida! And Karen already thinks he’s copulating with Victoria Bonobo, anyway! So he might as well! But can he? He loves Karen to bits.
They reach the gate just as the flight begins to board. Victoria hugs him with relief and they penguin-walk with their luggage to their seats in coach. An hour and twenty minutes later they are back on the ground, in a cab listening to the driver’s tape of Yobisch Podka’s lively Insipientia. “I love this piece,” Aitchbone says, certain the driver is a Middle Eastern terrorist waiting for orders to blow the tip off the Washington Monument.
“When I was a boy I studied composition with Yobisch in Leningrad,” the driver says. “We still send each other birthday cards.”
“You’re a musician?” D. William Aitchbone asks, certain that this tale about studying with the great Yobisch Podka is just a cover for his bomb making.
“I am a very good musician,” the driver says. “I have a tryout with the Cleveland Orchestra next month.”
The skeptical lawyer from just south of Cleveland hopes to trip him up. “What instrument?” he quickly asks him.
The driver answers effortlessly: “Violin. In Cairo I was first chair. In Cleveland I will be honored to sit in the last chair. It is the finest orchestra in the world.”
D. William Aitchbone is suddenly proud. “We’re from Cleveland.”
The driver smiles into his mirror. “How about those Indians?”
D. William Aitchbone gives him two thumbs up. “This year the whole enchilada.”
“You are a nice couple,” the driver says. “Most of my fares think I am a terrorist.”
“No kidding?” says D. William Aitchbone.
And so the cab reaches the Hyatt and D. William Aitchbone tips the driver a five, which he is sure will go into a fund to buy plastique explosives. “Violin my American ass,” he says to Victoria Bonobo as the cab drives off.
They check in and tell the disappointed terrorist bellhop they’ll carry their own bags. Inside the glass elevator D. William Aitchbone presses 18. He lets Victoria Bonobo play with his Adam’s apple, even when the elevator stops at 12 for a terrorist carrying a stack of room service trays.
Bing! Ka-boomp. Eighteenth floor. Victoria’s room is first and D. William Aitchbone lets her kiss him on the lips, with all the suction she can muster. But he does not let her drag him inside. “I want you as bad as you want me,” he says, panting real pants. “But we’ve got breakfast with the VP at seven-thirty, and if we make love all night—and Sweet Jesus, it would be all night—we wouldn’t be worth a damn. We’d end up with the Interior secretary again. Or worse.”
Victoria Bonobo is not disappointed. She is aroused even more by his manly insistence on business first. And so early in the morning another cab-driving terrorist whisks them to the White House for a breakfast of huevos rancheros and refried beans. The VP wears a Serendipity Green® tie in honor of their little village, and after his eyes drink in the sister of his old college roommate, he promises to attend Squaw Days no matter what. “I don’t care if the prime minister of England gets blown up in his Bentley,” he says, “I’ll be there for you. I’m really anxious to meet that Howie Dornick fellow.”
Yet another terrorist whisks them back to the Hyatt and they ride the glass elevator pawing and rubbing each other from floor to floor. They have two hours and twenty minutes until check out. Bing! Ka-boomp. Into D. William Aitchbone’s room they rush. The PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB sign goes on the door. Into the bathroom goes Victoria Bonobo to undress and insert her diaphram. She steps out and finds the manly man she has been waiting a year for, still in his blue suit, standing in a pool of eggs and chili sauce and refried beans. “Sorry,” he says, his voice rippling like the belly of bullfrog. “I’m really sorry.” He starts to gag, but he doesn’t vomit, inasmuch as this time his finger isn’t down his throat. “At least the VP is coming this time for sure,” he says.
So now D. William Aitchbone knows he cannot be unfaithful to Karen Aitchbone. And from the frost in Victoria Bonobo’s eyes, he knows she knows it, too. And the flight home is a miserable one. He drops her off at the end of her driveway and drives as fast as he can to his soapy white Queen Anne. He will wrap his arms around Karen and tell her over and over that he never slept with Victoria Bonobo, that he never could, nor would, nor will he ever, even if it means he will never be anything more impressive than president of the Tuttwyler village council.
He drives past Howie Dornick’s Serendipity Green® house as fast as he can, pretending he doesn’t see the television crew or the little crowd of daytrippers. He hurries into his own house ready for his hug. He finds a letter on his perfectly puffed pillow:
Bill,
Hope you and Vicki enjoyed Washington. I’ve taken Amy and Cannon to the farm. Not for a visit, Bill—for good!!!!
Karen
p.s. Penny Grinspoon died last night. Try to be civil at the funeral.
Of course D. William Aitchbone will be civil at Penny Grinspoon’s funeral. It will be the political event of the year. The governor will be there. Half a dozen state legislators will be there. Buddy Bowfin, the 22nd District’s fourteen-term congressman will be there. Every businessman who needs a friendly vote from the Tuttwyler Village Council, or the Wyssock County Commissioners, or the Ohio General Assembly, or the U.S. Congress will be there. Hundreds of run-of-the-mill voters will be there. Of course D. William Aitchbone will be civil at Penny Grinspoon’s funeral.
On the morning of the funeral God purifies Tuttwyler with below-zero temperatures and a torrent of snow. But the cold and snow stop no one from venturing forth to pay their respects. The red-brick Methodist church on the east side of the square hasn’t been this full since Artie Brown’s funeral eleven years earlier.
Though surrounded by his children and grandchildren, Donald Grinspoon sits painfully alone in the front pew, snow dripping off his old pair of Weideman boots. Surrounded by Karen and Amy and Cannon, D. William Aitchbone also sits painfully alone, nodding politically at every set of eyes that find him.
There are several eulogies. Donald and Penny’s eldest daughter, Donna, who looks so much like her mother, remembers the warm peach pies and vanilla ice cream, and how her mother lead them all in singing “Jingle Bells” at 6:30 every Christmas morning. Younger daughter Jeanie, with her father’s eyes and smile, remembers the potato salad and the marshmallow fights and how her mother decorated the living room at their Key Largo condo exactly like their living room on South Mill, so her family and her many friends would always feel at home. The gove
rnor remembers the selfless days and nights dear Penny put in manning the Republican Party booth at the Wyssock County Fair, making sure everybody who walked by got a campaign button for their lapel, a bumper sticker for their car, and a warm Republican smile for their hearts. Finally, D. William Aitchbone speaks of Penny’s unflagging loyalty to her husband, and of Donald’s unflagging love for her. “Penny Grinspoon was simply the best,” he says. “We will all miss her so.”
The church empties. The procession to the village cemetery begins. Penelope nee Tuttwyler Grinspoon gets a goodbye swing around the square and a final look at her soapy white Victorian on South Mill. “I have never been unfaithful to you,” D. William Aitchbone whispers to Karen Aitchbone as they crawl along in their American-made Japanese luxury sedan, just five car behind the hearse, just one car behind the governor’s limousine. “I love you like Donald loved Penny.”
“Really?” Karen Aitchbone whispers back, glancing into the back seat to make sure Amy and Cannon are occupied by their books from the library. “Does that mean you’re going to buy me a condo in Key Largo?”
Her loyal husband is stunned. “You know about the Weideman Boots thing?”
“The whole town knows about the Weideman Boots thing. Penny made sure everyone knew.”
“Penny knew?”
“Wives always know.”
“I swear, Karen, Vicki Bonobo and I have never—”
“Save it for your lawyer, Bill,” Karen Aitchbone says, in anything but a whisper. “And make sure it’s a good lawyer, Bill. Because I’m going to get a great lawyer.”
D. William Aitchbone isn’t whispering now either. “I swear, Karen, you’ve got more brass than a marching band!”
At the cemetery the great herd of frozen, glove-banging mourners crowds around the grave Howie Dornick has dug. The village backhoe sits just twenty yard away, frozen Ohio clay stuck to its hydraulic claw like cake frosting stuck to a mixing bowl beater. Penelope is handed over to God with as much Christian joy as a day in February allows. The minister invites everyone to the Grinspoon house for lunch. The glove-bangers retreat to their cars. Thirty minutes after the hearse pulled in, the hearse pulls out, leaving only three living humans in the cemetery.
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