Sharyn McCrumb - The Windsor Knot

Well, there had been a time when Emmet had been interested in her and in his hometown, but years of exasperation had obscured those pleasant memories, replacing them with half-remembered quarrels and with the numbness that set in when nothing Emmet said or did mattered to her anymore. Clarine tried to remember the Emmet she’d married in 1958; maybe she ought to put his highschool photo on the mantelpiece instead of the later one. He’d seemed like such a nice, steady boy in those days. He had played high-school varsity football, which had impressed the shy sophomore Clarine, and he’d worked weekends in his father’s hardware store. It was understood that he was going to take over the business one day.

She had got engaged to him at seventeen, when he went in the army, and she’d written him letters on pink stationery the whole time he was stationed in Germany. Emmet did take over Mason’s Hardware in 1976, when Daddy Earl had his stroke, but by then he had lost interest in the commercial possibilities in Chandler Grove, Georgia.

“Let’s sell the store and go to California!” he’d say.

Clarine said she hadn’t lost a thing in the state of California.

“Life’s just passing me by here in the sticks!” Emmet would sigh. “I know I could make it as an actor.”

Emmet had played the role of Emily’s father in the Chandler Grove production of Our Town; the Scout reviewer had pronounced him “adequate.” The senior English class, following the play in their literature books with tiny flashlights, claimed he hadn’t missed a line.

Emmet followed up that success with a portrayal of James Oglethorpe, founder of the colony of Georgia, in the town pageant. After that, he figured the only thing keeping him out of the movies was geo graphical inconvenience.

Clarine said relocating was out of the question because she didn’t want to star in a real-life documentary about damn-fool Georgians caught in a California earthquake that they hadn’t ought to be in. And besides, there was her mother to think of, past seventy and suffering from arthritis. No, Clarine insisted, there were too many family obligations-not to mention the Mason family business-to keep them in Chandler Grove, and she wasn’t going to see Emmet throw it all away trying to become another Bob Eubanks.

She had been right, too, she thought, scowling at Emmet’s smarmy Kodachrome smile. Stay home , she’d said. You’re not slick enough for California . But talking to Emmet about show business was like Emily trying to talk to her folks in Act Three of Our Town: she just couldn’t make herself heard. In the end, Emmet trumped up a business trip to California for a hardware convention, and he announced that he was staying an extra three days to talk to some Hollywood agents.

Look what had come of that.

The day before Emmet was due back, Clarine received a phone call from the California Highway Patrol, telling her that Emmet had been killed in a car wreck on the Ventura Freeway. The accident had been so bad that the car caught fire, the officer told her. There wasn’t much left of Emmet J. Mason. Did she want him cremated?

Before she thought about it, Clarine blurted out, “You might as well. A little more heat won’t matter to Emmet at this point.”

So they had. A couple of days after the phone call, the UPS truck had pulled up in the yard and the man made her sign for a heavy package, about the size of a shoe box, wrapped in brown paper. When Clarine took it in the house and unwrapped it, she found a blue-flowered ginger jar with a note attached that said: Enclosed are the remains of Emmet J. Mason. With our deepest sympathy , and signed by some California funeral director.

Clarine put Emmet on the mantelpiece between the carved-oak rooster clock and the silver-framed photograph. For a long time she was too shocked to feel much of anything, except an occasional flare of anger when she looked at the jar. Gradually she came to realize that Emmet had probably died happy, pursuing his silly fantasy of stardom, and that she didn’t miss him all that much. So she sold the hardware store, banked the life-insurance money, and lived as frugally as she could, because she didn’t want to run out of money in her old age. She’d never had a job in her life; couldn’t even balance a checkbook till Emmet’s death forced her to learn. She didn’t want to have to clean other people’s houses for slave wages when she was old and feeble, so she did all the chores herself, and she watched every penny.

She was about to get up and dust the mantelpiece when the telephone rang. Clarine hurried out into the hall and got it by the third ring. “Hello?”

“Mrs. Mason,” said an unfamiliar voice, notably lacking a Southern accent.

“Yes,” she said warily, ready to slam down the receiver at the first sign of a sales pitch.

“Wife of Emmet J. Mason?” he continued.

“Yes.” She didn’t bother to correct him. Best not to let strangers know you lived alone. Maybe she’d won a sweepstakes, she thought.

“This is Sergeant Gene Vega of the California Highway Patrol. I’m sorry to have to tell you that your husband Emmet J. Mason was killed in an auto accident here this morning…”

“What, again?”

Sheriff Wesley Rountree was reading this week’s edition of the Chandler Grove Scout , an activity that never took as long as his coffee break. The front page was good for about three minutes, if you read slowly, and generally consisted of one city government story, one wreck or weather story, and a heartwarming human interest piece featuring either kids or old ladies. After that came the community news, devoted to toddlers’ birthday parties or visits from out-of-state relatives. Then came the local grocery ads, accompanied by a few freebie news releases from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (THE GYPSY MOTH IS NOT YOUR FRIEND) and a page of high-school sports stories that contrived to mention the name of every conceivable person present at the event ( After the third inning, Cheerleader Mascot Shannon Gentry waved to her grandmother, Mrs. Lois Andrews) .

Wesley glanced at his coffee cup. It was nearly full, and he was already past the high point of the issue: the irate letter to the editor from Mr. Julian, the local curmudgeon.

Deputy Clay Taylor, on the other hand, was already on his second cup of herbal tea, deeply immersed in a crime novel. He was hunched over his desk, his rimless glasses teetering midway down his nose, lips pursed, as he turned the page of the thick paperback entitled Sergeant Luger: Crack Shot Wesley was surprised at his deputy’s choice of reading matter. Usually the Peace Corps veteran restricted his leisure study to socially significant works like The Coalition for Central American Rights Newsletter or pamphlets by groups with names like Defenders of the Ozone. Just bringing Clay’s mail back from the post office box could raise your social consciousness, the sheriff contended.

Wesley turned a page of the newspaper. “I see where the Chandlers’ niece is getting married,” he remarked. “I think we met her during the Chandler case, didn’t we? The one that kinda resembled Linda Ronstadt.”

Clay Taylor refused to rise to the conversational bait. He turned another page.

“Says here she’s studying forensic anthropology in graduate school. I used to think that meant analyzing the way different cultures talked, because back when I was in high school, speech class was called forensics. Turns out it means analyzing human remains. Interesting sort of job.”

With an absent nod in the direction of his boss, the deputy turned another page.

He must have reached a sex scene , thought Wesley, returning to his own choice of reading matter. He scanned the rest of the page and caught sight of a familiar name. “Well, Clay, looks like you got mentioned in the Scout this week,” he called out.