The Windsor Knot

The sudden need of a marriage partner had shed rather a different light on his freedom from social obligation. Now he felt like an outcast, marooned in a strange land whose language he did not speak. Even the most casual encounter made him feel like an alien. What did one reply to the man in a camouflage hunting outfit and a University of Georgia cap who ambled up to him at the gas station and said, “How ’bout them Dawgs?” Charles said that he didn’t own one, which, judging from the man’s reaction, was not the correct response.

Charles was afraid that he might find the female residents of Chandler Grove equally impossible to communicate with. He tried to think of places that he could locate someone who was more of a kindred spirit. He had still received no reply to the letter he had sent to the Georgian Highlander box number. Surely the responses to such a local magazine couldn’t be that numerous; perhaps his literary skills were even worse than he feared. Should he try again? There were Atlanta newspapers and magazines with personals columns for lonely yuppies, but they also required a written reply to a post office box, and there wasn’t time for that. He needed somebody around here that he could relate to. Some other group of outsiders, perhaps, who were in Chandler Grove but not of it.

Earthling!

Charles remembered the group of Earth Shoe people described by Tommy Simmons. Charles had recommended them as caterers for Elizabeth’s wedding partly out of mischief and partly because as a vegetarian himself, he hoped that his cousin would hire them to cater the wedding so that he could enjoy the food. Now he thought of an even better use for Earthling: as a source of suitable women.

Having forgotten exactly where the lawyer had said they were, Charles had to drive about in search of their health-food store. Fortunately, in Chandler Grove, such a quest was not difficult. After ten minutes of driving, he crossed the steel span bridge over the river, having covered the one-block business district of downtown Chandler Grove without finding any new establishments. Once over the river he discovered what he was looking for. The old gristmill, set in a grove of ancient oaks, had been repainted barn red and displayed a sign over its porch- EARTHLING-with a logo: a rainbow over an oak tree.

He parked the family station wagon in the gravel lot next to the riverbank and went in, hoping that a maiden with the soul of Madame Curie and the looks of Joan Baez was waiting for her prince to come. He straightened his borrowed tie.

Perhaps he had overdressed for the part, he thought, looking over the Earthling premises. A sawdust-covered floor was littered with packing crates and barrels of grain, each labeled with a sign hand-lettered in Magic Marker. A homemade cloth banner on one wall proclaimed the back room as the national headquarters for the Central American Prayer and Protest Group. Charles edged his way past plastic tubs of spices to examine the notices on the bulletin board. He had worked his way through Goat’s Milk for Sale; Custom-made Crystal Jewelry; and Advanced Yoga Classes when a gaunt, bearded man emerged from the back room and hailed him with “Yo! How can I help?”

Charles took a deep breath. “I-uh-” Inspiration! “I notice you have a sign up about Central America and I wondered if I could help.”

The man stared at Charles in his suit jacket and tie. “Well, we have a beans-and-rice dinner coming up on Friday night.”

“No. That wasn’t what I had in mind. Look, are you part of the underground?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You know, the underground! That group that smuggles political refugees out of Costa Rica!”

A woman with braids and rimless glasses stuck her head out from behind the curtained doorway. “There aren’t any refugees from Costa Rica.”

“Puerto Rico, then,” said Charles impatiently. He wished he had taken a look at Newsweek before he left home. “You know, Central American illegal aliens.”

The Earthlings looked at each other and shrugged. This guy was too dumb to work for immigration, they figured, and it didn’t seem worth the trouble to enlighten him in regard to Puerto Rico.

“I thought I might marry one,” Charles said wildly. “Keep her from being deported.”

The woman’s lips twitched in amusement, but she said nothing.

Finally the man said gently, “We don’t do aliens. Look, can I help you?”

Charles looked at them, trying to decide whether or not to tell the truth. Better not, he decided. They didn’t appear to be people who would do desperate things for a large sum of money. They would for a cause, of course, but he couldn’t come up with one on short notice.

The woman came out from behind the curtain now, looking concerned. Her lips were pale and her eyelids red with a well-scrubbed look. Charles thought that she looked sympathetic and her figure was all right.

“Look,” he said, “I’m a physicist, and I don’t know anybody in town. Would you go out to dinner with me and tell me all about your work here?”

The woman regarded him as if he were a weevil in the whole-wheat flour. “No way,” she said.

While he waited for his deputy to get off the phone, Wesley stared up at the picture of the cowgirl on the palomino. The girl and the horse graced the calendar above his desk. Every year Wesley would sift through the collection of complimentary calendars sent out by local businesses-in search of a new palomino and cowgirl to adorn his workspace. Usually it was the feed store or the local hardware that issued such an offering, but this year they had opted for collie puppies and waterfalls, respectively, so Wesley had had to go as far as the Milton’s Forge Tack and Saddle Store. This year’s cowgirl, a skinny blonde in a white buckskin jacket, looked as if the palomino she was holding by the reins was the first of its species she had encountered. Wesley would be glad when the year was over. There weren’t any trees in the background, either. Any place without trees made him nervous.

His conversation with Clarine Mason had been brief. He had told her as gently as possible that the photograph from California did resemble Emmet, as far as he could tell, and that being the case, he had a few more questions to ask. He wanted to know if Emmet had ever been to college or if he had lived anywhere but Chandler Grove. Clarine said that apparently he had, if he was presently residing on a slab in a Los Angeles morgue, but Wesley assured her that he meant before that, to the best of her knowledge.

“No,” said Clarine Mason, without a moment’s hesitation. “He went to the community college for a business course, but he’d lived at home then. Of course, there’s the army. He was stationed in Germany about 1960. Does that count?”

“It may count,” said Wesley. “But I doubt if it matters.” He told her that he would be in touch when he learned anything and hung up.

Clay, on the other hand, seemed to get trapped by every person he talked to. He always wound up saying very little during these phone conversations, except for an occasional “I understand” and “That’s not really why I called” or “How interesting.” The calls always started out the same way. Clay would inquire whether the funeral homes supervised cremations, and then he wouldn’t get a word in edgewise for a good three minutes. Wesley was afraid that if this kept up, his deputy would become a real-estate baron in cemetery plots.

Finally, on the last call, he managed to avoid having one of the firm’s representatives sent around to discuss their special prepayment burial plan (Because in your line of work, sir, you never know) and he hung up the phone with the air of one who has had to wrest himself from its clutches.

“Okay,” he said, turning to Wesley. “I have some information for you. And, listen, if anybody with a voice like Vincent Price calls up and asks for me, tell ’em I’m out, all right?”

“Persistent, were they?” Wesley chuckled. “What did you find out?”

“They didn’t want to discuss cremation, you understand. I gather it must not be a profitable enterprise for them. It does them out of embalming charges, expensive vaults, satin-lined caskets, and all that other good stuff that contributes to the high cost of dying.” Clay shook his head. “When I go, just wrap me in a blanket and throw me in the ground.”

“That’s probably illegal,” Wesley pointed out.

“Yeah, they got lobbyists in the legislature, too, don’t they?” He turned to the page of scribbled notes he had taken during the phone calls. “All right, most of the local ones say that they don’t offer the service because there’s no demand for cremations in rural areas. Especially not back East. Now, in places like California, Hawaii, and Oregon, about forty percent of the deceased are cremated, but in, say, Kentucky and Tennessee, the figure is less than one percent.”