The Windsor Knot

country. So as not to make the neighbors nervous, he told himself. He slipped a Statler Brothers cassette into the tape deck and sang along, enjoying the sunshine and the beauty of a June day in the hills of Georgia; but in the back of his mind a list of questions was forming.

Clarine Mason fingered the crystal pendant around her neck and took three deep breaths. She really was feeling better. It was quite amazing. The pendant was absorbing all her negative feelings, just like they said it would. Perhaps the herbal tea had been a help, too. She resolved to buy more of it; after all, they had been kind to her and they needed the business, and after all, ginseng really might be an antidepressant.

Clarine poured hot water into the teapot and waited for the herbs to steep. The kitchen was sunny and comforting in the morning light. She felt happy to be on her own among her plants and her cross-stitched samplers. She was all right in the kitchen; it was the parlor that bothered her, with that blatant bare spot on the mantel that used to be a memorial to Emmet.

She had wanted to talk to somebody about her anger and her sense of humiliation at Emmet’s betrayal, but as she considered her friends one by one, she could find no one in whom she wanted to confide. Most of her friends were older women like herself, and although they would never admit it, her plight would make them uncomfortable. Somewhere, she thought, under their professions of sympathy, there would be a spark of satisfaction that this had happened to her. That the humiliation had been meted out to her, and not to them. That she was gullible to have believed in Emmet’s death in the first place with only a blue jar for proof.

Clarine had thought she’d go crazy that afternoon, pacing around the big empty house with all that rage building up inside her. But then as she was tidying up the kitchen, she’d noticed an old edition of the Chandler Grove Scout under a pile of vegetable peelings, and there had been an ad at the bottom of the page.

Treat Your Worries with Nature’s Remedies, the ad advised. Spiritual and Nutritional Counselors at Earthling Will Help You Fight the Blues. The directions in the ad described the old gristmill by the river as the headquarters of the health-food store and meditation center.

Clarine though to herself, Well, why not? She knew about Earthling from local gossip among the ladies’ church group. Everyone said that they were a bunch of hippies from out west who believed in eating peculiar food, and who took an interest in political causes that nobody else had ever heard of. Clarine knew all that. But their ad promised help to people with worries. Clarine decided that in this case their being outsiders was a point in their favor. Telling her troubles to those crazy people would hardly count as disclosure. It wasn’t as if anybody who mattered would find out. In fact, she thought, considering the peculiarities of their own lifestyles, they were hardly in any position to look down on her for being a discarded wife.

The potions of Earthling, Inc., seemed to Clarine to be her best chance of consolation without confiding in her friends and neighbors, those whose esteem she valued. Heaven forbid that Dr. Chandler should learn about the shame of Emmet’s defection. She would much rather try the mumbo jumbo of a bunch of raggedy strangers than confide in her lifelong acquaintances.

In a mood of desperation, gambling on a long shot, Clarine had gone to visit Earthling. When she reached the old gristmill, she parked the car in the gravel lot. Inside the cluttered shop, she looked around as if she were a casual tourist, trying not to attract any undue attention. She was nervous, not knowing what to expect from these outlandish strangers, and she was bewildered by all the strange and unpronounceable items they sold.

Just as she was ready to dash from the shop and forget the whole thing, a dark-haired woman in braids and an Indian print dress appeared and asked her if she’d like some tea. She seemed so sincere about the offer that Clarine forgot to say no, and soon she was sitting in the back room telling her life story to Shanti, which is what the girl said to call her. Shanti had seemed most interested in Emmet’s return from the ashes, as it were. But she said that since death was only a state of mind anyway, that Clarine should feel perfectly free to count Emmet’s first death as the valid one for psychic purposes. Just forget this little epilogue, she’d advised. After two more cups of tea, she and Shanti were in perfect agreement that Emmet had racked up enough bad karma to come back as a cockroach, and that Clarine was not to worry about any loose ends that Emmet had left in his new life. Shanti prescribed herbal tea and a healing crystal, and she urged Clarine to come back for meditation classes.

Clarine decided that she’d go to Earthling’s programs on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That way, it wouldn’t conflict with ladies’ circle on Monday and Wednesday-night choir practice. She poured herself a cup of herbal tea and added two spoonfuls of sugar. She was feeling much better indeed now that she was busy. Emmet was already fading from her consciousness like a bad dream.

The telephone rang, startling her so much that she spilled a few drops of tea. Setting the cup down carefully in its saucer, she hurried to answer it.

“Mrs. Clarine Mason?” said another of those plastic West Coast voices.

“Oh, Lord God! What is it this time?” cried Clarine, completely out of patience with intrusions from California.

“I’m with the coroner’s office, ma’am, and I’m looking at this form here on your late husband Mr. Emmet J. Mason, and I see that the officer who called you has neglected to put down what you’d like us to do with your late husband’s remains-”

In words of one syllable, Clarine told him.

“I don’t care if you’re Wyatt Earp,” said Susan Davis in her sternest voice. “You can’t bring that Coca Cola in here. There are irreplaceable documents in this office. So you either dump it out, or you stay outside the railing until you finish it.”

“Aw, Sue,” moaned Clay Taylor. “Come on. I have a couple of hours’ work to do, and I’ll probably even miss lunch. It’s police business,” he added for good measure.

Susan Davis was not impressed. “Parking tickets is police business,” she observed. “That don’t mean you get to break the rules in here and get me in trouble with Mrs. Home.” Her dark eyes flashed as she made her pronouncement and she went back to copying names in a record book.

With a sigh of resignation, Clay Taylor returned to the basement hall of the courthouse and finished his drink. He wondered how anybody as pretty as Susan Davis could be in such a perpetually bad mood. She had beautiful dark hair, worn long, except for a bit at the front caught up in a barrette, and her features were cameo perfect. If it weren’t for the perpetual snarl, she could be lovely. Her face in repose was a frown of disapproval and she could wring vinegar out of the most sugary comments addressed to her. In the three years during which Clay had been a deputy, he had occasion to encounter Susan at least once a week on visits to the records office, and he had yet to observe her in a good mood. There wasn’t much point in arguing with her, though, he thought, taking another swallow of Coke. He just hoped that someday Miss Dragon Lady would do 56 m.p.h. when he was out with the radar gun.

In a few minutes he reappeared at the counter of the records office. “Will you let me in now?”

Susan’s expression suggested that he was still a nuisance, but that she would have to put up with him. She opened the wooden barrier and motioned him in. “What do you want?” she asked in tones suggesting complete indifference.

“I need to see the death records in the county for the last five or six years. Can I use your computer?”

Her frown deepened. “No, you can’t use my computer. I have work to do! And besides those records haven’t been put on disk yet.”

“Why not?” asked Clay without thinking.

“Because I’m too busy to get around to it, what with people coming in and wasting my time asking stupid questions!”

“Well, where are the records then?”

“In a drawer, of course! Come on, I’ll show you where it is.” Her expression suggested that this would involve a four-hour trek through a swamp. In fact they ended up no more than twenty feet from Susan’s desk. She jerked the file drawer open for him and started to stalk away.

“What if somebody lived in this county, but didn’t die here?”

She gave him a withering glare. “Then they won’t be here, will they?”

“But the obituaries would be in the newspaper,” said Clay, thinking aloud.

“That’s not my problem!” said Susan, going back to her desk.

“Okay, I’ll check here first, and then look in the archives at the Scout office.”

“Bully for you.”