by Rita Durrett
being a good conservative American, His Honor sealed the depositions. There seems to be no way to stop the sexual immorality that is infecting the big cities. But by sealing these scandalous depositions His Honor tried to keep it from becoming known that the same disease had shown up in Hometown.
After the divorces were finalized, each of the couples went out of town to remarry. They were wise to do so. Considering all that had led up to these marriages, neither our judge nor any of our town ministers would have wanted to preside over such unions.
I must confess, I misjudged completely the effect the divorces and remarriages would have on Hometown folks. Probably this was because in working with the two uncoupled then re-coupled couples I had become firmly convinced that what had gone on between the Hatfields and the McCoys had not been sexual dissipation, but rather the inevitable, if improper, result of altered love attachments. I expected the rumors and stories to die down after the remarriages. There no longer was anything immoral going on between the couples. This should have been apparent to everyone. For though relations between the two newly realigned McCoy and Hatfield couples were affable, there no longer was any of that exuberant neighborliness which had characterized them when they were differently mated. In fact, after the remarriages things at the Hatfield and McCoy half-acre lots became decidedly decorous. So there wasn't the slightest bit of evidence to support a continuation of the rumors. But rumors, I fear, are like boulders rolling downhill: Once they start rolling, they become self sustaining. So all that nonsense speculation about the Hatfield and McCoy wells being tainted with aphrodisiacs just kept on, and the high school bus couldn't resume the efficient short route past the Hatfield and McCoy places.
VI
The two divorces were legally straightforward, completely free of complications or difficulties. The biggest task was with the real estate property. Each ex-wife had to be removed from the title of her ex husband's half-acre lot and replaced on the half-acre lot title of her new husband. Fortunately, I am both a lawyer and real estate broker, so I could handle the whole matter. Unfortunately, however, the land survey required before any title can be adjusted turned up a problem. According to the survey, all the previous surveys had perpetuated an original error dating back several decades. A tiny sliver of land had somehow been mistakenly included in both the Hatfield and the McCoy titles. It was a minor surveying error. The amount of land involved is totally insignificant. And since there was no disagreement about it, it was not going to take any heroic legal action to rectify. Nevertheless, legally it was an error, it had to be corrected, and it would require some time and bother to properly dot all the i's and cross all the t's. Because of that trivial surveying error I'm the only person in town who learned exactly how the two couple's re-coupling hit a snag, why after going to all the troubles and expenses of divorcing and remarrying in order to fit in in Hometown, all four abruptly left.
One day a few months after the couples had settled into their new marital arrangements, when all the legal formalities except the trivial land survey problem were well and properly finished, Mr. Hatfield loaded up his van with flowers to be delivered to some of his big city customers. When he got a couple dozen miles out of town his van broke down. The engine started missing, then backfiring. He pulled off the road and stopped while he tried pumping the accelerator to get the engine to run smoothly again. But the coughing and stuttering continued and then the engine just quit and wouldn't restart. When Hatfield reached for his cell phone he couldn't contact anybody. Apparently the valley he was stuck in is one of those infamous dead spots where cell phones won't work. So Hatfield did the only thing he could do. He got out, stepped back over to the highway, and tried to wave down a passerby for help.
By pure coincidence, one of the first cars to come along was the McCoy SUV. The new Mrs. McCoy, i.e., the woman who a few months before had been Mrs. Hatfield, was also on her way to the city. She had never liked the dining room set the first Mrs. M. had left in the McCoy house after the divorce. Now that she was lady of the house she intended to replace it. However, the only furniture store in Hometown didn't have anything which suited her, so she was driving to the big city to find a wider selection.
Of course, she immediately recognized her ex husband waving for help at the side of the highway, so she stopped to provide it. After all, as I said, their divorce had not been due to any animosity between them, but rather because each had fallen in love with someone else. So now she had the same affable feelings toward him she would have for any neighbor. When Mr. H. explained his problem, the new Mrs. M. (nee Mrs. H.) agreed to turn around and drive him back to town to her new husband who could come out with his tow truck and rescue the broken down flower van.
I learned what these two did next in a way I'll explain in a moment. But I never learned why they did it. That's anybody's guess. My guess is that it was the first time since their remarriages, probably the first time since their cross-couple love testing that the two had been alone together. They had gotten divorced because each decided he/she loved a different person. However, that didn't mean they had stopped liking each other. Old habits never die easily. Some say they never die at all. Just look at how hard it is for smokers to quit. So I think old habits just took control of the pair.
Anyway, when these two were about ten miles outside of Hometown they turned off the highway onto an unpaved and seldom used rural road. A couple miles down this road, in the middle of a wooded area where I suppose they thought no one would ever see them, Mrs. M. (nee H.) parked at the side of the road. They both got out of the SUV's front bucket seats and onto its ample back bench seat where they did that which barely a year before they had decided they no longer wanted to do with each other.
I learned this a couple weeks later from a Hometown friend of mine who happened to be stalking a buck deer through the very woods where the SUV was parked. It wasn't legal hunting season, but as my friend carefully explained to me, he was only rehearsing, practicing so he'd be ready when hunting season arrived. As a good conservative American, that's certainly all he would have been doing. At any rate, when that buck paused in a little clearing my friend drew a bead on him, only a practice bead, of course. But before my friend squeezed off a practice round he noticed something which he hadn't noticed before, something which the magnified image in his scope brought into view. Though the trees in back of the buck obscured it, about a hundred yards or so beyond the deer there appeared to be some kind of vehicle.
My friend snapped on his rifle's safety to be sure he didn't accidentally put a slug through any car. Then he focused his scope on what he thought might be a vehicle. It was only idle curiosity, of course, but he wanted to see if it happened to be the game warden's pickup. Because there were so many trees in the way he had to change his location to get a good view, and his movement spooked the buck. But that didn't matter because my friend couldn't continue practicing with anybody around even if it wasn't the game warden, since anyone who saw him might not realize he was only practicing and might misinform the game warden.
My friend stealthily moved forward through the trees till he found a place where he could get a good view of the vehicle through his scope, and he was pleased to see it wasn't the game warden's pickup. However he was surprised at what he did see: A pair of naked female legs doing an upside-down tap dance on the headliner above some SUV's back seat. At that point my friend settled down to carefully observe. He wasn't being a voyeur. He wanted to find out who was the dancing legs' partner. If the partner turned out to be the game warden, it was for sure that the legs would not be the game warden's wife's. So if the partner was the game warden, then my friend would never again have to worry about anyone mistaking his practice hunting.
When the dancing stopped the scope showed the couple in the SUV back seat were dressing, but it couldn't see inside the car clearly enough for my friend to identify them. After a short while the passenger side back door opened, and s
ince my friend was viewing from that side, his scope then clearly showed who the man was, Mr. Hatfield. However, from his vantage my friend couldn't get a good enough look at the other side of the SUV to identify the woman when she exited its back seat and reentered its driver's seat. He did get one fleeting glance, enough for him to guess she probably was the barmaid from a sleazy bar located a few miles outside town. (There are no bars inside Hometown.) This woman is known to be available, for a price, for just such dancing engagements.
I never let on to my hunting friend, but I knew better who the woman was. It didn't matter if he couldn't tell me her exact identity because what he did tell me was the exact time he saw her and Mr. Hatfield. And after a period just long enough for someone to drive from those woods back to the highway and then back to the McCoy half-acre lot, I drove up to the McCoy place to deliver the new half-acre lot titles with the corrected survey error. I happened to arrive at exactly the same time as the McCoy SUV carrying Mrs. M. and Mr. H., her previous husband and, I know now though I didn't know then, her