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This is not a sentimental story. There will not be any crying or murders and if by some twist of fate some murders get into this story, they will be smart murders and they will be executed quickly.
Regardless, there will not be any crying.
If something beyond my control and beyond the control of the characters in this story were to occur, such as a murder, for example, and the characters felt so overwhelmed by the senseless murder that they could not help themselves but to cry a little to get over their grief, then the crying involved would be very brief, and I have a feeling that only one tear would shed and that tear would never come out, but stay locked up behind the eye of the person mourning the uncommonly discreet but still very tragic murder, which would probably happen to a man on his wedding day in full view of his now never-to-be wife, who of course would not consider the fact that now she would have to buy his tuxedo, it being covered in blood and shot up with bullets, and she would merely continue her mourning and hold back her tear.
Humans are not built to hold back tears, so do not begrudge her that one tear if by some chance she fails in keeping it in, despite her best efforts to spare the reader having to look at it. Today the reader must only bear the one tear while the widow must bear the sorrow of never becoming a widow, since her husband died before they could get married. It certainly would have been a little better for the widow if her husband could have waited a little to get murdered, so she could have called herself a widow and really felt secure in the use of that word, rather than having to mention the fact that she was not really a widow every time the subject came up.
In the end though, the widow would go home. She could not after all spend the rest of her life in the street kneeling over the body of her dead almost-husband, who had long since been taken to the hospital and to the morgue and zipped up into a little bag and pushed on a tray with very smooth rollers into a stainless steel compartment for dead people anyway, such was the nature of the problem, his being dead and not only dead but murdered and not only murdered but murdered in full view of his now never-to-be wife on their now tragic wedding day.
The widow would open a can of Campbell’s Chunky soup, which her fiancee had picked out because he was so very concerned with her health that he was willing to spend an extra fifty cents to get chunky soup. But the soup would not heat up, and that would turn out to be the fault of the husband for not fixing the microwave, which she had asked him to do not only several times, but several clusters of times, which translates to several times on several days. Days are, after all, groups of seconds and minutes and hours and therefore clusters is a fine term for a grieving widow who had the unfortunate luck of not even being a widow to use on her day of mourning to describe her soup which was chunky but would not heat up.
The stove? Nevermind the stove, the widow wanted to use the microwave and she couldn't, the stove is beside the point. Chunky soup is no better than regular soup when served cold. We are not talking Gaspacho here. Gaspacho is a fine soup if you happen to be eating it in Spain, but we are not in Spain, we are about as far from Spain as you can get because we are in Great Falls, Montana, a place without the slightest resemblance to Spain, except for windmills, which I have an idea they have both in Great Falls and Spain.
You can put up a windmill just about anywhere regardless of whether or not that place has any wind. A windmill will still be a windmill with or without wind.
The widow put up a small windmill in her front yard – a large one wouldn't fit, the yard, like the windmill, is small – and the widow often remarked that the windmill would be a great thing for generating electricity if only someone could figure out a reliable method. Let's not pick on her too much. She is a widow, almost.
And after not eating her soup and not kneeling in the street for any longer than was necessary to advance the plot of the story, and not becoming a wife, the widow went out on the front porch and sat on the black railing. The wind was a bit more than she could put up with so she pulled her hair, blond, into a pony tail and said goodbye to that problem. Then she smoked a cigarette - it doesn't matter what kind - and she felt the smoke go into her lungs and was glad to be poisoned by something. Life is too pure in its joy and sorrow and love and death not to be poisoned by something.
She lit another cigarette after smoking the first and let the match fall on the green outdoor carpet, where it burned a hole in the plastic and died the same kind of death as her husband. The widow began to look around and she noticed that she wasn't going to be able to pay for any of it: the house, the car, the funeral, the casket, which she hoped would be silver to match the distinguished look she was going to force the undertaker to put on her husband's face.
But how can you have this type of story without a child? Her son, who was only seven because seven is a much better number than any of the other numbers you could use for a child, and who had a face which was very guilty, so guilty in fact, that when you looked at him you were always thinking that maybe the story was really a mystery or film-noir of some kind where you were going to find out at the end that the son with the guilty face was really somehow responsible for his father's death, walked out onto the porch. The son walked to his mother and refused to cry and refused to look innocent and his mother patted him on the head.
If the reader would please refrain from getting overanxious and calling for the mother to kill the son for looking so guilty, you would see what was coming next. Perhaps she will kill him in the end if you be more patient.
So, finally you get around to the question of wedlock.
Well, I have already told you that the widow was not married, so how could she have borne the child under wedlock? A previous marriage? No, there were no previous marriages. That is a very sad story. If the reader permits, I could tell it.
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