probably couldn't help it; he was new in town and did not know how to behave. Those who discussed the matter at the Haven Lunch agreed Mumphry was more to be pitied than disliked. He ran as a partisan Democrat, and the gist of his platform seemed to be that, when it came to a position such as constable, the elected official would have to arrest drunks, speeders, and hooligans; he might even be called upon to arrest a dangerous criminal from time to time and run him up to the county jail. Surely the citizens of Haven weren't going to elect a woman to do such a job, law degree or not, were they?
They were and did. The vote was McCausland 407, Mumphry 9. Of his nine votes, it would be fair to assume he had gotten those of his wife, his brother, his twenty-three-year-old son, and himself. That left five unaccounted for. No one ever 'fessed up, but Ruth herself always had an idea that Mr Moran out there on the south end of town had had four more friends than she would have credited him with. Three weeks after the election, Mumphry and his wife left Haven. His son, a nice enough fellow named John, elected to stay, and although he was still, after fourteen years, often referred to as 'the new fella,' as in 'That new fella, Mumphry, come by to get his haircut this mawnin'; I member when his daddy ran against Ruth and got whipped s'bad?' And since then, Ruth had never been opposed.
The townsfolk had rightly seen her candidacy as a public announcement that her period of mourning was over. One of the things (one among many) the unfortunate Mumphry had failed to understand was that the lopsided vote had been, in part, at least, Haven's way of crying: 'Hooray, Ruthie! Welcome back!'
Ralph's death had been sudden and shocking, and it came close - too very damn close - to killing the part of her which was outward and giving. That part softened and complemented the dominant side of her personality, she felt. The dominant side was smart, canny, logical, and - although she hated to admit this last, she knew it was true - sometimes uncharitable.
She came to feel that if that outward and giving side of her nature were to lapse, it would be something like killing Ralph a second time. And so she came back to Haven. Came back to service.
In a small town, even one such person can make a crucial difference in how things are, and in what jargonmeisters are pleased to call 'the quality of life', that person can become, in fact, something very like the heart of the town. Ruth had been well on her way to becoming such a valuable person when her husband died. Two years later - after what seemed in retrospect to be a long, bleak season in hell -she had rediscovered that valuable person, as one might rediscover something moderately wonderful in a dark attic corner - a piece of carnival glass, or a bentwood rocking chair that was still serviceable She held it up to the light, made sure it was unbroken, dusted it, polished it and then returned it to her life. Running for town constable had only been the first step. She could not have said why this seemed so right, but it did - it seemed the perfect way to at the same time remember Ralph and get on with the work of being herself. She thought she would probably find the job both boring and unpleasant ... but that had also been true of canvassing for the Cancer Society and serving on the Textbook Selection Committee. Boring and unpleasant did not mean a task was unfruitful, a fact a lot of people seemed not to know, or to willfully ignore. And, she told herself, if she really didn't like it, there was no law to make her stand for re-election. She wanted to serve, not to martyr herself. If she hated it, she would let Mumphry or someone like him have a turn.
But Ruth discovered she liked the job. Among other things, it gave her a chance to put a stop to some nasty goings-on that old John Harley had allowed to continue ... and grow.
Del Cullum, for instance. The Cullums had been in Haven since time out of mind, and Delbert - a thick-browed mechanic who worked at Elt Barker's Shell - was probably not