No Hope Divorce by Gary Wright

While it is true that you should never underestimate the actions of a woman scorned, neither should you miscalculate the thought process of a Redneck who has been wronged. Old Ezra Pond over to Mataha, the County Seat of No Hope County, was telling me recently about the nephew of his good friend, e.e. goings. It seems that e.e.’s nephew, Tommy Bent, got a divorce about a year ago from his lovely bride, Lila, and it was a particularly messy one. They had only been married a few years, and as Lila Field used to like to say, “I left Field and got Bent.”  It’s really too bad that her excellent homespun humor departed when she went to divorce court. She asked for pretty much everything and pretty much got it.

Judge Evelyn Poor over-extended her ruling and gave everything to Lila. Judge Poor harbors a thinly-felt though deep-seated hatred of all men. It seems that Ms. Poor felt lonely and unappreciated as a homely child. She tried her hardest to get her attractive and socially-active uncle to molest her, and he absolutely refused. Though too shy to say or do anything toward that end in her street clothes, she donned a judicial robe and turned into Everywoman, with a quest of righting every perceived wrong felt at the hands of people of the male persuasion. To this day, she takes her vengeance on all men who appear before her. In her judge’s garb she feels empowered and emboldened.

However, that’s another story for another time. I want to tell you about the Field divorce. Now, many of you may be familiar with the no-fault divorce, but I am about to acquaint you with the No Hope divorce, which is a fact, not an impugnment of this particular divorce nor divorces in general. The fact is that all divorces granted in No Hope County are No Hope divorces.

When their divorce was finalized, Tommy and Lila played out the words of a Johnny Cash song, that “she got the gold mine and he got the shaft.” When he asked Judge Poor to reconsider, she eloquently rebuffed him by stating, “How dare you question my ruling.” So much for give and take.

When he came back before her in a hearing to revise the alimony somewhat in his favor, he explained that he was required to pay more alimony than he was able to make working two full-time jobs. She replied with, “Well, Mr. Bent, do the best you can.”

He figured out that he wasn’t going to get any relief at the judicial bench, so he determined to seek his own relief at his work bench. Tommy still had keys to the house that Judge Poor had granted to his former bride, where Lila was now living with her new boyfriend, Clyde Excalibur. Tommy quietly began executing hia long-planned strategy.

Shortly after moving into the new house, Tommy had taken Lila down to the Jefferson Hardware Store and let Lila pick out the curtain rods which she had been eyeing for some time. Though a bit pricy, he bit his lip and said, “Nothing’s too good for my little honey bun.” Up went the new curtain rods, much to Lila‘s delight.

On a certain day when Tommy knew that Lila and her stay-at-home boyfriend would be out of town, in went Tommy and down went the new curtain rods. Back on his work bench in the shed where he lived, Tommy went to work. He carefully opened one end of each curtain rod for every window of Lila’s house. Into the circular, hollow rods, he poured a carefully prepared mixture of ground shrimp and caviar. Meticulously resealing the rods to ensure no marks were made, he returned to Lila’s house and replaced all the curtain rods throughout the house, painstakingly putting the curtains back and erasing every trace of his entrance to the house.

He had been vigilantly planning and plotting, so now all he had to do was wait. Within a couple of weeks, the seafood mixture began to rot . . . and to smell. Ooh, did it ever smell! Lila called in every expert she could find to help identify and take care of the odor, which had become overpowering. Fumicides were applied; then pesticides, odor-cides, smell-icides and every other cide known to man. No one could trace the origin of the foul odor. Finally, in desperation, she moved out.

In another couple of weeks, Tommy approached Lila and told her, “Look, Babe, I know that you’re kinda in a bind about the house and the smell and all. If you’ll cut back on some of my alimony payment, I’ll buy my interest in the house back and I’ll move back in at a discount, even with the bad odor. The house has a lot of sentimental value and all.”

She quickly agreed and they had the documents drawn up to make it legal. There was one proviso that she asked for: that she could come in and take some of the things out of the house with her.

On the appointed day, with lawyers present to ensure proper closure by all parties, she came in, and then walked out of Tommy’s life. On her way out, she took her prized curtain rods with her and moved forever to Michigan with Clyde. Whew! I think I smell her all the way from Saginaw.