In our town, known throughout the province as a place of uncommon common knowledge about solving its own problems, was a man known as the Don. He had the bearing of an overlord/aristocrat, and he deserved the epithet due to his family’s history, their financial holdings, and his own beneficent and noble manner. The Don’s family owned the paper box and tool and die factories on the eastern side of town, the sports arena across from the town square, and, it was said, the town council.
In his youth, the Don was a good student and good athlete, and was always forgiven for his juvenile indiscretions, such as drunkenness and vandalism, due to his sincere remorse, his desire to make amends, and the further steps he always took to help the less fortunate of the town. (“Boys will be boys”, they said.) He donated heavily to charities and it was believed he purchased a house for a destitute family.
The Don modified his behaviour in his late twenties and early thirties, and was rarely seen about the town, appearing only at fundraisers and on the occasional stroll along the river. He expanded his business ventures and created more jobs for the town’s citizens in plastic moulding, shoemaking, and tourism. He had everything he wanted except for a wife and family.
The women in the town of his own age had already married, or steered clear of him due to their experiences with him in their teenage years, so he focused on younger women, who were more unlikely to be influenced by the stories, and who looked up to him as a rich and handsome man.
A young woman named Clara became particularly enamoured of him and, after a year-long courtship, she accepted his proposal of marriage.
A child was born within a year, and Clara and the Don were the models of civic propriety; they were invited to all of the best functions, and their charitable works made them pillars of the community.
But as the Don descended into middle age and preferred a quiet existence, his young wife grew bored and was seen regularly at local restaurants and taverns, eventually taking a lover named Max. Although the young couple attempted to hide their affair, it was known to many in the town, but no one was overly concerned, not even the old busybodies who normally frowned on such behaviour. They loved Clara, tolerated Max, and understood that the Don had partly brought this upon himself by ignoring Clara’s own personal wants.
Divorce, however, was out of the question. Marriage, to many in the town, was a sacrament, and there could be no argument about that. The affair could continue, they thought, but divorce would affect the child too much to be desirable, and would be detrimental to the Don’s various businesses. Clara, Max, and the Don would have to rough it out as things were, and they understood this. Only an act of God could interfere with the state of things.
Sometime later, while returning from a walk along the river, the Don was struck by a car and killed. The town had a funeral, the size of which hadn’t been seen in six counties since the death of the Don’s grandfather. A statue of the Don was built on the town square, and the civic building was renamed in his honour.
After an appropriate length of time, Clara and Max married, had three children, and drifted into old age, still lovers and each other’s best friends. They died within a week of each other, well into their nineties. The affair was deliberately forgotten, the Don was still held in the highest esteem, and no one even suspected that it was I who had hit the Don with my car.
