King’s “Premium Harmony” is one of his post-Needful Things (1991) Castle Rock stories, first published in The New Yorker in 2009 and collected in The Bazaar of Bad Dreams in 2015. You’d think that once a town has lived through the literal coming of the devil and had some time to recover, things would be looking up, but “Premium Harmony” is bleak. 

Castle Rock doesn’t have much going for it: businesses have left, things are run down, and “It’s pretty dead.” The Wal-Mart is just about the only thing the Rock has going for it and that’s where Ray and Mary are headed in “Premium Harmony,” to buy some grass seed in the hopes of increasing the curb appeal of their house so they can sell it before they lose it. With every line of dialogue, they gripe and snipe at one another, zeroing in on and exploiting one another’s faults and shortcomings, and they have both chosen unhealthy ways of dealing with the stress of their marriage and of life in Castle Rock: Mary binges on snack cakes and Ray smokes. 

When Mary asks Ray to pull in at the Quik-Pik so she can grab a ball for their niece’s birthday, there are opportunities to look on the bright side, but neither of them are interested in seizing these. The fact that a ninety-nine cent ball could bring joy to a small child could be read as inspiring rather than sad. That Mary cares enough to know that the Quik-Pik has purple balls (her niece’s favorite color) and Wal-Mart might not could be touchingly thoughtful rather than just another act of contrariness. But that’s not how it plays out, of course. Ray is disgruntled, takes a cheap shot at Mary about the snack cakes, and asks her to get him a pack of cheap cigarettes (Premium Harmony brand), which starts a whole new argument. 

In the end, none of it matters though: not the ball, not the snack cakes, not the smokes. Mary has a heart attack and drops dead in the Quik-Pik. Shocked, Ray joins the employees and shoppers in the store, as they stand around and wait for the ambulance to arrive, reciting stale platitudes and offering hollow condolences. Some curious teenagers peek in the window, craning their necks and aiming their cell phone cameras, ready to make Mary’s death a spectacle. As Ray and his fellow Quik-Pikers absorb the shock of Mary’s abrupt passing, “Ray tells them a few things about Mary. He tells them how she made a quilt that took third prize at the Castle County fair. That was in ’02. Or maybe ’03,” though this doesn’t really speak to who Mary was or tell them anything about her that matters. This moment of shared sorrow feels performative, empty, and numb, an everyday tragedy in a town that has seen more than its fair share. And as Ray gathers his thoughts, “it comes to him that now he can smoke all he wants, and anywhere in the house.” 

For Ray and Mary, there is no silver lining, no  “happily ever after” in Castle Rock. There’s only the fatalistic ability to choose one more self-destructive thing that brings them a step closer to the end. 

Quotes from “Premium Harmony” are from The New Yorker’s online publication of the story, available here.